The Sri Lanka Press Institute inaugurated the much-talked-about Press Club on Monday afternoon amidst much pomp and pageantry at the very ‘In’ Ivy room at the Cinnamon Grand. Ironically it is not the ‘water hole’ press club of yore – situated at the heart of Fort.
This comes under a different theme. This Press Club is more than a ‘hell may care’ bunker where a much harassed journo would duck in to drown his day’s sorrows after a hard day’s work. It looked more like a place where one could discuss today’s dip in the stock market or the future of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi over a sip of wine than a decent water hole where members of the fourth estate could go and feel belonged to. However, this is not my area of concern or field of activity. So I would get to matters closer to my heart and on something so relevantly occurred at this very gathering.
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| Kumar Sangakkara and Lasith Malinga congratulate each other at a game. Many feel that T-20 is the tinsel version of the game and can never be converted to gold. |
Invited for this forum was the Chief Executive Officer Haroon Lorgat to impart his and the International Cricket Council’s views on the health of the 50-over cricket and the challenge posed to it by the T-20 version.
As many of us know that 50-over cricket barely 365 days ago was on an operating theatre bed. Many thought the patient was about to die or was dying of an unknown disease as the scalpel handlers around him tried to chop him into various sizes and shapes in their belief that he could survive. Yes, in Australia they cut the game into a 25-overs-apiece. In England they clipped some feathers out and made it a 40-over affair. Yet the ICC big wigs did not have ants in their pants; so they watched the domestic fun (in fact Lorgat confessed that they really encouraged these moves and watched the outcome and the impact it would have had on the game) but did not buy the idea and make a mess of things. If they had adopted those ideas, the cricket could have really died.
In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the ICC’s view about 50-over cricket and its studies and surveys on it. Lorgat began by saying that the 50-over version is in no danger of losing its identity. He said that this version of the game was so attractive that more than 976 million people from four cricket-playing nations – England New Zealand South Africa and Bangladesh - still thought this was the best form of the game. This survey was done by a reputed global research company.
Commenting on the current affairs, the ICC Chief said the ongoing World Cup in the Indian sub-continent demonstrated how strong 50-over cricket had grown to be and how secure the future of the game was.
“I had confidently predicted to the media on February 1 that this World Cup would be the perfect showcase for the 50-over format to answer the critics and I had proclaimed that ODI cricket is alive and well. I am pleased -- and naturally relieved -- to say that so far the statements I have made have proven to be correct. The evidence to prove that 50-over cricket is far from finished has been plentiful. The television audiences have been the biggest in history," he said.
Lorgat said the qualifying group encounter between India and England, which ended in a high-scoring tie, was the most watched ODI game in television history, and added that the record may be smashed on Wednesday when India play Pakistan in Mohali". He also added that this may even lead to a link of communication between the two politically deadlocked cricketing neighbours. “Cricket diplomacy is better than no diplomacy,” he quipped.
Spurred by the success of the tournament, the ICC is also contemplating changing the present ODI ranking system to a league points table. Lorgat thanked the ICC working committee -- which included Sri Lanka’s Interim Committee Secretary Nishantha Ranatunga who had worked on this project for the past 18 months -- for coming up with this novel idea. In all probabilities, the ten World Cup participants for the 2015 in Australia and New Zealand would be chosen based on this new system. The committee will meet once again after the World Cup in April to decide on the final draft. Besides this, Lorgat said the ICC Test Championships was also in the pipeline (it was the Sunday Times that first broke the news about the Test Championship) and would be launched in 2012 as proposed.
After Lorgat’s address, came the open forum where the audience got their chance to get even with the ICC with a bombardment of inquisitive queries. Initially Lorgat said that all three forms of the game were at a very healthy state and the whole gamut was up and running. Yet a wise old crack quipped that the game may be healthy and running on golden rails, but it comes at the cost of the player’s health and the taxation on their bodies as they are engaged in a roll 365 days a year. He pointed out the Englishmen at the beginning of their cricketing calendar completed a magnificent Ashes win, but by the quarter final stage of the World Cup 2011 they were a bunch of wounded soldiers hardly able to walk. Rather taken aback by a good yorker, the ICC CEO brought his bat down on time to say they too were concerned about it.
Still the only grey area that the musings had that evening was the ICC’s attempt to push the newcomers into the game through the T-20 and get them to work upwards. We feel this is an awkward situation. We in the big league were fortunate enough to learn about the game of cricket through the purest form of it. Learning by watching the ball getting accustomed to the situation and building an inning makes you perfect and once you are confident enough to play the correct version of it you can build all improvisations around it. Yet, if someone begins to play the slap-bang methods of T-20 and even if they are very good at it, their conversion to the pure form of cricket may not come. Because T-20 is the tinsel version of the game and it can never be converted to gold.
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