How the most elegant stroke in cricket was born

The left leg quietly put across the right to a break-back from Mold, then lo! the ball was going to the fine leg boundary, not with the weight or ponderousness of material object, but as a ray of energy out of 'Ranji's' sinuous blade.
- Neville Cardus

The origin of this much celebrated stroke is a rather interesting tale. Below, read AA Thomson's writeup on how it was 'born under hardship, adversity and a self-imposed handicap'.

'..Ranji gained an introduction to Fenner's and there was bowled to by relays of professionals, some of them the finest bowlers ofthe day, who tried to rid him of his worst faults. In practice he was tireless (C.B.Fry told me that one February day at Cambridge he saw Ranji, in fur gloves, bat two hours before, and two hours after, lunch to four first class bowlers.)

In trying to teach him to make sound defensive strokes (which he hated)Dan Hayward, the leading professional, took the drastic step of pegging down Ranji's right leg. Thus, as they say, is history born. Instead of playing a defensive shot, as his mentor had intended, Ranji inclined his sinuous body, flicked his supple wrists, and the ball went like a flash to fine leg.

Thus the most elegant stroke known to cricket was born under hardship, adversity and a self-imposed handicap.

About twenty years later, when he was less slim. less supple and far past his glorious best, I sat as near as I could to sight screen behind the bowler's arm at Lord's to watch if I could discover how this historic stroke was made. The bowler, and undeservedly forgotten man named Mignon, was bowling fast, but Ranji's leg glance was quicker- quick enough, it seemed, to decieve the human eye. There was that uncanny flick of wrists and the ball hit the pavilion rails at fine leg like a tracer bullet. He did not appear to have hit it hard; it was almost as if he had struck a match on it as it went by. It was not a chancy deflection or a sneaky 'tickling down the corner'. The full blade of the bat met the ball every time. It happened again and again.I was dazzled. I still am.