The Dark Era of Classic Spirit

Sometimes I wish I lived in the early 19th century to watch the legends of the game mastermind its art. It would have been such a treat to watch Sir Jack Hobbs being hungry for runs, Sir Don Bradman’s masterpiece of batting, Sir Len Hutton’s classy drives, Sir Frank Worrell keeping it all along the ground; I feel unlucky that I wasn’t there to witness how great they were playing. But I enjoyed watching my time heroes: Glenn McGrath pitching the ball just outside the off-stump and making it dart around to flick the outside edge of the bat to be caught behind at the acrobatic slip cordon, Great Muttiah Muralitharan bamboozling the batsmen to get through the gate between bat and pad, Marvan Atapattu’s patient, long innings, Michael Vaughan’s elegant drives on the offside.

But the new era that dawned around the midway through the last decade, to me, is the downfall of cricket. The invention of Twenty-20 has brought the darkness into the game. It has caused to break the patience of elegant batsmen and to disturb the accomplishment of their batting as well as to reduce their foot-movements. Furthermore, it crunches the disciplined bowlers down on the ground to give an awful pleasure to the geek fans, who don’t enjoy anything else, but seeing the ball in the air.

And then came in the IPL, compromising the spirit of cricket for money and taking apart a big part of the international cricket calendar. I find most the changes that came out with T20 and around that time, so ridiculous: A ‘free hit’ after a no ball would do nothing but discouraging the bowler and the ‘super-over’ to get a result out of a tied game is even more ridiculous. They better put a coin-toss to find a winner rather than a ‘super-over’. I think cricket is being footballized or they are trying to match it with football or the other games. But the question is why does cricket need such kind of changes, which hurt its spirit, when it has an its own identity and a history of over 130 years at the international level?

Chris Gayle was recently pulled out of West Indies’ leading seat as he turned down the central-contracts, because he fancied the big lolly that he gets by playing for the IPL rather than the respect that he gets by playing more decent-spirited cricket at the international level for his country.

I find it making no sense when some geek fans say “the middle overs of 50-over games are rather boring”. What you enjoy in a One-Day innings are the various parts of it: first you survive with the new ball, then keep the scoreboard ticking; if you lost some early wickets, try and occupy the crease for a while and rebuild the innings with some steady partnerships and when you are into the closing overs of play, go hard at it and try and smash the ball around for some quick runs. However, England dumped 50-over games from their domestic circuit last summer and that could be an ominous gesture of One-Day-Internationals getting reduced to 40 overs per a side in the near future as well.

Adding much to worry about for the real cricket lovers, another T20 competition called ‘Champions league’ came into the already packed cricket calendar, reducing more international cricket.

As a consequence of those infections, Test cricket began to subside and ICC began to think about some more ridiculous changes to the greatest format of the game. MCC took on the then champions, Durham on a Day-Night, 4-day game with an un-traditional pink ball at Sheikh Zayed stadium, Abu Dhabi, in March, this year. But I guess they didn’t know that what they were doing would only tamper the spirit of the game even more. However they’ve found out some concerns about noticing the ball in the dark as the ball deteriorates. But the sad thing is, ICC hasn’t yet taken the idea of ‘Day-Night Tests’ completely out of its head.

If the things continue to move on in this way, we’ll be unable to find the whereabouts of Great, Old Test cricket, which has become a candle that is burning down to the ground. If we don’t get together to blow it off, it’ll be blown away into the history. But the thing is, what we can do to save it, still remains with a question mark.

-Sachintha Saputhanthri-

Forfeited Momentum

Coming into the 1st Test of the 3-match series against Windies, Sri Lanka hadn't got their front line seam attack in the squad. May be they are saving Malinga for the world cup, which is just around the corner, though I don't see why they shouldn't use Nuwan Kulasekara, who is probably the most consistent 'line and length' bowler in Sri Lanka at the moment. May be they have under-estimated West Indies or haven't given a worth for the Test series.

The team didn't look balanced with two spinners and 2 seamers instead of one spinner and three seamers, especially at a time when the young allrounder Mathews is still recovering from a knee injury and is unable to ball.

After losing the toss and having to bowl first on a healthy batting track at the splendid Galle International Cricket Stadium, Sri Lankan seamers didn't look consistent as they used to be. Although Thushara started off with a couple of maiden overs he couldn't stick to a consistent line and length while Dhammika Prasad was struggling to find his rhythm from the initial stage. West Indies openers were likely to lack their concentration in the first hour of the day though SL seamers were going too wayward to capitalise from it.

Playing the first game after having to hand the captaincy over to Darren Sammy, Chris Gayle was struggling to get of the marks initially though, once he did it with a cross-legged glance for four, he made sure that he took the control of the day's play and took the driving seat of the Windies innings. The young opener Adrian Barath and the debutant Darren Bravo made half-centuries to help Chris Gayle dominate the 1st day of the game with an unbeaten double-ton.

What Sangakkara has to learn from this is to do the first thing first. Use the best available team to try and win the Test series first and then prepare for the next year's world cup!