Cricket surrenders to fast-food society (4 December 1998)

4 December 1998

Cricket surrenders to fast-food society

By Chris Laidlaw

International cricket is a bit like pregnancy. There are several options. Going to full term is the convention and many of the old-fashioned five-day tests seem almost as drawn out as a nine-month gestation. Kerry Packer, an Australian in a hurry, brought us the one-day stuff, a premature delivery. Now we have the morning after pill -- Max cricket -- the object of which appears to be to terminate things as soon as possible after they start.

Cricket Max was one of those things that was just waiting to be invented. It signals the unconditional surrender of cricket to the demands of the sound bite. Coverage of a full five-day test isn't a money spinner any more. It is 95 per cent down time and five per cent action, not an appealing ratio in the commercial era.

Even conventional one-day affairs are far too long for the cable operators who want to make a faster buck through sport. What the pay channels want is a game with all down time eliminated. Reflective moments are for slow coaches and the dim witted. Max is for the alert consumer. For the enthusiast who prefers to consume his cricket into one short, madcap scramble; a blur of swing and hope.

Players are under strict instructions to keep walking to an absolute minimum. None of that pretentious behaviour on arrival at the crease designed to infuriate the opposing bowler -- pulling at the pads, adjusting the helmet, calling for new gloves or gesticulating at the last second for the sight-screen to be moved this way or that; no gazing round to check the field placements three times before taking strike, or, worst of all, straying ostentatiously down the wicket to tap at some imaginary imperfection in the pitch with the bat.

No mucking about between overs; there is one 30-second commercial break and it must be stuck to. No hanging about after you're out, unless you intend to indulge in histrionics in which case exceptions can be made for dramatic effect. Gone, from the viewer's perspective, are all those languid opportunities to watch the grass grow or to follow the progress of seagulls mating under the sight-screen.

You have to admit that Max has a certain pizzazz. Anything less than 15 runs an over is pedestrian. Anything less than 10 is letting the side down. Chris Cairns knocked up 50 in a single over a couple of weeks ago. In the good old days, Geoff Boycott would allow himself a couple of days to put a half century on the board while the punters quietly slumbered around the ground. The scorekeepers are now equipped with calculators and ambitious parents are using cricket Max games as maths tests for the kids.

It is intriguing to see all the rules of stroke play broken in a single over. Round arm jabs and manufactured swipes designed to get the ball over the top into the Eldorado of the Max Zone, and double your score, have completely replaced conventional stroke making.

Serious coaches are beginning to grumble about the effect this is going to have on players' techniques. Nobody seems to be taking any notice of these killjoys. They said the same thing about one-day cricket when it first started and improvisation replaced classicism.

In any case it is arguable whether abstinence from the cricket Max competition would make much difference to our Black Caps' penchant for turning victory into defeat.

Heaven only knows what Don Bradman makes of it all, if anything. You would have thought it would appeal to Geoff Boycott who seems to have developed a taste for the rough and tumble, but even he apparently feels this is going too far.

But if Boycott is against it, then Yorkshire should be for it and with a little luck we will see this new hybrid species marketed to the rest of the world. Yet another example of leadership in the free market from New Zealand.

Source :: The Christchurch Press (https://www.press.co.nz/)