In a world where money talks, cricket has been marketed exceedingly well by its advisories. What is forgotten in all the hype and the noise is the strain and pressures a player undergoes each time he steps onto the field.
Modern day cricket is all about hype and pressure a player has to undergo – He has to be very resilient and adapt like a superman (he needs to be cool as a cucumber, ensure he is not injury prone and not let the adulation and money get the better of him).
It was thought - A two-hour football game is more gripping and pressure worse than a pressure cooker – Players succumbing to heart attacks were witnessed on the field. The Reason being Pressure. In two hours, you have violent fans screaming and rooting their players to perform. Pulsating moment for the body and the mind in those two hours.
Now, cricket with its Twenty-20 (T-20) format will push players into performing like super humans. Especially in India a country known for its love for cricket – the players have to scale up and satiate the cricket crazy populace OR perish. We will soon witness many cricketers clutching his chest and slumping in the field.
But the saying "Be a Roman while in Rome" applies well here. In a nation seized by cricketing frenzy where people literally worship mortals, ordinary cricketers are made to feel like super heroes. It is, in some way, the duty of cricketers to entertain the masses. The world has changed, too. Heavy-duty bikes and cars have been replaced by lighter, faster ones similarly; the game has to change with the taste and higher expectation of the audiences. The players of today need more skills than technique, more guts than patience, more nerve than stamina.
Players have started earning more money than before. Cricket is spreading in different parts of the world with the initiative of the International Cricket Council and other cricket boards. Spectators have started enjoying the game more than before. However, the question remains the same: is T-20 an evolution of real cricket or gulley cricket, where the batsmen are expected to dispatch every ball onto the boundary? In the international arena, Test cricket is still considered real cricket, where technique and the temperament of batsmen and bowlers are tested at various levels. People who prefer Test cricket to the limited-over forms of the game are often called purists. They are very few compared to the cricket crazy masses that enjoy the slam- bam variety.
The few lovers of Test cricket are the real connoisseurs and think of it as the classical form. It is classical because it is a cultivated form of the game, distinct from both local, popular, primitive forms of bat-and-ball games as well as modern abridged variants such as One Day Internationals (ODIs) and T-20.
More than Test cricket, the ICC is now focusing on 50-50 and 20-20 cricket. Some players feel that one-day cricket can now replace Test cricket, as T-20 becomes the new one-day. All cricket boards have started organizing tournaments mostly aimed at making money rather than developing the game. Gone are the days, when in a series, more Test matches were played than one-dayers. In the current scenario, a series usually has a couple of T-20 matches thrown in to make the tournament exciting. This means that the length and width of the grounds are reduced to help cricketers hit fours and sixes with ease and pitches made more batsmen friendly, to help them score more than 300 runs. All this are being done with an eye to phase out Test cricket. The players, however, are not willing to accept this truth.
Going by business angle – T-20 is the best bet – Cricket crazy masses far outnumber the purists.
"It is just weird and a hard thing to get your head around." Pietersen, Former England Captain says.
It would be fair to say the T-20 is a lop-sided game. The so-called new rules favor the batsmen. The bowlers are just queued up as lambs to a slaughter house. No-Ball rule is a shocker. A free hit awarded in favor of the batsmen (double whammy) everything going in for the batsmen and very demoralizing for the bowler, it is simply not fair when a game murders an entire community in the name of entertainment! Genocide is more like it.
However, cricket is not pure entertainment; sadly, it has been made out to be so throughout the world, more so in India. It is not a movie that you go to, expecting 100 per cent entertainment. It is a game by mortals with flesh and blood like you and me playing to earn a living. Even in a movie, there are parts, which, by them, are not entertaining but contribute to the overall enjoyment. Similarly, while cricket is expected to entertain, it needs to provide players the opportunity to use the skills they have learnt, to apply the tactics they have discussed, and to plot brilliant ploys for the opponents. The climax, of course, will be entertaining.
However, in a T-20 match, this beautiful phase where minds battle and skill is tested has no space. It all boils down to mindless hitting from the time they say start to the time they scream STOP! STOP (similar to crazy school boys swinging their bat aimlessly).
Players need to stand up and fight for Test cricket. Agreed, it has to be made more lively and interesting to win more spectators. Five days of play should produce better results than mere draws. Authorities, too, need to be serious about cricket. They have been entrusted with a lot more than merely the job of lining their pockets. Long live cricket!
