Has cricket lost its glory? Has match-fixing sullied the game for the cricket-loving public to such an extent that they boycott going to the stadiums, and like bookies and punters, sit at home and bet through the day, caring a hoot for the purity of sport or its result? Or has something else evolved which is bringing the game down to its knees, keeping traditional fanatics from bothering to go to stadiums?

In order to answer this question one has to necessarily drive down the path of history. It’s a path that has created fame and fortune for most, corrupted a few and shamed others, for it’s a road that has been paved by gentlemen and then destroyed by cricketers who have been bought and sold; gone to the highest bidders. It’s also a road where the administrators have made mistakes and ensured the death knell of cricket.
For cricket once used to be a purists’ dream. Simple yet complicated, beautiful yet gory and today it has been reduced to a circus devoid of romance, with barely any character.
Yet today though the game has its characters — for the utter brilliance of a Sehwag innings has as much to offer if not more than any other played by his predecessors, and the genius of Tendulkar has as much brilliance as that of Bradman — but it’s being rejected by the public.
The question is why? I cannot answer this in a few words but I can point in a direction where the answers lie.
Let’s for the moment put aside match and spot-fixers, sponsors, large sums of money and such related complexities and introspect. Cricket’s spirit and laws were framed well over a hundred years ago for amateur gentlemen playing the game on uncovered wickets with character. Yes, each wicket was known for its uniqueness. Teams were selected based on this.
This gave rise to bowlers who used this distinctiveness to their advantage. Whilst some became fiery like Lillee, tricky like Hendricks or crafty like Prasanna, batsmen moulded their own technique and psyche according to the wickets and the bowlers and formed their own character.
West Indians like Kanhai thrilled the world with their explosive batting. Great Indian and English batsmen like Gavaskar and Boycott moulded to their surroundings and became stingy and miserly with their wicket and impossible to dislodge. Australians produced brilliant brash, aggressive and dismissive batsmen like the Chappell brothers.
Batsmen in short took on a character of their own, coloured in hues of the wickets they played on and the bowlers they played against. Every person, man or woman, adult or child, would be nervous, expectant, every time that he saw Lindwall, Wes Hall, Imran Khan or Malcolm Marshall running in to bowl, their hearts in their mouth, would it be a bouncer, a yorker or a banana in-swinger?
The crowd knew the deliveries that had been bowled before and had seen through the plan, each one was knowledgeable and would try and read the bowler’s mind, predict the next delivery.
There would be an audible gasp every time a bouncer was bowled and a sigh of relief and applause as it sailed past the batsman but an inch from his eyes.
Over time eroded the era of the purist spectator giving rise to the bookie and the punter.
The spectator of old would now sit back and wonder if he truly wanted to go see such a circus. Are you surprised that the cricket lovers of old in Kolkata do not throng to the stadium any longer? Don’t you yourself wait for the T20 circus to arrive and then go for a few hours of fun? I have said before and I say it again, like football, it’s time to change the name of the game. Cricket of old is dead and with it has died the true cricket fan.