Philosophers XI

Virender Sehwag
Teaches us that the external world is illusory and that pitches, bowlers and cricket matches do not exist. The essence of Sehwagism is simple. If it moves: hit it. If it doesn’t move: hit it. If you can’t quite see what it is: hit it.

Chris Gayle
Siddhartha Gautama once resolved to sit at the foot of the Bodhi tree and not to move until he had found Truth. Centuries later, the West Indian captain seeks to emulate the Buddha’s search for enlightenment by standing completely motionless for hours at a time.

Kevin Pietersen
A devotee of Freud’s theory of the Super Ego, he has added much to the school of Existentialism, with his poignant writings on the loneliness of the million dollar sportsman and his habit of referring to himself in the third person.

Kumar Sangakkara
This chatty Sri Lankan is a raconteur behind the stumps and regularly wrongfoots opponents by quoting Oscar Wilde. “Consistency,” he once triumphantly declared to a bemused Jacques Kallis, “is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

Sourav Ganguly
Like Machiavelli’s ideal ruler, the Prince of Kolkata understands that sometimes it is necessary to treat people badly for their own good and that it is better to be feared than to be loved.

Andrew Symonds
When not lassoing sharks or strangling wild pigs with his bare hands, Roy can often be found poring over the works of John Stuart Mill. A devotee of free speech, his career thus far has been a refutation of the philosophy of Rene Descartes: “I (don’t) think, therefore I am.”

Adam Gilchrist
Rejected Steve Waugh’s ‘Spirit of Cricket’ in favour of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. The Jimmy Stewart of the cricket world, this jug-eared glove man always walks when he nicks it. Unless it really matters, obviously.

Shane Warne
Believes that man should throw off the shackles of coachism and obtain ownership of the means of selection. The acceptable face of Marxism, his stock delivery pitches on the right before veering sharply to the left.

Daniel Vettori
A follower of Flemingism and The Way of The Straight Bat, this bespectacled monk spent many years sitting silently on wooden benches, absorbing the teaching of the master and contemplating the nature of defeat.

Harbhajan Singh
A true Nietchzsean, he believes we should not be bound by meekness. The superior man does not let Australians, ethics or the ICC Playing Regulations restrict him. And the weak and childlike are often deserving of a slap. Thus spake Harbhajan.

Glenn McGrath
Practitioner of the philosophic arts, this latter day Socrates is a master of inductive reasoning: (“We’re going to win five-nil”) and a skilled rhetorician: (“Hey, Eddo, why are you so f***in’ fat?)

First published on Cricinfo