Change of guard... Change of attitude

Cricket, the times they are a changing. Subtly but yet over the ages of cricket a lot of changes have occured. The rules, the versions but those are not the point of this blog. It is about the change in attitude and consequently the bragging rights of the best team in the sport that I wanted to spend my two cents worth of observations.

I believe over my so short and sweet life span on this planet, there have been two eras of cricket. The West-Indian kingdom and the Australian ascendancy. Since I was a very young lad, I remembered the dominance of West Indies over the game. Buoyed by a ferocious bowling line-up and talented hitters, they were an intimidating opposition every other team looked to beat. The attitude of the carribean cricketers was as cool as their calypso music. Pure talent, the "game is fun" attitude help them dictate their dominance over the game. I was able to witness this during our games against the carribean teams in WMCB. Chillax, drink a beer, go and hit some amazing shots, have a fun weekend.

Then came the slow and steady encroachment into that dominance by the lads down under led by Alan Border and manager Bobby Simpson. They brought a whole new attitude to the game of cricket - Professionalism. With this new sensed attitude they set about taking the game away from the leaders and finally were able to emerge as the new supremos. This attitude continued under the Steve Waugh era and other teams started to embody the proffessional aspect in their games as well. The South Africans led by their tech savvy manager Bob Woolmer came as close to the Oz but could not overcome the last hurdle of overtaking them. They probably lacked that little bit of passion to tip them over.

Sensing the gap closing up on them, there was a change in guard again and with Ponting at the helm, there was a whole new attitude shift. "Professionalism with a don't give a damn attitude since we are going to win". With players like Symonds, Lee, Clarke the juggernaut kept rolling and edging themselves once again away from the teams trying to catch up with them.

With new players emerging in the cricketing arena carrying some of this new born attitude, India (Sehwag, Yuvraj, Kaif, Pathan, Dhoni) , Pakistan (Shoaib, Akhmal, Younis) and England (Flintoff, Pietersen) seem to be the teams in the forefront to become the new center of cricketing supremacy in the world. Would it need a little more than this attitude to overcome the Aussies or will we see another shift before the powers shift elsewhere?