Cricket and Poker…

Just finished watching the Knight Riders vs Kings xi and couldn’t help thinking that there is such a striking similarity between poker and cricket.

The last ball was being bowled by Agarkar and 1 run was required by the Kings xi to win and I think the entire world and of course the batsman, Irfan Pathan knew he was going to bowl a yorker and guess what he bowled – a yorker indeed! And obviously Irfan got that run and Knight Riders went down yet again!

Now, you can sympathize with them and feel sorry and all that but lets pause for a moment and think. The world expected a yorker, Irfan expected a yorker so it might have been nice to bowl a bouncer ? I know it is difficult to bowl a bouncer but so is a yorker and maybe kings would have still won but maybe the unexpected could have worked too?

And that is where cricket is like poker. The best in the world in poker don’t just play their own hands, they play the other person, they read the other person’s moves more often than not and outplay them and Cricket is exactly like that.

Cricket is as much a mind game as a game of skills and whosoever ends up reading the other player better, bowler or batsman, comes out on top. The difference between the good and the great in Cricket is simply that. I remember Aamir Khan mentioned that last year when he sat watching an IPL match with Sachin, Sachin could predict every ball that was going to be bowled and that is what makes him a genius.

Maybe playing poker should be part of practice as a cricketer, maybe one should be trained to read the other player as much as trained to bowl or bat better. Who knows, it might just work!