Sports

Sports

Another dying breed
By S.R. Pathiravithana
Down the line of history humans have seen the emergence of empires and destruction of them and along with them some other activity of significance which will remain as a pale streak of memory after a given period of time. In sports though we in modern times have not experienced such occurrences so far there is one sport that is very close to extinction and even now it could be listed in the endangered list. This is none other than the game of Test cricket that we have grown to love so much, but at present is gasping for breath cringing under the pressure and threat posed by the emerging shorter versions of the game.

It is interesting to note how the longer version of the game is slowly disintegrating and becoming shorter and shorter. I remember my father narrating this story about the legendary MCC team which toured South Africa in the 1913/14 series and at that time the games were played to a finish. So at the end of the 9th or the 10th day of the match they had to call off the game because the boat which was to take them back to England was leaving. In an era where ground preparation and body gear was not heard of a game takes a course of 9-10 days and still is not finished! To my mind the reason was that the batsmen of that era were more adapted to play longer innings and mostly had put a prize on their wickets.

Then as time went by the governing body limited the game to five days of cricket in a Test match with a rest day in between. Following this with the introduction of the shorter version of the game which came to be played in concurrence with the Test matches the rest days were also done away with and Test cricket was strictly played for only five days ( unless the two teams agreed upon it in their original schedule).

In this era there were batsmen born of the calibre of Haniff Mohammed, Geoff Boycott, Ken Barrington and Sunil Gavaskar who carved out memorable innings in their own inimitable styles, and they were in the real Test mould. But in the 1960’s the authorities came to be concerned about the loss of popularity of the game and gradually brought in the limited overs version of cricket.
With the limited overs cricket picking up momentum the authorities then introduced the Cricket World Cup in1976. To my mind it was the first nail in the coffin of that beautiful game called Test Cricket. World Cup Cricket was a huge commercial success and the crowds were back in the stands.

Then the rulers of the game of cricket as mundane people they are began to get greedy and wanted more. They gradually started converting the game into a business empire by the name of the International Cricket Conference. The ICC then wanted more countries to play the game so that the game would be more commercially viable. Out of the newcomers the first was Sri Lanka who gained their full membership in 1981 and played their first match in1982 against England at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium. Zimbabwe the next in played their first Test match against India ten years later in 1992. Eight years later Bangladesh also played their first Test match against India in the year 2000. Subsequently Kenya too got the nod to play only in one-day internationals.

The ICC had their full complement of the stake holders in the ODI’s and the money making machine was on its way. At the same time after Sri Lanka triumphed in the 1996 World Cup (with India and Pakistan having won it before) the entire Indian sub-continent became a huge market for cricket and a hub of activity.

Now any side which prepares their side for the future prepares it with a world cup in mind. For instance Sri Lanka’s incumbent coach Tom Moody was given the licence only till the 2007 World Cup. Now when a side prepares they publicly say “We are eyeing the next World Cup”, and not “We are preparing for our next tough Test assignment against so and so”.

At present the entire emphasis is laid on One-day Internationals and even though there were moves to have a Test championship nothing constructive has been done. However the ICC have also started showing tremendous interest in a game called the twenty-twenty cricket which they think will take cricket into the next elevation of commercialization. With the introduction of this aspect of the game the thinking is that they can lure countries like the United States, Japan and Korea where another bat and ball game – Baseball has taken deep root. China is another attractive market the ICC is dreaming of.

Meanwhile on the surface cricketers in the ten major (more to the point of eight) cricket playing are pushed from one tournament to the other. Win at all cost is the password in cricket and as a result technique has become a bad word. As one of Sri Lanka’s top exponents of batting artistry Sidath Wettimuny put it “As a result of the players getting used to the limited overs version they have forsaken the art of playing in the “V”. Instead they concentrate a lot on scoring runs at “third man” or “fine leg” and this has truly affected Test cricket as whole”.

Now going on that argument one could ascertain as to how many Test matches within the last two years have ended within three days of play and four days of play. At the same time by how many games have gone the full length one could gather how much the original has deteriorated. The order of the day in any team is batsmen who can bowl and bowlers who can bat. If not they will convert bowlers like Irfan Pathan into batsmen who can bat at number three, without considering as to what will happen to their bowling when they place more emphasis on their batting?

Then with the twenty-twenty cricket taking root and when the batsmen start paying more attention to that type of game may be in the future some of the Test matches will finish in two days until the authorities are forced to take them out of the calendar altogether labelling them as utter commercial flops.
“Hi” Mr. Speed, you are now travelling too fast. You are bound to get a ticket soon”.

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