Long before the time of money and dance girls and aggressive style of play, there was an age when cricket used to be only a game but what a game it was. There were Graces and Bradmans and Huttons and Larwoods. They too were, after all, humans. As players, their game had style, persona and attraction. As humans they were fragile yet sober and gentlemen. All their rivalries started on the cricket field and ended there. Yet even in those rivalries they never forgot to respect their opposition. It was a time when cricketers had to work full time to earn their living. Even in those times, when it was a difficult proposition to play, they maintained their humility. They had to give up their bread and butter to be on the field. They respected their opponents. There never used to scenes like a bowler threatening to throw ball back to the batsmen or throwing it. You never used to see a fielder intimidating a batsman with aggressive throws or verbal jabs. It used to be a simple contest between bat and ball and the rest was left to be. People loved it.
Then came the era of professional cricket and with that came stupidity, a lunatic misplacement of human feelings called aggression and loss of respect. Money should have brought humbleness and greatness but it brought everything but these things. Slowly, players started forgetting what heritage of the game they had been passed on and what would they pass on. Talents make men humble, yet with the advent of professional cricket, talent became a curse. It was hard to find a good cricketer among good players. Egos became everything and to date, still are. All this was branded as hard cricket. Some took this to heart and went so far as to prove that cricket is very hard. Umpires were considered as mere spectators on the field. Rules were left for the coaches and managers to read. Cricket fields became battle fields. Players became warriors. Equipment became weapons. You either found a player hitting someone with a bat or others defending themselves from a ball attack. Pointing and abusing became a norm. People loved it too.
Now is the era of neither professional cricket nor amateur one. Its purely an era of money dictating a game that has its roots connected to cricket. Nowadays, to schedule a series, a board has to take consent of their marketing partners. Game formats are designed to accommodate them. Players look more of walking advertisement agents rather than cricketers. A cricket field resembles a huge mall rather than a playing field. And all this has been branded as the advent of game or the moving forward of the game or taking the game into new era. Makes me wonder, is it really cricket or something like it.
By Razi Bilal
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