Musing over Cricket

Batting, those days, had only one dimension: technique. Greatness of the batsmen (sorry, but the word ‘batter’ like the other gender-free word ‘actor’ belongs to later era and I am so glad for that) was assessed only by the soundness of their technique. A good batsman played all his strokes exactly as given in the copybook. Straight (vertical) bat was the norm and a cross (horizontal) bat was frowned upon or rather looked down upon by the purists of the game.

Improvisation, which is considered a virtue by all lovers of the present shorter version of the game, was unheard of. Some may argue that improvisation requires greater talent or a class whereas technique, at its best is only a craft. While the latter (technique) is like the grammar of a language, improvisation is more like a poem which does not always follow its rules. They can site the example of Don Bradman as someone who represents the former class (pun unintended) and point their finger probably at Jeff Boycott as a typical technically correct but an unexciting batsman to watch.

The advent of One Day cricket seems to have started the dialectic between these two, which in turn appeared to associate themselves with the longer and the shorter versions of the game respectively. The great Test players like Gavaskar lived in the era when this dialectic was at its first two stages of Theses and Antitheses and therefore could not quite make an easy transition from Test cricket to Onedayers. But now the dialectic has entered its final stage –that of Synthesis and consequently, one now finds Pontings, Tendulkars, and Inzamans who can excel themselves in both forms of the game. A modern cricketer needs to have a mix of these two cricketing abilities albeit in varying proportions; this mix needs to be technique-rich for the Test cricket and vice versa.

Television has really done a yeoman service to Cricket and this game can never, ever pay back its debt to the former. Firstly, it has taken the game to people’s living rooms located miles away from where it is played. Secondly, it has made this game more transparent than it was in the past and of course I am referring to the hindsight that is now possible, thanks to the technology, for almost all umpiring decisions. Thirdly, it has linked the game to the advertising world and consequently has produced millionaire players and super-rich Controlling Organizations of the game in some countries. Board of Control of Cricket in India, which was probably counting its pennies some years ago, has metamorphosed into a veritable empire with tremendous financial clout and now more resemble the ultra-rich Boards of Trustees for pilgrim-centers like Tirupathi and Shirdi than its poor cousins controlling other games.