How would soccer look if FIFA decides that some sanity needs to be brought into the game-and decides that all the games would hence forth be played over an entire day?
It's not very tough to imagine. The whole team would keep standing in front of the goal posts. The players would stop running around and the game would start testing the virtues of 'will' and 'patience'.
Supporters of the 'traditional' formats of Cricket often overlook the most basic fact about any sport- that a game is a game is but only a game. So at the most basic level (you might call it a philosopher's viewpoint!) cricket is all about six slims sticks, one slightly broader one and a round object. Soccer is even more minimalist. Only a big, round object! Ditto with other sports.
But the problem with Cricket has been its baggage of history and its narrow minded and hugely nostalgic patrons. Cricket was initiated by people who called themselves 'gentlemen', a euphemism for rich amateurs. As TOI's Swaminomics points out, only they could play a game which spanned for 5 days in the outdoors! This mentality refuses to go away till this day. It is also responsible for the lack of vision and direction Cricket has been suffering from for quite some time, with haphazard rule changes and whimsical schedules. The critics and administrators are too past-oriented to look into the future. They also refuse to admit that rough, tough and athletic people can have any considerable sway over the game and that one of game's primary purposes (and certainly the primary source of revenues) is about entertainment of the paying public. It's the popularity which brings in the masses to watch the matches and buy the products that players endorse. And then some gifted ones choose to select this game over other occupation to entertain and dazzle the others with their skills. (May be Yuvraj Singh would have selected Golf, or baseball, had he been in the US!)
Talking about skills, hitting and slogging demands as much skill as, lets say, playing a forward defensive stroke, or showing the patience to leave the potentially troubling deliveries and the concentration to last a whole day. Also, preventing a skilled batsman from scoring quickly is as much a skill as trying to get a guy out who is just content on occupying the crease.
That said, one thing that people failed to take notice during this Twenty20 2007 World Cup (which would make the critics and the masses equally happy) was the no of batsmen who were clean bowled, many a times with their stumps totally shattered. This is one of the most beautiful sights in Cricket and one saw it in very good measures (my personal favourite would be the cart wheeling of Gilchrist's middle stump by Sreesanth in the semi final!)
So may be the purists can convince themselves about this format. They are not in a huge no anyway but one suspects they influence cricket in a disproportionate way. My personal remedy is to sizably cut down on ODIs. To retain a link with the much beloved past, test cricket would have to continue it in the same vain as today. If viewers become hard to come by the the revenues from Twenty20 are always there to fund it!
It's not very tough to imagine. The whole team would keep standing in front of the goal posts. The players would stop running around and the game would start testing the virtues of 'will' and 'patience'.
Supporters of the 'traditional' formats of Cricket often overlook the most basic fact about any sport- that a game is a game is but only a game. So at the most basic level (you might call it a philosopher's viewpoint!) cricket is all about six slims sticks, one slightly broader one and a round object. Soccer is even more minimalist. Only a big, round object! Ditto with other sports.
But the problem with Cricket has been its baggage of history and its narrow minded and hugely nostalgic patrons. Cricket was initiated by people who called themselves 'gentlemen', a euphemism for rich amateurs. As TOI's Swaminomics points out, only they could play a game which spanned for 5 days in the outdoors! This mentality refuses to go away till this day. It is also responsible for the lack of vision and direction Cricket has been suffering from for quite some time, with haphazard rule changes and whimsical schedules. The critics and administrators are too past-oriented to look into the future. They also refuse to admit that rough, tough and athletic people can have any considerable sway over the game and that one of game's primary purposes (and certainly the primary source of revenues) is about entertainment of the paying public. It's the popularity which brings in the masses to watch the matches and buy the products that players endorse. And then some gifted ones choose to select this game over other occupation to entertain and dazzle the others with their skills. (May be Yuvraj Singh would have selected Golf, or baseball, had he been in the US!)
Talking about skills, hitting and slogging demands as much skill as, lets say, playing a forward defensive stroke, or showing the patience to leave the potentially troubling deliveries and the concentration to last a whole day. Also, preventing a skilled batsman from scoring quickly is as much a skill as trying to get a guy out who is just content on occupying the crease.
That said, one thing that people failed to take notice during this Twenty20 2007 World Cup (which would make the critics and the masses equally happy) was the no of batsmen who were clean bowled, many a times with their stumps totally shattered. This is one of the most beautiful sights in Cricket and one saw it in very good measures (my personal favourite would be the cart wheeling of Gilchrist's middle stump by Sreesanth in the semi final!)
So may be the purists can convince themselves about this format. They are not in a huge no anyway but one suspects they influence cricket in a disproportionate way. My personal remedy is to sizably cut down on ODIs. To retain a link with the much beloved past, test cricket would have to continue it in the same vain as today. If viewers become hard to come by the the revenues from Twenty20 are always there to fund it!
1 comment:
tell u what ODI cricket is nothing but grandfather cricket. its an idea whose time is up.
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