Hi Abhinandan,
I am a regular consumer of Newslaundry and especially like the NL Hafta podcasts. Despite being a fan of the type of journalism Newslaundry does, I am writing this letter to express a serious disagreement with you.
For the last two consecutive Haftas, episodes 52 and 51, you said that you don’t consider cricket as a sport because “if someone like an Inzamam Ul Haq can be considered a great at something, it cannot be a sport”. I kind of let it go the first time but when I heard it again in the latest Hafta, the diehard cricket fan in me just could not sit back and take it. Before I begin, let me just tell you that I don’t have anything against any sport and I like and follow other sports too. So, I am not trying to prove that cricket is better than say tennis or any other sport, but I am trying to tell you that it is an equally beautiful sport.
First, about your comment on Inzamam, please google some early images of him when he debuted in 1991 and may be you will see a young man who you may consider as a sportsman. I agree that with age he put on a lot of weight and was never good at running between the wickets but that is only an aspect of the game. You can think of it as a tennis player being weak with his or her back hand or with the second serve.
However, when he was only 22, he literally won Pakistan a World Cup, that too in Australia which at that time was supposed to be the place to perform. Imagine a young man walking into bat in a World Cup semi-final and producing 60 off 48 balls while chasing a stiff target (yes, 264 was a tough target in the 90s). You can bet that effort not only required physical fitness and ability but enormous mental strength as well. Even after he had put on weight, he was exceptional as a slip catcher and you probably won’t understand this, but had wrists of gold. Not many players have gone on to make more than 20,000 international runs and also have captained their sides.
Have you not considered the athleticism that is needed to be a Jonty Rhodes or a Ricky Ponting or the strength needed to be a Shoaib Akhtar or a Brett Lee? A 100m sprint gets over in a few seconds, but a champion fast bowler runs in and bowls 20 overs in a day in a test match, in addition to execute other nuanced skills of swinging and seaming the ball. A great batsman like a Lara or a Tendulkar has to implement a serious use of feet movement and hand-eye coordination to place the ball in the gap. Sometimes the ball is turning and sometimes it is coming so fast at them that the reaction time is less than a second. Recently, Ravindra Jadeja took a catch for which his reaction time was less than 0.5 seconds. He not only had to spot the ball in that duration, he had to jump and grab it as well. If that is not sport for you, then what is?
I seriously urge you to search for this on YouTube and see yourself how exciting cricket can be: “Dwyane Leverock catch”. In addition, you should also watch Rahul Dravid’s utterly brilliant innings of 233 in Adelaide in which he demonstrated physical as well as mental ability as a sportsman. If that does not make you change your mind, try watching Curtley Ambrose’s deadly bowling spell at Perth against Australia.
You can probably argue that cricket does not test all the players equally on equal skills, but that is by design. Most team sports are played that way, that is, why they are team sports. The beauty of cricket is that you can have a player as fit as a Chris Gayle or as bulky as a David Boon, but there so many skills involved in the game, both physical and mental, that both can succeed.
Having said all that, if your hate towards cricket is coming from the over commercialisation and faulty ranking system, I totally understand that because I also feel the same way. But, cricket is a beautiful sport and always will be.
PS: I hope Arunabh reads this before leaving Newslaundry so that I have a chance of at least someone appreciating my thoughts on cricket. That article he mentioned about 50 greatest performances in Cricket Monthly was fantastic.
Yours Truly,
Nishant Shrivastava