What goes around comes around

As anyone who watched agog during this summer’s unputdownable Ashes series will testify, cricket at its very best is a game of ebb and flow. No single incident can be deemed to have turned a match, precisely because – in a sport that is tussled over for five days straight – there is plenty time for a wounded side to right a perceived wrong.

If we are to accept this basic premise – and let’s face it, only the most one-eyed of partisans would prefer to watch a two-day rout ahead of a bumsqueaking cliffhanger a la Edgbaston 2005 – then to take the expression back to its tidal origins, we find ourselves one step short of saying: “what comes around goes around”. Which is where my argument against technology comes in.

It’s all too easy to get overly emotional about cricket. While England are winning back the Ashes, or while Sourav Ganguly is toying with Indian emotions like an electric violinist, it can seem like the most important thing on earth. But then, along comes a tragedy like the tsunami or the Kashmir earthquake, and you are jolted back to accepting the reality of sport. We love it because it is a break from the norm – a living and breathing metaphor for our everyday anxieties, but one that matters not a dickybird in the grander scheme of things. Last time I checked, Australia had not ceased to exist as of 6.15pm on September 12, 2005.

While researching my argument, and in keeping with the new technological era we are trying to embrace, I stuck the phrase “Life is an elaborate metaphor for cricket” into Google. This is a bon mot of hazy origin, and I finished my search none the wiser as to its origins. But I did nonetheless unearth an entire colony of Blogs, all of which trumpeted these exact words across the tops of their homepages.

The point is not entirely a digression. The fact is, there exists an entire universe of people who love the game precisely for what it is. Inherently decent, occasionally flawed, but unsurpassed as an artform when presented in a package as irresistible as the one that we have been treated to this year. Theatre did not become redundant simply because cinema allowed second takes of scenes that did not comply with the director’s vision. A great Test match is not cheapened by the faint inside-edge that may or may not have changed the course of an innings.

Errors are central to the narrative of cricket, more so than in any other sport. Did Shane Warne drop the Ashes by reprieving Kevin Pietersen on the final day at The Oval? Had Ricky Ponting already surrendered them by bowling first at Edgbaston? Would Damien Martyn have saved the day at Trent Bridge if he hadn’t been sawn off early? Would England have won 5-0 if Pietersen himself had held any of his three chances at Lord’s? Of those four examples, only one would have merited a second take. Why should we stop the symphony in order to replay a bum steer from the conductor?

For a dyed-in-the-wool Luddite such as myself, it was heartening to read Amit’s opinion of the technology trials that recently took place in the ICC Super Series. It is the interruptions of cricket’s natural rhythms that offend me, largely because TV replays often serve little purpose other than to layer red tape upon an escapist enterprise that should not be shackled in such a clumsy manner. His argument, to be fair, did not proclaim that television was the be-all-and-end-all (although that in itself shows just how quickly technology becomes obsolete these days – we can only thank our lucky stars that cricket in the 1870s didn’t suffer a similarly short shelf-life).

Instead Amit professed, with some persuasiveness, that Hawkeye is the way forward. Such technology, however, doesn’t come cheap. It is all very well offering it up to the very top table of the game, but what of the lower reaches? Umpiring is a thankless task, yes, but it becomes even more so if those who persevere through the grind of the first-class circuit are denied the opportunity to reach the top of their trade. People in all walks of live are paid good money to trust their judgment in moments of extreme pressure. Umpires, like city traders, are only human.

Some errors, however, are less forgivable than others. Even I wince at those instances when the naked eye in the armchair could have made a better judgment than the man in the middle, because in an instant all the veneer is stripped away from my argument. To counter those injustices, I call upon the appeal system – as proposed by Duncan Fletcher among others – in which up to three contentious decisions can be called into question per match. That way, the best of both worlds can be accommodated, and the narrative of cricket can continue unhindered on its prescribed course.