Yet Another

The Adelaide Oval – 26^th January 2008. Those of us who followed the action were fortunate to witness a Don-overtaking century from one of Australia’s great opening batsmen – Matthew Hayden. But the highlight of the day was another very sad, unfortunate and sudden high profile retirement, this time Australia’s stand out performer and for many years fixture behind the stumps, Adam Craig Gilchrist.

Gilly was a crowd puller. When he came into bat or was already at the crease, people from all around the world, regardless of their nationalities and preferred teams, tuned in to watch him. More often than not, Gilly satisfied the viewers.

There were two Gilchrists – Gilly the ‘keeper and Gilly the batsman. Both these avatars were sensational rather than charming. Gilchrist the batsman had a good technique, but don’t expect an exhibition of the copybook cover drive, timed to perfection, all along the ground, reaching the ropes. Gilly knew that the bat was meant to be used to hit the ball, and he did so with a great amount of force. When Gilchrist bats, there’s fireworks. He will not give you an innings of such class and technical proficiency which the common man cannot appreciate – although I tend to believe that this was more by choice than inability. Gilchrist will come to the crease and will entertain. On Gilchrist’s good day, any price for a ticket is value for money.

The reason Gilchrist is said to have revolutionised test match batting, is that he brought an aggressive, attacking style into it. Now, as a result of the Gilchrist phenomenon, even the purest of the purists are able to enjoy a little bit of slam-bang-wallop in Test Match Cricket. He batted in Test cricket with a strike rate of just under 82! There have been many aggressive batsmen – a certain Sir I.V.A.Richards and Krishnamachari Srikkanth to name a few, but Gilchrist was something different.

Gilly was also a wicket keeper. Gilly’s greatness lies in the fact that one can say it either way, Gilly was a ‘keeper who batted, or Gilly was a batsman who kept. His wicket keeping was sensational as well. There were stunning and athletic dives, and pictures of Gilly behind the wicket bare a stark resemblance to Rhodes at backward point. Gilly was amongst the best in the world, and picked up some blinders, but he was never indisputably the best ‘keeper in his time. There was always South Africa’s Mark Boucher to give him competition. Also, some believe that Gilly’s most probable successor, Bradley Haddin is better behind the stumps than Gilchrist. But, even behind the stumps, as irrelevant as it may seem, Gilly was more fun to watch than most others. He was always flying (rather than diving) about behind the stumps to the pacers and picking up stunning catches where he had very limited sight of the ball. So often one hears the commentator saying, “How did he get that far?” Well, that’s Gilchrist.

Gilchrist’s retirement is very sad. We will all miss one of the most captivating cricketers of all time, without whom the cricketing arena just will not be the same. Cricket – or all sport – is meant to provide entertainment. And few have entertained more than Adam Gilchrist. Thank you Churchie. Thank you very very much.-BS

This article was meant to be a little longer, but it was unfortunately curtailed due to the editor’s reluctant display of favour towards his academic pursuits. Cricket Opinions apologises.

Coming Soon

Yet another high profile retirement....its Adam Gilchrist this time. It'll be sad to see him go. Coming soon - a look back at the Gilchrist phenomenon.

.....and again

Once again, Cricket Opinions wishes to apologise for the delay in updation........the regulars all know why.
- Editor

And Now Its Pollock

The past few months have seen quite a few high profile retirements, primarily from the Aussie camp – McGrath, Warne, Langer, etc – but also otherwise – Lara, Inzy. And now its Pollock.

Miserly, as he hates giving away any runs and has more than impressive economy rates in both forms of the game. The fiery, red-head and nippy youngster became the veteran work horse of the South African team and more specifically, the Protean pace attack.

He is known to have clicked in partnership with other bowlers – earlier Donald and more recently Ntini – and also support the other bowler and act as a heavy barrier in order to lock runflow from one end while things aren’t going well at the other.

He has been seen in contrasting roles, the wicket taker and the economical and enduring machine which just would not give away runs. He has performed equally and very well in both these roles. A point which has to be noted here is that towards the end of his career, he seemed a little less likely of picking up a wicket, and in the shorter form of the game, his tight, nagging, consistent and economical style seemed like a fall back option; a style he resorted to when he was unable to pick up wickets. But this is useless in the longer version. This is what may have resulted in his being dropped from the test side and then being brought back as a first change bowler for some matches.

Many of us, and most importantly and thankfully him were aware that he was into the final stages of his career and that soon, he would have to hang up his boots. It is in this context that one must commend him for the timing of his retirement. It could not have been better timed. He said that he wanted to be picked after being dropped for the first two tests against the West Indies and then announce his retirement as he did not want to be picked for emotional reasons but for the ability we all know he possesses. And when the situation came, he called time.

Even in the latter stages of his career, he was capable of bowling quick. He bowled a couple of really quick bouncers to batsmen as variations which clocked over 140kph on the speed gun. This probably means that although he was capable of bowling quick, Pollock understood that he had to tone down his pace so as to give more room for sustenance over a period of time. This is typical of Pollock.

He played mind games with the batsmen, certainly not as much as someone of the likes of Shane Warne, but Pollock had his own style. He would keep the ball pitching on the six pence most of the time. But, you could count on there being that odd ball, which would be just a couple of centimetres hither or thither that spot. That ball almost unfailingly, would have the batsman in trouble. Many batsmen of the world were probably fooled by the simplicity of the strategy itself.

He is a classic example of the theory that as a pace bowler, one does not necessarily require genuine pace to get past batsmen.

When I switch on the Television and see Shaun Pollock bowling, I’d like to continue watching not just because of his immaculate and tight areas, but because of his capability to produce some peaches. To get the outside edge of the bat when the batsman is playing correctly for the line and bounce of the ball with the pitch playing truly, is an art of which Pollock was a master. He did not move the ball four feet laterally. After all, that would only beat the batsmen, for the bat is only 5 inches wide. He only moved it two and a half inches, and that’s all he needed to move it, for that much movement would ensure that the ball would clip the outside edge of the bats in the hands of even the best.

Everyone is content and pleased with Shaun Pollock’s performances – with batting being the exception – and realise that his time has come. However, the simplicity of Pollock’s game is one thing you are left wanting more of. Shaun Maclean Pollock’s game had a simplicity which – ironically – is complex to achieve; a simplicity, which not many others are exhibits of; a simplicity which will be missed for long years to come.-BS

How much sympathy can be offered to the umpires?

The answer to this question is highly convoluted and complex. The umpires carry a huge amount of pressure on themselves out in the middle. They are human and do make mistakes.

The point to be noted is that, there are unintentional errors and then the more dangerous intentional errors, which are very common in the lower strata of the game. Either bias towards one team or one individual or at a higher level racism causes these intentional blunders. There is absolutely no doubt in the fact that these intentional cases cannot be excused at any level, in any situation and at any cost. But, the problem is that it is usually the case that the umpire in question is the only one who truly knows whether the decision taken was an honest one. Therefore, however capable an umpire may be, his integrity is more important than anything else as the players and the general public are inclined to excuse a wrong decision more when they believe that the decision was taken in all honesty.

The umpires do a very tough job. The cause of an incorrect decision is important to consider. A great majority of umpires give decisions correctly 100% of the time, based on what they see. The point here is that the decision goes wrong when they don’t see or hear something crucial. Therefore, it is the incomplete or otherwise flawed input and not the processing that goes wrong. An alert umpire will give more correct decisions than one who is not alert. The words of a former test umpire, “All the decisions I gave were right, from what I saw” convey this point clearly. Therefore it has to be noted and reiterated that a good umpire gives all his decisions, without exception correctly, based on what he sees.

Decisions such as the question of whether there is a nick with the ball going down the leg side through to the ‘keeper with the batsman attempting a pull or hook pose problems for the umpire. The reason is the umpire does not get as clear a sight of the incident as he would have been comfortable with due to the angle. The bat-pad decisions are also challenging although these are considerably easier than the decisions previously dealt with. The problem with the bat-pad decisions is that under normal circumstances, the bat and pad are very close to each other, therefore any deflection will happen very fast and what got the first touch and whether there were two touches at all is not clear in the umpire’s mind.

One may argue that a good umpire must be capable of negotiating all these decisions and dealing with them appropriately. This is true, but even the greatest of umpires are human beings and they will make mistakes, more likely in these cases.

Therefore, in difficult decisions such as these, there should be a level of leniency in judging the umpire.

There is one more factor which comes in - the situation. An umpire cannot give a caught behind decision half as easily at the Eden Gardens as against Hove because of the noisy atmosphere at Calcutta. Also, a mistake the umpire makes is given importance on the basis of the victim as well. The uproar caused by Sachin Tendulkar being wrongly declared out will certainly be much more than the similar decision with Alan Donald at the receiving end.

There will be mistakes made and that is the beauty of the game. I hope my opinions are portrayed clearly through this piece.-BS