What did Joan of Arc and John McEnroe have in common, apart from 365 bad-hair days a year? An overwhelming desire to kill Englishmen who disagreed with them?
We don’t know if Ms Of Arc was also prone to blurting out ”you cannot be serious!” while cleaving British pates, but history does tell us that when her occupation of Caens was doubted, she responded by flinging her sword to the ground and screaming, ”I was in! I was in!”
Certainly both had a burning ambition to light a fire under the establishment, Joan’s backfiring somewhat nastily. But more importantly, they were members of the world’s most magnificent minority, a club that includes Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Beethoven, Einstein and Bart Simpson.
These giants of civilisation had horrible handwriting, were unable to cut paper in a straight line and lived, on average, almost a decade less than those who did not share their glorious gift. Simply put, they were left-handers.
Lefties have a grand tradition of breezing into sport and making it all look terribly simple. McEnroe — to many the greatest tennis player of all time — seems a veritable bridesmaid next to über-southpaw Martina Navratilova.
And in the category of swinging chunks of wood at little leather balls, the names of Babe Ruth, ”Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Graeme Pollock, Gary Sobers and Brian Lara head a list that includes Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Lance Klusener and now Graeme Smith.
England’s cricketers are no doubt making their own comparisons with two fairly infamous sinistrals, namely the Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper, and whatever the result of the current Test series, England’s post-mortem will not be a pretty sight, with the careers of various lion-hearted bowlers smeared all over Smith’s glinting blade.
Being a left-hander myself, it is tempting to suggest a parallel between enlightenment, sophistication, handsomeness and left-handedness; but one must be modest and concede that 90% of the world’s population is probably good for something, even if that something has not yet been revealed.
To be fair, right-handers do manage admirably in some arenas. Like shaking hands, for example, or saluting fascist dictators; but in sport the best they can hope for is a grudging egalitarianism between the two halves of their bodies.
Which is often a good thing: Australian mega-tadpole Ian Thorpe would lose precious seconds should he ever veer wildly to port, his overdeveloped left arm sending him whirling like a rubber-clad ferry-wheel across the width of the pool.
Likewise Michael Schumacher could wind up as a Ferrari-red mist all over the grandstands if a dominant left hand gave too great a twitch.
But luckily Schumacher and all the right-handers of formula one benefit from yet another anti-left conspiracy, with just two out of 16 circuits featuring anti-clockwise races.
Right-hand hairpins, scissors, fountain pens, fish-knives — so many obstacles stand in the way of the lefty and yet, still, he triumphs. Imagine how far Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (both southpaws) could have gone if Apollo 11 hadn’t had its windscreen-wiper control switched around with its indicator lever.
Right-handers invariably have the last laugh, if for no other reason than that they generally outlive lefties. James Anderson might have looked like a bloke chucking custard-pies at a brick wall in the first two Tests, but 60 years from now he’ll be able to mop the drool off his bib and have the satisfaction of knowing those monsters, Smith, Kirsten and Rudolph, are six feet under.
The statisticians suggest that left-handers have a lower life expectancy because of something called ”industrial accidents”, a euphemism for a spectacular orgy of misfortune in dog-food factories and sawmills the world over. Likewise only left-handers will ever know the adrenalin rush of firing a pistol and having a red-hot, 0,45mm cartridge ejected straight at their right eye.
But perhaps it’s much more simple, especially in sports. When it’s all so easy and you’ve achieved everything, what’s left to live for?
Old-age homes, where the soup spoon is the wrong way around and the nail scissors don’t work left to right? We’ll take the sweet hereafter, thanks.