Genius Erosion

For the last decade and a little over most people from my generation have grown up admiring some of the most brilliant cricketers. And I suspect that there never was a time when there were so many phenomenally good cricketers playing at one time. Most of us just took for granted the quality of cricket that was played. But in the last few months with the exodus of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath (from test and soon ODIs as well I guess), Inzamam (from ODIs), Brian Lara (just announced retirement from ODIs), there already seems to be a huge void in the cricketing world. To make it worse, soon enough, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Gilchrist, Jayasurya and Hayden will be gone. If these players were taken out of the current cricket scene I find that my interest in the game dips tremendously. Shoaib Akhtar who is super exciting might not be in the game for too long as well given the way he is going. That would then mean that not a single exciting batsman or bowler would be playing the game except Muralitharan. The rest of the cricketers are very good cricketers but not quite in the same league as the guys mentioned.

From an Indian perspective, currently there are hoardes of people wanting Tendulkar to quit the game. Younger players might be good and they might even win games and that would be nice. But I don't think that would compare to the pleasure of watching Tendulkar bat. And the bottom line is that Cricket is just a game and the pleasure got out out of an innings like the one in Sharjah is far superior to a victory for the team. As I see it, patriotism has no room when it comes to a game. I'd be much happier watching a Brian Lara or a Tendulkar play brilliantly than seeing a favorite team win. Watching Shane Warne bowl was a superb pleasure. Watching the variations and the mind games he played was much more fun in my opinion than the equation of the game. After all how exciting is it to watch Ian Bell or Suresh Raina win a game? Yuvraj Singh is exciting but I dont think he falls in the league of Lara and Tendulkar.

Anyway in the next year or two we'll probably realize the reason as to why cricket was so much fun to watch in the last decade!