Do you remember who won the orange cap in the first IPL? Or who took away the purple cap last year? Do you care to look at the number of sixes hit by Chris Gayle in an IPL match? The fact is that the caps change heads with such frequency and Gayle crosses the boundary with such abandon that the sanctity of the statistics has taken an almost irreparable hit. But does it matter for the paying public or the players? Purists often complain about the changed nature of the game of cricket. The glamour, the glitz, the noise and the round-the-clock telecast of the game scandalises the prescriptivists.
IPL is especially pilloried for exerting a corrupting influence on the gentlemen’s game. But the game in its different formats continues to be packaged and consumed though modes of its consumption have undergone a change. IPL is a hit with lots of people, and most certainly, with all players.
An understanding of the structure of cricket can shed interesting light on the past, the present and the future of this glorious game. With its rich history and its different dimensions – players, audience, use of technology and its archive of statistics, etc – cricket follows a structuring principle.
The game is regulated with some simple rules followed everywhere, be it an international match or a local village game. As commentators never tire of saying ‘it is not rocket science but a simple game of cricket.’ The rule-governed nature of the game ensures the practice of the game at different levels and different locales that include both big grounds and small backyards. The game has both its langue (its rules) and parole (actual games), its diachronic (its history) as well as its synchronic aspect (the present variety from Test matches to 5-over a side) to use the terms popularised by structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Like the rules of language all rules of the game are not in operation in an individual game.
The structuring principle has been at work in the transformation of the game in the past few decades. In its long history the game has accommodated a lot of changes. At the macro level the changes include experiments in different formats from Test matches to ODIs to T-20 matches, use of technology in the game and innovations like super substitute, pinch hitter and power play.
At the micro level innovations like reverse sweep, dilscoop and helicopter shot in batting and reverse swing and doosra in bowling have easily become an integral part of the game. The paradigmatic axis of language which explains our selection of a word out of many other words which could have been chosen also has a parallel in the game of cricket.
Batsmen, especially the better ones, can choose to play different shots to the same ball. A bowler like Wasim Akram is considered a genius because he could choose to offer a lot of variety maintaining the same action and run up. It is the basic structuralist principle of the relationship of parts to the whole which can explain the real appeal of the game. Parts relate to the whole from cricketers’ perspective. Players often play the game without reference to its history. However, the game exists for its millions of viewers too. In fact, it is the break of this relationship of parts to the whole that explains the interest of millions of followers of the game.
Viewer’s interest often centres around parts. Statistics in the game are technically parts which should have a meaningful existence only in relation to the whole, that is the actual game of cricket played by 22 players on a field. However, statistics are preserved by a lot of experts and fans and avidly devoured for their own sake. The game is marketed on the basis of statistics. The entire discursive terrain of cricket constructed by newspaper columns and radio and TV commentary and replicated in leisurely gossip of cricket fanatics is built around statistics.
Wisden even invokes religious imagery. The materiality of the actual game cannot be denied but its understanding is achieved through these discursive structures. Statistics like ‘fastest or slowest hundred’, ‘fastest or slowest to reach 3,000 or 10,000 runs’ or ‘oldest or youngest to reach 100 wicket mark’ have contributed to this discursive terrain of the game.
Statistics have not only proved to be addictive for millions of fans they also require no understanding of the game but still arm millions to build their arguments. There is always an unlimited opportunity for records to be made in the game. Records, at best small parts of the game, can keep fans satisfied and they may easily forget the whole.
A century by Sunil Gavaskar in a drawn match is just a small part in a whole but it can keep fans happy and satisfied. Few people care to remember that India actually lost the Perth Test in 1992 in which Sachin Tendulkar scored his much talked about (a part) hundred. A ball bowled at 160 miles per hour may be hit for a six but the fan of the game remembers the speed announced by the speed gun.
In the game of cricket, particularly in Test cricket followed in India, parts have always been more important than the whole. It is a perfect case of the tail wagging the dog. The real danger that the surfeit of cricket and its telecast has posed to the game of cricket is not the dilution of the game but the frequency with which statistics change. The popularity of T-20 has further trivialised statistics. Test cricket thrived on parts. Statistics were everything in tests. Garfield Sobers highest score of 365 stood as a world record for almost three decades. Records had a certain solidity and sanctity. Limited over matches changed the nature of statistics but they were still very important.
Every cricket fan remembers Kapil Dev’s 175 not out versus Zimbabwe though the match was not even telecast. Centuries, five and 10 wickets hauls, time taken to score, time not taken to score – all of them provided potential for interesting statistics.
When instant gratification becomes the ideal, when consumption is taken to be the be all and end all principle, when memory is outsourced to gadgets, the least consumed things in the game of cricket turn out to be statistics on which the game thrived for so long.
They also have a very short-lived existence. Now statistics have only an illustrative value, not even relevant during the telecast of the match, what to talk of preserving a scrapbook.
And because the parts have a momentary appeal, the game has lost some of its sheen.
It will continue to be liked but because of its potential to package entertainment in different forms.
Purists may not call it progress but change would remain an integral part of the game.
(The writer teaches English at Aligarh Muslim University)
