Five soulful steps to Ten10

So let’s not talk of death. Let’s talk of birth — the birth of new cricket. Purists’ concern for the beautiful five-day game while they count Yuvraj’s sixes is perverse pleasure. And their fear that cricket itself is under attack from its football version is a sad mix of ignorance and myopia. Here are five of those cardinal concerns and how they have either already been tossed aside by the World Cup or will soon be by one great Test match in the India-Australia series, perhaps.

Twenty20 is batsmen all the way: Batsmen’s role is being exaggerated by the lovers of the downtrodden, which according to them are the bowlers. Most matches in this World Cup have shown that batsmen are no more predominant in this form than in an ODI. The average score per over in this tournament has been 8 or 9 runs. That’s not extraordinary. How many runs does a good team score in the last 10 overs of an ODI? About 80-90 is quite the norm. Give the same team 7 wickets in those 10 overs. It could score even 120, batting first. And teams do. Very often, of late.

Bowlers have no role in it: Bowlers don’t need such defending. A spinner is no more pathetic in giving 18 runs in an over than a fielder who drops a sitter or a batsman who gives a catch off a full-toss. So stop patronising the likes of a fiery Umar Gul or a crafty Daniel Vittori. When they go out to bowl, they are not thinking if it’s a batsman’s game or the third umpire’s. Vittori gave less than a run a ball in the event. Who was the championship’s most valuable player? Shahid Afridi, the bowler. And those who are worried about the economy rates of good bowlers, remember that such rates are relative — in a run-chase of 310 runs, 10-0-55-3 is brilliant bowling, especially when three opposition bowlers gave an average of 56 runs each.

Twenty20 would finish ODIs: A Twenty20 was done to the one-day game not this year but in the 1996 World Cup by two Sri Lankans. They taught the world, Australians included, that it was profitable to hit over the 30-yard circle in the early overs. They made risk fun and 250 runs an easy target to chase. And 300 a winning total. In the years since, 300 is chased frequently and even 320 gives little reason for complacence. So will the audience prefer a 40-over smasher over a 100-over smasher? They won’t. They will watch both. Did they abandon going to Test matches after ODIs came? Not in India or in South Africa. In England neither. And in Australia? Switch on your TV this Boxing Day for the Melbourne Test against India.

Tests will suffer with ill-skilled players: They will not. Who laid the rules which say all batsmen have to play all versions of the game? No one missed Michael Vaughan in ODIs nor in Twenty20. No Indian fan was looking for Rahul Dravid’s name in the batting card. Good batsmen like Alistair Cook should play Tests; an Ashwell Prince can play ODIs, too; and a Pietersen or a Ponting can play all three versions and a fourth, Ten10, in future. They will make sure we have 400-puls run-days in Tests more often and even fewer draws. As for bowlers, they decide the outcome in all forms of cricket. So they too can’t play all. The fast bowler who can’t bowl

20-25 overs a day and has no genuine out-swinger need not play Tests. But his perfect yorker will put him in the ODIs and the 40-over game, in which he can be a hero by giving less than 30 runs in his 4-over quota.

And the lovely soul of cricket? That’s going nowhere. Muhammad Ali did not ruin boxing by keeping his hands at chest-level. The rocket-swift hockey of today is no insult to Dhyan Chand’s memory. Goran Ivanisevic did not look ugly hitting all those brutal aces, did he? The soul of a sport is not like the letters of a constitution, open to violation by a politician’s single act of venality. A Misbah-ul-Haq is as much in touch with the soul of cricket as was Geoff Boycott. And if the soul of cricket does not like a player, he would not be playing any international cricket anyway. So relax.

In case you are still anxious, remember that souls in fact transmigrate in the mainly Hindu country, they just drop the current body like old clothes and take off. So if you saw the beer-soaked soul of cricket flying towards Rohit Sharma or Joginder Sharma on Monday, it was all preordained. Enjoy.