Cape Town Test | Sport, like art, need not make sense; it can be enjoyed still Premium

You can put down the below-par performances in the Cape Town Test to technical deficiencies in batting, yet you come to the philosophical question: Can we really know anything for certain? Also, does everything have to make sense? Read Suresh Menon’s Between Wickets column by subscribing to The Hindu.

There was a screen between me and the action in Cape Town. The television screen. Sometimes this can be an advantage, the presentation of the game from different angles. Often it is a disadvantage (even when the commentary is turned off) because, in effect, you are watching the game through someone else’s eyes.

The 642-ball Test there must rate as one of the strangest played. It has inspired many theories and many might-have-beens from experts, players and viewers. It was riveting in the way natural phenomenon like a volcano eruption is (when there are no casualties). It was a reminder that so much of what we take as the gospel truth regarding cause-and-effect is based on uncertainties.

Was it good for Test cricket? It was certainly better than a five-day draw eked out by defensive play and unimaginative captaincy. Sometimes the individual controlled an outcome, at other times the individual succumbed.

This mixture made it impossible to pin down motives and rationales in our usual glib fashion. So you sat back and enjoyed it untroubled by the compulsion to explain or even understand everything; too much knowledge can occasionally extinguish the pleasure.

Fact is, there is only one honest answer to the question: What happened? It is, “I don’t know.” Anything else sounds contrived. A reporter or commentator making that admission might lose his job, so he deals in certainties, in straight lines leading inevitably from one incident to the next.

The safest course would be to blame the pitch. South Africa were dismissed for 55, and India lost six wickets without a run being scored. These are Exhibits ‘A’ and ‘B’. Fast bowlers took 32 of the 33 wickets to fall, that’s Exhibit ‘C’. Exhibit ‘D’ is what didn’t happen: Two spinners with over 400 wickets between them were not required to bowl. Yet – Exhibit ‘E’ – a batsman made an attacking century (Aidan Markham 106 off 103 balls) when no one else in his team crossed 20 in either innings.

The pitch wasn’t the greatest. The idea of a dodgy pitch spreads quickly within a team – it becomes a self-fulfilling reality.