How is that for a One Day International Cricket Match aggregate?
Believe me, I have had a few things to knock me out in the past few days but this score card, I don’t get it. I just don’t. When did cricket become a game of sixers and boundaries alone? Does the J’berg ODI deserve to be called the greatest game ever, as many have sang in the last twenty four hours.
Is it time to ask for a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty against Bowlers?
Is it time to mourn the loss of subtelty and nuance in cricket? If there was a comparable moment in poetry, where sixers and fours would replace guile and subtlety, pace and accuracy, wouldn’t there have been an outrage?
Do we not even recognize what happened at Wanderer’s?
What did happen? Was it J’berg’s high altitude and a flat wicket? Or 20/20 cricket? Fitness and athleticism? Improved technology? Just the attitude of 21st century batsmen, who only know to throw their bats at the ball, style or technique be damned?
Or was it the absence of two bowlers of metronymic accuracy, Shaun Pollock and Glenn McGrath, who would have bowled a maiden or two even on a day like this and bowled ten overs for less than sixty runs?
Even five years ago, celebrating an ODI bowling performance of 0/60 in ten overs would have been inconceivable. Yesterday, both Greame Smith and especially, Ricky Ponting would have accepted it gladly. Here is a story from the SMH that truly brings home the magnitude of the South African chase.
In between innings, two Australian punters put $20,000 on the World Cup holders to win at odds of $1.01 with Centrebet - standing to win just $200 each. Another got on with Sportsbook.com.au at the more generous $1.06, betting $16,000 to win $960. Instead, the three cocky gamblers lost the lot.
Sure they did. Heck, I could have done a better job yesterday, even against a rampaging South African top order. How do you lose after scoring 434 runs in a ODI match? As a citizen of the Aussie cricketing nation, I wonder whether this is the beginning of the end of Aussie dominance. Both the Ashes and particularly, this game reflect a corrosion of self belief that Alan Border, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh had assidiously cultivated. Would Waugh have allowed allowed this to happen?
But my bigger worry is about the state of the game itself. Have we lost the capacity to appreciate a maiden over? Back home, the mass hysteria over cricket is all about big hitting and high scores. I know that. I wince each time I walk past a TV showroom, where standing outside and watching the game will be fifty people, who erupt each time there is a big hit. In fact, they are waiting for that six. Will they ever want to watch Warne bowl a maiden over or Dravid negotiate good swing bowling on a seaming wicket, with his impeccable technique?
Slightly more reassuring is the Mohali test. Look at this score card and consider the performers: Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid. I know your pulse ain’t abnormal at the mentioning of these names but I can live with that.
Well, as I end my lamentation, I also take comfort in what that wise sage, C L R James, once said: what do they of cricket, who only cricket know?
What do I know?
4 Comments
nice mention about the match. neevu ee post haakirteera aMta oohisidde. But I surely do not agree with your lamentation. Agreed that bowling and fielding(esp. Australia) was below par. But having said that, one needs to take into account the factors of the match. J’burg is a flat pitch with small boundaries. Ponting scored a century in the WC final and took Aus to 358. But I do not blame the bowlers though. Given the way they were being hit and the way International Cricket has come of age and of course the pressure of bowling all your overs within the stipulated time of 3.5 hrs, if one is not able to think on such a day, u cannot blame him.
On the other hand I think that the spectators would have been the most thrilled. This match seemed to be influenced by the recent surge in the 20-20 compact Cricket we have been recently witnessing. Gone are the days when people talked abt less than 4 rpo for a bowler.
Coming to the scenario back home, I am beginning to get worried if the BCCI will ever ger serious abt 20-20 cricket. It surely is a new rage in the cricketing world and seems to have taken the world by storm. In an age where people want everything in a short time, 20-20 offers the best viewing possibility of in 3 hrs. I just hope India do not commit the same mistake which they made during the introduction of the one-day format. It took them years to actually digest the fact that there is a 1-day cricket. Now with the board completely against the 20-20 format and the whole world against the BCCI, I am just beginning to wonder if BCCI might just be caught on the wrong foot.
As an afterthought, “what if” Nathan Bracken had caught Herschelle Gibbs at the crucial time! Well If ifs and buts were pots and pans there would be no tinkers, would ther’?
I gotta disagree here. I think ODIs have always been a batsman’s game [hello, restrictive field placements] and so, this lament would be 20 years too late. Flat pitch, small boundary, high altitude, whatever. You still gotta hit that ball and I have no idea how you even get the nerve to start a 400+ chase. So, I would put this as a fine example of grit ever displayed. I look forward to seeing the match and catching the batting - which surely had some class. This wasn’t a slogfest by tailenders. Ponting/Gibbs’ innings must be seen, no? Best match ever? Hardly. But, one that WILL change ODIs again.
As for nuance and bowling - blame the BCCs and the fools who make wickets on which even the greats would get no mercy.
Here is a nice piece in the Guardian, on SA’s successful chase:
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/thespin/idx/0,,1730578,00.html
and here are some good lines from that piece:
“This is to make a more general point. As astonishingly as South Africa batted, they did so with the liberation of condemned men. It might even have been harder to chase 300, because that would have tested temperament, not just instinct. And the more Herschelle Gibbs’s instinct paid off, the more Australia panicked. The sheer horror of the prospect of defeat - in front of the baying Bullring, against a team they have so often labelled chokers, after notching up a world-record total - overcame them. South Africa showed what very talented batsmen can do if they have to. Australia showed what slightly less talented bowlers can do if doubt creeps in. That’s why a miracle happened on Sunday. And it’s what makes cricket, with its uncanny gift for the unexpected, such a great sport.”
One more, this time by Peter Roebuck:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/cricket/fans-rejoice-in-13-wickets-and-872-runs-worth-of-pure-sportingabsurdity/2006/03/14/1142098464068.html
“But this was not a tale of Antipodean incompetence, but rather of African inspiration. Smith and his players outdid themselves. They chased not as a gesture but with conviction. And every player responded.”
and
“Was the 2349th ODI the greatest ever played? It was. Does it belong alongside four-minute miles and 28-foot leaps? It does not. Astonishing athletic feats widen our appreciation of man’s possibilities. Instead, the match was a reminder that the true glories of any game occur in the conflict between committed and capable sides both desperate to prevail. Apart from the excitement of the finish, it is the rawness of the struggle and the response of the performers that holds our attention.”
Post a Comment