Overambitious Strokeplay - The new virus

Cricket is perhaps the only sport that catches a virus so fast that the immune system doesn’t get enough time to react. Only after it has suffered from the virus for quite some time, that pundits of the game realize the importance of the matter and try to curb it down or maintain it below a specific limit since eradicating a virus is an absolute impossible task, such is the game!

The latest virus to have infected cricket is Overambition. Yes, that is what you see when you turn on your television set and tune in to an ongoing match. It seemed to be a minor problem with the batsmen themselves when they started throwing their wickets in an awkward (and sometimes, ridiculous) fashion. But as days passed by, I was astonished to observe a similar trend in every other ODI and almost every T20I, and that is when I began to try and understand the logic acting behind this sort of infection. The effect, I learnt, is more pronounced in case of batsmen than in the case of bowlers.

Senior cricketers and orthodox fans of the game are distressed on watching this trend of being overambitious and throwing away one’s wicket going viral. And why not? Cricket is a Gentleman’s Game after all, and a fan won’t be demanding too much if he wants his cricketer to put a price to his wicket, leave the unplayable ones for the wicket-keeper to collect, play with soft hands, drive the ball elegantly, find the gaps most meticulously and finish the match responsibly. Yes, it sounds pretty tough, and it really is so, but that is exactly what our old boys did in the previous decades. So why can’t today’s cricketers do the same?

The answer lies in the advent of slam-bang hitting, courtesy T20 Internationals. All you need to do is to send the ball over the rope, and you need to try and do that, if possible, every ball. Forget the charisma, forget the elegance. All you need is muscle power. Forget cutting the ball elegantly, all you need is to get a leading edge. However ugly it may appear, you are awarded four runs. So why bother about style and sophistication when you don’t get extra credit for it?

Remember those classy straight drives by Gavaskar, those refined cover drives by Steve Waugh and those wristy flicks by Laxman and the glamorous dancing-down-the-wicket pull by Ganguly? A perfect admixture of style and class coupled with cricketing brilliance. And now think of the present breed of power-hitters for whom jabbing at every ball appears a more “tactical approach to the game” than playing with soft hands. All they worry about is runs, boundaries and sixers. They don’t have the patience to rotate the strike and keep the scoreboard ticking with singles and couples. Instead, they look forward to smashing the ball right from the middle of the bat and thus attempt loose strokes and fall prey to easy balls. Forget respecting the opposition, the young breed prefers staring at the bowlers in their eyes after they’ve been beaten, and try to avenge it on the very next delivery. In the good ol’ days, after hitting a sixer off the first delivery, our batsmen used to play the rest of the over cautiously and preferred to rotate the strike in order to get to the other end, calm his nerves down and prepare for the next over. Now fast forward to the present decade. You will see a batsman walking out into the middle, hitting a couple of sixes off consecutive deliveries and getting caught just inside the rope while attempting a hat-trick of lofty shots.

The innovations in modern cricket can’t be ignored as well. Such is their viral nature that a budding cricketer is keener on learning the Dil-Scoop or the Helicopter Shot or the Doosra or the Carrom Ball, rather than mastering the impeccable style of taking guard or playing the cut shot.

Aggression is good but unbounded aggression isn’t. And that is why amidst today’s Virat Kohlis and David Warners, you get a feel of the good old past when you watch someone as unperturbed and composed as Cheteshwar Pujara! A retro to his contemporaries, he brings back the orthodox approach to the game and builds up a different ambience altogether!

At the end of the day, amidst all the swashbuckling hitting all over the park, there still lives the masterful strokeplayer who slowly and steadily guides his way to finish things off in style. He is overshadowed by the mindless power-hitters, yet his fire never goes out. And as they say “You can like me or hate me, but you just can’t ignore me!”