TWENTY-20
Hey all u people out there, just thought I’ve been too philosophical in the last two blogs, so what better topic than cricket to break the jinx .Actually I happened to watch the match between Ind-Sri this weekend, as the 20-20 matches of the Finals day was also going on so I was swapping the cannels to have a track of the semis between Lancashire & Surrey, this is when the story started.
My mother who also happened to be watching the match got a bit disturbed by the swapping of channels & finally asked me, what was it, that was going on, in the other channel .My Mom happens to be a cricket literate(My criteria 4 a person 2 b a cricket literate is that he/she should b able 2 judge if an appeal for LBW is genuine or not, that’s coz I myself took a long time to understand that,& I believe that my Mom can do that to some extent) .So I told her that it was a 20-20 match going on & said that as India scored 205 runs in this match in 50 overs ,Lancashire had gone on to score 216 in just 20 overs! Astonished with this she started asking me all sort of questions like “is the ground small ?,Are there less members in the teams? Were there different rules with 10s instead of sixes & 8s instead of fours etc?(Actually she didn’t ask this last ques explicitly but I definitely thought that she would have loved to believe that)”.To her surprise all the answers were ‘NO’ .After explaining her a lot of things I could get it to her that there was nothing different except for the format & the mindset of the players.
As some of my readers would know, how passionate I happen to be about the very word “CRICKET!” & how much I like to blabber about it, I just started telling my Mom that the 20-20 is not the real way cricket should be, all slam-bang stuff & no cricketing techniques isn’t the real sprit of cricket ,etc ,etc ,etc……….At this she replied negatively & she believed that this is the way of going abt the game .She said that, if even India would have played like that in this match then at least they would have scored over 205.Now this couldn’t be denied, at least not by saying that Sri Lanka was a much better team than Surrey, coz if u’ve followed the 20-20 this year then u’d know players with what kind of pedigree participated .Cricketers like Graeme Smith ,Flintoff ,Trescothick ,Symonds & so many more to add 2 the list were all fighting it out. So back I went to stuff like, in 20-20 no one plays to play they just play to hit the ball hard by whatever means possible .After-all I couldn’t lose an argument to anyone over cricket, could I??? But then my Mom said one thing which shut my mouth & yes I lost this argument clearly.
She just said, “Every batsman plays cricket to get runs & every bowler plays to get a wicket & that’s it ,barring that, everything is secondary ,Would u have a player in ur team who is technically perfect but scores at a snail’s pace ?So why is the method of getting the runs so important to u?” Believe me I felt that all my knowledge in cricket was useless .I felt that I’m still living a couple of ‘cricket generations’ behind the present ‘cricket generation’!!!
Well, I still would love to disagree that cricket should be as result oriented as 20-20 but at some point of time I got to realize that cricket in its primary form isn’t the same as it used to be a decade earlier .In my school days we used 2 spend hours discussing passionately about cricket but today I really feel hurt when children say with great pride that cricket is a boring game.F1 & EPL have taken its place for many a sports enthusiasts .Probably people have become more & more sharp & choosy in their sports viewing habits .A 5 day test may interest a few outdated cricket followers (including me), but for them its sheer waste of time .5 days of tussle & toil just for a single win or loss or even more frustratingly a draw !A sprint athlete becomes 20 times more famous in just 9.77 seconds! But for me cricket in any damn form is gold dust, just can’t help it.
However, what we all know deep inside is that cricket is still the best, it just needs a facelift .And what better facelift than the Twenty-20.If the able handlers of the game really want an upsurge in the popularity of the sport then they got to get this format in soon, but again with a very careful approach !It should never play a replacement of one-dayers & needless to say test cricket just cannot be replaced .I’m not too sure if it would work on a local level in all the cricketing nations as it has worked in England coz after-all England & Australia have that rich domestic cricket culture(I’m talking about people viewing those matches) .So as per me an international 20-20 championship should come up once every year & then we can always have 20-20 friendly matches between the host & the tourists in every tour as & when convenient .
What I mean to convey through all this is that the time is just perfect to throw the 20-20 trump card for the betterment of the cricketing fraternity but it just isn’t ripe enough to start producing 20-20 specialists .Nor is it time to tell our youngsters that they can make a career in 20-20.Because if this starts happening then in just another decade there would be little difference left between cricket & baseball, and none of us would like this to happen, would we?
My mother who also happened to be watching the match got a bit disturbed by the swapping of channels & finally asked me, what was it, that was going on, in the other channel .My Mom happens to be a cricket literate(My criteria 4 a person 2 b a cricket literate is that he/she should b able 2 judge if an appeal for LBW is genuine or not, that’s coz I myself took a long time to understand that,& I believe that my Mom can do that to some extent) .So I told her that it was a 20-20 match going on & said that as India scored 205 runs in this match in 50 overs ,Lancashire had gone on to score 216 in just 20 overs! Astonished with this she started asking me all sort of questions like “is the ground small ?,Are there less members in the teams? Were there different rules with 10s instead of sixes & 8s instead of fours etc?(Actually she didn’t ask this last ques explicitly but I definitely thought that she would have loved to believe that)”.To her surprise all the answers were ‘NO’ .After explaining her a lot of things I could get it to her that there was nothing different except for the format & the mindset of the players.
As some of my readers would know, how passionate I happen to be about the very word “CRICKET!” & how much I like to blabber about it, I just started telling my Mom that the 20-20 is not the real way cricket should be, all slam-bang stuff & no cricketing techniques isn’t the real sprit of cricket ,etc ,etc ,etc……….At this she replied negatively & she believed that this is the way of going abt the game .She said that, if even India would have played like that in this match then at least they would have scored over 205.Now this couldn’t be denied, at least not by saying that Sri Lanka was a much better team than Surrey, coz if u’ve followed the 20-20 this year then u’d know players with what kind of pedigree participated .Cricketers like Graeme Smith ,Flintoff ,Trescothick ,Symonds & so many more to add 2 the list were all fighting it out. So back I went to stuff like, in 20-20 no one plays to play they just play to hit the ball hard by whatever means possible .After-all I couldn’t lose an argument to anyone over cricket, could I??? But then my Mom said one thing which shut my mouth & yes I lost this argument clearly.
She just said, “Every batsman plays cricket to get runs & every bowler plays to get a wicket & that’s it ,barring that, everything is secondary ,Would u have a player in ur team who is technically perfect but scores at a snail’s pace ?So why is the method of getting the runs so important to u?” Believe me I felt that all my knowledge in cricket was useless .I felt that I’m still living a couple of ‘cricket generations’ behind the present ‘cricket generation’!!!
Well, I still would love to disagree that cricket should be as result oriented as 20-20 but at some point of time I got to realize that cricket in its primary form isn’t the same as it used to be a decade earlier .In my school days we used 2 spend hours discussing passionately about cricket but today I really feel hurt when children say with great pride that cricket is a boring game.F1 & EPL have taken its place for many a sports enthusiasts .Probably people have become more & more sharp & choosy in their sports viewing habits .A 5 day test may interest a few outdated cricket followers (including me), but for them its sheer waste of time .5 days of tussle & toil just for a single win or loss or even more frustratingly a draw !A sprint athlete becomes 20 times more famous in just 9.77 seconds! But for me cricket in any damn form is gold dust, just can’t help it.
However, what we all know deep inside is that cricket is still the best, it just needs a facelift .And what better facelift than the Twenty-20.If the able handlers of the game really want an upsurge in the popularity of the sport then they got to get this format in soon, but again with a very careful approach !It should never play a replacement of one-dayers & needless to say test cricket just cannot be replaced .I’m not too sure if it would work on a local level in all the cricketing nations as it has worked in England coz after-all England & Australia have that rich domestic cricket culture(I’m talking about people viewing those matches) .So as per me an international 20-20 championship should come up once every year & then we can always have 20-20 friendly matches between the host & the tourists in every tour as & when convenient .
What I mean to convey through all this is that the time is just perfect to throw the 20-20 trump card for the betterment of the cricketing fraternity but it just isn’t ripe enough to start producing 20-20 specialists .Nor is it time to tell our youngsters that they can make a career in 20-20.Because if this starts happening then in just another decade there would be little difference left between cricket & baseball, and none of us would like this to happen, would we?
posted by suvra at Tuesday, August 02, 2005
1 Comments:
make merry while i lose u stupid fella.but remember i didn't lose 2 u.At least cricket is one field where i can give u real tough competition in arguments.the only thing i care about more than u do.....
& yeah the company of an educated viewer really enhances the charm of the game.
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