The change in the imagining of cricket among schoolboys is perhaps the most enduring reason for the decline of Test cricket in India, evident in its team’s deplorable performance in England this season. In their imagination, the practical has triumphed over fantasy, effectiveness over beauty, and the frenzy of speed over the charm of slowness. This has inspired schoolboys to embrace a style of play that is inimical to the culture of Test cricket, which is vital for creating a reservoir of talent.
Culture, classical or popular, persists through imitation, albeit with experimentation. Ask those who played cricket in school during the 1970s and early ’80s and they will tell you that they modelled their game to suit a particular form and ethos. It was through this model that they endeavoured to turn fantasy into reality, regardless of whether or not their style of cricket was practical or even required.
This style almost always manifested on the opening ball of the game. The boy with the red cherry would measure his run-up, often too long to justify the pace at which he bowled. There would be three slips and a gully at least, a short-leg and a third man, conveying claims to the three Ss of fast bowling – speed, swing, short balls. It didn’t matter whether he could swing the ball at will – a shining cherry deviates in the air anyway, and short balls were often a consequence of lack of control rather than intention.
Aiming high
The bowler would begin to run, gathering momentum, the six fielders crouching around, an intimation of the greatness awaiting him, an answer to India’s search for a speedster that was its prayer before Kapil Dev burst upon the scene. It didn’t matter whether the bowler had it in him to induce a snick, nor the ability of slip-fielders to pouch the catch. Not to give the opening bowler this field was to challenge his imagining of his skills, undermine his morale, and deter him from striving.
Six fielders around the batsman and a third man meant there were just four patrolling the square, always well inside the arena now made famous in cricketing parlance as 30 sq-yard circle. It was an invitation, no doubt, to chance your arm, opt for a cross-bat heave or lofted drive. Such daring was occasionally displayed. A successful execution was resoundingly applauded, but dismissal in the first few overs invited rebukes for being selfish.
Hadn’t the team’s coach, or cricketing manuals, or radio commentators told you over and over again: get your eyes in, gauge the bowler’s speed, leave balls outside off-stump before thinking of stroking freely? A maiden over didn't matter, even three in succession should not make you impatient. Of greater significance were that all the wickets were still intact.
Sure, you could lift the ball over the ropes, in case you had the ability, but, really, a truer, purer way of scoring was to stroke the ball all along the carpet, play with the spin, not against it, and watch the ball all the way from the moment it left the bowler’s hand. These skills were supposed to become your instinct, your second nature, as you were asked to imagine balls of varying lengths and shadow-practice a defensive stroke, bat and pad close together, or an off-drive with your head down, thus ensuring the leather didn’t squeeze past you to skittle the stumps or it wasn't miscued in a real match.
The philosophy of the game
Mind you, in those good old days, school cricket was mostly a 40-over game, punctuated by drinks and lunch breaks, stretching from 10 am till 4.30 pm. Yet it lacked the hurly-burly of the abbreviated forms of the game, much in vogue now. It wasn’t the duration but the philosophy of playing which inspired the young to imagine their cricket in the mould of Test cricket, or the long-form version.
School cricket was an extended apprenticeship to acquire attributes recognised as most valued. It was a step on the journey to become a cricketing artist, even though most knew they might not play the sport in college. It was they who became the educated audience of Test or Ranji matches, and taught those younger to them to distinguish right from wrong, beauty from crass, in cricket.
Travel around the city and watch the cricket as is played in the maidans, residential colonies, or in schools now. The earlier imagining of the sport has undergone a transformation, the defining attributes of which are now pragmatism and lack of imaginative indulgence. The opening bowler can count himself lucky to be given a slip; the batsman smites with the impatience and anxiety of a man working against a sharp deadline. Reverse sweep is in, shouldering arm considered a waste of delivery. There is no waiting, no pause, and no reflection.
In my Delhi neighbourhood, a T20 cricket tournament is organised every August. It’s a night game, the field illuminated with high-wattage bulbs tied to wooden poles placed at intervals around the oval. It draws crowds, definitely more than what, say, a Ranji match between Delhi and Himachal Pradesh would. There’s even a running commentary over the loudspeaker. One evening, a week ago, the commentator lamented over a bowler who had taken a wicket but had also been hit for 12 runs in an over. “His efforts have been wasted,” the commentator rued.
Give a little, take a little
The comment reminded me of the story the Indian spinning great, Bishen Singh Bedi, told a friend of mine. In an English county match, Bedi was up against the South African great Barry Richards. The Indian’s county captain wanted a well-spread field to contain the South African famous for his aggressive assaults. Bedi insisted otherwise, and had his way. The first delivery was tossed up, and was promptly despatched to the boundary by Richards.
The next ball was tossed up again, but pitched a fraction shorter. Richards swooped on it and smashed it for another four. The third and fourth balls, each pitched a centimeter or two shorter than the preceding one, too were sent screaming to the fence. So caught up was Richards in the frenzy of scoring, he didn’t discern the subtle change in length of each delivery. On the fifth, he failed reach to the pitch of the ball, went through with his flamboyant drive, and was caught. To his captain, Bedi said, “Barry Richard for 16 runs. Not a bad bargain.”
For contemporary schoolboys, the Bedi-esque style of cricket would have little resonance. Perhaps it would be dismissed as needless indulgence. Their imagination can’t conceive of the enthralling charm of lulling the batsmen into complacency, of giving away a few runs to bag an invaluable scalp in return. Abbreviated cricket thrills, it boasts of speed, but it doesn’t nurture the manifold skills (for instance, control over line and length, guile, patience, ability to spin, as Bedi displayed against Richards) required to become a great Test playing nation.
True, there are school leagues that are long-form. In Mumbai, for instance, there are young batsmen who have played over a day or two to score triple centuries. You have players under-18 playing sweating out beyond 20 or 50 overs. But they are the specialists, flag-bearers of a tradition withering away.
Death of fantasy
India will always have cricketers who will stride into the Test arena. But their quality will not match the best in the international arena unless the long-form cricket acquires a centrality in the imagination of the young, prompts them to fantasise about achieving greatness through a style of play that requires patience, fortitude, relishes slowness, demands a mastery of multiple skills and, yes, insists on a long apprenticeship for sublimation. The precise value ascribed to this style in the popular imagination determines the kind of cricketers that will be produced in what numbers.
T20, One Day and Test are to cricket what different types of novels are to fiction. In any novel there is a world created through words, having a story and a plot, a problem demanding resolution. It is the author’s imagination and style that determine his or her work’s classification – whether chic-lit, pulp, or classic.
When Chetan Bhagat’s book is advertised on the front-page of a newspaper, you know what genre of fiction rules the market, the model of imagining and writing aspiring Indian writers will likely pursue. Likewise, the provenance of India’s cricketing woes lies in the imagining of cricket among the young.
A Delhi-based journalist, Ajaz Ashraf is the author of The Hour Before Dawn, HarperCollins India, to be released in December.
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Culture, classical or popular, persists through imitation, albeit with experimentation. Ask those who played cricket in school during the 1970s and early ’80s and they will tell you that they modelled their game to suit a particular form and ethos. It was through this model that they endeavoured to turn fantasy into reality, regardless of whether or not their style of cricket was practical or even required.
This style almost always manifested on the opening ball of the game. The boy with the red cherry would measure his run-up, often too long to justify the pace at which he bowled. There would be three slips and a gully at least, a short-leg and a third man, conveying claims to the three Ss of fast bowling – speed, swing, short balls. It didn’t matter whether he could swing the ball at will – a shining cherry deviates in the air anyway, and short balls were often a consequence of lack of control rather than intention.
Aiming high
The bowler would begin to run, gathering momentum, the six fielders crouching around, an intimation of the greatness awaiting him, an answer to India’s search for a speedster that was its prayer before Kapil Dev burst upon the scene. It didn’t matter whether the bowler had it in him to induce a snick, nor the ability of slip-fielders to pouch the catch. Not to give the opening bowler this field was to challenge his imagining of his skills, undermine his morale, and deter him from striving.
Six fielders around the batsman and a third man meant there were just four patrolling the square, always well inside the arena now made famous in cricketing parlance as 30 sq-yard circle. It was an invitation, no doubt, to chance your arm, opt for a cross-bat heave or lofted drive. Such daring was occasionally displayed. A successful execution was resoundingly applauded, but dismissal in the first few overs invited rebukes for being selfish.
Hadn’t the team’s coach, or cricketing manuals, or radio commentators told you over and over again: get your eyes in, gauge the bowler’s speed, leave balls outside off-stump before thinking of stroking freely? A maiden over didn't matter, even three in succession should not make you impatient. Of greater significance were that all the wickets were still intact.
Sure, you could lift the ball over the ropes, in case you had the ability, but, really, a truer, purer way of scoring was to stroke the ball all along the carpet, play with the spin, not against it, and watch the ball all the way from the moment it left the bowler’s hand. These skills were supposed to become your instinct, your second nature, as you were asked to imagine balls of varying lengths and shadow-practice a defensive stroke, bat and pad close together, or an off-drive with your head down, thus ensuring the leather didn’t squeeze past you to skittle the stumps or it wasn't miscued in a real match.
The philosophy of the game
Mind you, in those good old days, school cricket was mostly a 40-over game, punctuated by drinks and lunch breaks, stretching from 10 am till 4.30 pm. Yet it lacked the hurly-burly of the abbreviated forms of the game, much in vogue now. It wasn’t the duration but the philosophy of playing which inspired the young to imagine their cricket in the mould of Test cricket, or the long-form version.
School cricket was an extended apprenticeship to acquire attributes recognised as most valued. It was a step on the journey to become a cricketing artist, even though most knew they might not play the sport in college. It was they who became the educated audience of Test or Ranji matches, and taught those younger to them to distinguish right from wrong, beauty from crass, in cricket.
Travel around the city and watch the cricket as is played in the maidans, residential colonies, or in schools now. The earlier imagining of the sport has undergone a transformation, the defining attributes of which are now pragmatism and lack of imaginative indulgence. The opening bowler can count himself lucky to be given a slip; the batsman smites with the impatience and anxiety of a man working against a sharp deadline. Reverse sweep is in, shouldering arm considered a waste of delivery. There is no waiting, no pause, and no reflection.
In my Delhi neighbourhood, a T20 cricket tournament is organised every August. It’s a night game, the field illuminated with high-wattage bulbs tied to wooden poles placed at intervals around the oval. It draws crowds, definitely more than what, say, a Ranji match between Delhi and Himachal Pradesh would. There’s even a running commentary over the loudspeaker. One evening, a week ago, the commentator lamented over a bowler who had taken a wicket but had also been hit for 12 runs in an over. “His efforts have been wasted,” the commentator rued.
Give a little, take a little
The comment reminded me of the story the Indian spinning great, Bishen Singh Bedi, told a friend of mine. In an English county match, Bedi was up against the South African great Barry Richards. The Indian’s county captain wanted a well-spread field to contain the South African famous for his aggressive assaults. Bedi insisted otherwise, and had his way. The first delivery was tossed up, and was promptly despatched to the boundary by Richards.
The next ball was tossed up again, but pitched a fraction shorter. Richards swooped on it and smashed it for another four. The third and fourth balls, each pitched a centimeter or two shorter than the preceding one, too were sent screaming to the fence. So caught up was Richards in the frenzy of scoring, he didn’t discern the subtle change in length of each delivery. On the fifth, he failed reach to the pitch of the ball, went through with his flamboyant drive, and was caught. To his captain, Bedi said, “Barry Richard for 16 runs. Not a bad bargain.”
For contemporary schoolboys, the Bedi-esque style of cricket would have little resonance. Perhaps it would be dismissed as needless indulgence. Their imagination can’t conceive of the enthralling charm of lulling the batsmen into complacency, of giving away a few runs to bag an invaluable scalp in return. Abbreviated cricket thrills, it boasts of speed, but it doesn’t nurture the manifold skills (for instance, control over line and length, guile, patience, ability to spin, as Bedi displayed against Richards) required to become a great Test playing nation.
True, there are school leagues that are long-form. In Mumbai, for instance, there are young batsmen who have played over a day or two to score triple centuries. You have players under-18 playing sweating out beyond 20 or 50 overs. But they are the specialists, flag-bearers of a tradition withering away.
Death of fantasy
India will always have cricketers who will stride into the Test arena. But their quality will not match the best in the international arena unless the long-form cricket acquires a centrality in the imagination of the young, prompts them to fantasise about achieving greatness through a style of play that requires patience, fortitude, relishes slowness, demands a mastery of multiple skills and, yes, insists on a long apprenticeship for sublimation. The precise value ascribed to this style in the popular imagination determines the kind of cricketers that will be produced in what numbers.
T20, One Day and Test are to cricket what different types of novels are to fiction. In any novel there is a world created through words, having a story and a plot, a problem demanding resolution. It is the author’s imagination and style that determine his or her work’s classification – whether chic-lit, pulp, or classic.
When Chetan Bhagat’s book is advertised on the front-page of a newspaper, you know what genre of fiction rules the market, the model of imagining and writing aspiring Indian writers will likely pursue. Likewise, the provenance of India’s cricketing woes lies in the imagining of cricket among the young.
A Delhi-based journalist, Ajaz Ashraf is the author of The Hour Before Dawn, HarperCollins India, to be released in December.
