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 You can shout from the rooftops, you can sing it as a lullaby; you can print it in a textbook or say it quietly in an inconsequential piece like this one. But nobody will listen to the oldest truth of this game. Good pitches produce good cricket, bad pitches produce bad cricket. A fifth- day pitch that is as sleepy as a backbencher in a civics class is a bad pitch. And so we have had a bad Test match. Maybe we should ask Shahrukh to make a film about it, maybe we should get a Kareena Kapoor or a Priyanka Chopra to enact a raunchy number about it and maybe then, somebody will emerge from the shatteringly important issue of writing columns to listen.

It doesn’t matter whether or not the chairman of selectors writes a column. It does matter if we play boring Test matches. So where then do the priorities lie? And the disease is spreading. I have been asked to be on a radio programme and a television show about the Vengsarkar issue but nobody has asked why we are playing cricket on slow, low, pedestrian pitches. Soon our idea of livening up pitches will be to get a starlet to dance on it, or a tarot card reader to spread her cards on it! I turned down both requests by the way. I find the Vengsarkar issue trivial and unnecessary. The playing of cricket is getting increasingly marginalised from the cricket world.

And so we continue to send out the wrong signals. We don’t have to worry about a coach, about a permanent manager, about a cricket calendar, about unhappy captains, about systems for selectors to work within. Or about pitches and bright cricket. In three weeks we play a Test match in Melbourne on what is bound to be a fresh, bouncy pitch. India will need three seamers in the playing eleven. Today, we cannot find two to pick in the first fifteen. But the most important thing about the selection committee meeting is not that. It is about whether or not the chairman of selectors will attend. Really!

Let’s cast our minds elsewhere then. Two great Sri Lankans have been in the news. One is the proud, rightful owner of a world record that may well stand for decades, if not in perpetuity; the other has, interestingly, gone against the trend and retired from Test cricket to focus on one-day cricket. Those are happier tales; of humble men who achieved big things, of the men who make watching sport a worthwhile activity.

Murali is a fine man who has achieved success in all conditions. Ignore that record in Australia, for there is a chink in every man’s armour. Warne struggled in India, Tendulkar’s record against South Africa isn’t as awesome as everything else he has done and Botham never came to terms with playing against the West Indies. If Murali’s action was the only thing that contributed to his success surely there should have been ten other Muralis by now. He has done what any man could have, he has made his point and if batsmen still can’t pick him, let’s acknowledge his genius for that is what it is. A simple man has performed brave deeds and the modern holy trinity of Warne, Murali and Kumble have made spin bowling eminently watchable. Let’s raise a toast to that.

And to that other humble destroyer, Sanath Jayasuriya. Batting in Test cricket is a more difficult profession than it is in one-day cricket and he has acknowledged that. His departure from Test cricket was imminent; runs were hard to come by, he was probably counting the singles when he might have missed a couple of boundaries in his prime, and the voice from within had spoken. But interestingly, unlike many others who give up one-day cricket to concentrate on the longer version, he has gone the other way and it makes so much sense. He still bats with freedom in the one-day game, is still Sri Lanka’s talisman cricketer even if the ball doesn’t quite obey the bowling arm every time and has set a precedent that some others might do well to follow. And even though he is now scoring runs in both Tests and one-dayers, I can well imagine that when the time comes for Tendulkar to choose, staying on in one-day cricket might be the better option.

And hopefully we won’t be debating his columns! And on that note has anyone wondered why these “columns” are so insipid, so devoid of any insight.

Maybe the young men and women in office backrooms, putting famous names onto their modest efforts need to be a little more creative. Maybe they need to give their cricket stars a point of view.