Thursday 11 April 2013

Pondulkar, the IPL and nostalgia

Something strange happens to our old enemies as they prepare the leave the field. Age strips them of their armour, and as it does, they become something else, something different. Their power fades, and from underneath it comes the fuller man.

The blindness has been ours rather than theirs of course. Cricket is a game built on nostalgia of one kind or another: for what was, and for what might have been.

The IPL's fusion of high commerce and eye-melting spectacle may be designed for the future, yet corners of it are filled by the past. It's a happy by-product of the competition's need of fame to power its expansion that it has become a benign and accepting old folks home, an annual reunion for semi-retired warriors. There's Adam Gilchrist, chin a little sharper now and some grey in his stubble; Here comes Brett Lee, bowling an unplayable leg-cutter to a kid who was six years old when he made his Test debut; Over there is Murali, that weary arm looking ever more slender and tortured after many thousands of overs. Big Jake Oram's arrived, patched up and wobbling in to bowl. There are more, too: the noble and eternal Dravid, bristling Brad Hodge, those Hussey brothers...

Till now, they have been small pools eddying in the river,  hidden by the flow, but this year they have a headline act in Pondulkar, that irresistible pairing at the top of the Mumbai batting order. It doesn't matter that they haven't yet got many runs, or that one half of the duo is still a fully engaged international cricketer. Instead, it's just enough to see them together in an arena with some meaning. Ten years ago, they might have done some serious damage, too, but the IPL didn't exist then, and anyhow there's something uplifting about watching Ponting in particular searching for method in a format that, in his orthodoxy, he initially disdained.

Two men who will have a combined age of 78 before the tournament closes have given it exactly the kind of widescreen, technicolor glow that softens the bellowed commentary, that leavens the sponsored inanities, that connects thrusting modernity to its past.

And if that weren't service enough, they give it heart. Their epic careers trail behind them, and we all have our memories vested in those. They are champions brought back to the pack by age, old men in a young man's game, the last light of the comet's tail. It's almost impossible to watch them walk out and imagine that once, there were hundreds of thousands of people urging them to fail, because nothing befits them more than success.

That's the pull of nostalgia, and in the IPL, it pulls harder than anywhere else.

8 comments:

Fark said...

Seconded. I couldn't help myself but watch the "Pondulkar", and would be quite happy to see those individuals do well.

On a side note, I'm glad that you coined the term as "Pondulkar", and not "Tendulting"... now that just sounds like a bad stomach bug.

I love Cricket said...

Ha Ha .. You have nicely putted the points , and I am fan of your writing skills. We all know Tendulkar and Ponting are basically for test game but its all about money which bring old guns into IPL .Lets see how can they do magic with old cricket bats in lightening fast cricket named as IPL.

Cricket is Here said...

Nice information and i am agree with previous commenter on Tendulkar and Ponting. Actually IPL is not cricket its club of few Industrialist for making money. No cricket at all , just money

Anonymous said...

Gilchrist and Laxman batting together for Deccan was like all my cricketing fantasies come true.

IPL throws up some beautiful juxtapositions.

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Cricket Fans said...

After analyzing the performance of Pointing and Tendulkar in IPL 2013, it is clear that this game in not suitable for these cricket giants. They are not only disappointing there fans but also hurting there image which they earned with great sacrifice the hard work.

Cricket said...

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Eliza Eats said...

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