A change in generation, but the same old advice

I recently read an article by Charles Kortwright, the England fast bowler who played from 1893-1907 (he also claims to have bowled a delivery which pitched mid-wicket and went out of the ground on the first bounce thus conceding 6 byes), which was published in the 1948 edition of the Wisden Almanac. Now I wont give a link to the article here because I know none of you would be interested in reading it and even fewer would actually know who Charles Kortwright was. The article was very well written and consisted of some great advice for budding fast bowlers. However some parts of it immediately caught my attention for a completely different reason. Here are a few excerpts from the article -

"I have little patience with modern bowlers who condemn these shirt-front wickets and ask how can they be expected to get men out when the pitch will not help."

"I do not feel that young cricketers today are always prepared to take the trouble over their game that they should, possibly because there are so many counter attractions."

"Another encouragement which I would mention to bowlers and those aspiring to success with the ball is that they enjoy many advantages compared with those of the old days."

What is to be noted here is that the "old days" are the late 1800s and the early 1900s, while the "modern bowlers" are those who were bowling in the 1940s and 50s (or in short the people who nowadays crib about how good the old days were). So we can make the following observations:

a) Whenever you compare a modern player to an older one, the modern one is no good. Irrespective of what period either of them belongs to.

b) The next generation always has greater distractions and is always less keen to work hard (I really wonder what distractions the people in the 40s had).

c) The modern generation enjoys various advantages as compared to the older ones but yet they do not make full advantage of it.

d) The old times were hard. Much harder than today. Again, this statement is valid irrespective of the time-period.

So what this basically means is that everyone loves to hold on to his own time-period and to claim that people back then were much better, life was harder but people were still happier. And all this is irrespective of what time-period they belonged to. So I guess Nostalgia seems to be the defining human quality.

This also means that I shall keep all this in mind whenever I listen to an elderly person when he talks about the "old days" and hence think twice before taking his word for granted. And more importantly, it means that in all probability, sometime in 2060 I will be telling anybody who's willing to listen, "Ah the 2000s, those were the days!"