Wednesday 14 May 2008

Not cricket? Think again!

All too often, one is left stranded for words when Captain Jojo brandishes his cricket-purist tendencies in one's face. The combination of a lack of suitable eloquence, and laziness in bothering to string together a coherent argument meant one would always come out second-best in such discussions. The hunt for a reasonable argument in favour of Twenty20 games of cricket was well afoot. Okay, not WELL afoot, but it was chugging along (again, that laziness..)

Until now.

Peter Roebuck's article, and a very nice clutch of comments following it, do the job very nicely.
No version of cricket featuring fearless tacticians, shrewd selections, daring strokeplayers, fast bowlers, legspinners, swift running and athletic fielding deserves to be scorned.

As I see it, all that is stiff-upper-lip talk for:

In your face, purists!


Update: As bolsters, a couple of earlier articles, one again by Peter Roebuck, and one by Lawrence Booth.

2 comments:

SuperMus said...

JoJo ki Jai Jai! Nicely written...

And I do hope someone links this post on their blog and adds that there have been some very nice comments following it :D

Anonymous said...

In part due to my own laziness to string together a coherent argument, in part due to my rush to catch up with dinner at my hotel here in Pune, and in part due to your kind linking to a long-lost blog, i shall just link a blog-post here from the very same blog. I believe T20 is a natural extension of the sentiments expressed here.
http://freewheelingaway.blogspot.com/2006/03/piyo-thanda-jiyo-cricket.html
This is, of course, not to cast doubts on the resounding success of the format which was never in doubt, IMO. After all, for every Salman Rushdie, there's a faster-selling Jeffrey Archer, for every 'English, August', there's a more popular '5.someone'...

- JoJo