With batting records being broken every second day in the last six months, the current batsmen have been said to be much better than the legends of this game. But the reality may be very different than what we see.
When South Africa came to India last year, the only thing everyone talked about was the pitches. Every South African batsman complained about it and they even got the support from some ex-Aussie cricketers. The South African batsmen didn’t have a clue about the spinning balls. It seemed as if they didn’t know how to play spin. The Indians, too, weren’t at their best and we hardly saw a big score in the series. When we talk of legends like Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting they had played most of their innings on square turning tracks and the world knows what a tremendous job they did in their era. Even the greats from other countries who toured India have some big scores against their names.
As the South African series ended and India went to Australia, everyone was expecting bouncy pitches with movement for pacers. But all they got were flat pitches having nothing for the bowlers and the batsmen made mockery of them to 300+ scores almost at will. However, in the first T20 match against Sri Lanka this month showed the real characters of the same batsmen as India who chased almost 200 a week back against a side as good as Australia, were out on 101 against some rookie pacers on slightly green wicket.
The one thing made clear about these turn of events is that cricket is deep in trouble with the batsmen making hay of bowlers on flat wickets and not show any commitment on pitches which offers movement for the bowlers. None of the current batsmen in modern world seems to know how to stick on to the wicket on a bowlers’ pitch. That is the exact reason why the legends are missed, because they played with equal ease on all types of wickets.
Whatever records are broken nowadays are nothing compared to what cricketers achieved in past era. All we can say is “may god be” with the bowlers who are treated like ‘stepchildren’ by the cricketing fraternity.
By Kapil Dabas
