What cricket says about modern India

The contention that India is no good at Test cricket, and reasonably efficient at the shorter formats, no longer needs validation. The team's results in the last 20 Test matches (two wins, 13 losses, five draws) and the last 20 One-Day Internationals (nine wins, seven losses, four ties or no-results) played away from home are ample proof of the gap between its abilities in the two forms of the game.

Among the various reasons given for this performance paradox is how the influence of the Indian Premier League has reduced the importance of Test cricket, making our players more tuned to the demands of a version in which you don't to need to be as fit or as patient. The popular view is that India, as a nation and as a team, is no longer interested in "slowness" and "drudgery". That we're a young, hungry nation that has embraced "spirit" and "urgency" instead. Since the BCCI controls the sport through its financial muscle, forecasters argue that the way cricket is played will itself change in the not-so-distant future. Be that as it may, the transformation in our basic cricketing skill-sets needs greater scrutiny.

Cricket - say pandits who have chronicled it over the decades, from Neville Cardus to Christopher Martin-Jenkins - is a reflection of society at any given time. We live in an era when modern India is often celebrated for its energy, its passion, its newfound confidence, and its hunger for instant success. We've come a long way from when class and caste ensured that, save for the few exceptions who proved the rule, ambition was alien to our multitudes. You lived close to where you were raised, did what your parents had done before you, and died in the same penury in which you had been born.

Modern India no longer has those restrictions. Today, young Indians, even those from small towns and villages, have the license to dream. It could be argued, therefore, that the products of this generation - born in the late '80s and early '90s who ventured out into the world during the technology revolution of the 2000s - are leaving their stamp on how India is playing cricket. They have made our team aggressive, self-assured, and confident of delivering the goods within a short time-frame.

But while we celebrate these qualities, as we should, let us take a moment to look at the flip side. Does our loss of interest in Test cricket, and the lack of ability to compete over 15 sessions against the moving ball, also tell us what our society is slowly losing?

Test cricket is about dexterity, patience, endurance, and character. About the ability to fall down after taking a blow to the head, and doggedly compiling a century while surrounded by four slips, a gully, a point, and a short-leg. For a bowler, it is about working the batsman out through endless spells of accurate teasing. Test cricket is outlasting a siege or breaking through a meticulous defence. It urges you to take the long road instead of a short-cut; to read the book instead of just watching the film. Most of all, Test cricket teaches you that slowness is not a flaw, and steadfastness can win the race.

So, if cricket really does define us, who have we become? Have we chosen instant gratification over persistence; the end over the means? Are we, in other words, a 50-over society?