Spice of Life: The joy of watching a cricket ball swing and spin

Cricket in an era gone by had more to do with dismissing the opposition with skilful and, at times, venomous bowling that it was about mammoth totals, sixes and fours

The 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is just around the corner. Cricket lovers then are looking forward to their favourite batsmen to have a field day in every match, at a blistering pace no less! My thoughts, though, are at a different wavelength. Is everything well with the game of cricket? On the face of it, it seems so. Is something amiss amid the torrent of sixes and fours though?

I belong to a generation of cricket lovers, one that grew up watching the good old Test cricket with one-day format while it was still in its infancy. (HT FIle)

I belong to another generation of cricket lovers, one that grew up watching the good old Test cricket with one-day format while it was still in its infancy. Cricket in those days had more to do with dismissing the opposition with skilful and, at times, venomous bowling.

Many cricket lovers would vouch for the fact that the pace attack of the West Indies led by Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding was feared around the world. It was thrilling to watch, say, Marshall charge towards the batsman with close-in fielders all around, waiting to lap up a tentative edge and the batsman jabbing at the ball, missing it altogether! It was even more thrilling to watch a short-statured batsman, read Sunil Gavaskar, standing up to the formidable bowling and skillfully dispatching the pacey deliveries to the boundary with utter disdain! Other cricket-playing nations also had fast bowlers of this calibre. Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Australia’s Dennis Lillee, England’s Bob Willis and New Zealand’s Richard Hadlee also belonged to the same generation. Who can forget our own Mohinder Amarnath facing Imran Khan in his prime, managing to survive a whole day, and coming to the pavilion with bruises all over his body?

Spinning wizards, too, are a thing of the past. The art of luring the batsman into a trap, before dismissing him, mastered by the great Bishan Singh Bedi and Erapali Prasanna, is no more in vogue simply because the big shots aimed to trap the batsman would bring down the asking rate and hence, take away the match. The greatest souvenir of the game of cricket should undoubtedly be the ball bowled by Shane Warne outside the leg stump of Mike Gatting spinning around the latter’s legs to hit the off-stump! Have we seen today’s spinners even attempting to bowl a similar delivery?

Batsmanship too has changed with the times. Gone are the days of the “silken touch” of England’s David Gower, the elegance of Gundappa Vishwanath’s square cut or the sheer artistry of Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas. Brute power is what matters these days.

Not to forget, listening to the frantic commentary of the cricket match on the ubiquitous transistor was a thrill. The hi-tech, multi-camera coverage of cricket matches these days pales in comparison to the excitement generated by the running commentary.

Cricket has changed gears to catch up with the present. But, it seems to have lost its innocence somewhere along the way! The younger generation needs to rediscover the thrills that the game of cricket offers when it is allowed to run at its own leisurely pace!

The writer is a Jalandhar-based freelance contributor