A few weeks ago, the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama met with the West Indian cricketer Brian Lara. In the course of their conversation, the President picked up a cricket bat, and as an American baseball player (or a New Jersey Mafia Don) would say, he took a few swings.

As is true with most matters Obama, pictures of his cricketing attempts were immediately available on the other side on an Internet hyperlink, which made its way to my inbox.

My cursor hovered apprehensively on the landscape of my monitor like a butterfly over a minefield. I had to be careful.

Today, the entire world is enamored by the President. I know of musicians who fervently wish that a month of the year rhymed with “hope” so as to facilitate song making. At a time in our history, when the sky is this blue and the earth so deliciously round, could I take the risk of shattering the promises of hope and change, and take the predictable plunge into the tepid pool of political disillusionment?

For make no mistake. You don’t know a person completely until you have seen her or his cricketing stance.  The demeanor of a cricketer in repose can help you look deep in the demons that lurk in the nether worlds of his soul. 

The President might get Wall Street bankers and members of the Taliban to apologize to each other and the world at large. He might even get the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq to embrace warmly and suffocate in their grasp, the ancient demons of real and imaginary animosities.

But it wouldn’t matter.

What if our Commander in Chief shuffled nervously towards the legside in fear of a fast ball? If that were to happen, Putin would surely have every incentive to rear his reportedly ugly head. Or what if Mr. Obama displayed that strange mixture of arrogance and befuddlement that so characterized his predecessor’s efforts on the cricketing fields of Islamabad? We would then know that “change” was not imminent – rather it was just another campaign promise that couldn’t survive the metamorphosis from the TV to the real world.

Or even worse, what if the President revealed himself to be a perfectly conventional man who has his “legs approximately a foot length apart either side or on the popping crease, and whose weight is distributed on the balls of his feet, with the knees slightly bent?” Could such uncertain times afford such a predictable leader?

A cricketing stance can tell you a lot more about a man that his mother or lover ever could. If only there was a database of the citizens of the world with pictures of them awaiting a cricket ball. A truly useful information repository of this kind would prepare you for what to expect from people before you ever met or Googled them.

The Indian opener Krishnamachari Srikanth kept his feet so wide apart that Russian gymnasts, perfectly capable of doing the split were driven into acquiring inferiority complexes.  There was more than a touch of eccentricity mixed into the cocktail that sloshed madly within the man, and when I did have the occasion to meet him, I wasn’t surprised or hurt when he shook his moustache wildly at me as if it were on fire. There was no ill-will and for the duration of that evening, the world was a happier place.

The greatest batsman of all time Vivian Richards faced the fastest of deliveries armed with nothing more than a red cap and an arrogant wad of chewing gum. If I was to consider entering a career of crime (and my therapist tells me there’s still hope) I would do my best to keep away from the streets of Trinidad. It just wouldn't do to run into the man himself in a dark alley. If I have acquired this life saving knowledge today, it’s not from our dying newspapers or the democratically jumbled Wikipedia, but only because the sight of the great cricketer in majestic repose has been emblazoned with a fervor of a childhood moral into my mind.

I clicked on the link. The President had an open stance that placed him in an ideal position to ward off the unexpected. He might have had a tad extra weight on the backfoot, but he more than made up for it with a smile, which is really an excellent way to take on the world.