Of cheetahs, cricket and crazy speed on 2 legs.
By Rajiv Theodore
BANGALORE: He wants to beat the cheetah.
The man who dare express this desire can be none other than the one and only Usain Bolt, the fastest human the world has ever seen. It is another matter that a cheetah can cover 100 meters in just seven seconds, but even the sheer will to beat this fastest animal requires accomplishments of a different league not to mention phenomenal athleticism and blinding acceleration.
The fastest human is on a visit to India. In his usual colorful mood, the celebrated Jamaican had a brush with the Indian media at a press conference here where he proclaimed that competing with a cheetah would be cool and that newspaper headlines would say ‘’Usain Bolt beats Cheetah.’’
Competition was surely there, not on the athletic track but on the green grass of Chinnaswamy Stadium where he played cricket against India’s ace in the game—Yuvraj Singh.
This unique improvised match had seven players on each side that included some celebrated cricketers. This four-over match had Team Bolt on one hand, including Nugent Walker Junior and Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh. Team Yuvraj had bowler Zaheer Khan in their ranks.
Bolt is a great fan of cricket and had made several attempts to play the game at the top level. He had also contemplated playing football as a career.
The show started with Bolt belting most of the balls for a six with the 6000-strong crowd going berserk at the six-time Olympic gold medalist’s each move. In 19 balls, Bolt hit 45 and compiled 59 runs. Yuvraj and his team could not run that score down in their chase. Bolt won the game. Bolt had once bowled Chris Gayle out in a similar face-off in Jamaica.
Later, Yuvraj beat the 28-year-old sprinter in a race at the stadium itself, but then that was all show as the tall Jamaican allowed the Indian to ‘win’, part of the package just like the sixes were. It’s another matter that Bolt’s last run three days ago at Warsaw fetched him a world indoor record for 100-meters with a timing of 9.98 seconds.
‘Lightning Bolt’ hopes to erase his record at the forthcoming World Championship at Beijing. He has another challenge coming up from the 104-year-old Hidekichi Miyahki – dubbed the ‘’Golden Bolt’’ and who holds the 100 meters world record for centenarians. He wants to take it up against the Jamaican!
The outcome of that clash is anybody’s guess.
But coming back to the real Bolt; his parting quote at Bangalore (and he promised to come back) was surely worth contemplating: “As an athlete I have seen records come and go. They have always been broken but if you want to be as great as me, you have to work very hard. That’s why my records will stand the time.”
1 Comment
“Pound for pound a cheetah’s acceleration power is about four times that of Usain Bolt during his world-record 100 meters,” says Alan Wilson, professor of locomotor biomechanics at London’s Royal Veterinary College, who led the study. “And what’s more, a cheetah can still accelerate like that even when it is already doing 40 mph, then decelerate nearly as swiftly, turn hard, and sprint in another direction.”