Yesterday morning, as I got up and drank my coffee, I checked the news and saw that an English cricketer was playing in India at that moment and closing in on a double century, to scoring 200 runs in an innings. I turned on the TV to watch as Joe Root, captain of England, reached his double century a short while later.
For readers not from cricket playing nations (in short, those countries that used to be controlled as part of the British Empire), cricket has reacted to the short attention span of the modern world by offering their game in shorter and shorter formats, aimed at providing excitement in shorter and shorter forms.
The traditional “test match” last for five days. At the next level down, country cricket, matches are three days. For many years we have seen “one day” matches, and in more recent times, “20:20” matches, where each team gets to bat for 20 overs, which is 120 deliveries they can look to score off, with a 20:20 match typically on a weekday evening for the “after work” crowd and lasting only a little over three hours, compared to five days for a test match.
So, back to Joe Root and the traditional five day game, at this test match between England and India. In reaching his double century, have a guess how many deliveries he faced in order to reach that massive total of runs? 100? 200? 300? No, he faced 341 deliveries. Dorothy. this ain’t baseball.
On every one of those deliveries the Indian bowler and team were seeking to get him “out”, to end his innings, so Joe Root had to be patient indeed. To patiently choose when to defend, when to attack, when to settle into a slow rhythm to frustrate the bowlers to then temp them to bowl more loosely and aggressively, then to cut loose and attach those loose balls.
341 deliveries faced over nearly two days against a top test team. Exceptional and patient. In our short attention span, instant gratification world, there remains much to be said for being patient, building foundations slowly, allowing the results to come over time. Meanwhile, the five day test match continues today.