Making your own luck

Riding your luck

We had a bit of luck

My luck is in

Strokes of luck

Cricket and fate have always sat in an intricate realtionship with each other. Which isn’t saying much as I guess fate, being one of those big cosmic concepts, kind of sits in an intricate relationship with everything, and it’s obvious that cricket, through endless series of intricacies is everything. But Mohammad Ashraful’s innings yesterday dealt deeply with such problems. The chance that he harnessed, the errant bundle of luck that he formed himself into (it wasn’t form, his was a misshapen innings to say the least). I think it was practically the first over that Ashraful faced when he lauched Brett Lee for 20 runs. A top edged six off a short ball – no control, could have gone anywhere, lucky to be alive. Caught at mid off, a wild slash making room for himself outside off stump – no ball called, dismissal stared in the face. Another top edge for six off a short ball. An awful flat bat thwack over mid-on with no timing and only just enough power to clear field and run away for 2 runs. On the last ball he actually played a good standard shot through the leg side for four. Only Lee could have bowled such an over. The luckish Ashraful had absorbed Lee’s power and and it fed the luck that he was allowing to consume him. With each delivery Ashraful intensified himself as luck. A mass of chance. Chance is perhaps a better word than luck here. I’m not even really sure if luck, as such, exists – I think cricket shows this. You can make luck, but then if you’re making it its not lucky anymore, its planned, its good play (this is why a cricketer being given not out by an umpire when they are clearly, technically, out does not trouble me – either it was part of their plan already or they will now have the chance to make something of it, which can be a very exciting prospect). Chance you take. At times, it is there for the taking. Ashraful took his chances, playing strokes of luck. Ashraful is interesting because what he actually does is bring chance with him to the crease, he doesn’t try and build a form from which to launch attacks and from there collect the vestiges of chance to ride upon. Ashraful bats backwards (he moves way outside off and plays Gillespie backwardly over leg stump). He brings chance with him to the crease, unleashes it, takes it, unleashes it, strokes of luck. And slowly settles down into something more solid. His is an acute understanding of fate. In terms of cricket shots he is all imprecision, but in terms of dealing abuses out upon fate and making luck his own (he is luck in a vaguely human form – perhaps he even looks more like luck than a human, he twitches, his head shakes) he is all precision – timing. He understands that there is a forecful element in Brett Lee’s bowling that also carries with it some chance for the batsmen who has the application to take it upon himself. Ashraful picks his moments. Chance & fate is a time thing. Ashraful is in his own time, a cosmic time, or he is the time of the cosmos, the future – he is the future of Bangladesh cricket. He needs to teach them how to find and take their chances. At the moment they are looking in all the wrong areas.