Mahinder Singh Dhoni is reported to have said that he would like to have
Mahendra Singh Dhoni
pitches that turned right from the first day – the idea being that such pitches would help our spinners. (That the golden era of Bishen singh Bedi, E.A.S.Prasanna, B.S.Chandrasekhar, and S.Venkataraghavan is a thing of the distant past is quite another matter, though.)
Not a heroic idea from one of the greatest heroes of modern Indian cricket.
It quite doesn’t seem that Dhoni understands that it amounts to dicing the game and is unfair to the opponents, to the spectators and to the game itself – and it is unfair to our cricketers too.
It took us ages to break away from the tendency to have pitches doctored to suit our spinners and to let pace-bowlers also blossom. We became a serious force to reckon with in international cricket only after we too came up with our own set of remarkable pace-bowlers (who were encouraged by pitches which were no longer loaded against them) who, though not quite in the league of Hall, Griffith, Thomson, Hadlee etc, have proved to be exceptionally talented and capable of winning matches for the country. Does Dhoni want us to slip back to the dark ages when we were helpless if our spinners couldn’t deliver on unhelpful wickets overseas?
Moreover, what kind of sportive spirit this idea of Dhoni is, we wonder.
Creating wickets which favour only spinners, only pacemen, or only batsmen is not fair game – no matter who does it and which country does it.
Balanced wickets are what the game needs: wickets which are helpful to pacemen initially, wear out over the duration of the match and help spinners, and are neither flat (making them a batsman’s delight where even a gully cricketer can score a century) nor degenerating so badly that they prove to be impossible to bat on or turn out to be physically dangerous to them. In short, wickets which do not heavily favour any particular class of players are what the game, players, and spectators need.
Doctoring the pitches is not what heroes do. True heroes do nothing unfair because heroism comes out in its full resplendence only when the circumstances are not rigged in their favour.
Sportsmanship is not about winning matches. It is about making the playing and watching a delight. It is about making everyone go home, at the end of the day, with a smile on his lips no matter who has won or who has lost.
Perhaps the increasing presence of money in the game is responsible for the decreasing evidence of sportsmanship.
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Tags: Cricket Dhoni
