So I decided to sit down tonight and revisit one of my first loves, one that I had been giving the cold shoulder for quite some time since wife and kids and diapers and office and diapers and kids and wife decided to stake their claims on the... well, warmer shoulder... Now, why should one shoulder be colder than the other anyway - does the heart have a propensity to favor one side over the other in its supply of warm blood, or has one side been the leeward side during my office-commute - and will not the said temperature-difference cause a small electric current to flow through the body, and if so, will it be fatal...?
But as usual, I digress. So, like I was saying, I decided to sit down tonight and indulge myself by spreading out in front of the Ind vs WI test match that the idiot-box was going to dish out between 8pm and 4am. Back in the days when cricket used to have a right on the more comfortable shoulder, test cricket used to be riveting stuff - any five-day matches involving Australia used to be packed with three days of engaging action, ending in a demolition job through either bat or ball, and Shane Warne/ Adam Gilchrist claiming the Man of the Match award (come to think of it - so did any match involving Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, for entirely opposite reasons though). Any other match would be played between two teams so similar in their incompetence that you could never predict whose rubbish would tilt the match the opposition's way, and when, and hence made for compelling viewership. If New Zealand ever started to employ the strategy of playing consistent codswallop in an effort to lend some stability to the bottom-most rungs of world cricket hierarchy, Pakistan would suddenly ambush it by putting up such an outlandish display on the field that the ICC would have to set up review-panels to investigate whether the PCB did indeed send their national cricket-team on the tour, and not the unlettered youth battalion that the ISI had recruited to spread terror in Afghanistan. India, meanwhile, would be doing its best to make sure that every single player in the country got at least one chance to open the batting with Tendulkar, in an effort to convince Srikanth that there was no regional bias amongst the selectors, which is why they made sure that Tendulkar featured in every single Test, ODI, 3-day, 2-day and exhibition match that India were invited to (Lalit Modi hadn't thought-up T20s by then). England had their brains so addled from trying to distinguish their own South Africans from the opposition's, that their habit of running out their own partners or dropping dollies Geoffrey Boycott's grandmum would have caught in her sleep no longer even raised an eyebrow. South Africa themselves were suffering from the double whammy of having their best cricketers exported to England, and of their team spending more time practicing the Heimleich manoever than in the nets, in an effort to control their "choking" situation.
So at any rate, test cricket used to be good stuff. Stuff you'd be willing to sacrifice half a night's sleep for, and risk ruining the next day's presentation for, and not be disappointed with your decision in the end.
Tonight, however, was different. Today was a day Rahul Dravid chose to showcase (again) the brand of cricket so dear to him - that of attrition. Worse - his style seemed to rub-off on his much-younger and overawed batting partners as well. What followed after the tantalizing second-over dismissal of M. Vijay, out to an ankle-high grubber from Rampaul and reminiscent of the good old days when balls used to routinely misbehave in a similar fashion on subcontinental landfills that doubled as cricket-pitches, was over after over of tedious nothingness. The bowler would, depending on his style and speed, either pound-in furiously from 45 yards behind the popping-crease or take one-and-a-half baby-steps to feint a run-up, and summon all his craft to combine with the pitch's devilry and make the ball unplayable, but on reaching the vicinity of Dravid's bat, the ball seemed to lose all intent, tamely thud into the bat and fall dead at its feet, to be recovered by an increasingly tired and annoyed wicketkeeper. Delivery after delivery, the script retained its infuriating sameness - gallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallop-whinnnnng-THUD! Rinse and repeat.
The routine apparently got so tiresome after 150 overs that everyone in the stadium lulled himself to sleep, with even the bowlers themselves too drowsy to deliver the ball any more. Dravid did not seem to care, as he kept brandishing his bat in the same monotonous arc irrespective. Eventually though, he too got bored and declared himself out (he was too polite to interrupt the umpires' reverie to coerce a decision from them). The day's play had to be called off prematurely because the batsmen in the dressing room were either hypnotized or had successfully appealed for euthanasia, and hence were in no position to bat. I had long since surrendered to slumber, and came to know of the (non)-events only in the newspaper the next day, but not before making a quiet resolution to not risk another night's sleep over a test match till the day Rahul Dravid hangs up his boots.
But as usual, I digress. So, like I was saying, I decided to sit down tonight and indulge myself by spreading out in front of the Ind vs WI test match that the idiot-box was going to dish out between 8pm and 4am. Back in the days when cricket used to have a right on the more comfortable shoulder, test cricket used to be riveting stuff - any five-day matches involving Australia used to be packed with three days of engaging action, ending in a demolition job through either bat or ball, and Shane Warne/ Adam Gilchrist claiming the Man of the Match award (come to think of it - so did any match involving Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, for entirely opposite reasons though). Any other match would be played between two teams so similar in their incompetence that you could never predict whose rubbish would tilt the match the opposition's way, and when, and hence made for compelling viewership. If New Zealand ever started to employ the strategy of playing consistent codswallop in an effort to lend some stability to the bottom-most rungs of world cricket hierarchy, Pakistan would suddenly ambush it by putting up such an outlandish display on the field that the ICC would have to set up review-panels to investigate whether the PCB did indeed send their national cricket-team on the tour, and not the unlettered youth battalion that the ISI had recruited to spread terror in Afghanistan. India, meanwhile, would be doing its best to make sure that every single player in the country got at least one chance to open the batting with Tendulkar, in an effort to convince Srikanth that there was no regional bias amongst the selectors, which is why they made sure that Tendulkar featured in every single Test, ODI, 3-day, 2-day and exhibition match that India were invited to (Lalit Modi hadn't thought-up T20s by then). England had their brains so addled from trying to distinguish their own South Africans from the opposition's, that their habit of running out their own partners or dropping dollies Geoffrey Boycott's grandmum would have caught in her sleep no longer even raised an eyebrow. South Africa themselves were suffering from the double whammy of having their best cricketers exported to England, and of their team spending more time practicing the Heimleich manoever than in the nets, in an effort to control their "choking" situation.So at any rate, test cricket used to be good stuff. Stuff you'd be willing to sacrifice half a night's sleep for, and risk ruining the next day's presentation for, and not be disappointed with your decision in the end.
Tonight, however, was different. Today was a day Rahul Dravid chose to showcase (again) the brand of cricket so dear to him - that of attrition. Worse - his style seemed to rub-off on his much-younger and overawed batting partners as well. What followed after the tantalizing second-over dismissal of M. Vijay, out to an ankle-high grubber from Rampaul and reminiscent of the good old days when balls used to routinely misbehave in a similar fashion on subcontinental landfills that doubled as cricket-pitches, was over after over of tedious nothingness. The bowler would, depending on his style and speed, either pound-in furiously from 45 yards behind the popping-crease or take one-and-a-half baby-steps to feint a run-up, and summon all his craft to combine with the pitch's devilry and make the ball unplayable, but on reaching the vicinity of Dravid's bat, the ball seemed to lose all intent, tamely thud into the bat and fall dead at its feet, to be recovered by an increasingly tired and annoyed wicketkeeper. Delivery after delivery, the script retained its infuriating sameness - gallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallopgallop-whinnnnng-THUD! Rinse and repeat.
The routine apparently got so tiresome after 150 overs that everyone in the stadium lulled himself to sleep, with even the bowlers themselves too drowsy to deliver the ball any more. Dravid did not seem to care, as he kept brandishing his bat in the same monotonous arc irrespective. Eventually though, he too got bored and declared himself out (he was too polite to interrupt the umpires' reverie to coerce a decision from them). The day's play had to be called off prematurely because the batsmen in the dressing room were either hypnotized or had successfully appealed for euthanasia, and hence were in no position to bat. I had long since surrendered to slumber, and came to know of the (non)-events only in the newspaper the next day, but not before making a quiet resolution to not risk another night's sleep over a test match till the day Rahul Dravid hangs up his boots.
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