OZ TO CHANGE HOW CRICKET IS PLAYED

Australia may become the first country to resume cricketing activities, and it could happen by the end of this month after Cricket Australia put in place protocols.

NEWDELHI: Australia may become the first country to resume cricketing activities, and it could happen by the end of this month. According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald, Cricket Australia (CA) is putting in place protocols that will allow Australia’s pre-season to begin at the end of May. Heading the efforts are CA’s chief medical officer Dr John Orchard, and its head of sports science and sports medicine, Alex Kountouris.

Both were part of the team that created an exhaustive return-tosport guide, published recently by the Australian Institute of Sports, the country’s high performance centre. Those guidelines made it clear that using sweat and saliva to shine the ball will be stopped. The latest report details some more of what could become cricket’s “new normal”.

For one, there will be no team huddles – those intense few seconds when the entire team squeezes together to listen to impassioned words from the captain (and you, the viewer, wonder just what Virat Kohli is saying with such ferocity).

“It will be a spaced huddle,” Kountouris told Sydney Morning Herald. “It will be the new norm.

That’s one of those things, the physical distancing for the time being, that will definitely be out until a vaccine or some sort of solution like that [comes up].”

Off field, CA plans to serve players prepackaged foods instead of open buffets, and restrict the use of locker rooms.

On field, expect also the end of frenzied celebrations, of players running towards each other after the fall of a wicket, high-fiving, or hugging.

“I think we’ll have to find a different way to celebrate, they’ll have to be innovative,” Kountouris said. Ajinkya Rahane has one such suggestion. “Now celebrating a wicket will be like doing a Namaste…just stay at your place like old times, don’t need to run in from the boundary, you can do namaste,” he said.

Kountouris specifically rules out a particularly Aussie celebration, where the wicket-taking bowler’s hair is mussed up by everyone in the team. But he may not have to worry about that, because there is a high possibility that cricketers will take the field en masse with shaved heads.

With no cheering (or jeering) mass of spectators, and no spontaneous bursts of celebrations – imagine Kohli not taking off screaming after an Indian bowler takes a wicket, but standing in place and folding his hands in respect – what would cricket feel like?

As Rahane points out, there is precedence for it. The ‘gentleman’s game’ was once every bit as stiff as its inventors wanted it to be. In the legendary match between Australia and England in Manchester in 1956, where Jim Laker picked up 19 wickets, the celebrations were restricted to players standing in position and clapping politely.

For most of its existence, cricket has been a stoic sport.

“In the 70s I don’t think we were a lot different in our celebrations to previous Australian sides,” Ian Chappell told espncricinfo.in. “I have seen footage of [Bob] Massie taking 16 wickets at Lord’s and our celebrations are pretty muted. It was the way we carried on most of the time. We got excited by the odd dismissal when [Geoff] Boycott was dismissed at Lord’s in ‘72 we got a bit excited…”

It was only in the late 1970s, when the great West Indies let loose in their triumph, that cricket became more joyous in its celebrations. Think Viv Richards scampering around and high-fiving everyone after a wicket.

The new normal may see cricket revisiting a long past era of inscrutable restraint.