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Journalism of Courage
I don’t know if the people who run cricket there think like that, therefore whether they are aware of it, or indeed whether they care, but Kanpur let Test cricket and India down very badly this week. Thirteen wickets fell on the first four days and, as a contest between bat and ball, that is a bit like the US attacking Iraq after taking away their weapons.
True South Africa played poorly on it, true that it is extremely unlike a proud sporting nation to play for a draw but that doesn’t absolve the pitch. This paper reported that the new groundsman, a government appointee, is actually an electrician by training. That is ludicrous enough but maybe we should have told him that his pitch needed a spark.
We’ve now had two terrible pitches in two Tests. Organisations need to be concerned with things like these. They make for poor cricket and, quite frankly, this is terrible business sense. Mumbai missed the weekend audience and Kanpur drove everybody away. Apparently the question of pitches is on the agenda of the BCCI for next month’s meeting. It wouldn’t matter if they mistakenly picked up the agenda from two years ago, or three, or five. Like promises from politicians, this one doesn’t go away either.
Test cricket is on thin ice these days in spite of a great run over the last three or four years. Indeed it will always be so, for the times demand something else. A five- day sporting contest is a dinosaur waiting to get extinct and for that reason alone we must handle it with love and care. We must ensure results, produce positive cricket, highlight the virtues that made it strong in the first place, try and make them relevant to newer generations. Test cricket needs to run to survive.
That is why Kanpur caused it great harm. Even one bad Test match can weaken its existence. Nobody pays money to get boredom in return and Indian cricket needs to respect the money that it charges. A premium product cannot dish out lousy service.
We need to handle Test cricket with the same tenderness with which we watch our son’s first football match, with the way we take a pet for a walk or water the flowers. By contrast Kanpur stabbed Test cricket, not in the back but firmly in the chest. And if you want to forget the tenderness, treat it like a cold business decision. You can’t sell delicate flowers wrapped in waste paper, you can’t sell a Mercedes in Dharavi. And you cannot take your customer for granted. A farmer doesn’t destroy his own field.
But the pitch wasn’t the only culprit, it had a sidekick as well. When I first read that South Africa’s new coach, Ray Jennings, would be happy with two draws I smelt a rat somewhere. Mike Haysman in the commentary box suggested the statement was for the media and since I normally respect what Haysman says, I hoped he was right. He wasn’t and that must disappoint him too.
Plodding at two and a half runs an over over two days isn’t going to help anybody, it isn’t going to restore the confidence and self-respect that South Africa are looking for. A draw is only acceptable when one side is going all out for a win and the other is denying it to them. And, to be fair, India didn’t seem too perturbed with a draw either.
All over the world, sport is having to move with the times. Tie breakers are essential in tennis, Formula One has tried having qualifiers the same day as the race, the world’s biggest game lasts only 90 minutes, athletics has many events going on simultaneously. Soon 20-20 cricket will be upon us and it will be a huge hit. Sport needs to package itself to the public and that includes not only how it is played but how it is organised.
Soon Indian hockey will come face to face with it as well with the launch of the Premier Hockey League. It is the biggest thing that can happen to it — dare I say the only thing that can happen to it. The PHL is dressing itself up for the Indian public and it needs to do so. Hockey needs to come closer to the Indian sports lover, it needs a desperate change of image.
For long hockey has been complaining about the fact that cricket hogs the limelight. If we have a few more games like Kanpur, cricket might end up doing the biggest favour to hockey.
