Victory is not always winning the battle, but rising every time you fall …
Thus spake Napoleon Bonaparte but one suspects now is not the best time to administer this motivational dose to the New Zealand cricket team.
In a single day they found themselves putting in a lion-hearted effort to put up a fighting total after being derailed a number of times, but dug deep and put themselves on track again with a superb bowling effort only to be robbed of victory by a bizarre rule, probably thought up by a weary draughtsman stoned to the gills.
The perennial bridesmaids of World cricket found themselves once again cruelly denied their chance at a deserved photo op holding the World Cup aloft on the balcony at Lords. All this because of a ridiculous rule which held that the number of boundaries scored would decide the fate of the contest. The sight of the devastated faces of the losing team would go down as one of the enduring memories of the world cup.
Not the best advertisement for the gentleman’s game, but that as they say is the way the cookie crumbles. The moot point being that the rules and regulations of cricket have not kept pace with the changes of the game. Starting from the scheduling woes of the competition where quite a few crucial games were washed out without a ball being bowled and delayed starts after the rains, apparently because ground covers were not available, the management skills of the ECB and by extension the ICC came in for a fair bit of criticism.
This spoke volumes about the short-sightedness of the organizers given the fact that it was common knowledge that the first 3 weeks of June are generally very rain heavy and they tend to taper off towards the 1st week of July. This also created a situation towards the later stages of the league phase as the semi-finalists were decided only after the final match.
Some matches like the ones between Sri Lanka & Pakistan and Bangladesh &Sri Lanka would turn out to be extremely crucial as these teams were contenders for the 4th semi-final spot. The irony of the situation was not lost on quite a few critics of old blighty, who after having being at the receiving end of the barbs of a punctilious nation for decades decided to have their own back. They were quick to troll the ECB for their bullheadedness with traditional methods at the cost of efficiency.
The current situation at the ICC is not difficult to understand. As often happens to monolithic or oligarchic organizations, decision making is often sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
The tussle between the financial powerhouses namely India, Australia and England has impeded the smooth functioning of the organization and they are frequently left discussing non-issues as more crucial matters escape scrutiny. The one glaring concern is the poor challenge put up by the new member Afghanistan, the continued underperformance by Si Lanka and by the West Indies who only flattered to deceive.
The silver lining provided by an absorbing contest in the final and a new world champion could not shroud the diminishing competitiveness of various contests during the league phase. While it could be easy to gloss over the declining popularity of the longer forms in comparison to T20 where upsets are more the order of the day and results less predictable, the fact remains that the required skills for the T20 format have also pitchforked certain teams into the big league. Consequently an Afghanistan, immensely capable of producing an upset in a T20 match finds that a 50 over match is a different ball game altogether.
While the war-torn nation is still a work in progress and will take time to match the abilities of the other nations, the question is… is the luxury available to a game which is fast witnessing a soaring popularity of the shorter formats at the expense of the longer versions. Though it would be premature to press the panic button yet, the decline of South Africa in the recent past as it loses its better players to Kolpak and an inequitable quota system is a crisis that the cricketing world will have to face sooner then later.
An absolutely gutted James Neesham tweeted after the defeat in the final world cup suggesting that sports was not the best career prospect. “Kids, don’t take up sport. Take up baking or something. Die at 60 really fat and happy,” This was an understandable overreaction emerging from the extreme disappointment of losing the cup but the quote would appear a lot more plausible if the word “sport” from the tweet were replaced with ‘cricket’, if the future of the longer versions of the game were taken into consideration.
Article By : Shantanu Sharma
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