Rohit Brijnath, writing in the Hindu, elaborates on the art of stumping, with specific reference to Mahendra Singh Dhoni's stumping of Ricky Ponting in the fourth ODI in Chandigarh. He also highlights the importance of skill in sport.
Stumping is an elaborate, high-speed composition, a sort of symphony of movement, where Dhoni was bending, rising, collecting, watching Ponting making a decision, his hands responding, so alert and quick that it would have earned him instant membership in any union of pickpockets.
Sport is so cluttered these days, the air so thick with allegation and controversy (in the middle of the series the Indian chairman of selectors and team manager are fencing), that skill tends to get lost, or somewhat under-appreciated. The craft of the athlete apparently is not news, it doesn’t sell. In cricket, we add runs, divide them, mark out averages, list strike rates, but these days we mostly forget how these runs are made.
