I can’t think of any game which has changed as much over the past three or four decades as the game of cricket. The radio commentaries (television was some way off) of Anant Setalvad, Pearson Surita, Suresh Saraiya, Tony Cozier, Henry Blofeld and Richie Benaud still ring fresh in my mind.
I remember that even a quarter century by an Indian batsman those days was applauded as a milestone, and a six by a Salim Durrani or a ‘Tiger’ Pataudi was received with rapturous applause, for sixes those days were rare. I still recollect the thrill that Eknath Solkar’s sixer gave me even when the entire Indian team was bundled out for a mere 42 runs by the Englishmen in the summer of 1974.
The white flannel trousers and full shirts, the nature of the pitches, or the kind of stumps, shoes, pads, gloves, bats and balls of then may appear antediluvian to today’s cricketer.
Physical fitness had nowhere assumed the importance it has today! Spare a thought for an Indian batsman, without any of the protective gear that is available to the modern batsmen and conditioned on a diet of spin and flat pitches, having to face bowlers of the pace of Lillee, Thompson, Hadlee or the formidable quicks from the West Indies.
Commercialisation of cricket, which perhaps started with the Kerry Packer series, in the late 1970s, was viewed by most purists with suspicion and even disdain. The advent of T20, the IPL and the gravitational shift of the power centre of cricket to India with the Board of Control for Cricket in India becoming one of the world’s richest sports bodies, the coloured clothing, the logos and the brands, the day-night matches, the sponsors and the money, the advancement of technology, the cameras, the Decision Review System, the emergence of trainers and sports psychologists, the “democratisation” of the game and the emergence of young cricketers from the remote plains and places of India driven by a fierce will to “make it”, have made this game almost unrecognisable from what it used to be!
The languid grace of a straight drive past the bowler, or the classical run-up of a fast bowler to deliver his lethal inswingers and outswingers with deadly accuracy, or the guile and skill of a slow left arm or right arm spinner might still be there, but these appear to have been largely eclipsed by “360 degree” batsmen who can play the “ramp shot” and “switch-hits” at will, fast bowlers who bowl “slow” bouncers and “cutters”, “knuckle” balls and toe-crushing yorkers, spinners who can confuse and confound batsmen with “doosras” and the “carrom ball” and fielders who can defy laws of gravity in plucking catches while being airborne.
The fact that the game has changed over the years is something that is axiomatic. The purist might not like a “ramp shot” or a “switch-hit”, but the crew-cut, gum-chewing cricketer of today might tell him that it fetches him and the team runs and well, can one argue with that?
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