Even as India tightened their grip on the fifth Test, Bairstow was beautifully unconstrained
The sound is unique. How can this be? A regulation cricket bat hitting a regulation cricket ball: logic tells us this should sound the same whoever is swinging it. And yet intuition tells us otherwise.
Kevin Pietersen’s shots sounded like the crack of a rifle. Matthew Hayden’s sounded like an axe slicing through a tree. The bat of AB de Villiers, meanwhile, always made a delightful pock noise, however violently he was hitting it, as if he was simply helping the ball to wherever it was meant to go.
