By K. Datta
Disturbed by the loud roar let out by a bunch of excited Indian journalists crowded round the ticker at the 1986 Asian Games press centre in distant Seoul, a girl volunteer politely inquired what all the sudden commotion was all about.
Told that the five-day India-Australia cricket Test match back home in Madras (the southern metropolis had not then been re-christened Chennai) had ended in a tie, she curiously remarked: “Five days of play, six hours each day, and yet no team wins, and no gold medal for anyone! What kind of a game is it? What a waste of time? Your P.T. Usha did a better job, winning four gold medals in much less time.”
Seeing the bombardment of sixes and fours at the start of the Twenty20 World Championships in Johannesburg and the fill of excitement provided to the spectators at the Wanderers ground in a few fast-moving action-filled hours, the sweet little thing was not wrong, after all, when she reminded Indian reporters about the waste of time.
As for gold medals, may be a couple of Olympiads from now cricket may find its way to the quadrennial Games and fetch teams gold, silver and bronze medals.
Plans are already afoot to bring cricket into the Olympic fold. And then, for all you know, Korea or China, even Russia or the baseball-crazy Americans may be seen dangling medals from their necks.
Seeing the fireworks at the Wanderers, the actual cricket fireworks at the batting crease to be more precise, exhibited by Chris Gayle of the West Indies (117 runs, 57 balls, 10 sixes, 7 fours) and later by the South Africans, powered by a tornado-like 120-run unbeaten stand off only 57 balls between Herschelle Gibbs (90 runs, 55 balls, 2 sixes, 14 fours) and Justin Kemp (46 runs from 24 balls), Kapil Dev’s 175 not out, with six sixes and 16 fours, against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup in the one-day international (ODI) format looked pedestrian.
The future, ladies and gentlemen, is in the Twenty20. Even ODIs will be seen as time consuming.
Not long back, one is amused to remember, India strongly opposed the very idea of a Twenty20 World Championship when it was mooted by the International Cricket Council. The Indian cricket board, as also the breakaway Indian Cricket League, are now seen as vying to outdo each other in their plans to hold 20-overs a side tournaments.
It hardly needs to be stressed that for a tournament to grip the public imagination it has to have the “official” stamp. Everything else is seen as a “tamasha” (exhibition), however attractive marketing professionals and event managers may manage to make it, as indeed they’ll be out to do. It is something they are paid to do.
If Lord’s 1983 has stuck in the Indian public’s mind, it is only because the victory of Kapil Dev’s team came in an official World Cup final. It was after that that cricket became a craze, or a religion, in the country.
Even at the Wanderer’s Tuesday night, the crowds came to watch the cricket and the add-ons in the shape of fireworks, dance and music because it was all “official”.
The Gayles and the Gibbses have given Twenty20 the right kind of start. No one could have asked for anything better. You can expect more swashbucklers to follow the trend, which has been set so brilliantly.
The latest format now revolutionising the game promises to make the 50-over ODIs old-fashioned and the five-day Tests pre-historic, however much traditionalists may swear by the longer version to which ladies would bring their knitting.
In the new pacy excitement they will have little time for such leisurely pursuits after they have handed out the sandwiches and coffee to their families.
(K. Datta is a former sports editor of The Times of India. He can be contacted at [email protected])