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Litany of loss

I have written, in past columns, of what the game has gained these past twentyfive years, through the innovations in cricketing technique and the enlargement of cricket sponsorship.

This column, the last in the series, is devoted however to what the game has lost. 'And they that Reverence too much Old Times are but a Scorne to the New' -- thus remarked Francis Bacon, the seventeenth century politician and philosopher. But as a middle-aged historian, nostalgia for the past is for me a matter both of personal inclination and professional choice.

The cricketers of today certainly field better and bat more adventurously than they ever did before. With regard to bowling, however, one cannot say with similar authority that there has been an all-round improvement. For the game, as it now played, seriously disadvantages that most classical of bowling arts, that of finger spin.

One of the glories of cricket, in the 'old' days, was the battle between footwork and flight, between the quick moving batsman and the quick thinking slow left armer or off break bowler. Bowlers such as Erapalli Prasanna and Bishan Bedi revelled in deception, the batsman's misjudgment of flight or spin resulting in a catch to mid off or mid on.

But one hardly sees a catch taken in those positions anymore. The main reason for this is the dramatic improvement in the quality of bats, the fact that even a mishit nowadays will often go for six. This is why the spinner drops mid on to long on, back on the fence, the first time a batsman comes down to the wicket to him. He knows that he might still beat the fellow in the flight, but the chemically reinforced wood in the batsman's hands shall nonetheless carry the ball over the boundary.

Refinements in technology have served only to take the poetry out of the game.

Another mortal blow to the finger spinner has been the covering of wickets. In the past, when the pitch was left exposed to the elements, overnight rain would transform its condition. On a wet or sticky wicket, the fast bowler and wrist spinner are equally handicapped, one by slippery footholds, the other by slow bounce. Wet wickets are however made for the off break bowler and (especially) the orthodox left arm spinner, whose balls turn and stop, spit at the batsman's face or roll along the ground. Remember 'Deadly' Derek Underwood, that terror on wet wickets of whom it was said: 'He is England's umbrella, carried everywhere but taken out only when it rains'.

Notably, wickets damaged by rain also brought out the best in batsmanship. One of the greatest innings played on Indian soil was the 124 not out stroked by Alvin Kallicharan in the Bangalore Test of 1974-75. Venkataraghavan and Prasanna were in their pomp, but while they went through the rest of the West Indian line-up, Kalli batted with great skill, going back on his stumps to play the spin late or dancing down the wicket to take the ball on the full.

Later in that series it was the turn of India to be caught on a sticky, in Delhi. Alas, we had no Kalli to counter the mastery in those conditions of the outstanding off-spinner, Lance Gibbs.

Bishan Bedi has pointed out that the covering of pitches underlines how completely the game is now ruled by television. The successful marketing of cricket demands that play starts promptly at nine o' clock -- it cannot wait for wickets to dry or to be mopped up. But this change has further discriminated against an already unhappy section of cricketing craftsmen -- the slow bowlers.

I cannot believe, either, that all batsmen welcome the disappearance of wickets damaged by rain. The timid or mediocre might do so, but the confident can no longer test their skills in conditions favouring their opponent. For years to come, and for no fault of his own, Sachin Tendulkar will feel a sense of incompleteness as one old man after another will say, 'But Gavaskar and Vijay Merchant also made hundreds on sticky wickets.'

Another loss, to the spectator, has been the extinction of the genuine tail-ender. The end of an innings is the proper place for comic relief, when one has a right to see shots that shall never make it to any edition of the MCC coaching manual. But nine, ten and jack now all know how to play forward correctly, nudge the ball around for singles, and hit the occasional boundary too.

When one sees Rahul Sanghvi or Abey Kuruvilla hit a straight six, one becomes desperately nostalgic for a B.S. Chandrasekhar. For Chandra to meet a ball in the middle of the bat was as rare as an Indian nuclear explosion -- it happened all of six times in the twenty years he played the game. The googly bowler revelled in his plain incompetence, and so, more vocally, did the crowd. And what has come to pass in this country is part of a trans-national trend. When Devon Malcolm and Courtney Walsh finally retire, the cover drive through leg slip and the sweep shot into the hands of silly mid off will retire with them.

On the organizational side, among the costs of the contemporary game is the declining significance of domestic cricket. In January 1974, when I watched Bombay play Karnataka in the then half-built Chinnaswamy Stadium, each team had five Test players. For men such as Viswanath and Kirmani, on one side, or Wadekar and Sardesai, on the other, the cricketing honour of their state was fully as important as the cricketing honour of their country.

But nowadays, a cricketer who makes it to the Indian team is obliged to kick away the ladder that brought him to where he now is. He might play the first match of the domestic season, but for the rest of the year he shall play only for his country, and this too outside it. Toronto in September, Sri Lanka in October, Sharjah in December, while the 'lesser lights' fight it out in Mumbai and Bangalore.

The intensity of competition once displayed by the clash between Bombay and Karnataka has thus been displaced to the clash between India and Pakistan. But must one contest necessarily make way of the other? Other countries have maintained a more reasonable balance between domestic cricket and international cricket. They conserve their players by scheduling less internationals, and make sure too that these do not compete with important domestic fixtures.

Can one for instance think of a Sheffield Shield final clashing with an Ashes Test? Thus, for the Waugh brothers, New South Wales is still as important as Australia, and Darren Gough can yet bowl his heart out for Yorkshire as he would for England. One of my remaining ambitions as a cricket-watcher is to see Sachin Tendulkar bat against Anil Kumble in a Mumbai-Karnataka match.

I believe both Sachin and Kumble would welcome the contest too. The question is, will the Board of Control for Cricket in India ever allow it to happen?

The Board's disregard for the Ranji Trophy is one unhappy consequence of the conquest over cricket of the rupee and the dollar. Another, no less worrisome, is the changing profile of the spectators who actually go to the stadium to watch the cricket. Test match tickets were once modestly priced, meant mostly for those who loved the game and frequently played it as well. A portion of the tickets were always reserved for cricketers affiliated to the different clubs. Another large chunk was allotted on a first-come, first-served basis, to those whose interest was proved by their willingness to queue up for hours before a ticket counter.

Over the years, the opportunities for the genuine cricket lover to watch an international match at the ground have steadily shrunk. Large companies 'block-book' thousands of tickets, allotting them to employees, spouses, kids, clients, and favoured bureaucrats, all of whom are interested in being seen at the cricket, rather than seeing the cricket.

Some stadiums have even started fabricating air-conditioned boxes for the use of individual firms. Each of these boxes seat half-a-dozen whisky-drinking, kabab-eating, cricket-illiterate gents, colonizing a space where fifty keen club cricketers were previously accommodated.

In this respect, at least, the corporatization of cricket has led directly to the vulgarization of cricket. And it is not only greying historians who have reason to complain about this.

Ramachandra Guha