Among the many perils of sports writing is a the quizzing you often face while traveling, once professional identity is recalled. Not so long ago, on a tedious flight back home, a rather loquacious Indian gentleman, who has lived the better part of his life in the United States, suddenly decided at an altitude of 35,00 feet and ‘moving from one time zone to another that the time was ripe for a sports quiz “So why don’t they suitably compress this game,” he wondered, eyebrows raised and the tone of voice measured to convey incredulity. He was, of course, taking about cricket.
“Of course they have,” he was told. “The ‘one day game is a rage in all the cricket playing countries now. A game can be decided in a little over six hours, or even less sometimes.” “Oh yes,” he said. “I know that, I know all about one day cricket. recover my files crack free download cnet But you still need to spend a whole day to watch it. Can’t they have something you can pick up on a Saturday afternoon?” he asked. Till just the other day, about the best thing that could have happened to a cricket fan on a Saturday afternoon was a turbocharged century by a Gary Sobers while the worst would have been a Geoff Boycott adding another three hours to his Tong history of occupation of the creases of the world, and adding half a dozen runs (maybe) in the process. Instant and Fast: How times have changed! if the marathon ‘of the world of sport the game cricket as come to resemble a metric mile now, then maybe the day is not far off when it will be packaged as a sprint to help suit the tastes of impatient Star Wars age spectators such as our Indian American friend. If old timers overcome by nostalgia tum their faces away from the limited over game calling it an abomination, then there is perhaps more emotion than logic behind such an act. They might well say that the game has changed beyond recognition, that the fabled romance is gone, that the essential purity is lost, that the soul has been sacrificed at the altar of expediency. Nothing is quite the same anymore may as well be the lament. As Henry David Thoreau pointed out, things don’t change, we change. A game, like most things in life, is only what people want it to be. So, who has changed? What has changed? Man or the game? Man’s tastes or the way the game is played? The constant changes in man’s attitudes towards entertainment, towards leisure, toward what he ‘wants to see and hear, are bound to reflect on sport. In the event, what changed first was the modern cricket fan’s priorities. The rest, inevitably, followed. And, what is more, the romantic and the purist can still take heart in the fact that conventional cricket successfully coexists with the limited over variety, cricket successfully coexists with the limited overs variety. New Lease: Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the longer brand of traditional cricket has found a new lease of life, thanks to the abbreviated progeny. In how many cricket playing nations today, can test cricket survive without the support drawn from the one day game? Without the support drawn from the one day game? In India itself, how many business houses will come forward to sponsor a Test series if it was not supplemented by a one day international series? The sheer, mindboggling pace of late 20th century life does not allow much scope for Victorian pastimes. how to recover file on powerpoint on mca The present day man does not have the patience of his early century predecessor and he wants everything here and now! When he goes to a game on a Thursday he wants a decision on the same day, Not at twilight time on Tuesday the following week. After all, this is an age when almost everyone has a finger on the fast forward button. People are happy to get through with a three hour ‘movie in one hour on the video screen. Get on with it, is the chorus of the age in which we live, And cricket itself is certainly getting on with it, What started as an accident, almost an afterthought, on a soggy new year in Melbourne in the 1970-71 Australia England series has now be ‘come a major attraction in the world of ‘cricket. The one day internationals, the first of which was played to appease frustrated specters after the third Test of the 197071 series had to be abandoned owing to rain, are indeed the bread and butter of the modern game today. Those, then, were days (the early 70s) when the one day stuff was not even the icing on the cake. The best of players could very well refuse to acknowledge their existence and still make a great name, and a living, for themselves. The new game did not really catch the fancy of the fan until the 1975 Prudential World Cup. The drama and the excitement that the first major international limited overs championship not only won over a lot of skeptics but conclusively converted the lay fan, Excitement: What followed is the age of innovation in the game. Night cricket, white ball, black sightscreen, colored clotting… revolution was on. The players themselves had to make major adjustments in technique, in tactics, in mental attitudes…in just about everything. The angled bat dispatching the ball, airborne, thought the vacant slips may not be a pretty sight but that is a price that the batsman and the spectator alike have to pay for the condensed form of excitement. There was, of course, a bigger price to be paid in that the younger cricketers weaned ‘on the limited over game fell far too short when it came to playing the conventional type of cricket an consequently Test cricket itself suffered from a lack of genuinely classy players. But the process was irreversible. The thrill minute stuff was irresistible to the tans and they turned out in large numbers at major international matches even while support was going down for Test cricket. Meanwhile, the shocked purist continued to bemoan the increasing popularity of Heavy Metal Rick Cricket at the expense or so he believed of the classical concert stuff. But the one thing, the purist and most of us, should ask ourselves, is this: ‘Who are we to determine, or even seek to determine, what type of cricket people should go out and see? Instant cricket will indeed flourish if that is what the majority of the fans want. And, believe me, the cliche that the limited over game is “here to stay” is passe. The limited overs game is here to RULE.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 27, 1989
