In this session, the notable historian Ramchandra Guha and Bangladesh national cricket team’s bowling coach Heath Streak discussed the history and future of cricket with Kazi Inam Ahmed.
In the first part of the session, Ramchandra talked about how the game has progressed in the last three decades. He openly admitted that the Indian Cricket Council is not at all fond of him, and expressed his fondness for the Zimbabwean cricket team.
When Kazi Inam Ahmed brought up the topic of Bangladesh’s recent success run, Heath Streak complimented Mashrafee Mortaza by saying, “He got me out in his very first test match.”
The latter part of the session was mostly a discussion of how cricket has been commercialised and politicised over the last decade with the introduction of the T20 format. Even though T20 is widely popular, Ramchandra is yet to attend his first IPL match. In fact, he has never watched a single IPL match. When asked about this he replied, “I have never been to an IPL game partly because I started an unconstructed romantic. I love test cricket most of all. I don’t mind one day cricket. It’s just that as I see it, test cricket is like single malt Scotch, you can savour it, understand it. 50-over internationals are what I called Indian-made foreign liquor and T20 is the local hooch, you get it only when nothing else is available.” Ramchandra thinks franchise cricket is mostly corrupted because of all the money involved. However, he also added that 50-over cricket has also made test cricket more competitive.
The session ended by the three panellists exploring why the beloved game captures hearts and minds across borders by opening up the floor to a question answer session.