Sometimes, slow is good!

What is common to Dravid, Riquelme, and Sergio Leone? A sense of perfect timing.

If you watch Dravid bat you would realize that he plays the ball like he has all the time in the world. Let alone his defensive ones, even his scoring shots are played with elegance that are on a different plane than those around him. His hooks and pulls are not hurried, unlike other Indian batsmen. There is clam and equanimity in his style of playing.

Riquelme played with a charm not seen for almost a decade. In a fast paced modern game, he was a throw back to the times where skill mattered more than speed. He controlled the ball and created opportunities others could not sense. From a post on the Guardian,

In many ways, he is the closest thing football has to a quarterback, the most influential and glamorous position in American sport. The quarterback is the creator, the player who invents the game as he goes along. If it means passing back or sideways, in order to progress, so be it. Because what Riquelme has, above all else, is patience, the very quality Leo Beenhakker, the veteran Dutch coach of Trinidad & Tobago, says England, so hurried and committed to the long ball, palpably lack.

If you watch a Sergio Leone movie, you will understand that long movies are not boring. A 10 minute shoot out scene with only one bullet being fired is as fast and tense as the Matrix II bike chase scene! A long drawn shot of Eastwood staring at Van Cleef can be very interesting. It seems like the entire world has slowed down, and you can now focus on the action in the middle.

Slow is not always boring. Slow can be elegance. Slow can be precision. Slow can be like symphony!