The Elegant Left-Hander

One often hears how just being left-handed makes a batsman more elegant and pleasing to watch. The Laras, the Gowers, the Gangulys... the list of elegant southpaws goes on and on (Shiv Chanderpaul is often mentioned as an exception). This association between being left handed and being stylish is often extended to other games as well, although not to the same extent.

An explanation I have heard is: "As one watches a left handed batsman play, we naturally get to see more of the sweep of the bat, giving the strokes a fuller visual flourish." To be honest, I do not understand this argument at all; I have never quite felt I could see *more* of a leftie's coverdrive!

I have some thoughts on this matter though: Whenever I write something in English (a rather rare event these days), I hold the paper up against a source of light and see what I have written from the other (blank) side of the paper. My cursive handwriting is strictly mediocre but after 'left-inversion', it looks graceful and even beautiful. Of course, the inverted script is *not* really readable but it looks distinctly more attractive. For example, the tilts of letters is hardly consistent in my normal running hand, but from the other side, the slight mismatches in their angular orientation do not show up as much.

It appears that lack of parallelism in a group of (nearly parallel) lines is more apparent to (right handed?) human perception when they are rising lines (going from left bottom to right top, as the normal cursive English script) than when they are falling lines - and the falling angle is 'natural' to a left-hander (when a right-handed artist shades a pencil drawing, the shading lines rise whereas for a left-handed artist, they fall). My guess is: some related feature/limitation of our visual perception might have made us *less sensitive* to possible aesthetic drawbacks in a left-handed batsman's strokes, especially the cover-drive.

Well the above was just some speculation. Let me conclude with a 'left handed' quote, an amazingly lyrical bit of imagery from Omar Khaiyam's Rubaiyat in the Fitzgerald translation:

"Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.""

Note: Watched the video recording of an old Ganguly innings on the box. He kept feathering boundaries thru the offside cordon. The ball, after it would neatly thread the inner ring, actually would seem to *accelerate* in the outfield - and accelerate just enough to stay out of the chasing fieldsmen's reach (while keeping the fieldsman interested all the way to the fence).

As for other sports, I do think Roger Federer's tennis would have looked even more smooth and languid if he were left handed. And yes, even as things are, his game is a far more pleasing spectacle then (left handed) Nadal's crunching, muscle and bustle show.