This morning I came to know the sad demise of Peter Roebuck. I was taken aback for a while and when I gained all my attentions I had to realize that a person who has made us many fall in love with the words to fall in love with the game has left this beautiful earth. Peter Roebuck is no more in this world to charm us with his intellectual and beautiful writings on cricket.
Roebuck started his career as a cricketer but it seemed that he was born to write on cricket’ beautiful and critical insights.
Live telecast at present speaks a thousand words about cricket, but, words too, have an ability to paint pictures in a wondrous collaboration of the writer’s craft and imagination. And in modern day cricket literalists, Peter Roebuck was the best to paint the pictures in the finest manner to catch the imagination of a reader.
TV has taken the charm and beauty of cricket literature but still men like Peter Roebuck’s fine and astonishing ability to graft words in the most beautiful way has made cricket literature survive the onslaught of TV.
TV has had an influence on the way the game is written about. Perspective has replaced description; perspective has replaced description. Instead of recreating the day’s play, writers are continuously challenged to make sense of what happened. From expansive and expressive, the accent has turned to thoughtful and interrogative, and in the quest of the broad pictures the writers sometimes overlook the small endearing moments.
But Roebuck seemed not be affected by this. He was never to miss those small endearing moments, but used to describe them in a rather thoughtful and interesting way. He had been the ideal combination of Lara’s graceful aggression and Tendulkar’s class in the field modern day cricket literature; beautiful words mixed with graceful aggression, never stepped back to paint the truth with beautiful words.
Cricket has lost a word artist. Cricket will miss his words’ beauty, his knowledge and his thoughts on the game.
Rest in peace Peter Roebuck.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
