Cricket at silly point

Australian Kerry Packer is credited with having reinvented the game of cricket for the contemporary cricket fan. By whittling it down to a 48-over, one-day affair, and getting players out of their regulation whites into more television-friendly attire, he is believed to have injected crowd enthusiasm and corporate sponsorship into a tedious, long-winded game. After all, with the sun having setting on the British Empire, the world of the English green, where leather made slow if telling impact on willow to the general amusement of the local crowd, was something of an anachronism. That8217;s when Packer stepped in and performed his historic role of packing a punch into a dying game.

The sponsorships poured in as people began to eat cricket, sleep cricket, dream cricket. Many a fortune was made on that grassy pitch, and fame came home to stay for many more. Countries that had very little in common suddenly discovered they could speak a common language 8212; the language of the bat and ball. Even hostile nations couldforget their barbed wire fencing as they faced each other across that legendary 22-yard stretch between batsman and bowler. That8217;s when a very, very bored politician-cartoonist, more cartoon than politician, who ruled a proud state through remote control, decided that he wanted to play the game too 8212; play the game, that is, by making sure that it was not played. No cricket matches between India and Pakistan, he bellowed, and his words reverberated throughout a shocked nation. He loved the sound of his voice, so he repeated his threat even louder for good measure. This is patriotism of the highest order, he told himself, and the puppets around him echoed his words. A couple of phone calls later, the ancient land of Hindustan, which loved its cricket with a passion, was witness to mysterious events. Midnight visitors dug up a pitch here, a bunch of thugs held a demonstration there, and suddenly the trophies that the nation had earned through its cricketing excellence were found dented or smashed. No cricketmatches between India and Pakistan, bellowed the cartoon, even as Pakistani cricketers packed their bags for Delhi. Finally, after much coaxing, and an offering of red roses from the Union Home Minister, he relented. The game, he pronounced grandly, can go on for a year.

So the game will go on, but is it the game of yore? The happy, carefree, game, which brought people by the thousands to clap and dance and wave placards as their favourite batsman hit a boundary? Today, mounted police will form a ring around the stadium, khaki fatigues look set to crowd out cricket flannels, plainsclothesmen will be as ubiquitous as the sandwich vendors of old and sniffer dogs will be around to welcome any cricket lover who gathers the courage to actually come to a stadium and watch a match live. This is no game, this is a security exercise. What do they know of cricket, who only politics know?