Before Starting anything let me tell you that I am a BIG fan of cricket. Like any common Indian “sachin is like god to me and cricket is my religion.” But the future of cricket, particularly test cricket seems not much bright and this makes me really sad. Setback to test cricket are coming on regular intervals and they are huge. Legendary spinners Murali, Kumble, Warne have taken the retirement, Run machine Lara is not there. Sachin, Dravid, Ponting are the only players left among the league of legendary cricketers. And they are facing the greatest barrier on earth and that is ‘age’.
More importantly they were crowd pullers, people came to watch their game. I remember one quote said by a player of golf on tiger woods, “there are some players who are greater than game itself and wood is certainly one of them.” So all the gems of this generation cricket are either gone or are on the stage to do so in an year or so. Looking towards future generation no one seems to exist who can take place of these legendry cricketers. In comparison to football, efforts made to expand cricket in other parts of world has failed. To add to that, cricket playing nations have their own set of problem. Zimbabwe is still not recovered from the well known crisis, Bangladesh team needs to prove their capabilities on this front.
T20 & IPL seems to be nail in the coffin for test cricket.
Who is responsible for all these Conditions?
Several thoughts to reason that, but majorly it’s the politics which is eating away this once called gentleman’s game. Examples follow:
1) Jagmohan Dalmia, Former ICC chairperson had given status to Bangladesh as a test team to increase the count of Asian vote bank.
2) I fail to understand that honorable Mr. Sharad Pawar being the ICC President, when we have many capable Cricketers still left.
3) Officials from Australia,New Zealand, England may be can’t see that the nation once ruled by them, leads them in many field now a days.
BCCI and ICC are always involved in bull fighting with each other, later wants a complete authority on cricket body while former wants to dominate it, as it is the largest source of income to ICC. These fights will not do any good to cricket.
We need to preserve this game as it’s a medium to unite us, it’s a medium to celebrate, and it has become an integral part of our culture. I love to watch cricket, but I loved it more when I am excited to see how,within blinking of an eye the ball disappeared to fence when gets hit by master blaster’s bat. I would be excited to see how punter will hit a six by coming forward and leaning on a ball of any length in long on area, I would have loved to watch how will Murali turned the ball on a dead track.
In absence of all this, I am not able to convince myself that I would be same passionate cricket lover as I am, and you?
