Why the run-fest in Rajkot was not good for cricket

And so it is imperative that we get the surface right. The vagaries of the surface,and therefore their role in the presentation of a challenge from the bowler to the batsman,lie at the heart of cricket. Favouring the batsman a bit one day,then ensuring that he has to hop against the bounce or crouch to smother the turn the next day. It is the inherent mystery in the surface that defines the contest. And that is what crickets administrators have to protect. They must be obsessed by the need to retain the contest. Chocolates must have their cocoa,cricket must have its contest,neither exists otherwise.

At Rajkot 825 runs were made in a hundred overs. Many cheered as they might have in ancient Rome when Christians were thrown to the lions. The hitting of a boundary was no longer an event,no longer a victory for the bat over the ball,it was routine,almost par for the course. Was the bowler thinking of getting a batsman out or was he fearing where he was going to be hit? Was there a sigh of relief at a dot ball? Did submission accompany a bowler back to his mark in place of aggression? The earlier we outlaw such pitches the better it is. We must start today. An 825 runs a day wicket is as bad as a 200 runs a day wicket.

Having said that,let us pause a moment and see if another point of view exists. Could it be that what we are seeing is a redefining of possibility? Is this just a quantum jump of the kind we are seeing in the computing world? In animation? In speeds? Are batsmen compelling us to reassess the definition of risk? Are they taking us to a world we didnt know existed? Is this going to be the norm from now? Will we hit a thousand in a day? Possibly. Certainly hitting through the line and driving in the air are not as risky as once thought. But even if we grant that we are at an exciting phase in the evolution of the game,we can never minimise the opportunity a bowler must get of taking a wicket. Otherwise how are we different from a computer game where the player sets all the parameters and whose batsmen hit a six from every ball?

Maybe we can start,us in the media,by defining what a good pitch is; not one on which batsmen can score a lot of runs but one on which ball and bat have equal opportunity. Everytime a curator says I have prepared a good wicket let us ask him what he really means.

Bowlers are not waiters,they should not have to serve deliveries on a platter at a batsmans command. We have already produced monster bats,we have brought the boundary rope in so much that on some days it looks like we are playing in a small park. And increasingly we produce pitches like the one in Rajkot. Is it inconceivable that a day will come when a bowler is given a list of balls he can bowl,it is announced on a public address system and then we all wait and see what the batsman does with it?

Hopefully that is a doomsday scenario but it doesnt reduce the great need for the cricket world to come together to ensure that every cricketing occasion is a contest between ball and bat. We must be obsessed by the need to maintain it.