The Curious Case of the GOAT
Veni Vidi Vici! What comes to your mind when your first read the caption?It is defined as universally accepted acronym for the Greatest of All Times. I can be abused or trolled in my home country for what i am attempting to do next- I am literally going to now bell the GOAT of the cricketing world!!
For decades the cricketing world has witnessed some legendary batsmen who time and again have proven their worth for being the greatest players this sport of cricket has witnessed. Our country is obsessed with cricket and we often expect Indian players to dominate the game. Truth be told, our Indian cricket team has produced some cricketing greats like Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, Saurav Ganguly over the years. In the present times one simply cannot ignore the names of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.The above names almost sort of enjoy the GOD level status in our country.
Dwelling down the memory lane, cricket was not just about hailing your own country’s players but also accepting the greatness and talents of players from other playing countries as well. The West Indian bowling trio , Sir Donald Bradman, Steve Waugh, Adam Gilchrist , Ricky Ponting to name are some of the finest examples of how we Indians accepted that there are better players in this world than our own.
Things are a bit different now. The last decade saw a resurgence of Indian cricket in a manner that no body had perhaps imagined. We were somehow very apprehensive and doubtful about our team’s future once the likes of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid would retire. But these doubts have been put to rest and one can proudly say that the current Indian cricket team is perhaps the best in the world if not the number one.
Cricket is a unique sport- Its a game played by a team and at the same time it gives a single individual an opportunity to display brilliance for the team’s cause.
Having said that, if your are a cricket lover and an Indian cricket fan it is your duty to take notice of the performances of the other teams and their players as well. World cricket has seen its share of controversies , the latest one being the Sandpapergate scandal during the South Africa vs Australia series which took the cricketing fraternity to the cleaners. The outcome of the scandal was almost deemed as career ending for Steve Smith and David Warner . Both were almost written off by pundits as they were given one year suspension from playing or participating in any form of cricket. This was followed by the infamous presser where Steve Smith accepted his mistake on the field. Viewers considered this as a show of playing the victim and a lot was said about how Smith lost his composure during the press conference.
This one year ban almost made people forget about Steve Smith and that is when a lot of nosie was made by Indian fans by crowning Virat Kohli as the greatest of the game in the current age. We Indians simply were gloating about the fact that there is no one better than Virat Kohli in all formats of the game. All hail King Kohli!
The last five years has produced some interesting statistics and by the number logic we can easily say that Steve Smith inspite of that one year ban has been the real king of cricket. Have a look at the stats here.
The return of Steve Smith to international cricket has been nothing less than what dreams are made of. Since returning to the field the man has scores which read like these 144, 142, 92, 23, 211 & 82.
Purely based on the numbers and comparing the performances in Tests, ODIs and T20s we sure shot have a found a GOAT for this era. International Cricket Council in their tweets has been taking fun jibes at Indian fans by sparking a debate on who is the greatest of all times. Twitter timelines of ICC saw some nasty fanatic Indian fans rooting for beloved Kohli. However, as fans of cricket and as fans of Indian cricket specifically, we must accept that there are other better players than our own and perhaps this decade belongs to Steve Smith. Not far behind him is our very own King Kohli followed closely by Kane Williamson.
To conclude, I would say that perhaps the coming decade will be a decade of bowlers for Indian cricket and we might for the first time have our very bowler in the name of Jasprit Bumrah as the GOAT. At last, India will shed its obsession with bowlers.