The proponents of the game of cricket must have been very philosophical indeed. No other attribute can be deemed more accurate for including the controversial L.B.W rule in the rule book. The rule is fairly simple. It's ambiguities stem from it's interpretation by the wise old umpires in the heat of the battle. For some, it turns out to be lucky breaks. Some are given out, when they least expect it. What it is and how it will pan out and affect the course of a game is any one's guess, but in spite of all it's short-comings, it has one oft over-looked quality. It balances things somehow in the game's larger interests, just as we expect life to be one large roller-coaster with it's high shrieks of joy and miserable lowly pits. Well, that's the expectation anyway...
I am not aware of any other game where apart from skill, such a huge slice of luck is required. Football with it's offside rule and the exceptionally rare hand of God goal by Maradona might seem to come close, but in reality, it is by no means even a distant second. The L.B.W is and will always remain the striking force, it is, for it's consistency in causing upsets, when least expected, just as it happens around us.
If you thought L.B.W was the holy grail of cricket's balance, then think again. The toss, the nature of the pitch, the whims of the rain lord, the run rate calculation algorithm might occasionally have even bigger impacts. Couple them all together, and you have a game which can be dull and prosaic even before the first ball is bowled or head for a pulsating humdinger, where the result is not known even after the last ball is bowled. so it is with life.
With the advent of close range cameras, hawk eyes and a lot more technological sophistication, a lot of decisions are under constant scrutiny. Each shot is analyzed and re-looked from various angles, until you start debating whether there could be a phase beyond boredom. What would you prefer? Re-analyze everything or know that Kapil Dev did play a chance-less innings and rescued India from a impossible situation with a knock of 175. There was a strike that day and that glorious innings was never captured on video. That, however does not take it's importance away, but rather only serves to magnify it. The aura of mystery continues to remain, as long as it is not replayed. That, it was never recorded happened for a reason, perhaps to remind us that it is futile to re-play incidents, happy or sad.
Recently there has been no dearth of bending the game's rules. More rules to challenge the umpire, their decisions, even to the extent of going ahead to sack them. Almost everyone seems to welcome some of these latest additions. Little do they realize, that they are robbing the game of cricket of one of it's glorious natures, that of holding a mirror to it's alter ego, the game of life.
For within the confines of cricketing uncertainties, lies the certainties of life, and that being, life itself is uncertain ...
I have no inclination to blog, though this site was created quite some time back. The site has been crying out to me, every now and then to put up something. It only seemed fitting that I humour it's dearest wish by posting what I did, to remind itself, in no uncertain terms about it's own future...
