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As always, the glitterati on the tinsel town gather every year in the
Shrine Auditorium to congratulate themselves on a job well done in the
most elaborative ritual that came to be known as Academy Awards or the
Oscars, for short. And just as always, at the end of ceremony, filled
with surprises, hard-earns, sweet losses, gasping moments and yawning
sequences, everybody guffaws about the same thing - IT IS TOO LONG.
No
matter how much the organizers of the event try to tinker with the
schedule - pump up the key moments, bump off the bloated, cut short the
time for acceptance speeches, or cue in the presenters a little early -
the event cannot seem to shave off the extra fat, so much so that, the
dreary audience remember so little about the
highlights of the show and instead seem to harp on the length of the
show, the next at the water-coolers/coffee-makers. So what is the right
mix that makes the audience crave for more? A dash of entertainment, a
dollop of surprise, a pinch of homage and a sprinkle of pizzaz?
The
problem is, though everyone knows what is to be done, nobody seems to
know just how should one set about getting that. The good thing is they
keep on trying until they find the perfect concoction and the bad thing
is they keep on trying until they find the perfect potion, all at the
expense of the poor audience. If one thought that the tournament in
2003 was a behemoth, rivalling the monstrosities that used to come out
of Detriot's assembly lines a few years ago back when environmental
concern was just a talking point of the bored rich, the one in 2007 now
is just a curse, guzzling away enthusiasm to feed its continued tedium,
sucking out the life force around like a black hole on a mission. It
took 20 days to decide the Super 8. 40 days dragged on to decide the
final 4. 50 days belabored on to decide the eventual winner. Guess,
that was the only silver lining on the dark, massive cloud of gloom,
that there at least was a winner at the end of it all. But what about
the losers?
Sure, there were sore losers in the teams that spent years preparing
for the event, but left before the party even started. There were
perennial losers, who always made it to the semi-final despite all
odds, but never were able to get over the hump, since time immemorial.
But the real losers were the sport and the spirit of it. Crushed under
the avarice of the administrators to suck the event dry down to the
last drop of its advertising potential, the sport played out in front
of empty crowds, chanting non-existent cheers in the language of utter
silences. Of the 53 matches played in total, only a handful seem to
have piqued the interest of the paying public. The rest tickled the
statistician's math bone. And if the drama of murder, conspiracy,
resignations, off-the-field moves and counter-moves were enough, the
final 15 minutes of the finale alone could serve as the shining example
to sum up the entire tournament - that it wasn't the sport that ruled
the proceedings, but in fact it was the administrators, adjudicators,
rules books and obscure procedures. Quite fittingly, th key moments
unfolded in pitch darkness and great heroes were bid farewell in a
fashion that didn't befit their statures. So guess what the next day
water-cooler/coffee-maker conversations would concentrate on - the
master blasters? the wizard spinners? or the eventual winners? It would
instead revolve around the need for the greed and the incomptence of
the powers that be. Lost in the dull humdrum is the little feat that
the World Cup played host to for the first time - a 'three-peat', in a
manner that was convincing, whole and totally deserving. But then, a
few years down the memory lane, who would remember the scores? Scores
are for the statisticians. Dramatics are what the audience pay for. Too
sad that all the drama happened off the field. Add the audience to the
list of the losers.
And then, there is Australia. The tournament was just a demonstration
of the deep chasm in the cricketing attitudes between the Australians
and the rest of the world. Such are their standards of the game - the
staggering margins, the unflinching ability in either hunting down
targets or setting unassailable scores, that no other team in any other
sport, involving different nationalities, has established such a
supremacy, a king of ruthless hegemony, a kind of vice-like strangle
hold that no nation in the recent past has been able to break free
from. It is so easy to hate the big guy, the one with the most money,
the one with most power and the one with total control. It is very hard
to see beyond the tough veneer, to appreciate the clockwork consistency
and the ritualistic rigor that went into the making of the same. Also
it is equally exhilarating to root for the underdog, for no other
reason than the envious pleasure of seeing the mighty fall. Anytime the
Aussies take the field, the entire world except the continent country,
root for their bitter defeat. And when they, Praise The Lord, lose a
series or two, the world seizes the opportunity to scribble a bad
eulogy about how it was a sad day for cricket, but something good would
certainly come out of the new coronation - the bloodless coup. So as
the Aussies regrouped after the much needed wakeup call in the form the
2 consecutive series losses before the commencement of the Cup, and set
upon executing their well laid plans, trampling over the hopes of the
opposition, one at a time, it seemed like everything is back to being
normal - Sun rose in the East, Earth rotated from West to East, all is
well with the world and the Gods are smiling in the heavens. This is
the way it is meant and this is the only way hard work is meant to be
rewarded, even it comes at the cost of redundancy, or lack of proper
drama.
No other individual epitomizes the Australian ethic of playing hard and
winning right than the man who is deservedly the player of the
tournament - Glen McGrath, the man who is responsible for wrecking
oppositions, not through sheer speed or brute force, or any other seedy
technique that might have slipped through the convoluted crevices of
ICC mandated bowling practices, but in a manner, that is deep rooted in
accuracy, consistency and simplicity - not entirely the trusted
companions of initimidating fast bowlers. His ability lied not in
submission through intimidation, but in gradual and methodical
attrition - again, not a term that is associated with the fast bowling
kind. Which is why McGrath is so unlike any of his predecessors and so
different from his compatriots, that he almost writes himself his own
category. In the shorter version of the game where bowlers are
constantly listed under the endangered species after each series, here
is a bowler, who bowled in exactly the same way, hitting exactly the
same spots as in the longer version, and rewarded commesurately, if
not more. If there is one reason why he had a lower tally in the ODIs,
it has to be the 10-over limit per bowler. Had the restrictions been
eased up by a couple more overs, he would have certainly given his Test
tally a run for its money. Enough has been said about how egregious the
just concluded tournament was. Enough has been written about how
mismanaged the proceedings were. Enough has been covered about why this
was the worst tournament ever. But the mere mention of the name, Glen
McGrath, absolves all the of above. Inspite of the excesses, inspite of
the deficiencies, if this is the final time that this peerless bowler
graces the green in the middle ever, then 2007 is certainly a lot
better than many that had come before. Such was his sport and such was
his spirit. He left the game in a better position than when he found
it, and importantly, he left it on his own terms. And the win was only
the icing. Farewell to the king!
As the ground crew started to clean up the confetti after the end of
the festivities, as the Australians were still basking in the blinding
glow of yet another one sided affair, the clocks in the other parts of
the cricketing world started their count backwards to get a head start
before the champions - T-4. Quite deservingly, the wait is excruciating
for the ones that ended up on the other face of the winning coin.
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More Views by Srinivas Kanchibhotla
