Late Cut

If you were frozen in early 70s and thawed today, you won’t be blamed for being surprised at not recognizing the game of cricket. Night cricket, coloured clothing, bright lights, skimpily dressed cheers leaders, loud music and an almost universal par run rate of 6-8 runs per over, would certainly confuse you as to the identity of this vaguely familiar beast. And if you were unfortunate enough to see or follow “Player Auction” you would have required medical attention! Historians and anthropologists tell us that evolution is an extremely slow process. Hence I consider cricket fans of my generation, extremely lucky. We can claim to have seen evolution of a game that hardly changed for over a century, from its “ Lagaan ” days. No one, including the protagonists knew that Kerry Packer’s fight with the Australian cricket board to get Australian TV broadcast rights would turn out to be lot more than merely a clash of egos. When the push came to the shove, Packer’s so-called circus ended up...

Had India failed to win today's test, there could have been numerous Indian journos asking why BCCI refuses to play test cricket under flood-lights. Well, there is some merit in that argument; Indians lost close to 55 overs yesterday due to bad light/rain and if flood lights were permitted, they could have put in some overs out of that. They came close to loosing an opportunity to square the series and stay on top of the ICC ranking. For now, at least, calls for BCCI to join in an attempt to search for flood-light solution to test cricket may not rise. Of all boards, BCCI has been talked about as an autocratic board which does not hesitate to milk Indian cricketers as cash-cows. But they some how are not falling in with other cricket boards on this issue. Call BCCI traditionalist or just bullish for not joining other cricket boards, especially two powerful lobbies in world cricket namely Cricket Australia and ECB who are very keen to play test cricket under flood-lights as early as...