People tell me at the age of 25 my life is all about the future: getting the great job, great home, a loving wife and a family to boot. The world is my oyster, they say.
But what value is the future is you don’t pay homage to the past?
Who I am today is clearly defined by the experiences endured. Is that something I really want to forget?
Personally speaking, no, but if I move the topic over to the farce that represents modern-day cricket, it seems our so-called guardians have no intention but to concentrate on the future, regardless of the cost to the foundations that fed them so well.
I of course refer to the recent public poll conducted by the International Cricket Council searching for the best 11 players of all time. My intention isn’t to scrutinise the selection of certain individuals over others (although that is another topic truly worthy of remonstration).
Nor is it to point out the idiocy to place wisdom on a group of people so generic, you couldn’t separate the truly knowledgeable from the borderline idiotic.
What it does indicate is the danger of placing precedence of recent history over the tales of yore from way beyond. If our obsession with recent history is any indication of where cricket lies in the future, then names like Bradman might be sacrificed for Yusuf Pathan, to name but one example.
The very notion is frightening. But to actually envisage a situation where that could occur shows just how much we’ve misconstrued this great sport in recent times.
Cricket was never meant to be a slap-in-the-face enterprise. Indeed, it was that very quality the game lacked that lead to the creation of baseball.
Rather, the game was about mastery of endurance – about surviving terrible periods of bowling pressure, about bowling to a strict pattern until bearing results, and trying to keep alert in the field after eight hours of standing.
Don’t get me wrong.
Twenty20 has its place. But in terms of the sport in general, the role and prestige given to Twenty20 should be minimal at best.
To put it in no better terms, a madison cyclist has no place to ride alongside a Tour de France champion. That’s what this latest ICC poll has shown – that we as a public value pizzazz and modern gimmicks over the more tedious yet greater things that came before it.
I feel sorry for the 10 cricketers in this list (Bradman being the exception) that have been selected in this farce of a poll.
They bear no fault for the stupidity of others. Great cricketers as they may be, the realists among them will chuckle hard at the very notion they’ve been included over men far more deserving.
But more worrisome are the egotists who actually believe the filth they’ve been fed. And that all cricket is about now – the ego, the very quality it once so admirably lacked.
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