Many twists in this numbers game

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G.S. Vivek : Jaipur, Mon Feb 22 2010, 02:00 hrs

As a batsman without a jersey number punched the ball off the backfoot, a fielder wearing jersey number 09 dived to stop the ball. His team mate, sporting number 9 on his greens, ran in at the striker’s end, but jersey 09 decided to throw the ball at the bowler’s end. At the end of this sequence, Sachin Tendulkar was tragically run out.

Confusing? It’s likely to stay that way during this India-South Africa series. In most other sports, jersey numbers are useful for identifying players, but here, the numbers riding on players’ backs carry a fair number of intriguing stories.

Virender Sehwag, for example, doesn’t sport any number on his back, thus becoming an exception to the ICC’s rule with the game’s governing council having made it mandatory for players to sport jersey numbers in the shorter formats.

Sehwag has, in the past, explained his decision not to sport a number: not a great believer in numerology or astrology, the opening batsman got tired with the amount of advice to change his jersey number he and his family received from various quarters as he slipped in and out of form and put an end to it once and for all.

This visiting South African team has Mark Boucher sporting jersey number 9, while Herschelle Gibbs has 09 behind his back — probably the only instance in a team where two players have the same number, mathematically, on their backs.

Gibbs’s thinking in this regard has been bizarre for a while. He famously sported numbers 00 on his back, but since 2005, the South African opener has changed his jersey number every 12 months in sync with the year. For example he sported 05 in 2005, 06 in 2006, 07 in 2007, 08 in 2008 and 09 in 2009. The fact that he prefixed his numbers with ‘0’ was also because it clashed with those of other team mates, like Boucher now. However, with jersey number 10 belonging exclusively to Justin Ontong, Gibbs’s fascinating sequence was cut short.

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