When Rishabh Pant is on his knees, he is at his best. Some famous commentators said during an IPL match, “Wow, that is great commentary!” There was a time when cricket was graceful, when commentators used to talk about the game and its technicalities and shedding light on the knowledgeable elements of the game.
Now everything has gone astray. Now it’s time for a fall in the park, losing your bat, just being goofy on the batting track, and getting laughs and praise from the commentators.
That is the present state of cricket, and why not? Now, commentators and cricket experts care less about the game and more about their interests—whom they want to praise, whom they want to show as the best player, whose image they want to paint as the most valuable asset to the team.
And this has been going on in Indian cricket for a long, long time. A player who scores brilliantly, maybe like Sanju Samson or someone else, doesn’t get any praise. Why? He will get attention only when he fails to play a good knock. Definitely, he will get attention then.
But when he plays well, he will not get attention. On the other hand, someone who has been a failure is going to get attention, even if he had scored just 20 runs in 16 balls and got out. And in that short and brief innings, he played a brilliant shot, falling on his knees.
Now only a few shots or moments are going to be the highlight of the innings, nothing else. This is how much we have moved in the wrong direction in this beautiful game of cricket.
Somehow this fanaticism plauged by Indian cricket experts is ruining the future of Indian cricket. They are not valuing the talent, skill, and hard work of players anymore. But now it’s all about who is famous, who has the most money in PR agency, who is the most aggressive on the field, who has more supporters.
So, the innings does not become the measure of how well the player is doing, but how many supporters he has in the commentary box or in the media or on the Twitter, where you know the mad fans try to grab each others’ collar to prove their point.
And this is a new thing to the Indian cricket team. Ten years back, it was not like this. So much money has been invested that now everyone is trying to prove their point by just taking the entire space in the media.
Now, there was a player named Josh Brown in the Big Bash League. He played a memorable knock of 140 runs in 57 balls against Adelaide Strikers in the semi-final of BBL 20238 for Brisbane Heat.
And still, his name is not going around, neither are his supporters rallying that he should be part of the Australian Cricket team. Yet he played very well in the semi-final and final, and solely as an opener in the tough Australian conditions, he led his team to the title.
But nobody heard his name as the next big thing, the next captain of the Australian Cricket team, the next biggest star. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
But suppose if it happened in India, a batter had played a 140-run knock in 57 balls in a semi-final match. What would have been the scenario? If he was unknown, nobody would have cared, let’s be frank.
But if he was a famous player, everyone would have rallied around him, including Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, saying that he should be in the cricket team, he should lead the cricket team, he should do this, he should do that.
We should value talent, but unfortunately, that’s not how things work. You have to earn your stripes. Michael Hussey made his Test debut at the age of 30.
There are many stories of players who had to grind to prove their worth in International Cricket. It cannot be that easy. This stardom, this fandom, who will defend you to the death—this is not part of cricket. This is a new thing that is ruining cricket.
