STARTED as a game of gentlemen and taken as a favourite pastime for English aristocracy, cricket was a form of entertainment for the rich and the royals and pure in its original and uncomplicated form. But with the passage of time it has changed to an extent in its shape, in its shades and colour and is no more the game it was but a commodity for the buyers and the sellers.

Till the late seventies it did, however, manage to hold its purity and kept its sanctity intact as a gentleman’s game where umpire’s word was final and the spirit of the game considered to be a lot more important than the game itself.

However, Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer’s intrusion in the game with his rebellious World Series Cricket (WSC) in 1977 - in retaliation to the rejection of his bid to acquire the rights for his television channel by the then Australian Cricket Board (ACB) - then took this game through a rollercoaster journey where money talked and stakes shot up to raise the profile of the players who prior to that were poorly paid as professionals of the game.

Once on that path, the whole world of cricket took a turn into a new era and in a direction that dictated the fate of the professionals in the hands of the highest bidder.

That, no doubt, has given the modern game an opportunity to compete with other sports and for the players to enjoy respectable existence.

Now that Test cricket’s popularity is under constant threat, primarily due to the vast following and tremendous appeal of the limited over matches - especially the T20 version - the game has seen a paradigm shift where once again there is scope for the haves and have-nots to buy and also sell themselves in an open market.

That reminds me, of course, of the slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth century when the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the Americans bought and sold hand-picked slaves from the Central and Western Africa to the transatlantic countries, thus pocketing heaps of money.

The highest bidder had the best ones, very much like being in a cattle market where people bid for the best and healthy looking animal, be it a cow, bull or a horse.

Cricket I suppose as a game has now come to that where we watch a very similar system taking over and where the franchise owners and their team bid for the best to suit their requirements.

The players draft system has become very much like a cattle market where bidders converge to pick and choose to serve their needs to not only be in the limelight themselves but also to unearth new talent that we see emerge from various leagues including the successfully organised two previous editions of PSL and which has no doubt provided opportunities for the old and new from all around the world.

It will be unkind and inappropriate of me to brand the modern cricketers as slaves because they are not and are there at their own volition to offer their services to a suitable bidder; and that is the difference. Slavery was abolished by the Americans in 1808 and by the British in 1833 who then introduced indentured labour to bring in labour force from India on contract to cultivate their sugar industry in the West Indies and the railways in Africa.

From that stock come the likes of great Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharan, Sonny Ramadhin, Asghar Ali, Inshan Ali, Rafik Jumadeen and now Devendra Bishoo and the rest; and of course the modern great Hashim Amla from South Africa.

Watching the players draft, however, brings to my mind an interesting anecdote narrated to me by the late Tony Cozier, a brilliant cricket commentator and writer of the game from Barbados whose white ancestors had settled down in the Caribbean more than four centuries ago.

Why is it Tony, I asked him, that your island produces such great men of the game like the three W’s, Clyde Walcott, Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell, Garfield Sobers, Wesley Hall who all have been knighted, and the others like Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes?

Tony laughed and in a jest said to me, ‘Qamar, when it came to us we made sure to buy the best slaves available, hale and hearty, healthy and good in looks, that is why we produced great cricketers that the world marvel at.’

The players draft system is also now in vogue even on the domestic circuit of Pakistan cricket from this season, where the bidders I suppose look for the best and I don’t blame them for that. But is it right for the game at that level is my question?

Does the game of soccer, or football as it is known in this region, has a players draft system? I wonder.

The transformation from a gentleman’s game to a cricket’s cattle market that we see now has taken nearly 140 years; where money now speaks and the spirit of the game is of secondary importance.

That is how the game continues to change and, perhaps for the good of it, to keep it going.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2017