Ever been in a situation when an important cricket match is going on and you think the game will get ruined if you move even an inch anywhere? Well, I haven’t behaved that way, but my friends have made me do/sit/walk a certain way because they thought it was having an effect on how their favourite cricket player is performing.
If you think you or your friends are the only people with such beliefs about cricket, I have some bad news for you. Cricket players themselves are really superstitious people. From Virat Kohli and his favourite pair of gloves to Sachin Tendulkar’s left pad belief, cricketers are funnily superstitious sometimes.
In a recent interview with The Cricket Monthly, South African cricket player, Makhaya Ntini revealed some really weird (and gross) beliefs he nurtures.
He said that he carries a piece of cow-dung in a plastic bag and believes it to be a good luck charm. Not just that, he also pees on his hands and splashes it on his face sometimes for an extra push.
He said,
“It was always the same piece of dung throughout my career and was my lucky charm that kept me grounded, I would even kiss it when I needed a little extra out on the field. It clearly worked – just look at my stats!”
True enough, he scored a whopping 390 wickets in 101 Tests and 266 wickets in 173 ODIs.
But tracing Ntini’s childhood back to his where he hails from, he comes from a rural area in the country’s Eastern Cape. Since his family was too poor to afford shoes in winter, he and his friends would stand in fresh cow dung to protect their feet from frostbite.
About the peeing ritual, he said,
“It would revitalise me and get me going for the next spell.”
Whether you believe in these superstitions or not, these cricketers take their beliefs very seriously and would not accept anything against it. It doesn’t have to be logical or make sense to you, as long as their performance doesn’t suffer, right?