Cricket at Its Best

Kallis looks around the field and takes guard. Flintoff reaches the start of his run-up mark and turns. A slow clap starts reverberating around Edgebaston.

Mark Nicholas behind the mic, gibbering about the previous delivery a moment ago, holds his breath. Flintoff starts his run-up and the crowd goes wild.

Flintoff bangs the ball in, and Kallis sways away, smelling leather as he did so, as the crowd goes "oooh" in a collective release of breath. "What a rrrrrrrripper of a delivery!" exclaims Mark Nicholas. And you’re surprised to find yourself standing.

This is test cricket. A contest between the bat and the ball. The test match that you just saw in Chennai suddenly seems like a big joke in front of this. The IPL seems like gully cricket. You just realize that the matches you’ve been watching all this time were nothing more than the batsmen wearing garlands with the board officials performing the duties of the priests, while the wretched bowlers pray for forgiveness.

At the time of writing this, I am taking deep relieved breaths after watching india bat in Hamilton in their first innings after day two. So old school test cricket has not died after all. The bowlers peg away at the off stump, with just enough movement off the wicket and in the air to keep the batsmen honest.

The batsmen, namely Messrs Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, watching the ball onto the bat, defending and leaving with their heads virtually on top of the ball. Some classy cuts and drives. A treat for any test cricket lover. And my views regarding Charu Sharma turn out to be correct after all, when, instead of applauding the Indian batsmen for their patience and skill, he points fingers at what he believes was a miserly run rate of 3.06.

What would you rather watch? A test match between Australia and South Africawith Dale Steyn bowling around the wicket to Ponting, with a short leg in place, peppering the batsmen with short deliveries, or batsmen hitting sixes on placid tracks and small grounds in the IPL? Well we’re not going to have a choice this summer, when we get an overdose of the 20-20 format, with the ICC 20-20 World Cup following the IPL.

Insomniacs should tape test cricket played in the subcontinent, for use at night to induce sleep. Even the lords of purists would struggle to keep themselves conscious watching these matches, not because the run rate is lesser than that of the 20-20 format, but because its one-way traffic all the way, with tame draws or with teams winning by just the sheer weight of runs.

Batsmen are grinning beneath their helmets while they are playing through the line, giving themselves room, or dancing down the tracks to the pace bowlers.

As Boycott would put it, even me mum would turn the ball a mile on the Indian wickets. And look at Vettori. He doesn’t have that benefit at his disposal. But he deceives the batsmen through a combination of variations in speed, flight and drift.

But coming back to the importance of having good test match tracks, if you want the crowds to come in to watch test cricket (remember the unsettling silence in Nagpur and Mohali last October), if you want young players to work on their test cricketing skills instead of giving up on the longer format and concentrating on the 20-20 leagues, if you want to see your son play a cover drive instead of a reverse-sweep slog, you’ve just got to make good sporting pitches. I am addressing the BCCI, of course.

Let’s make Earth a greener planet. Let’s leave some grass on the pitch.

---

It’s the last ball of the over. Flintoff reaches his run-up mark once more. Kallis is trying to remember whether he paid his last health insurance installment. Flintoff steams in.

With an audible grunt, Flintoff releases the ball. Full and swinging away late, and the off stump goes cat wheeling! The crowd erupts. Kallis walks off shaking his head, thinking that he was better off in the heat of Chennai.