Posted in November 2011 …

Nov 29 2011
4 Comments
BCCI, Bowlers, Cricket, Indian Players, Test Match

India’s Vaunted Injury Management System

After the 4-0 drubbing in England, the BCCI bigwigs said the most pressing objective was to improve India’s injury management system. During the tour, journalists gushed over the system in place in England, which apparently watches its players like hawks and mandates everything they can do and eat and sing and dance (etc.) to keep them match-fit. So, how close are we to that ideal? Let’s take a look at the recent announcement that Praveen Kumar will not make it to Australia:

According to the original BCCI media release sent on Monday evening, Praveen had been ruled out only for the first three ODIs of the West Indies series. This came after Virender Sehwag, the stand-in India captain, had said on the eve of the Cuttack ODI that Praveen would be available for the second match on December 3 as he was suffering from “a niggle”.

It is understood the selectors were not aware of Praveen’s original injury when they had picked him in the squads for the two series. “On the day of the selection, if there is no adverse fitness report then you assume they are fit,” a BCCI official told ESPNcricinfo. “If you have not reported you are unfit you are assumed to be fit.” According to him the turn of events in Praveen’s case caught the selection committee completely by surprise. “The selectors only came to know a day after the Mumbai Test (which ended three days ago).”

I’ll say this much: we’ve made progress in that Praveen’s injury hasn’t come to light during the actual tour, but about one month before it. Just so people are clear about the stakes: We still aren’t sure about Zaheer Khan’s fitness, which means we could send a bowling attack to one of the biggest cricket series of the year led by Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron. Granted, Australia’s own team has been beset by injuries, but I’m still very, very worried.

Nov 28 2011
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Cricket

How To Wean The Indian Consumer Off Cricket

Over at Tehelka, Suresh Menon has a well-written (but fairly predictable) take on the legacy of India’s Big Four. I’ll have to deal with its larger thesis later, but I did want to make a point about one of Menon’s asides. Here’s the passage:

Had the Indian public turned its back on the game after Azharuddin admitted that he had used his supple wrists not just for scoring runs but for counting his ill-gotten wealth too, Indian cricket might not have recovered.

That players of the calibre of Dravid, Kumble and others emerged around the same period might have been a coincidence, but it was a necessary antidote to the shenanigans of an earlier generation. The golden age was also about restoring the public’s faith in the national obsession.

Do you think that’s right? Do you think that it took players of great caliber to bring the Indian cricket fan back to the game? Because, to my mind, there’s very little the Indian cricket fan won’t watch (other than maybe games against Zim and Bangladesh). There’s very little that could happen — match-fixing, whatever — that will wean him off the habit. This isn’t a comment about Indian culture; here in America, baseball, football and running have all been rocked by scandals recently (steroids for the first two; sex abuse for the second), and it’s unclear to me that any fan has turned against any sport as a result.

In other words, even if the player quality dipped after Azhar, I’m pretty certain Indian fans would have kept watching. That’s because there’s nothing else in Indian sport to watch. Football  has a regional following (south and east); Indian hockey hasn’t been cool since my father’s day, and tennis/archery/chess are all rather uppity pursuits. The problem is that there’s a bubble around cricket in India; once you get past the game, there are the media outlets, the endorsements/advertising and products, the politicians running around everywhere. The odds that a new sport can break this empire are too low.

Why should we care? After all, we are all cricket fans, right? Well, as I learned in high school econ, monopolies are bad, and if cricket’s administrators take the fans for granted (as they clearly do when it comes to selling tickets at stadiums), then we’re being cheated as consumers. There’s also the problem that so many money chasing this sport may lead to some greedy characters doing shady things. So here’s my question: were there periods when you stopped watching Indian cricket? When were they, and why?

Nov 28 2011
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Commentary, Coverage, Cricket

Prematurely Judging The Guardian’s World Cricket Forum

Earlier this month, The Guardian (home to some of my favorite cricket writers) launched the World Cricket Forum, a weekly blog that aims to catalog and discuss cricket around the world. It seems the writers at the newspaper suddenly realized that people outside England (and Australia) apparently play and even like to talk about cricket. Anyway, here’s the structure:

 This is intended to be a blog that is global in nature and weekly in output. It will consist of a short themed piece above the line, perhaps outlining the coming week, and then daily updated news stories intended as a catalyst for discussion. Then, having lit the blue touchpaper, we shall retire (above the line although not below, of course) and watch the discussion flow. Imagine, as someone said recently on here, a civilised dinner party conversation rather than the bear pit of a political rally. It is a forum for cricket friends around the world, a meeting place if you will.

Which basically translates to, “We will post a bunch of links to stories we thought were interesting, and then you talk about it.” I understand that the Internet is best when it is interactive, but I really don’t have much faith in letting comment threads rule the roost. There are blogs that feature great conversations from great online communities, but most have trolls, assholes, and very opinionated fans sorely lacking in perspective. Reading through the comments at the Guardian, I see many worthwhile comments, but not enough to match a surf of crap.

This raises a bigger question: are cricket fans jerks? There are the Test elitists and snobs (e.g.: me); the stats people whom no one can understand (let alone argue with); the nationalists who think the Do or Die campaign is still on; the Australians…. Perhaps cricket’s complexity lends itself to a sort of practiced erudition, a trend encouraged by both blogs (Hear Me and My Opinions!) and television replays and commentary (Everbody can be an expert after hearing one talk on televisions). I’d much rather we all talked like Devanshu Mehta, who sifted through volumes of data on J. Trott’s career and ended on this humble note:

That is what makes him so interesting– the most popular metrics used to judge a cricketer fail when judging Jonathan Trott. Batting average, strike rate, gross runs, 100s, 50s, are an inadequate set. Those of us who pay attention to numbers have known about the inadequacy of traditional statistics, but Jonathan Trott personifies this struggle. Any time anyone says, what’s wrong with traditional stats? We can say, “Jonathan Trott,” and smile knowingly.

Nov 28 2011
2 Comments
Commentary, Cricket, Test Match, West Indies

Can We Blame R. Ashwin For Not Taking That Second Run?

Kridaya links to a plaintive tweet from R. Ashwin and asks whether the spinner/batsman could have, in fact, won the game against the West Indies:

From the video, it looked like Ashwin was way back in his crease and played the shot off his back foot. Perhaps that was the only way to play the shot, but it also meant that he didn’t have much momentum going into the run. By the time he had pushed himself off to take the run, Varun Aaron was already halfway to the striker’s end. If Ashwin had been jumping out of his crease, taking a few strides and hit the ball somewhere to the side of some fielder, it could have opened up the possibility of a tight second run and because of that, put more pressure on the fielder and maybe a useful misfield.

Kridaya quickly (and rightly) notes that all this is easier said than done. I, for one, wouldn’t even think about “jumping out of my crease” against Fidel Edwards (or even Darren Sammy, actually). And Kridaya is also right to point out that to blame Ashwin misses the larger picture; he did as much as anyone else to bring India so close to an improbable victory. No, once again, the fault (if you must find one) lies with the vaunted Big 4, who failed to put their collective heads down and grind out a century a la Darren Bravo, leaving India behind in the 2nd innings.

Which is all to say that I found Arun Lal incredibly annoying at the end of the game. With his grating, whining voice, he kept asking why Ashwin didn’t run harder. “I can’t understand it,” he said, over and over again. There aren’t many ways for commentators to express dismay and frustration without sounding like know-it-all Indian uncles. Sunil Gavaskar is even worse; he adeptly mixes condescension and backseat-driver-confidence. He usually sounds like the know-it-all Indian uncle who emigrated to America and returns on vacation to tell Indians why their country will never be great.

Word of advice: if you don’t understand why a player on a cricket field did something, just follow this French commentator’s cue after the infamous Zidane headbutt. “Eh pourquoi? Mais pourquoi?”

 

Nov 27 2011
1 Comment
Cricket, Test Match

In Which I Have To Eat My Words About Cricket Rhythms

Bad timing, definition of: Writing a series of posts about how Indian pitches deliver terrible Test cricket rhythms a day before an Indian pitch offers a thriller that has a game go to the wire.

OK, but in my defense, I’m not alone (in wanting Indian pitches not to save all drama for Day 5). Here’s M.S. Dhoni:

“What I would like to see [in Tests in India], played out on fifth-day wicket [in Mumbai]; I want the pitches to turn from the very first day,” Dhoni said, expressing surprise at the ample turn and bounce offered on the final day. “It sets off a bit of panic in the opposition’s dressing room and, at the same time, you [India] are under pressure to perform as well. That what makes it interesting.”

The Mumbai match reminded me of the Adelaide fiasco, when the English suddenly caved against the Australians and allowed them to romp home after five days of utterly boring cricket. There is a lot of fun to be had in this rhythm (especially the quick turn from slow and predictable to manic and crazy). But, again, I don’t think it’s ideal because it reduces the first two innings (four whole days in this case) to irrelevance.
On the other hand, I did stay up until 6 a.m. to watch the final ball from Fidel Edwards. So that says where my heart is.
Nov 25 2011
2 Comments
Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar

The Sachin Tendulkar Milestone Obsession

I feel badly about Sachin Tendulkar missing his ton, but not that bad. Cricinfo has a very good story about the reaction in Wankhede when Tendulkar fell six short of his 100th 100, but reading it, I could only feel, “What is the big deal? Why so much emotion over another milestone?”

Here are  my theories for the scale of anticipation: 1) Tendulkar’s amazing career is nearing its end. We may have only a couple of more years with the man, but the 2011 World Cup (and the upcoming series against perennial nemeses Australia) mark a natural end to a long stretch of achievements. So, is this anxiety and pent-up hope all just another way to properly send the man off?

2) When I was younger, I always felt a tinge of disappointment at Don Bradman’s 99.94. If only he had scored those few missing runs! Imagine how complete and perfect his statistic would have been! Much older now, I don’t feel the same way — like all sports, cricket has a way of cutting down its athletes to size, and the drama of the perpetual pursuit for perfection is always better (and more poignant) than its achievement. But do we feel that if Tendulkar ends with only 99 tons (very, very unlikely), that ‘failure’ will be cited as a blemish on an otherwise sterling career? (Sort of like Federer and the French Open?)

3) It’s interesting that ‘milestone fatigue’ hasn’t set in. At a certain point, you have to figure there’s little difference between 12,000 and 14,000, or 50 tons and 55. But perhaps all this collective pining for 100th 100s speaks to the fickleness of the Indian fan. We want more and more and more from Tendulkar, or we’re bored. If you want to hold our attention, you need to keep performing.

Nov 23 2011
1 Comment
Cricket, Test Match

Finding The Right Test Rhythm

A bunch of great comments on my previous post about Indian pitches and Test rhythms. I liked this one from Gareth:

As a New Zealander, I suspect that the whole ‘First morning’ part of a test match may be more fraught with a mixture of anticipation and fear than elsewhere. I love it, but there’s always the possibility that a team will be 6 down at lunch and the ball swinging and moving all over the place. This happens elsewhere, but here the conditions are more likely to stay like that all day and we’ll be deep into the opposition batting by the end of day one.

I agree; the pitches in New Zealand take the first morning anguish a bit too far. Ideally, you’d want a testing hour-and-a-half of the new ball, before the batsmen take over post-lunch. You’d then see another challenge late in the day after Tea. Five wickets down after Day 1 is a beautiful thing. I should also clarify one thing about my previous post: I could get behind the Indian rhythm of building up to a manic Day 5, where balls are zooting all over the place. But that assumes the pitch has deteriorated enough — and that’s not happening as much as before (at least to my mind).

One last thing: Indian pitches emphasize the value of winning the toss. If you bat first on an Indian pitch, you could — as Darren Bravo just showed — rack up a huge total. You then can put pressure on the opposition, who are exhausted and constantly facing the prospect of a collapse. They also have to bat last on a crumbling pitch. Fans of other sports would call this situation unfair, but I have long maintained this outsized role for fate and chance is what makes cricket great.

Nov 22 2011
6 Comments
Bowlers, Cricket, Test Match

Is It Time To Drop The ‘Indian’ Pitch?

Many people who don’t care about a Test championship have a simple and powerful argument on their side. The problem, they say, isn’t that Test matches don’t have added ‘stakes’ or context, but that there isn’t enough good Test cricket. To raise the quality, you need better pitches that equalize the contest between bat and ball and, yes, risks the prospect of a Test match ending before Day 5. This makes sense, but it raises a problem for me: are we basically saying we should drop Indian pitches?

Let me elaborate: I have come to Test cricket rather late in my fandom, and I have to say, all else equal, I’d rather watch a Test in South Africa or England rather than one in India. That’s because the rhythm of the typical Indian Test match requires a lot of patience; from what I gather, two sides bat for a long time on a placid pitch, which then markedly deteriorates so all hell breaks loose in the final sessions. This means until the spinners can get involved, others bowlers have to toil for a long time and batsmen enjoy (long) days in the sun. Now, sure, you could say I’m wrong because what I’ve just described could be an excellent Test match and adding diversity to the ways cricket is played is part of its charm. But the problem is that Indian pitches sometimes don’t deteriorate, which means two sides just bat each other into a stalemate. There is nothing worse than seeing one team pile up 500 runs, only to see the other squad match it.

Do I have this wrong? Am I describing an ‘Indian rhythm’ that doesn’t exist? And be honest: do you really prefer Indian cricket to the swinging pitches in England?

 

Nov 18 2011
2 Comments
Cricket

Vinod Kambli Needs To Get Over It (And So Do I)

Let me get this straight: 15 years after a teary Vinod Kambli ran off a cricket field, he decides to accuse his teammates of fixing the match. The evidence is shaky; apparently, it involves a very hazy recollection of a team meeting, the decision to bat second, and Navjot Singh Sidhu’s compulsive habit of wearing pads. Granted, that match — which ended with India crashing out of the 1996 World Cup — has always tormented the Indian cricket fan’s consciousness. How exactly does a team go from 98/1 to 120/8, and what is wrong with Bengali cricket fans? (I’ve written about my own night watching this game as a young pre-teen.)

Here’s what probably happened: Kambli is a nobody. He always held out promise for more, but he ended up the underachieving brother (and next to Tendulkar as a sibling, that’s a tough act to play). He tries to get on with his life, but he sees Navjot Singh Sidhu — a man found guilty of murder, mind you — enjoy a comeback as a member of parliament and, for a brief time, a national commentator. He sees his former captain Mohd. Azharuddin — a man found guilty of match-fixing and banned for life — enjoy a comeback as — sigh — a member of parliament. And all Kambli’s left with is those awful 1990s earrings.

For a better psychological assessment, read Dilip Preemachandran. So it’s hard not feel for the guy, but self-pity isn’t exactly a full-proof defense. The more interesting question is what that match meant for Indian cricket. Apart from signaling the rise of a very dangerous type of cricket nationalism, it also epitomized how much India relied on Tendulkar to get through the 1990s. It also left me with a perpetual nervous condition; even after all India’s cricket achievements in the past few years, I still await the batting collapse and the stray bottle on the field. Will it be like the 1990s again when the Big 3 retire?

 

Nov 17 2011
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Australia, BCCI, Bowlers, Cricket, Ishant Sharma, RP Singh, Test Match

Untangling the Duncan Fletcher Factor

Is Duncan Fletcher behind India’s recent selection decisions? Since the BCCI has erected an electric forcefield to keep him from the media, we can only speculate. Take it away, King Cricket:

Umesh Yadav is a Fletcher bowler and we’ll doubtless be seeing more of him after he took 3-23 in West Indies’ first innings. As England coach, Fletcher erred towards the workmanlike spinner, but he’s blessed with more options in India and both Pragyan Ojha and R Ashwin have done enough to justify Harbhajan Singh’s exclusion. Was that another Fletcher move?

A couple of things have irked Indian fans lately. First: why drop Praveen Kumar after his solid performance in England? And second, who the hell is Rahul Sharma? I’m not sure what I feel about either (Is Praveen really a Test bowler? Would he be able to swing it all that much in Australia?). But the question left unresolved thus far is what exactly Fletcher (and the Indian think tank) learned from the England 4-0 debacle. Was it just a freak breakdown unlikely to ever be repeated? Was it just that the English planned better? Or was it simply that we need to manage injuries better?

It’s hard for Fletcher — or anyone — to believe that the Indian batting line-up will fail as woefully as they did in England. Even if he does belief that, Fletcher can’t change the batting line-up at this point (since Dravid/Tendulkar/Laxman/Sehwag/Gambhir/Dhoni all pick themselves, leaving just one spot to fight among Raina/Yuvraj/Rohit Sharma/Badrinath?/Pujara?/etc). He does have some leeway with the bowling, which explains the current experimentation with Ohja/Ashwin (instead of Harbhajan) and Yadav/Aaron instead of (or as part of an attack featuring) Ishant and Zaheer. Picking Yadav so soon into his career seems strange, until you realize that this is just the way Indian selectors work. Why waste young fast talent on crappy Indian pitches, when shiny ones beckon in Eng, S.A. and Aus?

All things said, as long as the Indian team doesn’t ruin Yadav/Aaron the way it ruined Ishant and Irfan Pathan and RP Singh and L Balaji (and so on), this team has a fighting chance. It helps that the Australian team isn’t nearly as good as they used to be (and they’re certainly not as good as England at home). There’s hope for you yet, Fletcher.

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