Friday, August 3, 2007

Jelly Beans

I swear that I had to Google up what a "jelly bean" means after the whole controversy regarding it in the last test.

Seriously, I think that every player sometimes needs the extra drive (if playing for the country or money is not a drive enough) to outperform himself and the sledging and pranks played by Englishmen probably acted as that drive for Zaheer. At the same time, the nerves and sledging got better of Sreesanth and the English nailed him all right.

Coming to think of it, sledging is now a commonly accepted phenomenon in World Cricket.
Gone are the glorious days of West Indian domination, where sledging was not required to take a wicket or to hit a bowler out of bowling attack.
The bat and the ball did everything.

Aussies started sledging in their typical aggressive way as a psychological ploy and soon mastered it. Instead of following the best practices of Australian cricket, the rest of the nations followed Aussies in this bad habit. So much so that soon, this became a norm. Now you can see the umpires turn blind eye when a bowler is allowed a mouthful at a batsman and the wicket keeper / close in fielders can be a chatter box all the time. As of now, a physical contact is disallowed but soon, I fear that the ICC will allow soccerisation of cricket where certain physical contact would be allowed with some conditions.

Yes yes, I know a fast bowler today has to be aggressive and all that, but still, I prefer the good-old game of cricket.
The game where a fast bowler comes in furiously and swings the ball beautifully, the batsman defends it with his best abilities and nods to the bowler appreciating the ball and the bowler lauds the batsman's technique and goes back to his bowling crease.

No sledging, no bad blood, and definitely no directed beamers!

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