Bull's Eye

It is indeed proof of the Lord바카라™s existence that, at this impoverished juncture, a diversion has arrived in the shape of Twenty20. We don바카라™t know what the god-fearing Pakistanis feel being led onto the ground by Afrikaner/Zulu bokkies in hot cargo pants. Or what manner of strategic beast lurks behind a Bangladeshi scorecard that goes 6W6W6W (or whether the dancing girls get cramps at the end of it). It바카라™s all planets away from the subtle metaphysics of Test cricket. T20 doesn바카라™t believe much in the prolongation (or absence) of suspense, those elegant leaves outside the off, those portly earls soaking in the diurnal rhythms of summer. But it바카라™s still good ol바카라™ wood on leather바카라”and is it too much to ask sportsmen to get a bit physical? How good Pakistan look now, having sacked the podgy, bearded Tablighis with too little faith in themselves and lassoed in a fresh rangy, mountain crop. And those boys straight from the ponds of Mymensingh바카라”what unleveed spunk! Why, one even spies a few in their late 바카라˜twirties바카라™ (that oarsman from Matara, a jack-in-the-box called Brad Hogg) prancing around the park like gazelles in heat.

The real surprise is, for all the bad press about the game being bowdlerised for dummies and neophytes in New Guinea, how much it is like cricket. Spanking good, finger-lickin바카라™ cricket. Not some mutant turtle ninjutsu for the delectation of those who drink genetically modified water, read Japanese robot manga and have a vocabulary somewhere between basic and cobol. T20, if you ask me, is a threat not to Tests but to odis, of which it바카라™s a satisfyingly soccerised variant. Nostalgic for a famous 36 n.o. in 60 overs? You바카라™re neanderthal. You belong under the permafrost in the Siberian tundra with all those tonnes of woolly mammoth dung. Don바카라™t watch cricket? Tough luck. As Advani once said, "Desh ka vayumandal kharab hai". (He wasn바카라™t talking carbon emissions.) Go gently on that sandy bridge from geology to theology....