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The Viv Richards leg-side flick By Kamran AbbasiYou dont take Viv Richards down. Ive seen him hit by a bumper and the ball slide off him like a sponge thrown at granite. Ive seen him bowled for a duck and still swagger off the pitch. In the mind of King Viv these are simply moments of odd luck in a bowlers favour, for in his realm, in those royal 22 yards, an opponent is to be cut down with his SS Jumbo.When you are growing up and you see a man like Richards bat, you want to bat like him. When you are older, you realise youll never see a batsman like him again. We know about the swagger. Others swagger too, but its never been so natural or intimidating. We know about the gum-chewing smile, bum jutting towards square leg in a straight-kneed stance, head cocked towards the bowler atop shoulders that seem as broad as the body is tall. We know what follows is beautiful brutality with no empathy for a bowlers impotence.We hear much talk of modern batting, of switch hits and ramp shots. Richards didnt need any of those. Richards style was to see ball, hit ball - anywhere. That isnt to say he couldnt play orthodox. His off-drive was quite upright but imperious; the ball might have been fired from a cannon. His pull was by arrangement with the bowler, who barely finished his action before Richards was swaying to the off side to thump him to the boundary. His on-drive was perfectly balanced, an exquisite blend of power and timing.In defence, hed pat the ball down as if it was the head of a docile kitten, to mock the lollipop deliveries of the worlds most fearsome bowlers. But a Richards defensive stroke was a grand anticlimax, an obscene waste of talent. Here was a man made for destruction.Speed, spin, late movement, early movement, the ball took a hell of a beating. When the mood took him, Richards stepped back a pace or two to free his arms and drive expansively through the off side. Whether it was a four or six was a matter of whimsy. It was unstoppable. It was signature. Indeed, all his moves were. He had so many signatures that youd need an autograph book to capture them.But the one that sticks with me is the way Richards played through leg. Yes, Richards was good off his legs. Fire one at his body and he flicked it away, as any world-class batsman might do, except with more venom. No, it isnt that routine stroke that interests me. Richards did something else, something more breathtaking, something that established his supremacy early in an encounter.Batting at No. 3, he faced the worlds best. Lillee and Thomson. Botham and Willis. Imran, Kapil and Hadlee. They spat venom and smelt blood. The pitches were rough, green or uneven. Richards didnt wear a helmet. They wanted to humble the mighty West Indies. They wanted Richards and his West Indians to grovel. Richards would smile. Hed swagger. Hed chew gum. Hed prod the pitch. Hed pat a few heads of docile kittens.The bowler felt on top, so chest-thumpingly on top that hed deliver a ball of perfect length darting in at off stump. Instead of patting back down the line, instead of stepping back and driving expansively through the off side, which it was too early to do, Richards had a third way. He moved with an effortless grace, as if merely readjusting that straight-kneed stance. His front leg moved forward and across his stumps, more across than forward, covering them, a certain lbw - for any man but King Viv, that is.Next, Richards delivered his stroke, his signature move. Across his straight-kneed front leg, in a feat of immaculate timing and rippling power, hed flick his hands over the ball, a flick that began as a twitch of his mighty shoulder pivots and ended with a snap of wrists, plucking it from its off-stump trajectory and pistoling it into or over the leg-side boundary. The message was delivered. King Viv was seizing control of his kingdom.Forward and across, with power and poise, from straightened knees and mighty shoulders, he felled the worlds best bowlers. They grovelled before him. If anybody else tried it, it looked like a slog, uncouth and uncultured. When Vivian Richards moved forward and across and flicked to leg, it was a shot of brutal beauty, a signature move to signal the demolition.Kamran Abbasi is an editor, writer and broadcaster. @KamranAbbasi****The Dhoni stumping By Sidharth MongaThe word evolution in the context of wicketkeeping frustratingly ends at how Adam Gilchrist turned that player into a batsman first and a gloveman second. Batting has evolved beyond recognition with the advent of the two limited-overs formats and the never-ending improvement in protective equipment and bats. Bowling has evolved with slower balls, reverse swing and the doosra. Wicketkeeping, a job behind the stumps, has only evolved in front of them.MS Dhoni the wicketkeeper is different; yet when you think of a Dhoni signature it is always to do with his batting: the helicopter shot, the quick running, the calculated finish. I have not watched the Dhoni biopic, authorised and promoted by the man himself, and produced by his friend and manager, but none of the promos shows him keeping wicket, and I am willing to wager that the movie does not delve into that aspect. It is a shame because, with due respect to collecting throws in front of the stumps, wearing helmets while standing up to the quicks and the advance in general athleticism, Dhonis stumping technique is the only evolutionary step in the actual art of wicketkeeping.Wicketkeepers tend to follow the laws of physics when they collect hard cricket balls. Which is, take the hands back to absorb the blow and make sure the ball doesnt fall out. When it comes to stumpings, especially when the ball is turning and bouncing, keepers go back with the ball a little to collect it cleanly before moving towards the stumps. There is a precious half-second lost there. Dhoni doesnt go back. His gloves are always moving towards the stumps. It is as if along the way he just picks up a stationary object and whips the bails off with it.It is an act whose finality is beyond doubt. You miss the ball with Dhoni behind the stumps and you know you have no time to get back. Usually on pitches with turn and bounce, you can always hope to return to the crease because the more the action on the ball the more a wicketkeeper has to go back with his gloves. This doesnt apply to Dhoni. The impact is most visible when batsmen are stumped playing the forward defensive. The ball dips a little and drags the back foot over, but it has to turn past the bat to beat it, which means a regular wicketkeeper takes that much time to allow batsmen to get back into the crease. With Dhoni you are stumped by the time alarm bells ring in your mind.This is no party trick, and he has many - for instance, sticking his right leg out perpendicularly to stop a late cut, even as the hands follow the ball should it miss the bat. Dhoni almost never misses a stumping or a catch even though his hands are never going back to soften the blow. It is the reliability that makes it a signature move.By all accounts, and by all I have seen in the India nets over the years, Dhoni hardly practises keeping. He rarely talks about it. His fielding coaches have little idea how he does it. Behind the scenes, though, he works hard and has done. He spends a lot of time on his wicketkeeping in his houses in Delhi and Ranchi. A current wicketkeeper on the circuit has had conversations with Dhoni about his technique and he says Dhoni can manage it because he has done it since he was a boy. Others dont even try.At a young age, as with many things he did in his own way because of a mind that questioned norms, Dhoni knew he wanted to save time. I am not sure if he ever watched or spoke to the only man I have seen pull off such stumpings in international cricket, Sadanand Viswanath. Like Viswanath, Dhoni trained himself to not let his elbows go behind his body when collecting the ball standing up to the stumps. He never shied from wearing a helmet to protect himself; being effective was better than looking flash. Then hours went into perfecting the move. His strength, especially in the wrists, compensates for the control he loses by not giving himself time.The result is an act of beauty that hasnt been given its due. Indian broadcasters nowadays seem to have a Kohli cam that captures everything Virat Kohli does on the field: running in with the ball, reacting to the delivery, to the shot, appealing, celebrating, despairing, cheering, fighting, scratching his beard. The Dhoni stumpings are already caught on tape from multiple angles, and before he goes for good, I hope some producer decides to play them out for the world on loop. That would be a trip.Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo****The KP surge By Rob SmythIll never forget Super Saturday of the London Olympics: Kevin Pietersen was batting. Pietersens awesome 149 against South Africa at Headingley left a far greater imprint on my memory than the orgy of patriotism that accompanied arguably Britains most celebrated day of sport. He didnt win a Test, never mind a gold medal, but the ethereal majesty with which he took apart the best pace attack in the world prompted a tremulous gratitude I shall always remember. The visceral thrill was such that it was impossible to sit still - and not just while the innings was going on. When I went home that night I tried to watch a film, couldnt concentrate and put the highlights of the cricket on, twice.Pietersen was associated with many shots - the switch hit, the slog sweep, the flamingo - but his greatest skill was what we might call the KP surge: when he would decide, as if on a whim, to take a bowler or an attack apart; when his mere presence at the crease was a newsflash. It might only last half an hour or an hour. That was enough: the resounding impact of the Pietersen surge meant it was invariably match-winning. When he made a double-century against India at Lords in 2011, his half-centuries came from 134 balls, 82, 85 - and finally 25 as he ran riot. He did not so much trouble the scorers as terrorise them. He did it against all opponents and in all contexts; he could kick an opponent when they were up or down. He did it in all formats too, but the elevated significance of his Test-match surges made them the most exhilarating thing I have seen in cricket.The best things about watching sport are genius, unpredictability and partisanship. As an England fan, the Pietersen surge involved all three. It was an almost psychedelic experience. Those innings were a cure for shyness; they made you want to tell someone, anyone, that Pietersen was on one. In sport its extremely rare for the reality to exceed the fantasy; with Pietersen that happened on multiple occasions. He didnt deal in the impossible; he dealt in the unimaginable, remixing existing shots and inventing new ones. Its no surprise that the majority of his most famous shots came during a surge, when he was in a higher state of concentration.In his superb book Kevin Pietersen on Cricket, he observed that being in the zone did not, as we tend to think, mean seeing the ball big; it meant seeing it slow. Two shots demonstrated that better than others: the dreamy pull off Dale Steyn during his 149 at Headingley, and the laziest driven six over extra cover off Pragyan Ojha in his immense 186 in Mumbai later that year. There were a few exceptions, most notably the chest-beating duel with Brett Lee during his Ashes-winning 158 in 2005, but the Pietersen surge was usually defined by a serene control and an aura of invincibility. He gave the worlds great bowlers a crash course in futility.There was no pattern to when all this might occur, and he has struggled to understand the frequency with which he entered the zone. The most common trigger seemed to be defiance - of opponents, the media, poor form, or even, at Headingley in 2012, his own team-mates. He might be stimulated by the desire to show off, the match situation or the weather. In Colombo in 2012, he decided he simply could not bat time in the 45-degree heat. So he hit one six, and then he hit another, and soon hed made 151 from 165 balls.That aura of invincibility could be deceptive. For every legendary surge, there were three or four where he got himself out just as word was spreading that something magical might be happening. That jeopardy added to the thrill of the experience, and the reward when he pulled it off was that you could sit at close of play trying to fathom what you had just witnessed. As a sports journalist you can become anaesthetised. The KP surge took me back to being a fan, and being a kid, lost in the wonder of astonishing sport.Rob Smyth is the author of Gentlemen and Sledgers: A History of the Ashes in 100 Quotations****The dry-pitch con job By Andrew Fidel FernandoIf a government job is the most stable employment in South Asia, cricket administration is perhaps the most volatile. Cricket Australia has been stuck with James Sutherland for the better part of two decades. Giles Clarke looks and sounds like Jurassic calcium deposit, and upholds the hairstyle and values of an even earlier age. In South Asia - and Sri Lanka, in particular - cricket governance is forever enlivened by summary firings, interim-committee appointments, judicial injunctions, hostile takeovers, ad-hoc cocktail lunches, impromptu travel junkets, temperamental office Wi-Fi, and so on.So when out of this chaos order emerges, it does seem wondrous. And in no instance do administrators, ground staff, team management and cricketers collude to such consistently fruitful effect as in the preparation of dry tracks for foreign teams.It begins with the curator. In years gone by there may have been some head-scratching as to whether dry tracks are appropriate for certain visiting teams. Helpfully, the cricket world has since organised itself into two distinct groups: teams who can barely play spin, and teams who would rather self-immolate.When the latter sort arrive at the ground, the curator smilingly assures them that, of course, there will be some pace and bounce, not to worry, it always looks like this before a Test, and actually, this is quite like the one that South Africa had won a game on a few years back, youll see, and oh, put the opposition in to bat definitely. Not long after, he instructs his ground staff to scrub the surface down with coir brushes and warns them not to spill so much as a bead of sweat while they do. The curator has, of course, been instructed to prepare a surface just good enough to avoid ICC censure. Just to make sure, board officials are buttering up the match referee, their guest of honour in the extravagant pre-series tamasha. By the eve of the match a little tension has built up, but the tourists are concealing their fears. The visiting captain will make assertive, leader-like comments at his media appearance. They know it will spin, but his men are up to the challenge, he will say. They have trained so hard, they are the best-prepared outfit not just in the history of cricket but also of preparation. And, he says, the top order did continuous trust-falls and sang around the campfire in their team-building jamboree until all memory of traumatic past tours was wiped out.But then the match begins and things begin to go badly. The arm ball proves destructive initially, so the batsmen meet and decide to watch closely for it. The turning ball duly wreaks havoc the next day. Soon they begin to speak of spin bowling as if it is some kind of voodoo. Physically they are deteriorating, like someone is sticking pins into dolls made in their visage. Batsmen are sweating profusely in the heat. They are developing tinnitus from the constant cawing of the vultures around the bat. The legs are not quite moving as they should. The bowlers variations look identical out of the hand, so maybe the eyes are packing up.By now, almost everything the home spinners touch is turning into a wicket. They had smiled graciously while the fast bowlers were given their token two overs with the new ball, but before long, lost patience and strode to the bowling crease to dispatch them to the boundary. That was cute, machan, but its time to really start playing now. For much of the game, the fast bowlers trudge from position to distant position in the field. By the end they have had less impact on proceedings than, say, the sightscreen attendants.The home side eventually saunters to victory. The usual post-match reflection follows. About 48 hours pass. When another dry pitch is unveiled at the next venue, the visiting captain cannot drum up any bravado. This time he knows what he is really looking at: a funeral pyre.Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfos Sri Lanka correspondent. @andrewffernando Montez Sweat Redskins Jersey . Their 38th instalment is arguably their biggest fight card to date, including three-title fights and a main event which was selected by the fans. The promotion boasts 14-straight years of business and is operated by MFC president Mark Pavelich, who is often overlooked in this country for the foundation hes established for MMA in Canada. Sonny Jurgensen Redskins Jersey .J. -- Pitcher Carl Pavano is retiring after 14 major league seasons. https://www.redskinssportsgoods.com/Womens-Art-Monk-Inverted-Jersey/ . Neymar curled home a free kick from just outside the area to put the 2014 World Cup host ahead in the 44th minute. Three minutes after the break, a simple through pass from Paulinho freed Oscar and the Chelsea star rounded goalkeeper Jung Sung-ryong to extend Brazils lead. Derrius Guice Redskins Jersey . It was hard for Luck to pull off another comeback, or even get into the end zone, while standing on the sideline. Rivers threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to rookie Keenan Allen and Nick Novak kicked four field goals to give the Chargers a 19-9 victory against the Colts on Monday night. Darrell Green Jersey . As the crowd erupted, Davis knocked the ball off the glass and back into his hands. With 1:14 to go in overtime, Davis sixth block also became his 17th rebound. That, along with his 32 points -- which tied a career high -- proved too much for Denver to overcome, and the Pelicans held on for their third straight victory, 111-107 on Sunday night. Star guards Matthew Dellavedova and Patty Mills combined for 49 points in a 95-80 win over Serbia on Monday as Australia took a giant stride towards a top-two group finish in the Olympic mens basketball competition.But as impressive as the scoring output of the NBA championship-winning pair was, coach Andrej Lemanis could see even more positives.About the way Mills harried the Serbian guards each time they brought the ball up the floor.Or how Dellavedova was able to read the defence.Not to mention Dellavedovas remarkable 13 assists without a single turnover, to go with 23 points on seven-of-eight shooting from the field.Mills was scarcely less impressive, knocking down a game-high 26 points.When we got bogged down a little bit, Delly took a little bit of initiative to find his way into the paint and exploit some of the defensive framework that they had in place, said Lemanis.Hes just such a smart player. He reads situations very well and can find his way into being effective.... I first saw him when I came on board the national team in 2009 and to see his growth from then to now is just really fun.Hes continued to grow every year. His dedication to his art is just sensational.The final result did not reflect the closeness of the match, with the Boomers blowing out the margin in tthe closing two minutes with 11 unanswered points.ddddddddddddSerbia had led by as much as seven points during the third term, but the Boomers refused to buckle.Ive been on Aussie teams before that havent handled adversity like that, said swingman Joe Ingles.We stuck to our plan to keep executing offensively and defensively.Im really proud of our effort obviously against a really tough team.Australia are now in the box seat to claim a crucial top-two finish in Group A after opening the Rio tournament with clutch wins over France and Serbia, both of whom are ranked in the top six in the world.Australias next match is against the United States on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).Champion centre Andrew Bogut had three fouls before halftime and picked up his fourth early in the final term.But with Aron Baynes stepping up at both ends, Lemanis was able to keep Bogut on the bench for several minutes in the fourth quarter.Towering centre Miroslav Raduljica top-scored for Serbia with 25 points and captain Milos Teodosic had 17.Lemanis had singled out Teodosic as the biggest threat to the Boomers, who were mostly able to quell the playmakers influence on the contest. 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