The Vanishing Rainbow – a lamentation

Two pundits of the great game, Michael Atherton and Ian Chappell have nicely pointed it out.They say test cricket is the pinnacle but whether it will appeal to the best of cricketers in the days to come is the moot point.Chappelli is brutally honest when he says that players would rather honour IPL contracts than play for their nation.It is not just the money but the exposure.

Modern times has been a witness to a proliferation of T20 matches with ODIs being made redundant and monotonous.With all the money spinning around and T 20 leagues in full bloom everywhere, it is no longer the summer game Cardus eulogised.It is no longer an entertainment, either but business only.There is always a problem of mixing art with business.The crouching slips, the bowler attacking the batsman and the white flannels have become infrequent.With limited span of attention and time, the shorter will get shorter.In fact, Chappell is right about Ireland and Afghanistan, who lack test cricket pedigree and are only voters who have been given full member status in recent times.Some of the other nations, West Indies and Bangladesh included, in my view, are not test-fit squads.Most worryingly, some of the others play like novices, too and often, undoubtedly a result of too many T20s.

Abraham Maslow referred to self-actualization needs in his epoch making Hierarchy of Needs.Surely, Test Cricket fits the bill and the very best know it and feel it,too but the likes of Kohli,Smith,Williamson,
Root,Pujara,Anderson are exceptions rather than the rule.And that rule is unfair for true lovers of cricketing excellence, yours truly included.

Sometime this year, I read Duncan Hamilton’s One Long and Beautiful Summer over two months imbibing the intricacies of the red-ball game that is surely vanishing.Hamilton has not only lamented at the dominance of T20s, he has also eulogised the nuances of test cricket.Written in 2020 when COVID 19 had stunned us all bringing life to a halt, the absence of cricket was felt more than ever.Cardus had famously written ‘ there can be no summer in this land without cricket.’ Yet, like the Great Wars, COVID had brought the wheels to a grinding halt.Delaying the inevitable perhaps as the march of white-ball cricket is affected by force majeure, so to say.

Hamilton writes of Hove, Sookholme and Mention and the green outfields and First Class cricket matches, taking us back to the age of the romantics.The great Edmund Blunden, author of the fascinating Cricket Country, is one of them.Cardus, who needs no introduction, is another.These men were obsessed with the game, the grounds, the pitches, the fences, crowds and the actors in the great drama.That red-ball cricket is the glorious forefather, the venerable Big Daddy, seems to have been forgotten in the mad rush superbly depicted by Chaplin in the opening scene of Modern Times.How can the modern game, modern generation and modern everything forget the past? As Hamilton asks this question, so do lovers of test cricket.The perfect defensive stroke, glorious, velvety cover drive, imperious pull shot and that Trumper straight drive are sheer magic.Sublime, really.The spinner coming in to bowl the last over before lunch, the legspinner throwing it up, the subtle field changes, the swing of the pendulum are all too beautiful to forget.Maybe, the transient rainbow has ceased to light up the sky!

Written by

Partha Basu