Indian Cricket’s new avatar

By abhishek at 10 April, 2009, 12:21 am

While watching a test match between India and England, as a naïve 13 year old, I remember asking my dad about why was India still batting when it had far eclipsed England’s total of 300 odd. That’s when I was introduced to the concept of test match cricket where both teams would get a shot at batting twice over a period of 5 days. As a gully cricketer in my school days, I was drawn more towards batting. I liked scoring runs. So, to watch Brian Lara “build” his innings for hours together seemed terribly boring at first, but when I heard the likes of Henry Blowfield and Richie Benaud talk about what was happening on the screen, they made test match cricket seem more like a game of chess. Listening to them taught me that, what looked like a simple catch in the deep was actually a well thought out affair where the bowler would keep dropping the ball short hoping that the batsman would hook the ball to the man stationed at square leg for exactly that reason.

But to watch India play test cricket was not exactly an ennobling experience. ‘Fast bowlers hunt in pairs’ was the cricketing cliché, but Srinath and Prasad were always the hunted. Our spinners wouldn’t know what to do with the old ball when they were on tours outside the subcontinent. Barring Sachin, our batsmen would promptly loan their common sense to the lowest bidder and get out on shots which would make a tail ender cringe. This was Indian cricket while I was still at school. In came Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman during my college days, but we only got better at drawing matches.

Under Azharuddin, Indian cricket seemed to be walking on a treadmill. The flambouyant Ganguly “stared right through the match fixing scandal” as Manjrekar said here and now under Dhoni, India is on a nitro booster. Our folks are not only scoring well and bagging 20 wickets, but they are doing it in less than 5 days. The past few test series against England, Pakistan and New Zealand show us that the T20 success is rubbing off on test cricket inspite of it being a “different ball game” altogether. The team is young, fearless and has an attitude. It just so happens that they are also playing cricket. Put them on a playground to play any contact sport and they will be competitive.

When you see a Laxman hitting a ball in the deep and Virendar Sehwag running hard to complete the third run, you know that they enjoy each other’s successes. To watch Zaheer Khan take a five wicket haul away from home and lead the team off the field at the end of a hard fought session is a proud moment for any Indian fan who has become immune to watching the opponent flay the Indian attack for years. And there are fewer joys of being a cricket fan than to watch Sachin celebrate like an adolescent after taking a wicket.

Indian cricket is back. Earlier, it represented Captain Gogo, the lovable goon from Andaz Apna Apna who would come close to getting his spoils, but could never enjoy them – ‘Haat ko aayaa, muh na lagaa.’ But now, under Dhoni, Indian cricket is more like the Joker from ‘The Dark Knight’ who has the cake and eats it too.

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