DISINTEgration...

Seldom do the winds of change strike upon your face so torrentially. Seldom do I bump into grammatical errors in English. And she almost worships me in that context because she is so very proud of it. This nearly embarrasses me, at times because needless to say, my fetish for this unbelievably dynamic language fountains from my adulation for the gentleman’s game. And just as the fading final notes of your childhood love resonate with an inexplicable and unprecedented frequency before getting lost into the oblivion, maybe forever… the waning of your first love affair trebles your longing and eventually extinguishes a part of you!

She nods when I recount how far we have walked together. She smiles when I say how magically we lived it together. The gripping regret is that the international cricket now finds itself in a spot of bother and so do I. Heisenberg would have been gratified at his theory today for his much-celebrated ‘uncertainty’ looms larger over one of the most powerful and burgeoning fraternities of the modern era – the ICC. 

Let’s face it. It’s slam bang cricket. And I would trade all my money for stating that it’s just not cricket! The attack kills… the defence is quick… and before you’d do a certain research on who plays where, you realize they have switched sides. Overnight. There’s a certain gem called Unmukt Chand who fails to get an IPL game . The Indian cricket cuts a sorry figure because the ‘gem’ had left the Syed Mushtaq Ali Twenty20 tournament midway to join the Rajasthan Royals build-up camp in the UAE. Maybe, his shadow practice and throw-downs are well worth the freshly minted coloured papers… and his warming up the bench consistently ignites a certain fire for the selectors to take notice… seemingly, taking the ‘Ajinkya Rahane course’! But I’d say with conviction that the chagrin does enough to blur the status of the sport in the discerning eyes of a cricket fan, not an IPL fanatic. The smell of victories of an international face-off do not last… the ecstasy struggles to sink in. The encroaching schedule of the high-voltage club cricket leaves no breathing space to reflect upon the inadequacies in the strategy of a last-night battering. The lamentation of a defeat dissolves even before it could stir our hearts. Maxwell’s thunderstorm does seize the flavour of a certain Indian summer… maybe, threatening to muffle the roar of the desert storm of Sharjah. However, it dies out quick enough to place our safe bets on Virat Kohli – the only silver lining of Indian cricket at the moment. And I would go to the extent of saying that the BCCI owes him a great degree of reverence for keeping Indian cricket alive in this hour of crisis when the team is struggling to keep its head above the waters on foreign soil. An inconsistent playing eleven and an uncertain bench strength, which more often than not, relies on‘flash-in-a-pan’ performances compels me to reinstate that our domestic circuit needs to recharge its battery to prevent a bleak future – to save ourselves from the ominous clouds of the upcoming English summer and the sabotaging tunes of the chin-music Down Under in 2015. The curious case of Rohit Sharma adds another dimension to the already existing list of woes. I can vividly recall his international debut with an unbeaten 51 and then catalysing Justin Kemp’s run-out to ensure us a semi-final berth in The T20 WC’07. I thought the future has arrived. And so did the entire cricketing world. Well, it did arrive. But in the form of Virat Kohli! It is esoteric to see how our think-tank has invested every possible logic in persisting with this ‘promising phenomenon’. And it only indicates that the much-talked about IPL has failed to deliver the goods – to nurture young talent and help them cement a place in the national squad. Every year, a chunk of youngsters grab the limelight – some owing to a series of well-crafted performances while still others owing to sheer luck. However, most perish, remaining just a one-time wonder.

The IPL feeds the struggling cricketers, providing them with a safety net when the going gets tough. It feeds the audience. It brings in cash. But I have to state, ruefully, that cricket is losing its sheen… because all that glitters is not gold. When one of my favourite people on the planet stops keeping a track of the ‘irrelevant bilateral tournaments’ – as she prefers to call them – and I prefer catching up on some afternoon nap to asking who won the toss – you know it’s never going to be the same again.