South Asians Have Ideal Body Type for Cricket

By Dinesh C Sharma, DailyO, March 23, 2015

Success in cricket can be attributed to ethnic differences with some groups doing well while others lagging. That's why Europeans, South Asians and coloured people are over-represented in cricket while Northeast Asians, East and West Africans and Pacific Islanders are far and few. West Africans, with European admixture, in the West Indies and England are moderately represented in cricket. And among racial groups that do well in cricket, South Asians posses an ideal body type for this game.

This has been revealed in a new study by researchers from Britain and Finland. The evidence about racial differences in success in sports such as short and long-distance running, football, baseball and swimming is well recorded but this is the first time these differences have been studied for cricket. Racial differences are partly genetic because different races tend to succeed in sports which require certain physical characteristics which they possess, researchers have explained.

The racial differences are evident from rankings given for Test cricket, which is the highest level of cricket under the International Cricket Council. The ICC player rankings for 2013 shows that a majority of best Test players are either European or South Asian. Similarly, none of the best Test or ODI (One Day International) batsmen were black, Northeast Asian or Pacific Islander. Another indicator - ESPN data on world records - shows that Europeans or South Asians hold all records in bowling and fielding. The only exception is for batting where four out of ten records are held by South Asians, two by Europeans and four by West Indian Blacks Brian Lara and Sir Vivian Richards, who may have some European or South Asian admixture.

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