Return of the bowler

Over the past few weeks, I have painted myself into a corner by promising to write on many things but getting left behind as new issues and events demanding immediate attention kept cropping up. I promised to write on Task Force 121 and continue with the budget. I definitely remember promising to write about the T20 World Cup instead of getting diverted into 'praise' of India and that's just what I am going to do.
Don't be surprised if this short version of that takes between 3 to 4 hours replaces the 50-Over version entirely, which takes an entire day. As I said, in this frenetic world, where people have to fight everyday to earn a living, no one has an entire day to waste. The T20 World Cup was over in about two weeks, unlike the last 50-Over ODI World Cup in the West Indies which just went on and on like World War II.
Ian Chappell said: "This has been a format that has both entertained and educated." Why? There are many reasons, but the main one is that for the first time we had the most balanced matches in either of the short versions of the game, not dominated by batsmen alone with bowlers as sacrificial lambs on batsmen-friendly pitches that gave them nothing.
What made the difference? Three things, more than any other.
· The wickets had something in them for everyone. It is significant that there were only 166 sixes in the tournament; in the semi-finals and finals, sixes became rare.
· Spinners came into their own because spinners on slow wickets turning enough become difficult to hit. A score of 130 became difficult to chase while in earlier times, anything less than 180 was uncertain.
· By pulling back the boundaries and making grounds larger they equalised the contest between bat and ball.
The earlier batsmen-friendly pitches did some good, though, because they forced bowlers to add more to their armoury, like the doosra (invented by Pakistan, I say with some trepidation lest I offend the Indians). Earlier, Imran, then Waseem and Waqar, started making the ball talk in the air, making pitches irrelevant. But not everyone can do that. (I'm in grave danger of causing offence again). Now we have the 'slow bouncer'. In the old days it was called a 'long hop' that was dispatched to the boundary without fuss. Why not now?
It is perhaps because with protective armour stronger and better - helmets, armguards, thigh pads and what have you - unheard of in the old days, players' reflexes cannot expected to be the same any longer. Neither do they need to be as good of eye and movement. Nor have they learned their courage on exposed pitches. There are no Richards today, both Barry and Viv, what to talk of Bradman and Hedley. Where are the likes of Majid and Zaheer, Hanif and Gavaskar, Graeme Pollock and Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Kanhai, Worrell, Walcott and Weekes, Sobers and Miller? If these guys had helmets they would probably have got so careless that they would have got out. Which is probably why the last of the greats of the old school, Viv Richards, never wore a helmet against bowlers faster than we have today. If you don't like it, produce me an Akram, a Waqar, an Imran, a Holding or Marshall or Croft, a Lillee or Thompson... From any team. There aren't any. Not surprising, then, that the two teams with the best bowling attacks made it to the finals, not those with strong batting line-ups like India, Australia and South Africa.