There have been 91 overs of play in the first ODI between India and Australia at the Maharashtra Cricket Association’s new stadium on the outskirts of Pune. India are 196/7 and Mahendra Singh Dhoni has just been bowled by a superb leg cutter from Clint McKay. Australia will most probably go on to win this game from here.
The spectators at the ground have just watched 41 world class overs in the field by a purposeful Australian team. Yet, you wouldn’t know it. Everything other than Indian runs have been greeted by a numb silence. After Ravindra Jadeja was out caught at mid-on, Ravichandran Ashwin came to the wicket and played his first ball behind square on the off side and took off for what he assumed would be a simple single. Glenn Maxwell at cover point prevented this with a miraculously well timed dived. The ball was bouncing awkwardly, and must have had quite a bit of spin on it as balls chopped into the ground tend to have. Yet, he gathered it cleanly, as though his body was made of material to which a cricket ball is naturally attracted.
Any reasonable human being who watched this with his or her eyes open, assuming that such a human being had come to watch cricket, would have been up on their feet. Consider the facts. India had just lost a big wicket. Dhoni and Ashwin were at the wicket. Maxwell’s field was an act of cricketing excellence which signaled that Australia – one of the world’s top one day outfits were performing at the top of their game in the field. Yet, this audience seemed to see nothing. They had not even the minimal generosity of spirit to appreciate a quality bit of fielding, even though it did not cost India a wicket.
The 41 overs of Indian batting have shown why cricket is still possible in the 50 over game, while it is not in any reasonable sense in the 20 over game. Bowlers are able to bowl a length and a line and expect it to be a good ball. There are some risks batsmen are just not able to reasonably take. It is a form of cricket which separates aimless bowling from Ishant Sharma from the purposeful bowling of James Faulkner, Clint McKay or Shane Watson. I’m leaving Mitchell Johnson out of this comparison because the Indian is comparable to Faulkner, McKay and Watson in pace, not Johnson. The Australian tactic of keeping India’s batsmen honest by bowling short of a length and at the body worked because there was enough life in the wicket in the late evening to make the “stand and deliver” style fraught with danger. The Australians bowled very little without deliberation.
All this seemed to be lost on this crowd. All this cricket seemed to be lost on this crowd. People at the ground have paid between 750 and 60,000 rupees a ticket (the largest chunk of tickets cost 1500 or 1750) at a ground which is far away from the city, not reachable easily using public transport. This is an upwardly mobile, urban crowd. This audience is nothing like the 90,000 who used to be packed into the Eden Gardens in the 1990s, paying 20 Rupees for a ticket once a year.
It is sad that a brilliant Australian performance in the field was ignored by the spectators at the MCA stadium. Very few things at a cricket match are more dispiriting than a brilliant piece of fielding, or a brilliant sequence of deliveries met with silence – as if nothing happened, as if there was a rain break going on. All only because it benefits the wrong team. One would expect a more affluent audience to be more discerning, thoughtful one. But this is not so.
Audiences in Mumbai tend to be at least a little bit sporting. A fine cover drive by a visiting batsman will receive a smattering of applause. Yes, there are parts of the Mumbai crowd that will heckle specific players, often in disgustingly racist terms, but those are exceptions in the crowd. What we see at the MCA stadium is a different problem – that of mass disinterest in the game itself. The behavior of the crowd could be simply described. Anything that benefited India’s position in the game was met with applause and cheers. Anything which benefited Australia’s position in the game was met with silence.
When Cricket becomes a commodity, the central casualty is discernment. This is not how I remember cricket crowds at the Wankhede stadium when I first went there to watch cricket as a teenager. Then, crowds would be partisan, raucous, perhaps not the kind of the crowds my father was used to when he grew up watching cricket in the 1960s. But they were still crowds watching cricket – people capable of appreciating a maiden over by Glenn McGrath. People who would react differently when Amit Pagnis lofted Shane Warne against the break over cover, and when he aimed a cover drive but the ball flew through third man to the boundary. Teenagers in today’s crowds are receiving a very different education. I’m not that old either. Crowds at the Wankhede in the 2001 Test, I remember clearly, would generously applaud a fine cover drive by Michael Slater, or a sweep by Mathew Hayden. Hayden and Slater were not Australia’s big stars in 2001, they were decidedly second tier. Yet, when they played, they must have felt that people watching them play were doing precisely that – watching they play.
What was the crowd at the MCA stadium doing? Why were all those people at that ground? It is sad that we invite players from across the oceans and then behave as though they aren’t even present at the match. Some polite applause at the prize distribution following total apathy during the game is worse than no applause at all.
There is more to cricket than boundaries hit by Indian batsmen. Is it part of the BCCI role as the governing body of the sport to find ways to teach their audiences about this? In my view, it certainly is. But the BCCI seems to think that cricket is basically little more than something sold over the counter. It is no surprise that audiences are beginning to think this way too.
