Posted by If Virat Kohli has a defining quality, it is faintly-unnerving intensity. Remember that time he was basically livid about beating Australia? Or all of those very many times when he celebrated a hundred with incandescent rage?
We’re if not quite numb to these displays by now, then at least acclimatised to them. The moments that really strike us are therefore generally quirkier ones from the margins of the game.
This week Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 38 runs. Kohli was out in the second over and, as is so often the case when he’s failed himself, he made doubly certain to be ostentatiously satisfied with his team-mates’ success from then on.
When Glenn Maxwell reached 50, Kohli clapped him.
Only he clapped him really weirdly. Thrusting his hands out from beneath an IPL parasol, he went with an elevated, overarm, top-hand-downwards clap.
That is not how a human being claps.
Human beings clap horizontally. You can see his team-mates executing textbook human claps in the image above. (One of them is literally open-mouthed with incredulity at Kohli’s technique.)
Kohli’s top hand then rhythmically clapped the bottom hand downwards in what appears to have been a gravity-assisted battle for supremacy.
The image above is roughly where he bottomed out and he just persisted with his up-down clapping in that bent-over, arms-out position.
At no point did his facial expression make any kind of sense.
His eyes appeared focused on something actually inside Maxwell and we can only presume that his mouth remained open because he was slowly and invisibly inhaling his team-mate’s essence, like the ghostly vampire from Soul Reaver on the PlayStation.
That’s horizontal clapping
We’re entering “what is a clap?” territory here.
One would have thought that it would be depending on the way that the arms moved would decipher the type of clap rather than the plane or axis the hands are on when clapped together.
I would say in my humble opinion that Kohli’s clapping would be vertical as the arms are moving along a vertical plane.
Should you do another twitter poll for this??
It is an honour and a privilege to be commenting in the same virtual space as Virat Kohli’s PR Team.
King Cricket gets a lot of high profile visitations here – I seem to recall the international Court of Arbitration for Sport visiting this very site a few years ago too.
Might I humbly suggest that the debate about whether Virat Kohli’s clapping is vertical or horizontal is rather beside the point.
Where King Cricket has let us all down, including letting his web site down and frankly letting himself down, is by failing to recognise the definitional truth of the matter. If Virat Kohli claps that way, THAT way is now normal clapping and the fools who were clapping the old-fashioned way have simply not moved with the times.
There is a new normal in the matter of clapping and Virat Kohli has demonstrated it.
Well done, KC, for the pictorial aspects of this piece, which capture “clapping à la mode” extremely well. You just need to reverse ferret with your words, then all can be rectified.
I think that the idea that we should base ourselves on an ego-maniac from India is putrid.
I from now on will ensure that I clap in the way that people have done so in the past many milleniums and shall do what the vast majority of the world will also do. With it in mind that I do not, I repeat not, want to be like an Indian.
Also, King Cricket, a really random question but under the Freedom of Information Act you are able to request recorded information about stuff from a public institution by law.
So what I was wanting to know is very simply the details about how many visitors that this site has an other stuff like that. I’m just interested.
Prince Phillip? Are you back?
In response to your question, there’s a popular misconception that if you write about Virat Kohli, you suddenly get loads of traffic. There may well be a bump for larger sites than ours, but if we write about Kohli we’re vying for attention with a far greater number of web pages than if we write about Darren Stevens, say.
The upshot is that all our articles get roughly the same number of visits no matter who or what we write about, except for features, which tend to get two, three or four times the traffic.
What we’re saying is we write about what we want to write about and yesterday we wanted to write about clapping technique.
Felix, would you base yourself on ego-maniacs from other countries then? Luxembourg maybe?
I would think that I don’t base myself on any ego-maniac’s, because I don’t see myself as someone that has or needs a big ego. I would class myself as more of an intrinsic person. If that answers your question.
Also, KC, I was more just wondering how many you get as a general figure.
Whether it a substantial 10,000+ amount or a less more likely number around 2 or 3,000 mark.
If we got 10,000 hits for each article we’d probably write more.
Perhaps the review T Signal has become hardwired, explaining the evolution towards the vertical clap.
There was a fascinating piece in The Atlantic a few years ago talking about the changing culture of applause since ancient times and how technology is changing its very nature:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/a-brief-history-of-applause-the-big-data-of-the-ancient-world/274014/
Available in the archive without a subscription.
It is good to see cricketing terminology going cross sport.
For example.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.emilia-romagna-gp-qualifying-facts-and-stats-hamilton-extends-two-records-as.6pXeE7sOfnhkJmtb9itZIB.html
Ed Smith defenestrated by the King of Spain? Didn’t see that coming.
Wee Jimmy Taylor has got himself a promotion.
Ooh, KC, I know you don’t do requests, but…
My own personal favourite Ed Smith anecdote is this one:
https://ianlouisharris.com/2008/07/24/middlesex-v-worcestershire-days-1-and-3-at-lords-co-starring-ed-smith-22-and-24-july-2008/
Thanks for the tip off, daneel. Didn’t see it coming, eh? You, me and most people, I should think. Black swan events are like that.