Opinion A rousing context

In any case,how petty of us to place such demands on Tendulkar! First we accuse him of playing for the records,and now we inhibit his natural game by presuming to ask for records on order. And this insistence of whipping up milestones! A great innings is great for the sum of its parts — Tendulkar’s next century should matter for its own sake,not for the sequence of 99 previous ones,or the 51 Test ones.

Trouble is,those tasked with filling out cricket’s narrative are so repulsed by the prospect of hysteria (Sachin has a hundred centuries,so announce the Bharat Ratna,rename a Delhi boulevard,declare him a national treasure) — and,worse,an all-too-real a possibility,of violence (he failed to anchor the team to a victory,so burn a few effigies) — that they fail to nuance a romance cricket so desperately needs,and Sachin so bountifully offers.

Before the BCCI saturated the airwaves with non-stop cricket action,even before live telecasts of the game brought every match into our homes,Test cricket was its stories and profiles. And should the audiences move on to other distractions — as the dwindling attendance at Test and even ODI matches in India this past season suggests may well happen — cricket’s stories and profiles will connect us to its happiest days.

Sachin may be the greatest cricketer,or he may not — but the expanse of his career and his achievements overlaps a golden age of cricket. And how we get a measure of his career could,in effect,determine how we get past the crossroads the game is at today.

Delivering the Bradman Oration before the Test series began in Australia,Rahul Dravid flagged off the warning signals about a crisis that could engulf cricket. First: “The October five-match series against England was the first time that the grounds (at home) have not been full for an ODI featuring the Indian team.” Second: “A few weeks later I played in a Test match against West Indies in Calcutta,in front of what was the lowest turnout in Eden Gardens’ history. Yes we still wanted to win and our intensity did not dip. But at the end of the day,we are performers,entertainers and we love an audience. The audience amplifies everything you are doing,the bigger the crowd the bigger the occasion,its magnitude,its emotion. When I think about the Eden Gardens crowds this year,I wonder what the famous Calcutta Test of 2001 would have felt like with 50,000 people less watching us.”

Dravid’s proposed solution is to anchor cricket in a rousing context — to reconfigure the schedule,so that ODIs are aligned to ICC-managed multi-nation events (instead of the slam-bang procession of five and even seven-match ODI series that nobody remembers),Test matches retain a nation versus nation format with an overall championship title up for grabs (instead of the current Test ranking,so playing for an anticipated reward puts every series in sharper relief) and Twenty20 matches are limited to the domestic leagues (to make it “financially attractive for cricketers” and “also keep cricket viable in countries where it fights for space and attention”).

Cricket’s administrators have done little to inspire hope that their foresight extends to anything beyond the next allocation of broadcast rights,so it’s anybody’s guess whether as thoughtful a plea as that from Dravid,currently the oldest Test cricketer,will compel a rethink.

Context,however,is still within reach of those who care about cricket. A little anecdote from C.L.R. James should help. Writing about the second Test between Indian and England in the summer of 1982,at Old Trafford,he called Sandeep Patil’s 129 not out “an innings without superior and with few peers”. He then went on to inquire into what was a great innings and who could be called a great batsman,and he made the submission: “Patil’s innings was a great one. But that does not make him a great batsman in the historic sense of that noble term.” To illustrate,he recounted an incident during a match between Trinidad and Barbados in Port of Spain in the 1920s. George Challenor had opened the innings for Barbados,and soon enough was troubled enough to pad a delivery that would have clearly gone on to hit the stumps. The umpire said,not out. James went over to him after play closed and said,Challenor was out in the first over. I know that,replied the umpire. So then,inquired James. Challenor opened the innings for Barbados before close of play,said the umpire,would you have given him out for nought? And writes James: “To this day,some fifty years afterwards,I have not been able to say: ‘Yes,I would have given him out.’ ”

Umpires are no longer their own men — but we who watch cricket,we in whose name Dravid wants to frame context to make the game more meaningful,can try to answer,is a century from Tendulkar just another accumulation of a big innings?

mini.kapoor@expressindia.com