Different Strokes

If cricket were a modern Australian fairytale, we would probably see ourselves as the cavalier knight who has fallen in love with Miss India, a beautiful princess whose kingdom is a kaleidoscopic contrast of fabulous wealth and numbing poverty. It is now clear that India is the new dynasty of cricket and the rest of the world, Australia included, is watching this love story unfold with a mixture of emotions.

Not so long ago in Australia, the subcontinent was the butt of crass humour and cheap stereotypes. The famous 'Twelfth Man' skits were hilarious but they hinted at a first-world superiority that made no apologies for making fun of the so-called curry munchers. Ironically, winning in the subcontinent was a major achievement (if you managed it) but losing was a minor irritation. After all, dodgy umpires, dodgy curries and dodgy pitches were standard fare, were they not? Real cricket was always played on fast, bouncy pitches or perfectly manicured green fields in faraway northern lands. Mind you, when the West Indian pace quartet of the 70's and 80's were playing 'chin music', we weren’t that keen on fast, bouncy pitches but that’s another opera altogether!

But Australian cricketers and fans alike are starting to warm to this impending marriage with a grudging affection that is born from being a nation of no-nonsense pragmatists. If you can’t break up the lovers, there’s no sense in missing out on a good party! It helps of course that our wonderfully talented team has all bases covered in cricketing terms. Batting, bowling and off-the-field, Australia is now comfortable with the notion of competing with the home nations in their backyard. The mystique and fear have largely been replaced by cultural familiarity and supreme adaptability in all conditions. No one can argue with Australia's ability to win away from home.

The brief for Different Strokes is to be personal rather than analytical. Good: I find it very hard indeed to be dispassionate about cricket. Without passion, cricket is merely an arcane ritual of interest only to the participants and anthropologists with a taste for the bizarre.

Naturally I pay lip-service to the Corinthian ideal of a good contest, but I don’t really mean it. The last thing I want when one of my teams is playing is a good contest. What I want is for my team to win, and if it can do so without causing palpitations, sweaty palms and nail-biting, then I am entirely satisfied. As I write, Middlesex have won five games in a row, and only the first, the championship game against Derbyshire, was anything less than a walloping. What with England doing rather nicely against the Kiwis over the weekend and even Yorkshire finally managing to win a T20 yesterday, I am a pretty happy bunny right now.

Victory is all the sweeter when it comes against your traditional rivals, which in county cricket usually means your next-door neighbours. Beating Essex three times in a week is pretty good, but giving them three comprehensive towellings is even better.

In the championship game, overcast conditions gave us an early advantage which we proceeded to cash in on to the eventual tune of an innings win, but Essex still played as though they meant it. The T20s, though, were another matter. At Lord’s, Essex’s batting was clueless, a succession of skied catches meaning they did not even reach 120, which they followed up by dropping half a dozen chances as Eoin Morgan gave us a bit of a show on the waltz to triumph, then at Chelmsford they were undone by a hat-trick from Nannes in his second over and Middlesex again strolled home. If the prospect of millions from the Champions League is supposed to be concentrating county cricketers’ minds, the conclusion to be drawn is that Essex’s are concentrating on blue funk.

Professional journalists are sometimes a little envious of the unconditional freedom enjoyed by self-published literary crusaders on the Internet, but the truth is, only the good and credible get read. One of the wonderful things about wandering online is discovering new writers and new ideas: original, startling, delightful, provocative, and sometimes all of those together.

Different Strokes is a modest attempt at finding some of these voices and bringing them to you. None of the contributors here are professional cricket writers. And it is an advantage. They carry none of the cynicism that familiarity can breed, nor are they inured to the foibles of the game. Distance can bring wonder, as it can bring perspective. We don’t expect their views to always match ours, but we do expect their voices to enhance our offering to you.

A couple of our contributors are teachers, one is an amateur cricketer, and another is a database consultant. More are expected to join them soon. We’d like to regard them as enlightened lovers of the game we all cherish. Sambit Bal is Editor, Cricinfo