Jrod: Wanted – A Villain
October 20th, 2008 by JRod in Australia in India, Test cricket and tagged Australia, cricket, india, Jrod, twcEverybody needs a villain. Utopia is boring. You need someone to blame, someone to hate, and someone to release your anger on.
That is why I am sad to see Sourav Ganguly leave cricket. I hate him. Oh yes, how I hate him. Almost everything about him rubs me up the wrong way.
I get angry watching him. I am angry now thinking about watching him. I am angry now writing about thinking about watching him.
Every now and then he did do something that I liked: the moustache, leaving Waugh out in the heat, shirtless behaviour and missing Warne’s wrong ‘un.
But that could never slow down the raw hatred I have for him as a cricketer. The reason I am sad to see him go is that he is a proper villain. That his on-pitch record has almost nothing to do with him being hated, shows this.
An average of 42 in the middle order with three hundreds in winning Tests (before this series), two of those against Zimbabwe, is hardly devastating.
It was his Princely nature that made him a proper villain.
Shaun Pollock has the record and the nationality to be a villain but he doesn’t inspire great emotion. He was just a good cricketer.
Ganguly has people who hate him, people who love him, people who want to have his babies, people who want to make sure he has no babies and no one in between.
That is special. That is rare.
These days so many cricketers play whole careers without making a ripple in most fans’ memories. So we need more Gangulys because cricket is at its best when provoking extreme emotions.
And don’t listen to George Lucas: hatred doesn’t lead to the Dark Side. Boring cricketers do.
Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.com won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC
Posted in Australia in India, Test cricket |
October 20th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
One day the pressures of international cricket will get too much, a player will punch a small child and/or mascot on the boundary, and you will have your Max Bialystock, “That’s our Hitler!” moment.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:08 am
Agreed. Add to that this India Aussies series has been way too friendly.
Finally we saw some sparks on day 4.
I dint really like Ganguly either. But he was someone you loved to hate.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
Agreed, a proper villain, with actual character - unlike the Christian Warrior Hayden, who is a villain of equal measure but devastatingly dull. (And Hayden’s moaning to the umpires about Zaheer’s sledging is as embarrassing as it is hypocritical).
I think my favourite Ganguly princely moment is when he asked an England bowler to tie his shoelaces while on the way to a debut century.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I think he gave Mike Atherton his sweater (the then England captain) and asked him to run it off the pitch. Even if it is not true, is should be.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Ha, excellent. And The Independent says it’s true, so it must be.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
And the Guardian says it’s not, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/jul/12/cricket.englandcricketseries
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Curses! It was not clicking on the second google result that was my undoing. I suppose we’d better take Athers’ word for it, then.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 am
One day the pressures of international cricket will get too much, a player will punch a small child and/or mascot on the boundary, and you will have your Max Bialystock, “That’s our Hitler!” moment.
$5 on Gunther
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
>> $5 on Gunther
I have a sneaky suspicion it might be Monty Panesar…
November 20th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
The Joker of cricket. CHAOS!