Beyond the boundary - Loneliness at long-on (3 June 1999)
Cricket is no longer the game it used to be
03-Jun-1999
3 June 1999
Beyond the boundary - Loneliness at long-on
Shakil Kasem
Cricket is no longer the game it used to be. Gone are the red balls,
the cream flannels and the billowing white sight-screens. Take away,
too, the genteel, sedate crowds given to the odd ooh or aah and the
very tongue-in-cheek "Well hit, sir," and the even more discreet clap
or two.
Replace all these with white balls that swing wildly, erstwhile
flannelled fools now in coloured pyjamas, sponsor's logo on black(!)
sight-screens. Add beer-bellied rowdies stripped to the waist (if the
weather is right) to pass off as spectators, painted faces (all
weather) and raucous bawdy language to approve suitable bits of
action, out in the middle. This is the spectacle that greets the eye
at the ongoing carnival of cricket in England. England, you say?
Certainly this is not the England we knew nor is this the cricket
that used to be played. Changing times, changed needs, more
sociological dictat than mere cricket. We live and learn. One does
not talk of buckskin pads or linseed oil anymore, the talk centres
around speed guns and as such like. The gentle pace of English summer
and the game it gave birth to, is now a misnomer. One is flying madly
over the cuckoo's nest.
My only tenuous link with cricketing sanity rests with Mishu Kabir.
Like me, I suspect, he too is struggling to come to terms with life
after the Cowdreys, the Comptons, the Pataudis and the Bobby
Simpsons. We do talk (somewhat surreptitiously) of the halcyon days
of the Old Taverners, the Free Foresters or the Wagoners, but clearly
we are the untouchables among the current crop of cricket
aficionados. In keeping with the prevalent societal trait now very
much in vogue, we constitute a very small, and even smaller silent
minority. But Mishu does make my day every Saturday, as we try to go
back in time that is now long gone, almost irrevocably, as it appears.
Memories die hard. To be able to indulge in the odd flight of fancy
to keep in fleeting contact with such memories, is one of those small
pleasures of life that one is reluctant to give up. Thanks, Mishu.
But, you know it too, we are sort of aliens caught in a time warp.
Beam us up, Scotty.
Then, what of Tawfiq Aziz Khan? Another of the lost brigade, a man
who can spout cricket lore till the cows come home. He too belongs to
an age that saw cricket quintessence at its flowering best. He was
weaned on Cardus, Robertson, Mason or at worst Fingleton. His avid
storehouse of knowledge of cricket history, its players, the grounds
they played on and the records they set and broke, do not quite do
justice to what is going on around him today. And worse, he has to
find something complimentary about them to write about. It is a tough
job, but some one has got to do it, I suppose. My sympathies,
nevertheless.
Cricket in this World Cup has been, well, different. One maiden
bowled over, has been my daughter, who, not surprisingly, given the
present state of affairs, thinks the most good-looking players on
view are the best ones. My cup of woe almost runneth over.
Source :: The Daily Star