Woah! Have I started writing about personality development?
Not at all. I detest those self-help books: “How to make friends and influence
people”, “7 Habits of highly effective people”, “The Secret” and the like. Quite
a few of those are best-sellers, no doubt. You see them everywhere – from the
roadside second-hand bookstore to the overpriced bookshop at airports. If you
cannot teach yourself to be successful, no other book can. At least, that’s
what I believe. I will not sermonize on character building. What do I know of
it? So, do not let the title mislead you.
I belong to a Kannada-speaking Brahmin family from Bengaluru.
No. I do not speak English in the exaggerated, stereotypical ‘Madrasi’
accent portrayed in Bollywood movies. However, there are other aspects of the
South Indian stereotype I adhere to: I relish my sambar/rasam – rice and
curd – rice meals. Because I am from Karnataka (“Kaveri is ours!”), I relish ragi
mudde as well. I savor my filter coffee. Call me elitist for all I care, I appreciate
Carnatic classical music. I delight in reading The Hindu and – very pertinent
to this article – I enjoy watching Test cricket.
Among the people I closely interact, I have seen only a few
who take delight in watching a Test match. ‘Who plays and who watches
a game spread over five days when you have ODIs and T20s?’ they ask. Off-late,
specially India have been playing a lot of cricket and all of it in the
subcontinent. So, the result was known even before the match started. An Indian
loss was an upset. That wasn’t good advertisement for the five-day game, I
agree. However, now that India are travelling to South Africa, the game is
bound to be engrossing. So, why wouldn’t one watch? At least for the next
one-and-a-half to two years, the Indian cricket calendar looks interesting with
a lot of ‘away’ series, though the result might not be to the liking of a die-hard
Indian supporter.
I strongly feel we need to build up a case for Test cricket. The longer version of the game fails to be
merely between bat and ball. It is played more on the minds of the players than
on the greens. There is immense planning involved in setting up a batsman for a
dismissal, say by placing a short-leg and constantly bouncing him for a few
deliveries before rapping him on the pads or yorking him. You continue to
persist in a certain line of attack until you get a dismissal. You foil the
batsman’s game plan by standing up to the stumps and curtail his movement,
frustrating him. There is a sense of beauty in Ravi Ashwin’s off-spinners to
the left handers, with a couple of slips and a silly mid-off in position, before
he unleashes a carrom ball. While ODIs and T20s are heavily skewed in favor of
batsmen and brute force (with judicious amounts of skill), I find Tests more
evenly balanced. It relies much more on skill than the other two.
I look at Test cricket as an exercise in character building,
offering invaluable life lessons. You cannot win a Test by having just one proverbial
good day in office. It is the cumulative effort over five days which ultimately
bears fruit. That said, the match can swing from one team to the other over
sessions. You cannot win the war by disregarding the battles, can you? More
importantly, there is always a chance of reviving your fortunes, only if you
believe in yourself. The 2001 Eden Gardens Test between India and Australia is
perhaps the greatest example of this. More importantly, that five full days of
cricket can end in a draw is itself an illustration of the fact that our
actions do not always lead to tangible results. Isn’t this in line with the
philosophy of the Gita where Krishna asks Arjuna to do his work,
irrespective of what the result is going to be?
A player like Dravid had immense mental reserves to draw
from while he batted session after session, facing hostile bowling attacks, earning
him the sobriquet ‘The Wall’. Not only do you need to concentrate on every
delivery, you also need to push yourself physically in not-always-friendly conditions.
Very often, you bat patiently for that
one loose delivery every now and then, tiring out the bowlers, before you gain
momentum. It is a real treat to watch a batsman defend himself, putting a price
on his wicket against an aggressive opposition. It is a classic case of who
blinks first. Though clichéd, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This
is a luxury limited overs cricket does not offer.
In this recently concluded Test against South Africa, there
was another character on display by A B de Villiers. An explosive batsman in
the shorter formats, A B played a subdued innings, quite unlike himself,
waiting for the conditions to get better. In fact, his innings of trying to
stonewall the Indian bowling in a valiant attempt to save the test on their
last tour of India is still fresh in memory. It is this adaptability and
temperament as a player which makes A B indispensable to the team.
Despite so much on offer in five full days of Test cricket,
there is clamor to reduce it to four days – for purely commercial and monetary
reasons. In that case, a lot of games would end up in draws despite there being
a strong possibility of a result. It takes lot more grit and character to bat on
a fifth day wicket, saving the Test, than in any four-day game. It is
unfortunate that travelling teams are not competitive enough anymore. But then,
that doesn’t take away from the charm of a Test match. This series, where the
Indian bowlers have risen to the occasion might just be early signs of revival
of quality Test cricket (I am being hopeful). There is no need to tweak the
format.
In the days of e-mail, WhatsApp and instant gratification on
social media, a Test match is like the romantic idea of a hand-written letter. Let
Test cricket be.
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