A tribute to the 'pyjama picassos'
If Ryan Gosling - Time Magazine's coolest person of the year in 2011 - were a one-day player, he'd be a finisher, reckons Rob Smyth
Nitin Sundar
25-Feb-2013
If Ryan Gosling - Time Magazine's coolest person of the year in 2011 - were a one-day player, he'd be a finisher, reckons Rob Smyth. In the Guardian's Spin blog, he investigates what makes the Bevans and Dhonis of the world tick.
Bevan was a miracle of imperturbable efficiency; Christian Ryan wrote he had a "calculator for a brain and a tweezer for a bat". In one sense Dhoni is Finisher 2.0, because he has added huge hitting to Bevan's repertoire of deft boundaries and furious running between the wickets. Bevan hit 21 sixes in 232 ODIs; Dhoni has struck 136 in 201. Then again, Bevan rarely needed to resort to big shots, so well did he manage his innings. It's almost impossible to split them. If you were picking an all-time one-day XI, he and Dhoni would be two of the first names on the teamsheet.
Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo