Gilly's Legacy

Gaawn! The crowd is going wild at the Adelaide Oval!

I can imagine Bill Lawry uttering this when Adam Gilchrist (Gilly) was dismissed for the last time in his Test career. That dismissal marked the end of an era! An era, which began 12 years back when little Kaluvitarana took strike at the top of the order and struck a magnificent hundred against the Aussies. An idea was born. We often credit the Aussies with innovative tactics, which is not always true. In this case, Arjuna Ranatunga came up with this novel idea. It took a good one year and a World Cup final defeat for the Aussies to discover that they had a player—Gilchrist—who could do a Kalu regularly.

The advent and subsequent success of Gilly introduced a new meaning to the word ‘balance’ to the cricketing lexicon. Earlier, when you mentioned the word ‘balance’, you were talking about a batsman’s poise at the crease. Now the word ‘balance’ means who will play where! In the last decade, coaches and captains have brought in players into the eleven only to bring in ‘balance to the team.’ How can you explain Duncan Fletcher’s vision of creating a Gilly out of Geraint Jones? On the other hand, the Aussie gem of an experiment of creating a Freddie out of Shane Watson? Even more ridiculous was the English insistence on playing Ashley Giles over Monty Panesar—Fletch thought that if the Aussies had Warne, we had Giles at No.8! We shall compete man-to-man, position-to-position! Sound outrageous! Pakistan is still trying to create a Gilly out of Akmal—the whole world can see that he is a shoddy wicket keeper! The list continues… (Please note that I am not mentioning Dhoni. Enough has been said on him.)

All this in the name of bringing in balance to the team. Nobody is talking about skills anymore. What is also forgotten is that someone like Gilly was proficient in both the departments—therefore the term ‘balance’ made sense. Similarly, when Monty was always likely to pick up more wickets than Giles, why Giles?

In most cases, the tactic has not worked, not surprisingly!