Cricket & Music: Types & Comparisons

Here it is proposed to compare the three forms of Cricket, namely Test, 50 over games & T20 games with Classical Music, Light Music & Popular Music respectively.

The basics of cricket are the same for the three versions as are the twelve semitones of an octave common for all types of music. 

The purest form of cricket, test cricket is the connoisseur's delight like classical music &  appeals only to the cognoscenti. It brings out the best in the performers as well as the viewers/listeners. It brings out the beauty of defensive shots also when the situation demands it.

The 50 over form of cricket, is watered down to provide some artificial excitement by limiting the duration & providing cheap thrills by coloured clothing & encouraging innovative shot making. So is light music like Sugam Sangeeth or lieder in Western Classical music or thumri in Hindustani music, by providing verbal help to the emotions of music.

The least artistic form of cricket is the T20 format as is the film songs of India & the Rock music of the west. Both appeal to the lowest common denominator & are hence most popular & commercially profitable of the three types. Both appeal to the instant gratification of a populace with extremely limited attention span.

To end the essay with a remark by George Eliot in her "Daniel Deronda":

"Popular music is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state of culture, the passion & thought of people without any breadth or horizon. There is a sort of self-satisfied folly about every phrase of such melody; no cries of deep, mysterious passion - no conflict, no sense of the Universal. It makes men small as they listen to it."

Similarly with the shorter forms of cricket.