After Y2K

If the 1990s is to be remembered as the era of the great spin bowlers, the next eight years must surely belong to the wicketkeepers. Ian Healy and Jeff Dujon could never have imagined that their legacy has been embraced by the next generation who have turned that position into a genuine all-rounder role. Just about every country, England and West Indies notwithstanding, have a wicketkeeper who now wins matches regularly by his batting alone. Even trawling through the history books, I can’t remember an era when that was the case.

The decade began with the scandals involving Hansie Cronje and Mohammad Azharuddin. It brought home the dangers of a game that was in some sense a victim of its own television popularity. With so many meaningless ODI tournaments being televised around the world, it was a fertile environment for a particular type of gambling that allowed players to perhaps comfort themselves that they weren’t actually throwing a match. They were merely engineering a small period of play within the context of a longer game. Or so they believed.

We also saw the emergence of an opening partnership to match the Greenidge-Haynes combination, perhaps even surpass those statistics. Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer took aggressive opening batting to new heights and with players of the calibre of Ricky Ponting (and others), Australia remain market leaders in most aspects of the game.

Speaking of partnerships, we saw the great Dravid-Laxman effort in Kolkata which was on a par with the Gilchrist-Langer effort in Hobart 1999. Brian Lara and Hayden traded world record scores, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne traded bowling records while Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar started hitting speeds that hadn’t been touched for 30 years. It just seemed like a decade of high octane, high performance events that kept coming. Players from all around the world seemed to be treating statistics and records as a personal challenge. Even hat-tricks seem to happen more regularly these days.

Technology has played a major role in this decade too. History will show that innovations like HawkEye and the recent third umpire referrals had a profound effect on the game. Even in coaching circles, software analysis is now considered to be an indispensable part of a dressing-room environment. It’s barely a sport anymore, more like a scientific laboratory that produces F1 racing cars - fast, exciting and highly tuned machines!

There are too many wonderful players to mention in a short article like this, lest anyone take offence at notable omissions. It would not be proper to allow the retirement of one Brian Lara to go unmentioned though. That unique back lift and penchant for huge individual scores, married to a complex personality and a fantastic reputation for honouring the spirit of cricket makes him one of cricket’s most unforgettable memories. The decade marked the retirement of his notable peers too. The Waugh twins, Inzamam Ul Haq, Wasim Akram, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Aravinda De Silva – where do we draw the line? I can think of a dozen more great names.

On-field, cricket is a strong product. In the boardrooms and corridors of power though, there are serious geopolitical issues that remain unresolved. Allowed to fester, they may yet unravel the wonderful entertainment spectacle that is the modern game. From the IPL and T20 cricket to the status of Zimbabwe to the possible boycott of the 2008 Champions Trophy, these are all issues that need strong leadership by the ‘suits’. They need to be reminded that behind the accountants and television executives, there are now millions of global cricket fans who simply want to see the best cricketers in earnest competition with each other.

The two World Cups of this decade were pretty uninspiring events but that is not Australia’s fault. They have been simply superb in big tournaments, having not lost a World Cup game since May 23 1999. The onus is on the challengers to breathe new life into a tired format because after that terrible farce in the dark of Barbados in 2007, it was Australia first and daylight second. Well, twilight anyway!