There are times when cricket’s obsession with individual milestones – one’s own or someone else’s – does not sit well with a professional sport.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you would have known how Wiaan Mulder had kept the cricket fraternity hooked to his score before dropping the declaration bombshell out of nowhere.
Mulder explained his decision after the day’s play. He was on 367 at lunch, 34 runs away from history. “Listen, let the legends keep the really big scores,” head coach Shukri Conrad advised him at the break. So Mulder declared, and Brian Lara kept his world record.
Conrad’s words and Mulder’s declaration baffled some. Among them was Dale Steyn, who wondered why Conrad had not applied the same reasoning when Mulder went past Hashim Amla’s South African record of 311. One can always contemplate who is legendary enough to “keep” the records and who is not.
A few days before Mulder’s act, Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep had reduced England from 387-5 to 407-9 in the first innings at Headingley. Having taken the ninth wicket – his fifth – with the first ball of an over, Siraj had a word with his new-ball partner: “Shall I bowl outside the off-stump so that you can have your maiden five-for?” No, said Akash.
Two things connect these seemingly unrelated incidents (one of which was not even implemented). One, both follow a long string of incidents (we shall come to that). And two, in both instances, professional cricketers wanted to attempt something that would go against the team’s cause – but the act would be hailed as noble.
India won the Test match at Edgbaston by 336 runs. South Africa won by an innings and plenty. Neither incident affected the course of the Test. But they could have. Mulder’s declaration or Siraj’s offer did not hurt their teams – but they could have.
Don Bradman fell for 234 at Sydney in the 1946/47 Ashes. Later in the innings, Sid Barnes skied a ball and got out for the same score. In his autobiography, Barnes admitted to not wanting to cross Bradman’s score.
At Peshawar in 1998/99, Mark Taylor finished the second day on 334, level with Bradman’s Australian record. Taylor wanted to make the Pakistan openers field for twenty minutes on the third morning but decided against it: “I would then end up on 340 not out or something like that and I think people would have assumed that I’d batted on just for my own glory.”
So determined was Taylor to come across as unselfish that he was willing to forgo what was, by his own admission, right for the team.
Javagal Srinath followed the “unanimous decision” of bowling wide of the stumps when Anil Kumble took the first nine wickets at Delhi in 1998/99. Kumble himself had been there, done that in 1993/94, when Kapil Dev had been chasing Richard Hadlee’s world record of 431 Test wickets. No pesky tail-ender ended up thwarting India, but they could have.
Towering above all is the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot. When BB Nimbalkar (443 not out) came within touching distance of Bradman’s then first-class record of 452 not out, he forfeited a Ranji Trophy game: he felt that the Kathiawar team “would figure in the record book for the wrong reasons”.
Each of these decisions came down to milestones. Some wanted records for their teammates. Some ensured they did not come across as record-hunters and allowed legends to “keep” the records. None of these acts was done with the team in mind.
Uncharacteristic acts
Against Sussex in 1893, WG Grace declared on 93 to complete the full set between 1 and 100 (unlike many Grace stories, this one checks out). And against Middlesex in 1938, Bradman declared a few minutes before stumps to allow Bill Edrich to get to that coveted thousand runs in May. “I felt I just could not let him down,” Edrich admitted after getting there.
While these did not hurt the cause of a team, they are worth mentioning because the two legends abandoned their characteristic ruthlessness. The lure of a contrived milestone prompted Grace to forgo his famous pursuit of runs. Bradman had a rare moment where he made an allowance for an opposition cricketer.
At the other end of the spectrum
Sachin Tendulkar, Javed Miandad, and Graeme Hick were famously left stranded on 194, 280, and 98 because Rahul Dravid, Imran Khan, and Michael Atherton declared the respective innings. None of the batters was happy about these missed milestones, and the declarations were discussed and debated for years.
There, too, the individual milestone became the focus of the incident in a team sport – albeit in a different way. Not the team.
A miss is as good as a milestone
Cricket loves its individual achievements. Fifties and hundreds and five-fors are celebrated by cricketers or fans, and are part of career records. When someone rises up the all-time runs or wickets charts, they become part of the news cycle.
While being a team sport, cricket is an individual sport in a way, for every ball is a contest of one against one. While collective success is the obvious ultimate goal, records and milestones are what cricketers are remembered by.
The obsession with milestones convinces cricketers, albeit for a brief phase, to put the achievement of an individual above the course of the game. These sentiments are a throwback to an era when the amateurs used to control both the written Laws and the unwritten sense of morality and ethics of cricket. That is not the case anymore.
To be the professional team sport it claims to be, cricket needs to detach itself from its obsession of personal milestones.
