Cricket

My passion comes first and hence does cricket. And cricket for me is synonymous with someone called Sachin Tendulkar. I grew up watching him play. Cricket for me seems to be enjoying itself when he is on song. Its something I have tried time and again to express in words, but always in vain.

I do not say that he is the greatest batsman. But what I say is when the man is at his best, cricket seems to be at its elegant and graceful best. He is not as technically pure as Rahul Dravid or as explosive as Adam Gilchrist. But he blends the technical purity with subtle robustness that appeals so much to the eye. His straight drives of the back foot are a class apart. I have not yet seen someone else, who has dispatched the ever precise Glenn Mcgrath over square leg with authority and conviction.

If some one can stay at the international level for such a long time he is bound to have some records against his name. Records come, records go, but geniuses seldom do. Every cricketer goes through bad patches. The great Sir Don Bradman signed off his career with a pair. He achieved so much during his time, which was half as that of our Indian great.

If you compare the number of matches they both have played, you'll see that modern cricketers play thrice as much matches as compared to the oldies during the same duration of time. That is evolution of cricket from a game that was played to enjoy and pass time to a game that has become a money spinner.

In this regard, I should mention the recent aberration of the game introduced in the form of T20. If people call flying balls from players' bat to be entertainment, baseball is the game that they should be watching. Seriously, cricket was introduced as a ball game in which both the batsman and the bowler have an equal chance. But now it is a bat game that involves bowlers as jokers who try prevent scoring while batsmen are heroes who plunder runs.

In this context, it is important that test cricket is given highest priority. The true test for a cricketer is to last five days and do his best. Not to be the best in a slightly improved form of gully cricket and getting paid in astronomical figures for it. But who gives a damn! They are getting paid anyways.

People say its a fast moving world and we need to adapt to things accordingly. OK, right we are moving fast, but where are we heading to?...Only time will tell.