Let’s talk about a hypothetical cricketer who routinely nicks out to a ball just wide of off stump, a ball that calls for maybe a cover drive when it’s the back of a length but more commonly it requires a late cut when bounces a little higher. If this batsman practices and practices this shot until he can pull it off against a good bowler in his backyard, does it matter if he never performs it in a game? This is kind of the if a tree falls when no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound question. Is practicing and mastering a skill enough in and of itself, or does the practitioner have to make some public display for it to matter? Does he have to prove to others that he indeed has the ability to play the shot he practiced? Is it somehow more pleasurable? If it is not—that is: if the mere completion of, say, a cover drive is as pleasing to the batsman in practice as it is in the game, then why play the game at all? And if you do deem the in-game shot a more pleasing one, or, perhaps, a different skill altogether, aren’t you admitting that public perception matters quite a bit when evaluating someone doing something they do? For instance: who is better in this unlikely scenario, the bowler who hits the stumps one hundred times a day every day and then goes on to bowl three wides in his only over of his first game of the season or the bowler who can’t hit the broad side of barn in the nets ever, but somehow finds a magic ball in over number two? Well, objectively speaking, it’s bowler number one since he’s the one who can more consistently perform the skill and, therefore, he’s the one more likely to succeed in any one situation Subjectively, though, say, to the fans in attendance who have only seen these bowlers in the one match, the second one has proven superior—a difficult pill to swallow for the first bowler who practices more and who owns the skill in question.
I used to fight with my sister about who was better in a particular activity like bike riding, or something. I would tell her I was better because I was older and I could do a wheelie and I had more experience. She would then claim she was better. I would say I was better. She would say she was better. Me. Her. Me. Her. Over and over until my dad would pull me aside and ask, “Do you know you’re better at riding your bike?†Yes, obviously. “Then, why do you care if your sister knows? You know, leave it at that.†It was some lesson about honor and integrity that should, in theory, hold true. But the older I get, the more I wonder if, in our world of appearances and public opinion, I wonder if private knowledge matters at all. If you are a better cricketer than the other guy, but everyone thinks the opposite, who cares what you think? Plus, how far does it go? What if you can’t physically perform as well as the other guy, but you can visualize a better performance? For instance, what if neither of you can pull off a reverse sweep, but you can at least envision it done correctly and might know when to perform the stroke, whereas the other guy doesn’t even know what a reverse sweep is. Is this type of understanding enough to convince yourself of your superiority? Is your conviction true, anyway? Because if private knowledge mattered, consider the inverse: the other guy is better, everyone agrees that he’s better, but you believe you are better, as in, you believe the lie, your belief would be enough to make true that which was objectively false. Unfortunately, what everyone thinks matters, at lease to some degree, and it’s only easy to claim you don’t care about other’s opinions when other’s opinions are generally positive, and it’s only easy to give credit to your teammates when you are getting enough credit yourself because, as soon as you feel you’re not, you’ll be gasping for it like a beached whale does water. The best cricketers are only the best because people consider them to be such—without the public opinion, they are just trees falling in the woods with no one around. Is Dawid Malan better than anyone in the England squad? I think so; he probably does too, but no one else does, so he’s not.
So a good part of being good at something is the right amount of self-aggrandizement, I’m sorry to say. You have to call enough attention to yourself and your skill for others to consider your talent. A great artist who never publishes his work is not great until his work is published. Same with an author or deck-builder or name your profession. You’ve got to get that public perception to bolster your private knowledge because the opposite is nigh-on impossible to achieve.
This aricle originally appeared on
www.thebeehivecricket.com 
