By Saumyadeb Chakrabarty
The ball gently sways into the line of off stump and hits the batsman’s pad. Immediately Ganguly is up with the loudest of appeals. The next ball too hits the pad, this time not so close. Yet, Ganguly is up in that trademark style of his. Still, the umpire is just as resolute. This brings out the animal in the Indian skipper and motivates the keeper Vijay Dahiya too. For the next two balls they scream themselves hoarse. And when this fourth appeal too is rejected, Ganguly stamps his foot and lets out a four-letter word.
The consequence? Ganguly gets a one-match suspension and a two match suspended suspension and Dahiya gets one-match suspended sentence. But what the hell? They definitely dishonoured the gentleman’s game…The game, which some claim is an invent of the Queen for her soldiers getting bored on soporific Indian afternoons! And yours truly should take a holy dip in the…Thames before writing something half as venerable about that game played by eleven in starched flannels watched by brunching women on soporific English afternoons. After all, cricket is an honourable game…
It was the last Test of the Pak-Aus series in Australia (which Australia won 3-0). Pakistan was fighting a lost battle on the fourth day. Ijaz Ahmad was at his blazing best. He was really giving the stick to Glenn McGrath (He eventually made a hundred). The wily McGrath then started pitching it short. This is normal. But at this point of time, Ricky Ponting ran all the way from deep mid-wicket to close to the stumps and gave a severe tongue lashing to Ijaz. (Anyone could make that out). This happened when the bowler was going back to his run up and Ponting had no business doing what he did. Ijaz had done absolutely nothing to warrant this behaviour except the fact that he was beating the living daylights out of the Aussies. Ricky Ponting went scot-free. Cricket is indeed an honourable game… But this is the way the game is played by the `gentlemen`. No questions to be asked. They lay their own rules. And players from the subcontinent are taught to show restraint. When they don’t, all hell breaks loose. That is what happened to Ganguly who was just playing according to `their` rules, who was just trying to call a spade a spade. But heaven smiles beatifically when a Brett Lee jumps and punches the air (thank god!) and hurls expletives in the face of the batsmen. And when the Pakistanis reverse swing the ball, it`s as if they are practicing necromancy on the field.
Again, when Shoaib Akhtar was called for chucking, the decision was referred to and decided in a moment. But when the Indians called Brett Lee for the same, the case was referred to and put on hold for four months. And the media alleged that the whole thing was an Asian revenge on the Whites. But cricket is an honourable game….
Before Cronje`s mea culpa it was believed by the western media that match-fixing was another malaise that afflicted the subcontinent. The allegation was that the subcontinent was soiling the game that gave grammar its proverb `it`s not cricket`! This despite the passion that ignites the galleries, the adrenalin that runs in the veins of the masses that live and die on cricket. In India it is one sport that links the young boy of Byculla to the old man of Ballygunge, the trader of Delhi to the tailor of Trivandrum. It is in them that cricket in India resides. No Shane Warnes or Tim Mays could accept money, no Nicky Bojes could tank matches…With Cronje`s admission of his `sin` this holier-than-thou attitude got a severe beating.
The West just cannot accept the fact that the three countries of the subcontinent are redefining cricket. White sides touring the subcontinent are a perennially grumbling lot. First it is the quality of hotels and food. Mind you, they are all star hotels where even the drinking water is imported. The baked beans and spaghetti there are at par with what you get in the Ritz. Then the heat…Damn the players from the subcontinent who have to wear layers of clothing in English or South African conditions.
And finally, the 22 yards that matter. `They` always grumble when they stumble on turning surfaces, smugly suggesting that the pitches might be unprepared. But when they leave their decks to resemble green billiard-table tops, when the ball jumps and bangs into the visor, it`s sadism at its best. But the players from the subcontinent are always humble. We visit their lands to praise, not to bury them. For they are all honourable men. And the game that they play is honourable too…