AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        One-day cricket became a crowd-puller because of the tedium of predictability and inertia-ridden stretches in Test match cricket. Watching those matches wherein batsmen accumulated runs like a tortoise growing its nail was akin to seeing the paint on a wall go dry. But as we had seen in politics, where forces that campaign against corruption end up equally corrupt, the compressed form of the game too has fallen prey to the cliches of its own creation. The cadences of a contest are now on typical lines. The batsmen go for the leather right at the start, and then steady themselves in the middle overs, before again going berserk in the end overs. Whatever excitement that comes to the fore has little novelty or that element of surprise which makes sports the spectacle that is. Most one-day matches are actually much worse than a formula-ridden potboiler that Kollywood generates almost every week.

        From time to time, some contests do manage to rise above the everydayness as it did last night when South Africa and Sri Lanka played out a thriller, which was high on tension and tumult and excitement and ebullience. There were many twists in the plot that had they been in a movie script you would have given it up as being improbable and contrived. That is the beauty of naturally happening things as they don't have to follow any particular logic. But fiction has to be believable.

        The match came alive as a competition only in its last few overs. But it was worth the effort as Lasith Malinga's low-line slinged bombs proved more than a handful for the Proteas batsmen. The match seemed all but over after the good partnerships between Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis and then Herschelle Gibbs and Kallis. Then Malinga, whose askew angle of delivery makes it difficult for batsmen to pick the line, snatched four in four, spread over two overs. But in those 10 odd balls, the match provided all the excitement that you will remember for a lifetime. Malinga, with his buffy, puffy hair that make him look like someone carrying on his head a forest in blaze, ran in fast and furious and hurled the ball with sense of primordial energy as the batsmen moved around the crease as if negotiating a mine-laden area. It was a spectacle that was at once riveting and exciting. In the end, South Africa streaked past and won by one wicket. A win was very important for Smith's men as it is very vital for them to stay in the competition with conviction.

        But this World Cup itself needed such a contest as it proved that the game still had some tricks up its sleeve to surprise us. Though huge scores have been put up and big sixers hit underlying that this is the high-noon for batsmen, this World Cup has been pretty much short on well-matched rivalry on the field. Most matches have been decided almost at the half-way stage itself.

        But matches like yesterday's convince you that all hope need not be lost. One match doesn't make a World Cup. But it certainly shows that cricket's innate capriciousness is still intact. And now for the next surprise!