Commentators shriek in excitement as a massive six is hit. They want another as does the crowd. You flick gracefully toward fine leg and there will be hands thrown up from everywhere. “What’s he doing? He could have lifted that over midwicket.”

Batsmen today are expected to be gladiators flashing and swirling their bats as if they are fighting away demons from all sides. Even at the advent of One-day International cricket, there was still a certain decency to the art. The batsmen would not sacrifice their grace for television ratings, and there was no one selected simply because he was a crowd puller.

Yes sure there were the flamboyant ones like Asif Iqbal of Pakistan or, say, the late Colin Milburn of England. But they were still in the top class and they adapted mildly to the shorter format. They still had a range of strokes that were tender to the eye.

I cannot imagine someone like David Warner of Australia or Shahid Afridi being inducted into Test cricket in those days. And they are not that far away; you can count beyond two decades back and recall the amazing grace of David Gower and before him Majid Khan; languid and graceful, who would play a 90mph ball without any hurry.

This was simply because they had no ambition to break speed records; or show themselves worthy of selection for the crowd. And the spectators for that matter were more knowledgeable. You only went to the ground if you had an interest in cricket as an art. There were full crowds even when 200 were scored in a day, and you came back satisfied, maybe not thrilled at what you had seen.

“Remember that square cut from Sadiq off Arnold?” would be the remark on the way back in the taxi and the reply would often be “Yes, but those cover drives from Zaheer were the real delight for me.” A look at the scorecard would have astonished you. Neither had got to 40.

Of course we wanted centuries from them and we wanted to win. But that was something to look forward to on the last day; in the meantime there would be the classic shots, and a very rare one over the boundary.

That does not go to say that they were all artists with the bat. You had the grinders and the slashers, who would steal a single here or there and punch one to point off balance. For instance Javed Miandad, brilliant though he was, often built his innings with shuffles across the stumps and power hitting. And though someone like Clive Lloyd, Ian Chappell or Sunil Gavaskar were among the top run getters in the ’70s and before them innovators like the magnificent Rohan Kanhai who often played the ugly looking falling hook (yes, there were some Dilshans back then also), the graceful batsmen stood out even then. They would never sacrifice their posture or movement for moments of innovation.

They say that people would pay just to see Ranjitsinhji play the leg glance, which he is credited with having invented. He played on both sides of the last century, and though being an Indian prince, for England.

I have read about Frank Woolley of England and Neil Harvey of Australia who were regarded as extremely elegant lefthanders and Australia’s Victor Trumper before them. There were many others over the decades but restricting to those I saw myself, none charmed more than David Gower.

He had that unruffled, upright batting stance and his approach to the ball was so languorous that you felt there was no way he would come down on it in time. Yet it would be met or dispatched with unhurriedness. I cannot recall seeing any photograph of him where the finished shot did not leave the man perfectly balanced, every limb synchronised to the call of beauty.

Before him was of course Zaheer Abbas. In his very first innings in England when he drove and pulled his way to a mammoth 274, the Englishmen were gasping at the softness with which he caressed the ball all around. His high back lift and the fluid front to back foot movement made the connoisseurs of the art fall in love with him. Against truly fast attacks and on green pitches he was not really a man of crisis, nor a game finisher, but no grace was lost even then.

Majid Khan was another batsman who, after making his way from an opening bowler to a hard hitting middle order bat, was promoted up the order from 1971 and eventually to open on the English tour of 1974. He had that singular charisma for the aesthetic. He is another whose cover drive would sometimes leave him on tiptoe and one of the few I have seen who timed the ball with almost no effort without semblance of footwork.

He once took on his Glamorgan colleagues who challenged him to remain unbeaten without using his feet. So they tied up his ankles and bowled to him but couldn’t get him out.

He was as royal as they come; unflustered in the most exciting of times. As Dennis Lillie raced in with vengeance to take a few down with him as Australia defended a mere 30-odd target in the second innings of the Sydney Test, Majid met him with a wry smile. Sadiq and Zaheer had caved in to the outburst with the new ball, and Mushtaq was jumping all over the crease to ward him off. Majid fetched some 26 of the 30 or so target. It included a memorable six to fine leg off the fast bowler, as Majid stepped calmly to his right and swiveled to reflect it off his bat with the deftest of touches. I remember Alan McGillivray, the legendary commentator, saying over the airwaves with astonishment: “He didn’t even hit it.”

The 1980s saw the artistry restricted mostly to David Gower and to another amiable batsman in Carl Hooper of the West Indies. Compared to the bulldozing shots of Gordon Greenidge and Haynes, and the swaggering stroke play of Viv Richards, watching Hooper was like the calm within the storm. They had said that the knighted pair of Frank Worrell and Gary Sobers were a delight to watch with the time they had to middle the ball, but he surely was the first West Indian I saw who did not carry a certain aggressiveness to the opposition. His drive was a delight as were his hooks; he captained the West Indians even.

Australians are known for their hard-fought batsmanship but they had their own Mark Waugh and later Damien Martyn. I cannot recall anyone else having their fluidity among the current batsmen, who perhaps grew up fascinated by the hard hitting Gilchrist and Hayden.

One man I feel Pakistanis really missed out on was Mohammad Wasim, though he did play for a few years from the later ’90s. What fascinating footwork he had that would lead him to time the ball just the moment it was destined. Wasim was shoved up and down the order but would make runs in every position. He was lost early to some destructive politics but not before he had played his music, even if it was an unfinished symphony.

Possibly the last of the ultimate stylists was our own Mohammad Yousuf. He was in many ways a mirror of Zaheer Abbas when he played through cover or in his on-drive. Though he was always in that mould, but I felt that he blossomed into full grace in the last few years of his career. It was as if the ball was manoeuvred to hit the middle of the bat, and softly as they come.

Of course there have been several who have delighted with their style, like Inzamam, Lara, Gayler, Jayasuriya, Amla … all legends in long tall scores, all with a triple century at a minimum or like Tendulkar, Sangakkara, Michael Clarke and Azharuddin, consistent scorers and delightful to watch. But I believe they still have that modern-day streak of taking those odd chances for runs that batsmen like Gower, Zaheer, Majid, Hooper, Mark Waugh could control themselves against.

It seems to be going from bad to worse. Perhaps the English crowd is the only one among the world’s spectators that take equal delight in a sweetly timed cover drive and a bludgeoned six. Times are changing and the British are true to tradition, late adopters of anything they consider rude. The rest of the world is harking for more, and a delicate late cut will be accepted, not necessarily taken home in the short-term memory; long term would be an aberration.

I doubt if we will ever see that breed again. The character of cricket has changed; from a gentleman in bowler hat deftly lifting his hat at the passing ladies to the long shorted, slipper-clad chap in the baseball hat turned sideways. Players like David Gower would be scowled at even at the school level; “You ain’t here for beauty, kid. Either hit ‘em hard or hit the road.”

Today the kid dreams of emulating the longest six and getting to a century in less than 50 balls. It’s all about the quick fix and expecting a classic in grace is like expecting the 16-year-old busy tweeting to take time out for a game of chess. In fact very few will even relate to what I have written. It is from an era that has been left to the eyewitnesses and to the cricket archaeologists and anthropologists. The best we can do is to save the video archives and the photographs.

As Lt John Dunbar, exiled to a remote Western Civil War outpost in the movie Dances With Wolves responds to his commander’s query as to why he wants to go out alone into the unchartered frontier and risk being killed by the wolves and Indians, replies: “I want to go there, Sir, before it’s gone forever.” Millions of this generation have not been that lucky. Thankfully some of us have.

The writer has been writing on cricket since 1979, and has edited The Cricketer International (UK) Asian edition as well as authoring two books on World Cup cricket history. He sits in as a cricket analyst on various channels.