Another limited overs tournament is upon us, another experiment in this ever-evolving laboratory. New rules will be tried out, new people will seek to make their mark, new stars will be sighted, some declines will be confirmed. And as observers, we will know whether our thinking is accurate or, as so often happens, limited by our own imagination.

Graeme Smith, a young man doing an older man’s job, said something recently that must set all of us thinking. When South Africa amassed 418 against Zimbabwe he said that on another day his team might have been satisfied with 320, which would just as certainly have won them the match. Instead, he said, they chose to look beyond and discovered that 418, which the mind would have been tempted into thinking was infeasible, was actually just round the corner.

South Africa are actually a very good side to study because twice in recent months they have stretched the definition of what is possible. The idea that 430 against the best team in the world could be chased down had to belong to the realm of the idiotic or the romantic. Some believe the two are not that far apart! But what South Africa discovered that day was that while the mind knows no limits, our understanding of the mind merely acts as an obstacle to it. We thought 400 in a normal 50 over game wasn’t possible just as our ancestors thought a machine could not fly.

And so this one-day game, indeed cricket itself, constantly challenges us to relook at what we think is possible. The internet is 10 years old in India, dodgy dial-up lines are still all over the place and reside alongside a ridiculously fast broadband line. We thought oil was not meant to breach the 40-dollar mark. And so who knows what the game is going to throw at us next. And indeed, may we never know so that we can continue to watch, transfixed, limited by our bleak understanding of what the mind is capable of.

... contd.