The IPL Watcher

	The physical grace of the act transcends the context © Indian Premier League

Justin Kemp's catch to dismiss Virender Sehwag in the IPL game today - as he made up for the misjudgment and managed to take it one-handed on the boundary, falling backwards – called to mind the one he took to dismiss Mohammad Sami back in November 2008. Mohammad Sami was playing for the Lahore Badshahs, of course, and that was the league that wasn't, the ICL.

That was a far more difficult catch too and what a man of Kemp's size and bearing - 6"5’ and no ballerina - was doing taking it I'm not sure. Youtube has forever saved the twisting, running, improvisational genius of that one and if it doesn't make the hair on your arms stand up as a lover of sport, then you are without a pulse.

It was - and today's was too in a reduced way - the kind of thing that transcends every context: when it happened, who the batsman was or the bowler, what format, whether the league is sanctioned or not, the player a rebel or not. It is the kind of physical grace and outlandishness that puts cricket, very briefly, into spheres occupied by sports such as football or basketball. Those are sports where the movement of the human body is an art form in itself, a canvas stuffed with the entire, beautiful spectrum of human movement: the Zidane volley in the 2002 Champions League final, a LeBron block. These are times for goosebumps.

These two sports, unlike cricket, also at least appear to be full of men and women doing things very often that normal humans cannot. Cricket at least gives the impression of accessibility, in that its two basic disciplines, batting and bowling, are very human ones. Everyone feels, after all, that they can bowl a decent ball or play a solid forward defensive. Not everyone can dunk or volley with any degree of danger to anyone except themselves.

	Damien Martyn: a caresser not a carver © Getty Images

It’s easy to understand Shane Warne needing a mate in the dressing room – Darren Lehmann in the first edition, Justin Langer in the second, and now Damien Martyn – but what Martyn stands to gain by hauling his retired bones to India is hard to fathom. Apart from a few hundred thousand dollars of course; isn’t that the whole point?

Still, it was painful to watch him on Thursday night. Mark Waugh aside, he was the Australian batsman of that generation who gave us true viewing pleasure, caressing the ball rather than carving it. In that he was an exception to the Australian brand of batsmanship, which is based on ruthless and mechanical efficiency.

He played a couple of seasons in the ICL as well and didn’t particularly distinguish himself. But the ICL lacked the profile of its more powerful cousin and Martyn’s struggles went largely unnoticed. At the IPL, though, it is impossible to avoid the glare and, as Martyn searched for an unfamiliar game, it didn’t look pretty. As Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis – and even Rahul Dravid – have shown, classically orthodox players can hold their own in the form but it is unbecoming of touch artists.

For a while Martyn tried to play the pivot, but with his less-skilled team-mates struggling on a sprightly pitch in Bangalore, there was no one to bat around him. He miscued trying to hit over the top, failed to put away a full-toss, made room to cut but barely managed a tickle. After 15 singles, he finally managed to hit a four off the 23rd ball he faced – an un-Martyn like swing over mid-on - before being put out of his indignity by a yorker the next ball. It was a relief.