Swaranjeet Singh - ARTICLES

Sir Alec Bedser, one of the game’s all time greats, passed away last Sunday. Swaranjeet wonders how much the current generation knows about this giant besides his being one of cricket’s famous identical twins . . .

For more than three quarters of a century their has been near unanimity amongst cricketers and the lovers of the game about Cardus being the greatest of cricket writers. Yet a few have chosen to criticise him for living in the past, “fictionalise his accounts of the game and worse. Swaranjeet takes up issue with these claims.

It appears to the writer that there is an acute shortage of “interesting questions” in the cacophony of debate about cricket’s future. Here is a start. . .

Sehwag is not a man deficient in technique. He has adjusted his technique to suit the aggressive intent that is the essence of his game. He does not care what we think and say about his footwork. He cares about what he does to the ball and in that his philosophy is simple and uncluttered.

Sehwag’s batting irks traditionalists and Bradman who had a similar effect on them provides us the context for understanding Sehwag’s apparent defiance of what we euphemistically call conventional wisdom or tradition.

Is Test cricket becoming less of a contest between bat and ball? Are flat pitches ruining the longer form of the game? Swaranjeet wonders if Test cricket is becoming so batsman-friendly it verges on boring.

I have been looking for a book on Grimmett for close to thirty years; yet I refused to buy this offering from the Australian off spinner of the sixties.

What do they know of Cricket who only cricket know. All the world is a stage, all the world, including the cricket-field, and all the men and women merely players.

Sunil Gavaskar turned sixty today. I too will turn sixty in seven months time and that, perhaps, makes it easier to accept Sunil Gavaskar as an old man (if sixty is old) and not the same youngster who so very suddenly burst upon the collective psyche of Indian cricket fans thirty-nine winterrs ago.

Eight bodies, embodying the campaigns of eight groups of warriors and the hopes, aspirations, desires and dreams of their zillions of supporters, were brought to us in this years edition of the Indian Premier League.