As the name of the blog suggests, I’m not much of a cricket person. Well, I used to be till about 5 years back when I was still in college but once college was over and with it all the time in the world, I figured out that watching a sport where mostly nothing happened for the majority of the playing time, all by myself was a tough job. It soon turned out to be an impossible one.
T20 has certainly made things even more complicated. Let’s face it. With so many T20 tournaments being played all over the world these days, cricket in whites doesn’t only seem a thing of distant past but a different era altogether. And there’s absolutely no doubt that this is the most desired format for cricket lovers across the board. But I still fail to understand the T20 mania.
Alright, by now you must be cursing this eternally unhappy being whose only trip in life is to go against the consensus and you are justified in doing so. But can you possibly ignore the fact that such a kind always existed? After all, you cannot ignore us (me actually, plurals are used to gain some sort of an imaginary support from an imaginary section of the society) just because we are the minority!
What I fail to understand is this apparently smooth evolution of the game from 5 days to 20 overs. Popular demand, one would say. In that case, I fail to understand such a demand. Fans usually love a particular sport for what it is, including the duration. Rather, they are so decidedly blind that they never find a fault in something that they are so passionate about. And that makes cricket once again a unique sport as it is the only sport that changed its format and along with it its character to please its fans.
What does a cricket fan want? Does he want the game to remain the same? The way it was when he first fell in love with it? Or does he want her to change to suit his requirements? After all the idea of a 40 minute football match doesn’t appeal to a football fan and there’s no possibility of a World Cup of truncated football matches. Not in the imminent future, not ever.
The reason why cricket has changed is there for everyone to see. India has changed it. And this probably had to happen. Amongst the cricket-playing nations, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe cannot possibly make things happen simply because they don’t have the money. The West Indies is an identity the Caribbean islands go by on the cricket fields. It’s a collection of separate island nations where cricket is dying. Australia, New Zealand, England and South Africa don’t need to make cricket big for two reasons. Firstly, cricket is not the most popular sport in any of these countries and also they don’t have the numbers to support the cause. So it was left to India. To the Indian middle-class whose favourite pastime is watching television. And no other sport can boast of a peaceful cohabitation of viewers and an Indian team.
Thus, cricket changed from 30 overs a session to 20 overs an innings. And it divided the cricket fans into two different camps. The majority camp, the members of which are happy with this change and the unhappy minority lot. This has never been the fate of any other sport.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Unlucky Tendlya
On November, 15, 2009 Sachin Tendulkar completed twenty illustrious years in international cricket. The hype and hoopla around the moment was visible and understandable.
Each and every newspaper, tv channel, radio station kept telling us about it. Leander Paes was made to remember that table tennis match he lost to Sachin a few years back, Bishen Singh Bedi decided to be sensible for once and praise the man, Amitabh Bachchan recounted all those occasions when he had to post-pone shoots to watch Sachin bat (really?). So on and so forth.
Did make one wonder, what if Sachin was not an Indian? Or, an Indian, who represented another country? Someone like Venkatraman Ramakrishnan or Dinanath Ramnarine if we were to strictly talk about cricket?
Well, it would have been disastrous for Indian cricket but surely better for Sachin.
Why? Because in that case he would have had the good fortune of playing against Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Ajit Agarkar, Dodda Ganesh, Abey Kuruvilla, David Johnson and the likes.
In the sixth one-dayer against Australia in Guwahati in the recently concluded seven-match ODI series (The Aussies won that match by six wickets to clinch the series 4-2), Sachin managed to score only 10 runs. But he still had a record against his name. Sachin became the first cricketer to amass 3000 ODI runs against Australia. In fact, he became the first cricketer to score more than 3000 runs in any format against any team in the world. Hopefully he would soon cross the mark against the Aussies in Test cricket too. He’s scored 2748 Test runs against Australia so far and the deficit of 252 runs is a matter of one Test match for an average Sachin and three for an off-colour Sachin.
Now, how many runs would a man score against the Srinath-Prasad-Agarkar combine if he succeeded in scoring close to 6000 international runs against the Mcgrath-Lee-Warne combine? We all know the answer.
Sachin has often been compared to some of his contemporaries (his contemporaries though include everyone from Dean Jones to Callam Fergusson). But while comparing others to Sachin, people conveniently forget that while Brian Charles Lara had the good fortune of playing against Sunil Joshi and Nilesh Kulkarni or conversely, of not playing against Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Sachin had no such privileges. While Inzamam Ul Haq honed his batting skills against Harvinder Singh and Rahul Sanghvi, Sachin had to sweat it out against those who never bowled to Inzy in international cricket. Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed. Still, neither Lara nor Inzy managed to score as many international runs.
We all know that Sachin has scored close to 30,000 international runs (by the time this article is published, he in all probabilities would have crossed the 30,000 barrier as India would be playing against Sri Lanka). But I guess what makes this monumental milestone look even more unbelievable is the fact that he scored all those runs without facing a single delivery of Paras Mhambrey or Prashant Vaidya or Bhupinder Singh Senior.
What would have happened if Sachin wasn’t playing for India?
One, he probably would have scored another 30,000 runs against the ‘fearsome’ Indian bowlers.
Two, the Indian media would have had to give more space to Rahul Gandhi and LK advani.
Each and every newspaper, tv channel, radio station kept telling us about it. Leander Paes was made to remember that table tennis match he lost to Sachin a few years back, Bishen Singh Bedi decided to be sensible for once and praise the man, Amitabh Bachchan recounted all those occasions when he had to post-pone shoots to watch Sachin bat (really?). So on and so forth.
Did make one wonder, what if Sachin was not an Indian? Or, an Indian, who represented another country? Someone like Venkatraman Ramakrishnan or Dinanath Ramnarine if we were to strictly talk about cricket?
Well, it would have been disastrous for Indian cricket but surely better for Sachin.
Why? Because in that case he would have had the good fortune of playing against Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Ajit Agarkar, Dodda Ganesh, Abey Kuruvilla, David Johnson and the likes.
In the sixth one-dayer against Australia in Guwahati in the recently concluded seven-match ODI series (The Aussies won that match by six wickets to clinch the series 4-2), Sachin managed to score only 10 runs. But he still had a record against his name. Sachin became the first cricketer to amass 3000 ODI runs against Australia. In fact, he became the first cricketer to score more than 3000 runs in any format against any team in the world. Hopefully he would soon cross the mark against the Aussies in Test cricket too. He’s scored 2748 Test runs against Australia so far and the deficit of 252 runs is a matter of one Test match for an average Sachin and three for an off-colour Sachin.
Now, how many runs would a man score against the Srinath-Prasad-Agarkar combine if he succeeded in scoring close to 6000 international runs against the Mcgrath-Lee-Warne combine? We all know the answer.
Sachin has often been compared to some of his contemporaries (his contemporaries though include everyone from Dean Jones to Callam Fergusson). But while comparing others to Sachin, people conveniently forget that while Brian Charles Lara had the good fortune of playing against Sunil Joshi and Nilesh Kulkarni or conversely, of not playing against Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Sachin had no such privileges. While Inzamam Ul Haq honed his batting skills against Harvinder Singh and Rahul Sanghvi, Sachin had to sweat it out against those who never bowled to Inzy in international cricket. Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed. Still, neither Lara nor Inzy managed to score as many international runs.
We all know that Sachin has scored close to 30,000 international runs (by the time this article is published, he in all probabilities would have crossed the 30,000 barrier as India would be playing against Sri Lanka). But I guess what makes this monumental milestone look even more unbelievable is the fact that he scored all those runs without facing a single delivery of Paras Mhambrey or Prashant Vaidya or Bhupinder Singh Senior.
What would have happened if Sachin wasn’t playing for India?
One, he probably would have scored another 30,000 runs against the ‘fearsome’ Indian bowlers.
Two, the Indian media would have had to give more space to Rahul Gandhi and LK advani.
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