Cricket’s Evolution: T20 Is Driving The Great Transition

After the Faustian deal between cricket and the Devil at the auction table four years ago, the game is no more the same. The dil maange more philosophy driving the IPL and Twenty20 cricket is killing the game’s beauty and vitality. Worse, it seems cricket can no more produce another Sachin Tendulkar.’

It was a note of anguish from this writer over the growing madness involving T20 cricket many IPL seasons ago. As the 17th season of the marquee event gets going, it’s perhaps time to revisit the concerns over the fate of cricket expressed then and make a fresh assessment of the state of the game. There’s no hurt ego involved in getting the prediction wrong, and there’s no gloating over getting certain observations right. Like in the game, there are so many variables involved; you just cannot be right or wrong entirely. Now, let’s read the article.

‘Cricket 3.0. Maybe that’s how Thomas Friedman would mark the IPL, the sport’s new evolutionary phase and find in it more evidence of the world flattening. On his scale, of course, the laidback Test match cricket would be Cricket 1.0, followed by the adrenaline-driven One-Dayers and the designed-to-thrill league cricket. In his typically clinical reasoning he would possibly pin the change to the marriage of passion and pelf, an inevitability in a cricket crazy nation, and describe it as a logical progression of the dil mange more philosophy driving the fans of the game.

Four seasons on, IPL has changed the cricket in significant ways. It has dismantled the insularity of the cricketing world. Earlier, it was just a couple of coaches moving across continents; now it’s a free flow for players across nations and cultures. It has facilitated seamless movement of talent. Players with skills no more need to be the whims and mercies of the slave-driving boards. And it has made the association of money and talent far stronger than anytime in the history of the game. A happy story so far…’

‘But that’s it. The damage IPL has caused to the game is also incalculable. It has destroyed the soul of cricket. Progressively compromised with every evolutionary jump, it may wither away in a time not too far away.

Cricket on the cusp of a revolution, screamed the headlines when the IPL auctions stated. Players turned trophy horses in the hands of rich and glamorous owners and traded loyalties at the auction table. Love for the sport lost primacy as the league provided a stamp of legitimacy to thrill-mongering; it also turned the average cricket watcher into a consumer.

The world watched in awe and disbelief as the game’s biggest marketplace unfolded. Words of lament for the good old cricket were few and there were no sighs of exasperation as its heart was being mauled. Surely, nobody wanted to be caught on the wrong side of a revolution.

In the din of the development, the basic questions went begging: Revolution to what end? At what cost?

Cricket 3.0 marks the victory of the fan over the game. With the fan mindset driven by insatiable thrill-thirst, the new version was waiting to happen; indeed, it should not be a surprise if Cricket 4.0 lurks somewhere in the shadows, ready to take over. In hindsight, it is only logical that India, where the game has for long been more about instant heroes and excitement hunting than about enduring success and dominance on the field, would be home to the league. The IPL was a tribute to the zing value of the game not to the game itself.

In the reductionist approach of the average fan, cricket is all about hitting the ball hard and high the sound of woodwork being dismantled. Greatness here is a quantity that comes in the denominations of fours and sixes. Everything else – the joys of unique skills, the cases of individual courage, the test of character in great fightbacks, in all, the combination of abstracts that make sport so beautiful — turned irrelevant.

Imagine Brazil vs. Argentina football matches being curtailed to 20 minutes; Marquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude in 20 pages! Things truncated lose their natural rhythm, flow and intrinsic beauty. Works of art cannot be customised to suit the clients. IPL has done that.

The format cannot create another Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne or Rahul Dravid. Watch the Test playing nations around. The scene is dismal. There’s no special talent waiting to make it to the gallery of greats. We no longer hear of a Brian Lara or Vivian Richards in the West Indies or a Craig MacGrath or Wasim Akram or Imran Khan in the making. To be fair, the degeneration does not have much to do with the IPL, but league cricket is threatening to aggravate an already bad situation. Imagine four other high profile leagues around the world. New talent would flock there early ignoring the time, space and grooming required to attain greatness.

After a point, all cricketers will look the same, products of an assembly line that caters only to the basic minimum of the fan need. Skills and artistry would become alien propositions, an indulgence of the idle. The game would die eventually. Maybe the leftovers of the original game won’t resemble cricket at all.

So, where does one draw the line? There’s no end to the ordinary fan’s thrill-seeking. How long can the game be twisted to pander to his craving for sensation? Five over a side may be the next big thing waiting in the wings. But will cricket still remain cricket after that?

Some questions before we move into Cricket 4.0. Is football about goals scored only? Are movies all about the climax? And can love-making be about orgasm only?

Friedman sure would need long to make sense of the madness in his flat world.’

Well, league cricket has grown. Most cricket-playing nations have their own version of the IPL. It has created mercenaries ready to dump the nation for the club. We have not gone there yet, but we might have many gifted players who would see more sense in making the best use of their talent to make money than waste it for national pride. That’s how it works in multi-national organisations. They would see no reason why cricket would be different. It’s time we imagined a cricketing world that is absolutely flat; where talent would chase money and money would chase talent. Nothing else would matter.

But Test cricket has not lost its lustre as predicted. In fact, T20 cricket has made it more interesting. A new breed of players, groomed in the new format, has introduced more excitement to the longer format that was synonymous with boredom. Think of a Rishabh Pant or a Ben Stokes or a Travis Head or any post-T20 cricketer and observe how they approach Test cricket. It’s refreshing. The longer format is about skills. T20 has infused new skills into it. Test cricket is more result-focussed now and draws are a rarity.

The article said T20 has robbed cricket of its soul. That, as things stand now, is not the case. It has given cricket a new lease of life. It may not produce another Sachin, but it certainly has thrown up a whole range of exciting cricketers.

(By arrangement with Perspective Bytes)