Data informs many decisions now but Australia legend showed how some just have a knack for reading the game

Have you ever accurately predicted what will happen on a cricket pitch before the ball has been bowled? It’s an incredible feeling. That moment when you glance at the field, remember who’s on strike and think: “Here comes the short ball,” only for it to arrive, be pulled and then safely pouched by the fielder you had mentally circled at deep square. For a split second you feel omniscient. Like you’ve cracked the code. Cricket, more than any other sport, invites this kind of clairvoyance. Its patterns are legible, its traps visible, its repetitions comforting.

Even the greats get a kick out of playing soothsayer. During the third Test of the recent Ashes, Ricky Ponting was calling the action for Channel 7 when Pat Cummins was at the crease getting ready to face Brydon Carse. “We saw Cummins last over get unsettled by one that angled back up into the left armpit,” Ponting said. “He’s not a great ducker of the ball, he tries to ride the bounce and that’s why I like this field. You got one back on the hook so you can’t play that, you got one waiting under the helmet at short leg.”