Seventy-seven years ago, Oklahoma miner Mutt Mantle — a man obsessed with baseball — named his son after Philadelphia’s Hall-of-Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane.A promising player right from the Pee Wee leagues, there were indications even when Mickey Mantle was 10 years that he would one day play in America’s ‘Big Show’ — the Major League. His speciality was hitting both left-handed and right-handed, an art known in the baseball world as switch-hitting.One morning, in 1948, Mickey was spotted hitting two home-runs — one from either side of the plate — by baseball scout Tom Greenwade. Both the hits had cleared the fence and rolled into the river which was more than 400 yards from the home plate. Greenwade went to the small town of Commerce, Oklahoma on Mickey’s graduation day and signed him to a professional contract with the New York Yankees. One of baseball’s finest switch-hitters — and perhaps the greatest number 7 in history — had been discovered.This week, when England’s right-handed Kevin Pietersen did a ‘Mickey’— changing his stance to clobber Scott Styris over cover (which had become mid-wicket) — the bowler didn’t know how to react, and neither did the cricket world.Though Styris, the victim of the embarrassing thump, did not see any problem with the stroke — and neither have most of the game’s current and former stalwarts — the matter had to be referred to the ICC because some experts felt it challenged too many of cricket’s sacrosanct age-old values. Strange, considering this is the time of Twenty20 and cricket’s same sacrosanct age-old values are being defied every day by some of the same officials who were asked to sit in judgment.Scoff at the critics we might — Alistair Cook called the controversy “daft” — but it does throw up some interesting confusions that need to be addressed. What about the lbw rule because you can’t get a batsman out on a ball pitching outside leg-stump? What about the leg-side wide? What about fielding restrictions for fielders on the leg-side? And, the most potent argument of all, why does the bowler not have the freedom to switch hands, or sides, in the middle of his run-up?While we debate these issues, and ask for some clarity, what seems to be getting missed is the genius of the man who played that stroke. Forget all the historical ramifications and the future implications, forget the disparity between batsmen and bowlers, forget the legality and the laws of the game. Let’s strip cricket to how the game would perhaps have started — a man with a stick flicking aside a stone hurled at him — and admire the sheer brilliance of Pietersen’s hit.I’ve always told people who call Muttiah Muralitharan a “cheat” — despite Murali’s 735 wickets from 120 Tests he has never been given full credit because of chucking allegations, even though he has been repeatedly cleared by the ICC — that they should shut their minds to all the controversies and simply admire the Sri Lankan for his craft. What the ball does after he releases it is so much more fascinating than what he does with his elbow before that.So, in the case of Pietersen’s switcheroo, I ask his detractors to pick up a bat and try to copy the shot even against a club-level paceman. I’ll be surprised if they walk back to the pavilion without a black eye and a bruised ego.
