Still Waters Run Deep

In an empty arena, from an unspecified duration before the contest, a pugilist contemplates in solitude, getting acquainted to the ambience, envisaging success. It is a scene from a video-game, with soft music in the background. One year later, the player enters the empty arena and reposes, savouring success — though this scene wasn’t in the game. Such moments are profound, serene and meditative. 

At Cricinfo, writers described the best and the worst of cricket in 2012, Sidharth Monga chose something different:

It was a warm Adelaide afternoon. Australia had completed a 4-0 whitewash of India hours ago. The stumps had been taken out, the volunteers had finished cleaning the ground, the broadcasters had moved out with their equipment. Anyone with any sense had left Adelaide Oval, except for the lazier journalists. And the Australian team. Every now and then an Australian player would come out of the dressing room to take telephone calls and then go back in. A year ago they were hammered all over on their own grounds by England; they were now staying back to celebrate the end of a remarkable series. 

Four hours after the last wicket was taken, Peter Siddle came out to an empty ground, still in his whites. He went to the top of his run-up at the Cathedral End and bounded in without a ball in hand. With the same intensity with which he bowls in Tests, Siddle went through a delivery, turned, appealed to an imaginary umpire, and then celebrated an imaginary wicket. What joy.

[Source: Cricinfo]