The year gone by – 2013 A recall

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Quaint, queer…….2013 was that sort of year. It was a year of the unexpected, a year of twists, and a year of the possible, a year to remember .

Blanked out in India and squeezed dry in England, Australia have regained the Ashes with the pomp and swagger of their glory days. Questioned pre-season for his leadership style and commitment to the Australian way, Clarke  (“Cookey”) has led from the front with imagination and is a hero once again. The Australian revival is now credited to them playing a brand of cricket reminiscent of their halcyon years, and Darren Lehman has been hailed as the man who fostered the egalitarian “blokeyness” that has got Australia playing with renewed fearlessness. England have tasted glory and despair in a matter of weeks. Nepal have qualified for the World Twenty20. India’s young batsmen have shown the technique, application and hunger for Test-match success not many had given them credit for possessing.  South Africa almost chased down a record-breaking 458 at the Wanderers.

Lord Tennyson stated in his famous poem “ The Brook”….. For Men may come and Men may go, but I go on forever.. ……. So, they came and they went….while we remember them all.  Retirements… who would have seen them coming but sadly enough we were expecting them anyhow. The Little Master / Sachin‘s was the grandest and, given the size of his kingdom, it was heartwarming, tear-jerking and the most stirring. But it was the most expected. Michael Hussey went abruptly, with his desire dimmed; Graeme Swann gave up mid-series, drained and worn out by defeat; and Jacques Kallis perhaps listened to his body and soul. Kallis’ retirement came as a surprise, but a retirement that will be far more debilitating for his team. What he leaves behind, however, is emptiness. At the heart of it, retiring from sport is a deeply emotional decision. It is not like retiring from a job that has run its course. It is giving up what you love most, what has defined you and forged your identity; it is about leaving home and stepping into the unknown territory. Some get the timing right, many don’t, but to grudge them their decision would be missing the story. Tendulkar and Kallis have been the greatest cricketers of their era, and cricket is immeasurably poorer without them. With Tendulkar’s departure, India lost the final link to their golden age of batting. India’s golden age of batting has ended but it’s not all gloom and doom yet . With Kallis gone, South Africa will have to learn the art of playing with 11 men again.

But every departure also grants an opportunity for renewal, and Kohli, who had already taken over the  mantle of churning out one-day hundreds, provided a vision into the future with a first-innings hundred on a tough pitch in Johannesburg that was technically accomplished, temperamentally remarkable, and contained strokes of high pedigree. And in the same Test, Faf du Plessis, batting in Kallis’ position, produced a virtuoso final-innings performance that very nearly carried South Africa to a record chase. Does this make him the ideal inheritor for Kallis ?….i.e if only he could bowl like the legend.  Virat has started a new fashionable trend. Legends being hoisted on their team-mates’ shoulders has become a standard salute for their final swansong ever since Kohli and his mates carried Tendulkar around Wankhede Stadium in the wake of India’s World Cup win in 2011. Tendulkar himself was given the treatment twice more, by his Mumbai team-mates in Lahli in his final Ranji Trophy match, and finally in his farewell Test at the Wankhede. And so, Kallis decided to take a different approach and create his own ‘ride’ to glory with another magnum opus for his final Test appearance, in Durban.

The cricket world has always been divided over sledging. Some consider it to be against the grain of a “gentleman’s” sport and, in fact, cowardly. Others consider it a legitimate tool in a tough and competitive environment where mental fortitude is tested as much as personal physical skills. But not all cricketers have the wit and the sensitivity to manage the line between teasing an opponent and descending into downright crudeness. Trash-talking is okay in WWE, because the whole thing is fake. However, if cricketers came to blows, something about the game would be lost.  The notion of privacy on a cricket field is an illusion. Cricket is an outdoor sport, played out before thousands and watched by millions. To be able to hear what the players are thinking would be great for the viewers, and if the players wish to make fools of themselves, let them be judged for it.

In sport, the truth is often simpler……OR…. Is it a simple truth that…after all, it is sport !  Something that glues people, families and friends alike and entire nations full of diversity into an entity of solidarity and unique one-ness…And in cricket, such unique fractions of simple truth can make a world of difference.

Humbly put once again…. By a cricketing fan.

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