Eldine Baptiste named ‘The Nation Wants To Know Best Cricketer of All Time’

Sticking to a strict policy of ‘Losses Not Allowed’ the Nation-Wants-To-Know Best Cricketer of All Time award has been bestowed upon the former West Indian cricketer Eldine Baptiste. S Chuzzlewit reports on the forthcoming airing on the ‘When Sour’ programme.

West Indian fast-medium bowler and lower order batsman Eldine Baptiste has been named the Nation-Wants-To-Know Best Cricketer of All Time based on a panel evaluation by a leading Indian television channel.

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Speaking at a media release a day before the much awaited airing of the results on the channel’s famed ‘When Sour’ programme, Editor-in-Chief and news anchor Ms Airbags Now said, “It was a simple process of getting a few experts to converge on the decision after careful analysis of the records of all the cricketers who have played the game.”

When asked to elaborate on the surprise choice, Ms Now was vehement in her response, “Surprise? It was not surprising at all. Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of cricket will agree that it is just not allowed to lose any match. Our evaluation system was simple. Eliminate losers.”

Consulting her notes in the time-tested way of her channel, Ms Now continued, “Eldine Baptiste played 10 Test matches and his team won all of them. Don’t you see that he was the greatest cricketer of all time?”

While the cricket world has tweeted its disgruntlement at a player with a batting average of 23 and bowling average of 35 being chosen the greatest cricketer of all time, the choice has received support from one quarter.  The Chief Editor of the India Widens magazine accepted that Baptiste was indeed the most Impactful cricketer ever.

When one senior media personnel mentioned the name of Don Bradman, Ms Now had to look up her notes again, for a considerable while. “That’s a confusing question, since the name is a new one to me. I can see why. The technique is to go match-by-match and cancel the claims of any cricketer who played part in a losing cause. Don Bradman, as I see, was an obscure Australian batsman who lost the very first Test he played. England won that Test by 675 runs at Adelaide in 1928-29. Australia were walloped. I can’t imagine how one can even take Bradman’s name in this context after that. It is always amusing to note the names people throw up and the kind of sensitivity they demonstrate when the truth is voiced.”

Elaborating on the process of selection, Ms Now said, “The only cricketers who came close were Adam Gilchrist, with 15 consecutive wins.  There was also Tim Bresnan with 13. But then they both went and lost matches, thus being eliminated.”

Asked how one could evaluate the difference between winning 10 Tests and playing no more, and losing after 15 or 13 Tests like Adam Gilchrist and Tim Bresnan, Ms Now retorted, “He didn’t lose. That’s the important point.  And Gilchrist and Bresnan did. If we say losing is okay after ten wins, then we are accepting a lot. India lost the World Cup semi-final after 11 consecutive wins in World Cup matches: you want us to condone that?  You must remember that when you are getting paid the way cricketers are one is not allowed to lose. As one of the panellists, Mr Mohammad Bin Tughlaq Jr said, his grandfather played for the country for ₹25.”

When asked about the credentials of Bin Tughlaq to be a part of this supposedly elite panel, Ms Now explained, “The panel was made of people with excellent background in the game. Two of them were cricketers, but they disagreed and did not quite hang around till the final seal was put on the consensus. But there were also people from the newspaper world, one of them we picked up from a nearby bar last evening; and then there were representatives of the film world. To answer your question, Mr Mohammad Bin Tughlaq Jr can throw a light on the way the worlds of film and cricket intersect. You see, Mr Tughlaq’s grandfather and uncle captained India, and his aunt was a film actress. His two cousins and his cousin’s fiancée all come from the film world. Mr Tughlaq himself played very few First-Class matches and averaged in the 20s with the bat, but he is an excellent man to pass judgement on players like Virat Kohli who bring the two worlds together. Also, since you are so interested in going back in time, the list of such indefensible cricketers includes Garry Sobers and Vivian Richards.”

The names of these cricketers initiated questions about their ranks in the Nation-Wants-To-Know list, and Ms Now consulted her notes and replied, “Neither of them was any good. Sobers, for example, violated the never lose principle 25 times in the 93 Tests he played. Richards was better, but he too finished on the losing side on 19 occasions. Again, losing is just not allowed.”

(S Chuzzlewit is a chronicler who sees the world of cricket through a sometimes light-hearted and often brutal lens)