Kevin Pietersen - The most romantic innings ever played (Part 1)
Romanticism has always been something attributed to the early days of cricket, where the game was presided over by fair ladies in their dresses, sipping elegantly at their afternoon tea as their Casanovas would head to the field to play some good old fashioned
cricket. It was the time that marked the rise of the glamorous world of western cinema, a time that gave cricket Sir Don Bradman, a time that was fashionable, trendy and romantic. Yes, even cricket was romantic back in those days. Don Bradman, Len Hutton and
others made it romantic.
People would travel in flocks to see these men, to watch them play. It was a time when cars began to hit the roads, when the common man felt liberated. However, this romanticism was as temporal as other such periods before it, like the time of the renaissance
as they soon came to a rather monotonous standstill. Things were still moving, but not so rapidly. There was steady momentum, but not quite as romantic as it had once been. Soon, people became mechanical and so did everything around them.
Romanticism was sporadic after that golden period. We were given glimpses of it, just enough to make us crave for more. I truly crave comebacks, that too some magical ones. Comebacks that manage to, for a single second or more, lift our souls beyond the
realm of reality into a fictitious utopian world where romanticism thrives, a world that gives us that innate pleasure, that craving for it to last forever.
For a long time now, the world of cricket was getting plagued by the bitter pill of capitalism that brings with it, the concept of demand and supply, the concept of marketing, the concept of commercialism, the drive for higher profits. In some ways, it simply
kills the romanticism, the essence of something truly sublime. I despise Twenty20 cricket from the core of my heart, since I believe that it is simply an attempt to make the game more commercial by killing the essence of it. It gives the viewer just enough,
but not enough.
Were it for the T20 form of cricket, would the world have known a Don Bradman or a Sachin Tendulkar or Sir Vivian Richards or Sir Gary Sobers or Imran Khan?
This year has been a true revelation for the average cricket fan. The extent of romanticism and comebacks witnessed this year, the amount of achievements, the tally of record breaking partnerships have just been staggering. The year 2010 has been the year
of cricket in the most romantic of ways. It has been a year of comebacks; it has been a time where cricket decided to take its inhabitants to a beautiful honeymoon.
The way Malinga and Matthews won the ODI match for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754.
The triple century of Chris Gayle, the double century of Alastair Cook, a man who has been under immense scrutiny and the remarkable comeback of a man we never doubted - Kevin Pietersen.
All of which makes me fear for the future of the world. For when this last happened in the 1930s, a time when five triple hundreds were scored in a span of just 89 Tests, it eventually culminated into the Second World War. A climax simply ends up building
into an anti-climax and vice versa. That is how it has happened so far.
To be continued in Part 2...
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