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In modern day, cricketers live in a dilemma. If they want to be immortal they have to indulge in the purest form of the game -- Test cricket. If the cricketers want to make a decent living and have better standards than the Johnny next door, they have to be a part of the shorter versions of the game. At the same time if they are very lucky or their manager is an influential person who could wield the wand where it matters he may end-up playing in the Indian Premier League tournament as well.
The irony in the shorter versions of the game is that even if you are a hefty contributor in runs or wickets or both, you will end up making a bag full of money, but, the record books at the end of the day will not make any mention about you for the future generations to emulate. Your name goes into oblivion.
Yuvraj Singh – a victim of circumstances |
Yet, why did the Pharaohs in Egypt build all those magnificent tombs for themselves? They wanted to carry their legend. So to carry ones legend to another generation sometimes people strive hard.
I still remember the former Indian captain Kapil Dev who prolonged his career by a few more games to rewrite the bowling record against his name and finally made it against Sri Lanka at one point of history. But, ironically, his tally of 434 wickets bagged in 131 outings looks so insignificant in the present context. How many bowlers have passed that figure since then?
At the same time the West Indies dominated the spectrum of world cricket in no uncertain terms, but, made one mistake of carrying a load of aging players along with them. Once that lot of cricketers was offloaded at the port of old age, the ship began to sink. It happened gradually, but, it happened so significantly still the group of islanders who banded themselves together, only for the purpose of playing cricket as a unit, have still not recovered.
Today, the West Indian cricketers, who were the cynosure of the cricketing world in the past, have become a band of easy beats, and are occupying the bottom rung of the table of fortunes on a permanent basis.
At present the mighty sub-continent giants India is occupying the No.1 slot in the ICC Test rankings. But, how they have achieved it or at what cost is really left to be seen.
Among the present top rankers in the Indian train of fortunes is an aging bunch, starting from Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman. They are in their latter end of the test careers but are occupying the pivotal positions of No. 3, 4 and 5 in the batting order. So the longer they go on, the longer they will keep the Rainas, Kohlis and the Rohit Sharmas out of the equation. But, if they think a little deeper how many quality batsmen of promise have slipped into oblivion because all these veterans have held to their slots for the past decade or more.
It is also very obvious the plight of Yuvraj Singh who now has filled the slot that retired Sourav Ganguly had occupied. He lived in the peripheries so long that the rust in his Test temperament is very obvious now. I feel that he has got the break, a day too late.
In Sri Lanka, too, this anomaly prevailed at one point of time. In the post ’96 era, there may have been some veterans in the likes of Arjuna Ranatunga, Aravinda de Silva and Hashan Tillekeratne who should have made way through dignity. From the trio it was only Aravinda de Silva who duly retired from the side while the other two stayed on until they were almost dropped.
The most classical case in this is the Jayasuriya Saga. Everyone has heard it for the umpteenth time. We have to repeat it because we do not want a next in this category. Jayasuriya could have loved to go the same way with the legendary image that he carved out for himself, but, poured it all down the drain by hanging on.
On his parting news conference Muralitharan confessed, “I am thirty eight years old now. I even did not know that my tired knees would carry me for three Tests at 60 overs-a-piece."God has given me everything. I am blessed with that. I am not sad. I am very happy with what I have achieved and I am glad I am going out in a good manner because people are not asking me to go. They are asking me to stay. Still I want to go because this is the manner I want to go out. I am not dreaming about any past performances or anything. I am thinking only about the next match, finish well and retire properly.”
Murali also added that he thought about the 25-year-olds in the dressing room who were waiting to spread their wings and he was willing to afford them the opportunity.
What more can a bowler ask when God gives an eight wicket haul in his swan song and crowns him with a tally of 800 wickets, to go out of the game he loves so much.
That is the hallmark of a great character. Every actor should know that the show ends when the curtain falls. But, if a great actor who has taken the people’s hearts could muster enough courage and pronounce this. This is his swan song. He will be remembered forever.
Murali during his career has done more than his share to end up as an “immortal”. With the current pressures in cricket and the very game tilting towards the shorter versions, one cannot see any cricketer going on with a career that spans eighteen years. The sheer number of matches that they play now in all three forms will wear them down much earlier.
At the same time one cannot see a bowler as successful as Muralitharan or Shane Warne not going commercial and sticking to the longer version of the game with the goal of becoming the highest wicket taker in the history of cricket.
Muralitharan has done it. He bagged a match haul of eight wickets to lead Sri Lanka to victory over the number one side in the world. Prior to this, New Zealand Pace great Richard Hadlee, who played his last match in 1990, bagged an eight wicket haul against England. But in his case, his side lost. |
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