WHEN THE DULL GREATS ARE DEEMED WISE

WHEN THE DULL GREATS ARE DEEMED WISE

The cricket bat is brainless but has a fine cricketing brain. How true is that? Same with some of our great batsmen of phenomenal performance on the field and terrible before the microphone. Brainless otherwise, yet apparently possessed with a fine cricketing brain. How true could that be as well? Not Rahul Dravid, though, whose 2011 Bradman Oration proved his credentials as a fine thinker unlike some of his compatriots whose eminence with the bat allows them to run away with the epithet of being brainy, cricket-wise that is, when whenever they open their mouths, they prove themselves to be Shakespeare's Antonio of pretentious wisdom till he opens his mouth as well to prove the Bard right. To sum it up, let it be said that a cricketer of scant merit as a thinker, rational and deep, can hardly be deemed one possessed with a fine cricketing brain. The Indian cricket scene is so full of such pretentious igoramuses that one wishes a redemption from such brazen foolery. Alas, when will our cricketers, past and present, learn to learn more about the great game's history and tradition? When will they learn to be coherent in their understanding, appreciation and expression of such? Alas, when?

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Rahul Dravid delivering the Bradman Oration in 2011, a solitary exception to the general rule of Indian cricketers being devoid of deep thinking capacity and rational articulation thereof.