Another opinion piece on cricket. But does it even matter?

Root's England made an amazing comeback after losing the second Test. Michael Vaughan's comeback was less glorious, though

Cricket, despite all the glitz, is in poor health. And so is something that has made cricket what it is for its fans. Here is my piece on the art of writing cricket that seems to be falling apart in the face of the rapid changes that the game is witnessing.

Cricket as a sport has been revolutionised in the last few years. The change has flooded the game from all sides. From the length of the game, the colour of the ball, the sizes of the bat to headgear and cricketers’ hairstyles, everything has undergone change with the game's transmogrification. Another much discussed and debated aspect of this change has been the increase in the volume of cricket played. The number of internationals packed in a year now is insane. The workload of cricketers has raised anxious concerns about player burnout. The emergence of multiple leagues has fed into this change as well as has changed the face of the game. In this scenario, how has the media reporting the game coped with the change?

Thanks to the money that has flowed into cricket, media's interest has also piqued in the game. Every aspect of the game is thoroughly reported on. A dropped catch in the course of a five day Test match could have possibly gone unnoticed 20 years ago but not anymore. Thanks to a gazillion cameras, as much as a whisper into the ears of the batsman by the bowler can make it to the plays of the day section on some websites dedicated to the game. Most of the times, the writers are secretly wishing for something to transpire on days when the game is smoothly moving at its own pace, for the pressure to fill up those pages and sections detailing every minute incident on the ground is immense. This has led to an overkill of cricket writing, obviously facilitated by the overkill of cricket itself. Opinions are flying like the sixes off the mutton choppers they call bats these days.

Another rather laughable trend, which in the larger picture is not so laughable, that has emerged out of this million matches a year trend is the one of premature predictions. It has been there, lurking innocuously in the background on the newspapers and television screens that have traditionally been avoided by cricketers themselves. But now it seems to have reached a point where it definitely is unavoidable for the readers of the game.

Cricket, right from when it started, has been an unpredictable sport as most sports are. Obviously, cricket takes the cake simply due to the presence of Pakistan and West Indies in it. That's unpredictability into three, actually.  And in the face of so much unpredictability and uncertainty, the thing that's most predictable is opinions and predictions falling flat on their face.. With fewer matches to talk about earlier, there were fewer such instances. The most famous of it came in the 1983 World Cup when Wisden Cricket Monthly editor David Frith predicted that the Indian team won't progress beyond the group stage. The result? Kapil's devils lifted the World Cup at Lords by defending a paltry 183 against the mighty West Indies and Frith had to eat his words, quite literally. Frith ate the paper on which the prediction was published. If modern day cricket writers were to follow Frith's example, their breakfast, lunch and dinner would all be made up of the paper they write on. Or will they eat hardware of their fancy Macbook Pro? Why not, when change is the order of the day! Well, change has indeed come and that entails making sheepish u-turns.

The moment that sealed the deal for David Frith's paper meal

The most recent of such u turns came from Michael Vaughan, who seems to be developing a reputation unbecoming of a captain who earned his team the Ashes with his Tweets. More words and space to write (read more money) doesn't help his cause as his opinion pieces reek of a sportsman who has spent more time in the TV studios discussing cricket and less playing on the cricket field. After the loss suffered by the English team against South Africa in the second Test, the former captain let it rip. He minced no words in launching a scathing criticism of the English team's performance. In fact, the criticism wasn't as much as of the team's performance as of the team. Vaughan said Vaughan said: "The England batting has been appalling. Maybe it’s a lack of respect about what the game is. “They look like they are playing a Twenty20 game. They have this approach of attack, attack, attack. There’s no thought or feeling of seeing off a bowler or wearing a team down.

Vaughan had reasons to be furious with the performance for the South African team was the one responsible for the end of his 'Let's rest on Ashes laurels till eternity' dream and forced him to resign from captaincy in 2008. But the English team's performances soon took a u turn and so did Vaughan's opinion of the team and the captain he had lambasted weeks ago.  After the team’s impressive 3-1 series win, the former captain wrote in the Telegraph, “When Joe Root was appointed England’s Test captain there were questions over whether he would be tactically smart enough. For me, that was never in doubt and against South Africa he showed enough tactical intelligence to ease any worries about that side of his game.” Well, well.

"Look sir, we who don't respect Test won the series against a team you couldn't."

Vaughan's case is merely a single dot in Cheteshwar Pujara's innings. There is no end to the problem. Just like Pujara's dots. In the same series, Faf Du Plessis went on from being hailed as the team's saviour after the second Test victory to the one who just didn't have enough answers both as batsman and a skipper after the 3-1 loss.

The more cricket hits our TV screens, the more opinions will fly on a regular basis. In fact, the more cricket is played, the more we come face to face with the game's unpredictability i.e more frequently will the pendulum of player's form and fortune swing. And with that will the opinions about them as well. The left handed Ben Duckett was projected as the new hope of English batting lineup before Bangladesh and India found him out. By the end of the England India series, Duckett was forgotten and Karun Nair was hailed as the next big thing in Test cricket courtesy his triple century effort which spawned articles after articles about the man. The end result? Both Nair and Duckett are nowhere to be found near their teams' current XIs, which suddenly makes you question the paeans that were sung in their praise where they were earmarked for the greatness they failed to achieve.

The truth that is fast revealing itself is that the world of writing cricket has also suffered from the same problem of which the game itself is victim - too much cricket. And just as too much cricket has left us valuing too little of it, the same seems to be the case with writings and opinions about it. The shortest version has definitely injected life in the game’s following by bringing in millions to the stadium and in front of TV screens, but as for the art of writing cricket is concerned, the frequent switch hits a la KP by writers is simply taking it to the point where it’s becoming pointless.