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Is cricket still the gentleman’s game?
The good, the bad & the ugly
By S.R. Pathiravithana
May be a little over a half century ago, the game of cricket in the land where it originated (England) was dominated by a gentry who called themselves the gentlemen, who indulged in it for the love and social status and not for monetary gain that was derived from it.

In that same era there were also another section that was named the players, but, they were only a sector that helped the gentlemen indulge in it and in return they were rewarded for the services rendered. This scenario continued for almost a century and then in the post second world war era the gentlemen gradually faded away from the playing field.

The post gentlemen period saw all players getting an allowance for their active role in the game and these persons came to be known as professional cricketers. However even in this era it was the respective authorities of the game who decided who were to get what and the players fell in line. During this period the game grew in stature with the advent of persons of the calibre of Sir, Garfield Sobers, Ritchie Benaud, Sir Frank Worrell, Ray Illingworth, Graham Dowling, Intikab Allam, Nawab of Pataudi, and Peter Pollock who enriched the game in no uncertain manner. During this period the game had its own controversies like the side lining of South Africa over the Basil D’Olivera issue, but seemingly non were commercial, though its root causes transformed it into its eventualities. However even by the late sixties commercialization of the game had not taken its deep root.

Then in that era, once again in England, some counties concerned about their flagging coffers derived a new version of the game that was limited to only a day’s play and then the match would end. This culminated in the staging of the first World Cup in 1975, which was held in England. Though England fared well in the initial stages of this tournament, they had a disastrous end falling for a paltry 93 runs in the semi-finals against Australia – the ultimate runners-up of the tournament.

A while later South African born Anthony Greig replaced Mike Dennis as England’s captain. After two years of rollicking as well as controversial leadership of his adopted country, Greig planned out a coup ‘D grace along with Australian media magnate Kerry Packer to sign up a list of top cricketers in the world which included players from banned South Africa to play a series of carnival cricket for the Australian TV – Channel-9. This became a huge commercial success and the drawn up players were remunerated handsomely. The rest of the world cricket fell down on its knees and the cricket’s Pandora’s Box was thus opened.

This cricket carnival saw the advent of a pyjama version of the game where coloured clothing replaced the traditional white on the playing field. At the same time outside playing peripheries televisions had come in to stake claim of its pound of flesh of the game.

Gradually the shorter version of the game took the centre stage. While the longer version of the game started losing its grip as the top dog, it was kept on for posterity sake. There were more and more one-day cricket that came into being and at the same time the participating countries saw their coffers laden with gold. Then at the same time this transformation saw the new cricket millionaires of the likes of Shachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne enter through lucrative TV commercial deals. Besides this, there were commercials appearing on the bats, the playing shirts on players, while even the wickets and even start of the bowling run ups were sold for huge stakes by the respective authorities.

Then came the ugly side of the matter. Just recently, the Indian cricketers who are heavily in the midst of the TV commercialization of the game in the sub-continent had differences with the authorities of the game just before the last mini-world cup, over a commercial advertisement of their playing shirts. Now with the next World Cup scheduled to be held in the West Indies, the players from the countries that makes up the Caribbean have started their differences with their local authorities on similar lines. The result – the West Indies is represented in Sri Lanka by a second string and the host country stands to lose millions of rupees on TV deals.

The game of cricket has come a long way. At the same time the players have got richer. However has the game got richer by all these antics? Who is bigger in this exchange? Is it a cricketer who comes and occupies the field may be for a decade and a half the most or this beautiful game of cricket as a whole?

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