Batting Elegance: Soon to be a Lost Art?

When the brilliant fade away, the mediocrity of mortals begins to look distasteful. The Super 8 match between the West Indies and South Africa was, perhaps, a lesson in the importance of discipline and efficiency in modern one-day cricket, but it was also a bleak reminder of how much poorer the game will be when the current vogue of robust ball-thwacking inevitably pushes the virtuosity of the artists into the sidelines. Or one particular artist, to be more precise. We all knew that Brian Lara was going to retire from the one-day game after the World Cup - everyone was sad about that; but to see him confirm it with such pitiable defeat written all over his face was positively depressing. The most painful thing about the entire episode was not the fact that Lara's team got more insipid as the tournament progressed or that the captaincy skills of Lara himself suddenly and alarmingly reached rock-bottom; what was most sad was that cricket, at least one-day cricket, is on its way to saying goodbye to one of its most celebrated maestros ever with so little grace.

I'm not talking here, of course, of any lack of respect on the part of any cricketing figure towards Lara; the people all around have been most courteous and deferential, and rightly so. What I'm talking about is the manner in which physicality and brutal strokeplay are rapidly taking over the game. South Africa's explosion towards the end of the match may have had quite a lot to do with Lara's potentially-legendary (and not in the right way) decision to delay the third Powerplay till the 45th over, but it was the ruthless savagery of Mark Boucher and Herschelle Gibbs that effectively ended the game as a contest. And this has been the trend for quite some time now - Australia-South Africa matches are the best examples of the new cricketing dogma that power is joy, and even New Zealand have been turning to this unpleasant mantra through its McCullums and Orams. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those stuck-up purists who would rather see a batsman play out ten consecutive maidens with 'grit and patience' than hit a series of spectacular sixes. But I do believe that tearing into bowlers without the least hint of subtlety or elegance is more than a little disturbing, if not annoying. And sadly, with the exit of Lara, and the imminent retirement of Sachin Tendulkar, there won't be too many in the cricketing world to stand up to the unrelenting wave of ugly but effective ball-pounding that is threatening to turn cricket into a slower version of baseball.

Coming back to Lara, it's amazing how so many people brush off his one-day career as 'average' or 'nothing splendid' just because he's played very few games and scored no centuries in the last two and a half years. Most people tend to forget that Lara had semi-retired from the one-dayers two years ago and only returned as a regular member of the team when he was made captain. Before his hiatus, he had been as thoroughly proficient a one-day player as any, and certainly a lot more destructive in his approach and style of play than he is now. And his stats up to the year 2004 will happily confirm that. However, ever since he's entered his third stint as captain, he's largely tried to stay away from the spotlight and give his lesser-known colleagues the chance to become match-winners of their own, albeit with incredibly poor results. That the likes of Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and most infuriatingly of all, Marlon Samuels, have been unable to respond to Lara's pushes and prods (I'd perhaps leave Gayle out of this list - he was, after all, the Man of the Series in the Champions Trophy), is an apt reflection of Lara's entire cricketing life, both in Tests and one-dayers. He's never really had anyone to support, or even comprehend, his immense genius, and he has an astonishing tally of heartbreaking losses to show for that. Whether he would have been the greatest batsman of the post-Bradman era if it hadn't been for the remarkable incompetence of his teammates is perhaps too futile an argument. However, the fact that he has, in spite of the ruins around him, managed to carve out his own glittering place among the pantheons of cricketing greats is testimony to his incandescent brilliance. And besides, there's one thing that no one can ever take away from Lara - when he was on song, there wasn't a single batsman in the very long history of cricket who could match the sheer splendour of his strokeplay. Which is saying quite something.

Anyway, I think I should go back to watching the Australia-Ireland match. It's turning out to be quite ridiculously one-sided. I love supporting the Australians - it feels so much better to be rooting for guys like them instead of the appallingly pathetic West Indian team (save for Lara, of course). Ah, the Australian innings is just about to get underway, which means there'll be plenty of monstrous ball-thwacking from Hayden and Co. We'll miss you, Brian Charles Lara.