24 frames per second

Dear Viru,

Congratulations on that knock. After scoring less than 150 in your previous hundred (other than being prime, 131 has no redeeming qualities), I thought maybe you were losing your touch. Good to see that this is not the case.

I do, however, have one request. Would you please, for the love of God, just SHUT THE F*** UP?

Try and understand this from the opponent’s perspective. Take Muthiah Muralitharan, for instance. Highest wicket taker in tests, just 12 wickets shy of 800. Quite a feat, don’t you think? Especially considering how much mental strength he had to have had when the world and its grandmother-in-law was suggesting that he try out as a baseball pitcher and leave the bowling to people with straight elbows. Whether or not there were optical illusions involved, that couldn’t have been easy to deal with. Here he is, at the fag end of his career, pushing his body to bowl one more ball. His figures at the end of the day: 20-0-119-0. Not that any of the other bowlers fared any better.

Now, I don’t expect you to go easy on them. I don’t expect you to gift your wicket to Murali and help him along to 800 before he retires. If the ball is there to be hit, hit it, and hit it hard. I’m as patriotic an Indian as anyone else, so you’ll hear me cheering all the way.

But when someone asks you about your innings at the end of the day, don’t say something like: I try to hit only the bad balls.

Are you f***ing kidding me? You hit 40 fours and 7 sixes, dude. How bad could those balls have been? It just sounds ridiculous. Not to mention insulting to a bowling attack that you just destroyed. Leave the soundbytes to the gentle souls and leave the mayhem on the pitch when you walk out, okay?

Regards

Ramsu