An era is drawing to a close. Day by day, familiar face after familiar face calls time on their career, crossing over to the abode of being a mere memory. One day it is Dimuth Karunaratne, the next it is Marcus Stoinis. Slowly but surely, our favourite athletes will lose their hair, sprout beer bellies, and become sinks for our collective indignation as they slip into a role in the commentary box.
The timeless appeal of sport has been put down to humanity's pursuit of eternal youthfulness. A question that will surely confound the aliens when they take over our planet is going to be why adult human beings bother so much with beating a ball with a stick. One answer is that sport stimulates the adult mind as much as it nourishes the adult body, and for a brief moment allows grown men to masquerade as children. The primitive desire to stay young characterizes much of the human condition, and little awakens the child in an adult as much as cheering for a home run rocketing over the outfield fence.
Yet sport also sends us periodic reminders of the transience of youth — such as when 19-year-old Sam Konstas swats Jasprit Bumrah over his head with the sort of carefree insouciance that only the youth can muster. It is the inevitable cycle of life that the old are replaced by the new. Decay must follow genesis; the schoolboy must become the soldier, and the soldier the justice. Death, taxes, and Virat Kohli chasing a wide one are the only constants of life. What is paradoxical, however, is that knowledge of this universal fact does little to soothe the anxiety that takes shape after the retirement of a dear player. Will cricket continue to be the background music to life? Will the heir be as successful as the master? What if there is never another genuine great in the long formats?
It has been a source of fascination to me for a good two years now that cricket careers occur in clusters. The spate of retirements that is taking place today closely mirrors the exodus of legends from our game in 2010-15. It is a mystery what this is down to - perhaps the prestige of World Cups leads players to retire en masse, perhaps the systems which produce great players are temporally correlated - but does it even matter compared to the philosophical questions that a sea of goodbyes compels one to ask? Cricket today is arguably more exciting than it ever has been in the last 25 years - Tests are thriving and the T20 format is finally being optimized - and in the midst of this sit twentysomethings such as me, unable to perhaps fully celebrate this beautiful moment because for the first time in our lives the batch of players who gave meaning to a significant portion of our lives is bidding farewell. And while the new kids on the block are dazzling, they don't inspire the same childlike obsession in me that a Kagiso Rabada or a Mitchell Starc did ten years ago. Their obvious excellence is contrasted against my absent fascination, and together these two entities serve to remind me of how an era of my life is gradually fading.
The stories which once inspired me will be reminisced much less often. The athletes I once identified with will be relegated to a faraway corner of my heart. The wicket tallies which boomed and the run tallies which once exploded like laburnum tops will turn into immobile statistical records waiting to be conquered by newer and younger faces. Senescence is coming for my favourite cricketers, and I must look away to other sources to feel like a young boy again.
Admittedly that childlike enchantment returns every now and then. Such as today, when I watched Steven Smith race to a Test century. It has been business as usual for Smith these last two months, a glorious dawn of his sun after many feared it may have disappeared forever. But while it would be idyllic to seek security in the belief that he is back to his best, I have by now witnessed too many cases of players over 35 years experiencing a false dawn. The consequence of maturity is skepticism, and I find myself bemoaning this as I note that Smith is no longer the elite batter in the prime of his life determined to prove himself, but the old dog who has conquered all the peaks there are to climb and is now snugly adding to his riches. Look closely, and the best since Bradman, as he works the Sri Lankan spinners through leg with his cap on, with his wrinkled skin and protruding obliques, looks a little like Bradman from the late 1940s himself. His greatness has been calligraphed onto the walls, and our period of witnessing it being realized is slowly getting over.
Did I find love in the play or the players? Was it the sound of bat on ball that inspired me or was it the unique narrative of sport? Where must the line between wistful nostalgia and an honest appraisal of sporting outcomes be drawn? Will life get in the way of my pursuit of eternal youthfulness or will my love of the game triumph? These are questions I don't have answers for. But each time a Marnus Labuschagne edge carries to slip, or Rohit Sharma miscues a pull shot, or Jofra Archer drifts wide, or another retirement floods the home page of Cricinfo, a small part of me remembers that all good things in life must come to an end. If nothing else, we have the privilege of looking back at the highlights package and sighing contentedly like parents looking back at old pictures of their children.
The curtain is slowly falling on a golden generation, and all we can do is try our darndest to be grateful we were around to witness the greater part of it.
Beautifully written mate 👏
you are, hands down, my new fav cricket writer