For Love of the Game.

Most of us grew up playing cricket because it was fun. Depending on what you were good at, you used to dream of scoring the winning runs for the gully team or taking a hat-trick in the final over. Some of us thought we were good enough to do both. It didn’t matter how hot it was or if we had an exam the following day, all we wanted to do was play.

I’m not going to go into being proud of playing for the country because that comes a lot later than the joy of hitting the ball over the boundary or watching the stumps go flying. Cricket, like any other sport, is supposed to be fun. It is something you play to get away from that annoying school teacher who gives you so much homework. I assume anyone who takes up cricket as a career would have gone through these emotions when they started playing. Yet, somewhere along the line most of them seem to lose that zeal for cricket. It’s easy to pin the blame on too much cricket, but there are a lot of players who don’t seem into it even when they’re coming off from a long break.

So why am I talking about this? Well, it’s because of a couple of games from the recent Champions League. The first one was between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Delhi Daredevils. The Cape Cobras had just defeated the Victoria Bushrangers, a result that had knocked out Bangalore. That didn’t stop Anil Kumble from leading his side against the Daredevils who needed to win in order to stay in the competition. Staying true to his reputation of a fighter, Kumble strangled the Daredevils middle order before Ross Taylor blitzed Delhi out of the tournament. What was heartening to see was Kumble’s intensity throughout the contest. He looked like he was going to explode every time there was a misfield. The result rendered the Daredevils-Cobras game inconsequential as far as Delhi was concerned. As a result, we saw a Daredevils side sans Sehwag, who had been the one constant in Delhi’s performance throughout the tournament. He was coming off from a long injury layoff but looked like he hadn’t been away from the game at all. So why exactly did he sit out? Sure they won the game without him, but that’s beside the point. Was it too much trouble for him to come out for a game that meant little? What about the sellout crowd that had come to see him bat? These are the people who are responsible for the lifestyle he enjoys, through a career he chose because he loved playing cricket!

The intent of this post is not to slight Sehwag or praise Kumble. I would still like Sehwag to open for India in all forms of the game, and for Kumble to stay retired. But I would like to see cricketers play like they enjoy the game and want to be out there every time they have a chance to play. Let’s put the fun back into cricket!

by Mahek
You can read more of Mahek at his blog Confessions of a Forced Spectator

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