Running amok

Am reading the autobiography of a cricketing great and was planning to come back to blogging here with a review of that book but events on a few cricket fields prompted me to rush my comeback. Not that any one was waiting with bated breath, but hey, this is my blog and I am entitled to my delusions of grandeur. But I digress.

At the AMI Stadium in Christchurch, India serenely marched to 392 for 4 in 50 overs. With a score like this, you’d expect the bowlers to just turn up and sew up the match. No, not in today’s times. New Zealand roared off the starting blocks, Brendon McCullum was outscored in a rumbustious opening stand, and the Kiwis lost not because of the formidable total they were up against; they lost because they had an inexperienced middle order. They still managed to score 334, in just a ball over 45 overs.

Over at Kingsmead, Durban, Mitchell Johnson treated us to a rare frightful spell of hostile fast bowling on Saturday. (No malice intended, but the sight of blood spilling from the jaw of Jacques Kallis must have been heartening to bowlers the world over.) But normal service resumed today as a rookie playing in just his second test managed a century in each innings.

The anodyne series between England and West Indies continues at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain, and while England might just win this game and square the series, it does not take away from the batsman-friendliness of the series barring the one session of shame for England. Paul Collingwood averaged a shade under 46 before the test started and Matt Prior was at 40.42. Graham Gooch ended his career with an average of 42.58, Allan Lamb finished with a Himalayan 36.09 and that epitome of grace, David Gower managed 44.25. You decide the pecking order of English cricketing greatness.

To borrow a phrase I heard Ian Chappell use long ago, is run inflation well and truly on? Do we need to recalibrate cricket the way we knew it? Or is the game on its last legs? Only the likes of Johnson and Dale Steyn can help preserve the balance. But how long can they fight the elements?

The future cricket 5 (More to toss)

Eight long years ago, a good professor called Warren Edwardes suggested that the toss, the traditional ritual that constitutes the first action in a cricket game, be replaced by the Bid. His suggestion seems to have been considered worthy enough to be picked up by the Financial Times (caution: opens a pdf file). Considering no move has been made in this direction so far, it is safe to assume that the ICC did not deem it worthy to interfere with tradition in this one regard. (Considering the financial and marketing implications that the concept of “the Bid” suggests, certain quarters that run certain forms of the game may be interested in it, but hush, let’s leave cricket to people who understand the on-field game, shall we?)

It’s surprising when you think about it, but many of the traditional rituals of the game haven’t really changed, notwithstanding what else has happened to the game in the last few decades. As Gideon Haigh writes in this Cricinfo piece, the taking of the guard is still as unquestioned and unthinkingly automatic an activity with batsmen as it was from the days of the primo professional allrounder of the early 19^th century, William Lambert. (A relatively recent augmentation to this charade is the slightly pretentious and dare I say, sanctimonious, act of taking guard again after reaching a landmark like a hundred or a triple-hundred.) Similarly, that oh-so-quaint British tradition of a tea break still persists in test matches, and lunch continues to be taken after the first two hours of play in the day, even though the clock barely tips over to half-past-eleven in the sub-continent. Test cricket is still played in whites, notwithstanding the fact that players are used as sandwich men in some forms of the game, especially the IxL (replace x with either alphabet, depending on who you support).

Back to the toss. It is a chance beginning to the ritual called the match, and of late, players (do I remember Steve Waugh protesting against it as well?) have questioned the need for it and have suggested that it be done away with. But as rituals go, do you really want it to go? Instead, what if we use it as a kind of a marker-laying for captains to play their hands?

Traditionally, the toss-winning captain decides on two things – who would bat first and, if he decides to bat first, what roller should be used on the pitch. What if we increase the ambit of decisions that can be made immediately after the toss? Like choosing which overs to use as powerplays in a limited overs game? Now that makes it less of an unmixed blessing, doesn’t it? Or choosing what roller to use on each day of the test? And just to take away the luck factor to an extent, how about defining a set of decisions that will be taken alternately between the toss-winning captain and the opposing captain? And the toss winner just gets to make the first move.

Of course, the easiest option is to just eliminate the toss, but then how do you get the game started? Surely not cede home advantage or away advantage or any of those suggestions that were mooted in the past? As for the bid, I suggest we leave that to the people who manage the game outside the ground. I fear it is already happening.

Tailpiece: There is one unquestionable (at least by those who understand the game) abomination that needs to be tossed away when it comes to this ritual: using the toss to determine the winner of a game, a rule that applies in the Twenty20 format when the scores are level at the end. You know the cliché I am thinking of here.

Earlier posts in this series

50Fifty

More new balls

Limited over tests

Half-and-half

What next?

I wonder why no one thought of it before: using the trouser as more than just a piece of cloth to protect one’s modesty. The kiwis have hit on it, high-tech bowlers' trousers, specially designed to put shine on the ball, and Dipak Patel springs the second surprise of his life. (The first, lest you start thinking the 1992 World Cup, is having managed to have played at the apex level in the first place.)

The more interesting mention, as published in this cricinfo story is the introduction of the IonX BaseLayer performance underwear which is claimed to improve performance by 2.7%. The performance of the balls, I suppose.

From a cricketing perspective, the more sobering sound byte in the story comes from Patel himself.

"When I came into cricket I was surprised to find there are no regulations about what materials you can and can't use."

The game seems to be setting itself for controversy, considering the number of gaps it offers for misinterpretation. Not so long ago, there was an MCC debate and decision on the use of graphite in cricket bats. And quite some time back, a certain famous personage tried an aluminium bat, didn’t he?

So what is the next performance-enhancing accessory likely to be? A Velcro surface on wicket-keeping gloves perhaps? (Did I hear Kamran Akmal nod enthusiastically?)

Corrigendum published 06-June-08: The Patel responsible for this performance gear innovation is Dipal Patel and not Dipak Patel. Apologies for the mistake.

Silver jubilee

As the 25^th game of the IPL gets over, have I formed a slightly clearer picture of the tournament than on the inaugural day? A few vignettes to reflect on.

A female friend of mine whose interest in cricket was as high as Boycott’s was in hitting sixes trooped all the way to the D Y Patil stadium to watch a Mumbai Indians (candidate for the worst name award?) game. No, I am not being sexist, but what’s a fashionista and a Bollywood fan doing in the cricket ground? Would she have gone to the Eden Gardens to watch a classic test match between India and Australia?

Preity Zinta in the stands in a Kings XI Punjab (another name fit to be consigned to the dustbins of anonymity) game presents a dismal sight, at least as far as the cricket enthusiast is concerned. Any KXI wicket falls and her face clouds like a big tragedy has enveloped her brethren. Sure, any wicket could be trouble, but her expression of “something’s gone wrong, I don’t know what, I know I can’t do anything, but it’s my duty to worry” is just too priceless to belong anywhere but on the silver screen. She looks like an over-indulged kid whose favourite doll might just topple over from the balcony.

Cut to the same Preity Zinta in the studios. And what does our irrepressible Ajay Jadeja ask her? “Preity, I’m going to mention some names, and you have to tell me whether they’re cool or drool.” No, this was not on a fashion channel or a film awards nite, this on the match preview. A forum that has been graced by people like Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry, Tony Greig and the like.

A visit to the official web site of the Rajasthan Royals is revealing. Their vice-chairman Ravi Krishnan is responsible for “structuring the business for commercial, operational and on-field success.” Till not too long ago, the three most important aspects of the game were batting, bowling and fielding.

As with most things in life, there have been some positives as well. Shane Warne’s coaching, mentoring, captaincy and bowling (and batting, in that famous assault on Andrew Symonds) makes you wonder: Is he the best captain Australia never had? Glenn McGrath’s first spell in the tournament is perfection itself. Brett Lee steaming in to bowl, and pumping his fists at the fall of a wicket suggests that the players at least are serious about the game. The clashes between Warne and Saurav Ganguly suggest that the intensity is undimmed; the slow over-rates are encouraging.

A friend of mine (and a serious cricket enthusiast) calls the IPL an abomination that should be stopped at the earliest. I am veering towards that view as well: I am tiring of watching one slam-bang game every day. But what if there is one Sohail Tanvir spell every other day? Ah, come on in, mate, let’s have a chat and a beer. And a game.

The future cricket 4 (Half-and-half)

With the advent of Twenty20, what seems to be under the most threat is the full-day 50-over variety. Test matches continue to have their charm, albeit to a specialized and increasingly diminishing audience, but one-dayers seem to be in freefall. So this piece, and the one to follow in this series, focuses on messing up with the one-day version.

How do we get rid of the anti-insomnia pill that is the middle overs of a one-day international? The Twenty20 was one option the administrators came up with, but did we really need to truncate the game so badly? How can we play the whole day and still not have the middle overs?

Surely test cricket and some of its rules have something right about them? And Twenty 20, notwithstanding the criticism on the IPL and ICL, isn’t a n absolute evil either? So what happens when we mix test cricket with Twenty20? Well, to begin with, you get this post.

This suggestion is not dissimilar to the earlier one on limited overs tests. And it is something that one has heard whispers of in the past as well. Presenting, the two innings one-day international.

The simplest format for this would be to treat it exactly like a limited overs test, with twenty- overs per innings. But then that would become little more than playing two back-to-back twenty-five over shoot-outs, wouldn’t that? And attract weird names like (Twenty-five25)² or 25x4 or just plain and useless Test 25. So let’s queer the pitch up a bit more.

To begin with, a team will have only ten wickets to play with between the two innings. So while they can treat their first innings like a Twenty20 game, they wouldn’t have much of a second innings. On the other hand, they can save wickets for a second innings bash, but could then run out of overs.

Secondly, bowlers will have a limit on the number of overs they can bowl in the match, but this can be distributed freely between the two innings. This means I can save an entire ten overs of my lead bowler for the second innings. Or bowl out my potential weak link in the first. So when will you bowl Muthiah Muralitharan? And Ajit Agarkar?

A third, more complex rule could be that the two innings need not be equally spaced. The toss-winning captain could, as with the limited overs tests idea, choose the length of each innings for both the teams, in five-over slots with a minimum of 10 overs per innings. So we could have one innings of 10 overs and one of 40. I can already see Shaun Pollock declining the captaincy.

Think I should stop this insane series? I have at least three more ideas to throw.

Earlier posts in this series

50Fifty

More new balls

Limited over tests

Fun, yes. Serious?

The opening ceremony, which I caught only in snatches, seemed to have been organised impeccably, putting to the shade the chaos of the 1987 World Cup and the ordinariness of the 1996 version. The Bollywood touch was unmistakeable; the cash, unmissable. Ravi Shastri’s exuberance as a host complemented Charu Sharma’s lack of it. Sunil Gavaskar was lackadaisical, reading off a boring script. Ray Mali was anodyne, Lalit Modi, evangelical. Laxman Sivaramakrishnan’s pitch-reading was as banal as ever (The pitch will have something for the bowlers for the first eight overs. Why eight? And how?), while Ajay Jadeja’s inane questions were only saved by Vijay Mallya’s classy responses. Sample this.

AJ: I’ll ask you a question. If the Bangalore Royal Challengers need 20 runs to win and have about 5 overs to go, will you rather Rahul Dravid hit a couple of sixes and entertain the crowd or are you fine if Dravid and co. get it in singles and twos?

VM: Obviously, the focus is on winning… … … … let them focus on the game; I’ll take care of the glamour.

Or words to that effect. He has class, does Vijay Mallya.

Rahul Dravid s nervous, Sourav Ganguly s relaxed. It's business as usual. Dravid wins the toss and opts to chase. Sourav plays his first card by saying he would have batted first. Round 1 to the man they call dada.

Praveen Kumar bowls an excellent first over (and second and third); Zaheer Khan and Ashley Noffke have nightmare beginnings. Brendon McCullum looks too anxious to begin with; and Sourav hardly faces a ball in the first 10 per cent of the innings. In the second over of the innings (Zaheer’s first), something snaps. McCullum thumps two fours past midwicket; Zaheer’s shoulders sag. He comes round the wicket and, truth be told, has McCullum in a tangle, but the ball hits the back of the bat (even as McCullum attempts a flick) and flies over third man for a six. Pace of the ball, reinforced bat, or a hugely reduced ground? I suspect the last. Some more shots later in the innings, including a paddle sweep for six, reinforce the uneasy suspicion. Have they made the ground really small to ensure more batting entertainment? I desperately hope not.

McCullum continues his merry way, starring in 50-run partnerships with each of his four partners, and finishes with a scarcely believable 158 not out at the end of the innings. Teams have defended 158 in the past, and here is one man who makes so much. However good his form and great his talent, it’s hard to believe he would have made this if bowlers were not handcuffed so much. Any way, that’s a rant for another day.

The Kolkata Knight Riders finish at 222 for 3 in their 20 overs. We’re halfway through the match, and the match is over. So I step out to catch some dinner.

When I come back and turn the television on, the scorecard reads 46 for 7. I expected a one-sided affair, but not this bad. The Bangalore Royal Challengers stumble from there to 82 all out, with Praveen Kumar (who was their best bowler, notwithstanding a horror of a last over) top-scoring with an unbeaten 18. Has the search for Kapil Dev’s (not a name to throw while talking of an event like this, is it?) successor ended? On the other side, Ajit Agarkar finishes with 3 for 25. Want to bet on his recall to the national side for the 21^st time?

But a small incident towards the end worries me. Dravid’s men are down and almost out at 71 for 9 in the 14^th over. Ganguly bowls to Kumar, who has a go at it. The ball goes high in the air between mid-off and cover. It isn’t a difficult chance, but Ricky Ponting spills it. What are the odds Ponting would have dropped what was a relative dolly by Aussie standards in a one-day international between Australia and India and the bowler was Brett Lee?

So what’s the IPL about? I don’t know yet.

The future cricket 3 (Limited over tests)

With the current trend of test matches producing results (and in well under five days, as Ahmedabad and Kanpur proved), this change may not quite be required, but to prevent recurrences of the Chennai Test of last month and the featherbed sleepathons of the 1980s, why not limit the number of overs a team faces in a test match?

I remember this being tried out in some unofficial games, so the idea is not particularly new or original, but to the extent that it has not been implemented in official games yet, let me give it a shot.

Test cricket is about strategising, planning, taking your time in implementation and countering the vagaries of the deteriorating pitch and a tiring opposition. So it is key we don’t lose these elements in the proposed format. And while the toss brings in an element of luck, it tends to play a role in determining who initiates the strategy process. We make the toss a more important factor now.

In this version of the game, both teams get to play two innings, both restricted in terms of overs. The team that wins the toss decides (a) whether to bat first or second and (b) what the composition of their two innings is to be. The opposing team will also have to adopt the same composition.

For simplicity of calculation, a test match will be considered to be worth 400 overs, net of innings changes, slow over rates and other inevitable delays. Each team is allowed 200 overs. And the toss-winning captain decides how to split the overs. For ease of calculation and a semblance of balance, we give a minimum of 50 overs per innings and allow splits in lots of 25. So if the captain fancies a wearing pitch, he can choose 150 overs for the first innings and 50 for the second. Except that the opposition will also get the same break-up. If a team gets bowled out earlier, the remaining overs lapse. On the other hand, if the captain fancies early juice on day 1 and a featherbed from day 2, he can opt for a 50-over first innings and a long stint the second time round.

Sounds insane? Surely we want more masterpieces like this Don classic?

Part 1 – 50Fifty

Part 2 – More new balls

The future cricket 2 (More new balls)

Originally, the game of cricket was conceived as a battle between the bat and the ball. Insufficient protection for batsmen and for pitches in the early days made it more in favour of the bowlers. So the administrators took over, bringing in covered pitches, the bouncer limitation, the leg side fielding restrictions, the front-foot no-ball rule and many more. Protective equipment for every conceivable part of the body (and elsewhere) made batsmen even more intrepid.

Today, the hand that holds the bat holds all the aces. Michael Holding’s plaintive cries echo that, Javagal Srinath’s baleful expressions confirmed that, Jason Gillespie’s test double hundred drove the point home, Daniel Vettori’s progress as an all-rounder tells its own story and every run that Monty Panesar makes is another nail in the bowler’s coffin.

It’s time to tilt the balance, a bit to begin with. A regulation that is very overtly bowler-centric is an urgent need of the hour, Twenty20 or no Twenty20, ICL or IPL, sponsors or boards. Here’s something that helps the fast bowlers. How about halving the time to the new ball in test matches? So the fielding team can opt for a new ball after 40 overs instead of the current 80?

The likes of Brett Lee and Dale Steyn would surely relish the prospect of coming back for a second spell midway through the second session of the first day to take a tilt at the middle order. Of course, if there is an expectation of reverse swing in the afternoon, the fielding team can delay taking the second new ball. And if a certain Muthiah Muralitharan is in your team, you’d probably pass that red cherry for a few more sessions.

Consider the effect on the batsmen. A Sourav Ganguly will have to face up to the new ball in test matches, something he normally does not prefer. A Jacques Kallis will settle down to the spinners and the seamers (and plot yet another anonymous hundred) and then will suddenly come up against the quicker ones in the midst of a somnolent (for himself, for the fielding team, for the spectators) afternoon session. Ah!

Here’s a more complex alternative. The second new ball becomes available after 60 overs, the third one after a further 40 and subsequent ones after every 30 overs. Sounds complicated? Well, we have power plays of different durations in one-day games, don’t we?

Part 1 – 50Fifty

The future cricket 1 (50Fifty)

From timeless tests to five-day tests. From 4-ball overs to 8-ball overs to 6-ball overs. From test cricket to one-day cricket to Twenty20. For a gentleman’s game, cricket has seen quite a bit of change over its 131 year international existence. So what transmogrifications can we expect in the future? Some idle speculation here, over the next few posts.

50Fifty

This is possibly the most logical extension one can imagine. The five-day test match version was producing too many dull draws. To artificially generate a positive result in the game, the one-day game was introduced. Then when the middle overs of one-dayers started getting boring, the game’s administrators just knocked them off and pop came Twenty20. What can Twenty20 lead to?

Well, quite a few celebrities from the business world and from tinsel town are involved in the Twenty20 game, thanks to the IPL and the ICL. What is the key characteristic of celebrities? Coming late for an event, of course. And the game cannot start without the celebrities making their grand appearances and their world-changing inaugural speeches, can it? Now that leaves us with even less time on our hands. So what do we do?

Introducing (drum roll and cheerleaders waving whatever they wave) 50Fifty, where each team gets to face 50 deliveries. Fifty is not divisible by six, you say? Come on, let’s not let such trivialities come in our way, shall we. Let’s just eliminate the concept of the over as a unit. Each team has to bowl 25 balls from one end of the wicket and 25 balls from the other end, that's it. The order is irrelevant, the number of balls at one stretch does not matter; but ends change when bowlers change. And each bowler can bowl a maximum of 15 deliveries in a game. Sounds crazy? Well, did you think of Twenty20 twenty years ago?

Four stumps for a free hit

Should we call this cricket 2.0? Getting players involved in running the game? Well, that’s what the Australian Cricketers’ Association seems to be trying, by asking cricketers what can be done to improve the game. Well, the concept is interesting. Some of the findings (the focus was on Twenty20) are even more so. Of course, they seem to fly in the face of logic and certainly contravene tradition (as all change tend to), but out of such fantasy comes progress.

First up is the suggestion to have four stumps. Aesthetic and terminological (Which one is the middle stump? Which the off and leg?) challenges apart, anything that is even loosely pro-bowler appeals to me tremendously. (An easier solution could be to just increase the size of the stumps to give bowlers a better target to aim at.) For the same reason, giving a bowler an extra over if s/he takes a wicket is a thought. And abolishing leg byes is a most sensible idea Steve Waugh had mooted long ago – a leg bye is neither a function of the batsman’s skill (like a run off the bat is, for the most part) nor a failure on the part of the fielding side (as in the case of a bye or a no-ball or wide).

Giving a batsman a free hit off the first ball s/he faces is a curious suggestion. Who came up with the idea? What were they thinking? And what was the question that led to this?

A couple of minor suggestions came up as well. Like players wearing shorts in matches. Well, honestly, I’ m not too sure I agree with that. Especially with all the protective equipment players wear, they may look a wee bit odd with just a bit of skin peering between those pads, thigh pads, etc. And whether players have names or nicknames on the back of their shirts is unlikely to affect their performance or their marketability, so it’s one of those questions that can be ignored.

The use of microphones has registered a high degree of acceptance. I see a lot of opposition to this, especially from coaches. Will talking to the media distract a captain or a fielder? And will it capture sledging a little more clearly? As a viewer, I’d rather not hear what goes on, and stick to just watching the game.

Duality to trinity

Long has test cricket been referred to as the “longer form of the game.” Now, thanks to Twenty20, the media has begun referring to it as “the longest form of the game.” Well I never…

So does that mean that the language of the game will have to change? May be not all of it, but yes, cricket writing and commentating will have to jettison some oft-used expressions from the past and find new ones. Much like the game itself, the vocabulary also needs some refreshing. Which is just as well – it may help eliminate some trite, tired and over-used expressions. However, the phrase-challenged pundit may just find it a bit tough for a while.

Classical economists for whom cricket is a second love can no longer say “on the one hand, and on the other” because they now need a third hand to hold up the new baby. Unless, of course, one day cricket dies out (as some cricket futurists have forecast) and we return to the old economy again.

Old English scholars who write about cricket in their spare time will have to resist using expressions like “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” when referring to the similarities between test cricket and one-day cricket. Of course, they can extend it and say “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander but not for the swan” but that’s not quite as succinct as the original, is it?

While the formality of the toss will perhaps remain unchanged, bean counters need to toss out terms like “two sides of a coin” when referring to the forms of the game. They can become philosophical, though, and refer to the three forms as “two sides of a coin, plus the truth”, thus setting into motion an interesting argument on what truth is.

Punters will continue to play an invisible part of the game in all its forms, but the game is not a “two-horse race” any more. And you can be sure no one will bet against it.

The pedantic commentator can no longer use trite expressions like “the long and short of it”, and that is the long and short of it.

The shifting goalpost

As I write this, Pakistan are mounting a strong response, chasing 457 to beat South Africa in the second test of their two-test series (to call a two-match sequence a series is perhaps stretching it a bit, but I digress). The match might (and probably will) still end up as a draw, but that’s not the point.

Remember, this match is taking place at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, on a pitch where Paul Harris (no relation to Mutthiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne or Daniel Vettori) is turning the ball square. Notwithstanding that, Pakistan seems to be making a fair fist of chasing such a huge total on the fifth day of a test.

Have the “safe” targets (for the bowling team changed)? Sure there haven’t been too many 400+ chases in test cricket (I can remember just three or four in all), but teams have started coming desperately close. And captains are becoming increasingly chary of setting targets under 500.

A fourth innings target of 400 used to be the benchmark for test matches. Has it become 500 now? And is 600 in sight?

A similar trend seems evident in one-day games as well. There was a time when any target above 250 used to be considered absolutely safe. Then it shifted to 300. Now, it appears to be 325 or thereabouts.

Is it that batsmen have become better? Or have bowlers gone down a notch or seven? Or is it, as many experts claim, the impact of one-day cricket? (If that is indeed so, then where will Twenty20 push it?)

While it is perhaps a bit of each of the above factors, there are a few other factors that could be at play as well.

One is the way bats have changed over time – heavier, broader and with wider sweet spots and such like enable even mis-hits to carry to the fence.

A second reason is changing rules. And since most rules seem to be unequivocally in favour of the batsmen, increasingly higher scores tend to be the outcome.

Another aspect that has led to the increase in scores is perhaps the growing commercialization of the game. Which means more crowds, more advertising breaks, more need for entertainment and therefore, more runs. After all, you can take only 40 wickets in a test match.

An ominous start? Or a flash in the pan?

ICC World Twenty20: Game 1: South Africa versus West Indies. First ball: Shaun Pollock to Chris Gayle. Slapped through point for four. Pollock finishes with figures of 1 for 52 off four overs. Gayle scores 117 off 57 balls. Pollock’s team wins comfortably, chasing down a target of 206 off 20 overs with more than two overs to spare.

So, are the pre-tournament predictions coming true? Does Twenty20 herald the death of the bowler? Or is this match an aberration?

I reckon the latter. I think that the two teams just fell for the pre-match build-up on how Twenty20 is a batsman’s game, and so just didn’t try anything on the bowling front. Sure, the batsmen batted as if they didn’t care about their wickets. Unfortunately, so did the bowlers bowl. I watched almost all of the West Indian innings and five overs of the South African chase. And I don’t recall seeing a single wicket-taking delivery, including the ones that got the wickets. It was all about the batsmen – they made the runs, they got themselves out. Of course, the West Indies bowlers contributed – with 23 wides.

I suppose it will take some time for players (more so the bowlers, it appears) and teams to come to terms with this new version of the game. And for us spectators to settle into a watching rhythm. To be honest, I was bored to tears with yesterday’s game, notwithstanding (or because of?) Gayle’s non-stop six-hitting. But New Zealand’s bowling today is encouraging, though it has come against the minnows Kenya. There is hope yet.

A game of glorious certainties

So there you are, the game has been redefined for all of us innocents who believed that the game is unpredictable, that on a good day anything can happen, that one good spell or one good innings can turn a contest around. Cricket has just succumbed to the third and ultimate lie – statistics. A new statistical model called Score Wizard can predict the results of a cricket game – it claims a 78% success rate during the 2007 World Cup and has apparently been accurate in five out of the six games in the current Natwest one-day series between India and Pakistan. Here’s the story on this revolutionary redefinition of the game.

May be this is just what cricket needs. Take away the uncertainty of the result, and you can enjoy the game, the minor moments, the beauty of the contest (such as it is). English county cricket would love this invention.

Unfortunately, the model still has some uncertainties. Sacrilegious, isn’t it? Apparently, the model cannot account for “unpredictable noise” (what a delicious phrase!) like dropped catches, rain and a batsman getting out on a no-ball. That ensures that matches involving India and those played in England cannot come under the radar of the nifty model.

And horror of horrors, the model also has complaints about “unpredictable” players. Velamakanni, the co-founder of the company that created this model bemoans that the firm does not use the model to predict the scores of players like Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. “We have a problem predicting their performance, but we do very well with Sachin (Tendulkar), Saurav (Ganguly) and (Rahul) Dravid,” he says. May be Pakistan will be banned from the game. And “unpredictable” players from other teams will probably be sent to statistics institutes so they can learn to lose this undesirable aspect of their game.

The cricketing world waits with bated breath – when will the official Score Wizard World Cup be be launched?

At the entrance or at the exit?

The first list of players contracted by the Indian Cricket League (ICL) makes for interesting reading. The half-dozen international players include two South African cricketers – Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje – whose international career seems over. The other four, Pakistanis all, seem to have been snubbed in some form or the other by the Pakistan Cricket Board – Inzamam-ul-Haq being denied a central contract; Mohammad Yousuf and Abdur Razzaq being dropped from the T20 squad; and Imran Farhat running foul of the selectors by questioning his omission from the squad earlier in May.

But the interesting part is the list of Indian players. Included in it are six international discards, none of whom has had any significant level of success at the apex level, and a whole set of youngsters who may or may not have made the grade for the senior team in the near future.

So how is the ICL recruitment strategy likely to pan out, assuming they don’t get legitimacy status from the ICC? Of course, right now they would just grab anyone they get. But in the long run, will they wait at the entrance gate of international cricket or at the exit gate?

If they end up at the entrance gate, it may end up putting a lot of pressure on many stakeholders. The players themselves will have to decide which side of the fence to sit on. The ICL will have to make judgment calls on who is worth hiring and who is not – their talent scouts will have to match up to those of the official cricket boards. (Going by past evidence, that should not be tough to match though.) The boards will have to hike up salaries to ensure the good talent does not go away. Is it similar to the public sector and private sector battles for talent that has long existed in India?

If the ICL ends up at the exit gate, it may just about ensure that the stars don’t overstay their welcome in the national teams. At the same time, those stars may be able to extend their financial playing career as well. It could also pave the way for more youngsters into the national squads. Except that this strategy may cost the ICL a bit more.

Irrespective of the strategy it adopts, is the ICL likely to succeed? Will the matches have the same intensity as the official inter-country battles? What kind of pride will the players have at stake? Or will it be the international equivalent of that celebrity team from the England (I forget the name)?

Will we spectators turn up to watch a motley crowd of hopefuls-who-have-given-up-hope, international discards and one-step-away-from-retirement superstars battle it out in unrecognized games and series? Well, we moved from whites on five days to colours over 100 overs and now to the tamasha of Twenty20. We are nothing if not flexible in our cricket mania.

Dinesh Mongia said this about the ICL

My clear thought is, as a cricketer I want to play cricket. I play club cricket in Chandigarh, in Madras I play in corporate tournaments, I play Ranji Trophy for Punjab, and league cricket in England. Here again I get a chance to play with youngsters who are good, and foreign players.

As spectators, we perhaps are not unlike Mongia in sentiment when it comes to cricket watching. Any time, any where.

The Cowdrey Lecture 2007

It gave me great pleasure to note that a cricket commentator was invited to deliver the Cowdrey lecture by the MCC this year. Chris Martin Jenkins takes pride of place as the first non-cricketer to deliver the lecture in its seven year lifetime so far. In retrospect, it is quite surprising that this is a first. But that is not the focus of this piece.

The full script of the lecture is available on the Lord’s website, but let me pick up a few excerpts to comment on.

When a batsman is bowled; he walks; when a batsman hits the ball in the air to mid-off and is caught; he walks. When a batsman snicks Monty Panesar to slip via the wicket-keeper’s glove and is caught by slip; he walks. But when a batsman snicks it into the keeper’s gloves only – and not into a fielder’s hands – he doesn’t walk – in the hope that the umpire might not be certain. Again, when he snicks it off the inside edge via his pad to short leg and is caught, generally speaking these days, he doesn’t walk either, for the same reason. Where is the logic, or the honour in that?

The argument is a bit like Swiss cheese, I’m afraid.

A batsman walks when he is bowled because he knows the ball has hit the stumps and the bails have been dislodged, and the spectacle is visible to every one. A batsman walks when he hits the ball in the air to mid-off because he knows he has hit the ball in the air, and the evidence is there for all to see. A batsman walks when he snicks Monty Panesar to slip because he knows he has snicked it, and the world knows it too. (Though I’m not sure every one will walk if the snick went off the wicket-keeper’s gloves, but that’s not quite the point.)

However, when a batsman snicks to the keeper or inside edges to short leg, he does not walk. The reasons are one of two – he does not know whether he has actually snicked it, or he is not sure whether the rest of the world, especially the umpire, has caught him snicking it. The first is a question of logic, and the second, that of honour, if you will. We can appeal to the honour of the batsman perhaps, but if, “at the professional level players’ livelihoods are at stake”, honour is more often than not likely to come a poor second. It’s perhaps the harsh reality of professional sport, but reality it is.

Now let me turn the argument around. How many times do fielding teams appeal for leg before decisions on inside edges and on obvious down-the-leg deliveries, and on bat-pad decisions where the bat and the pad were a cricket ground apart? How do we appeal to their collective honour? If the umpires need help from the players, they do so from both sides, don’t they?

And even if we want to implement Jenkins’ suggestion, how do we do it? Fines for dishonour? Penalty runs or wickets? Warnings and bans?

On to a different point. To begin with, Jenkins argues that the overrate in test cricket has to be improved: “90 in a six-hour day HAS to become a minimum for a game.” Stepping up the pace, he advocates that we should stretch it to 100 overs a day and make test matches four day affairs.

The beauty of test match cricket is its slowness, in a relative sense. You have one-day cricket if you are in a hurry; and Twenty20 if you're just passing by. Speeding up a test match means you lose on the nuances. The spinner adjusting his field minutely; the batsman doing a bit of gardening to let his mind forget the dropped chance off the previous ball; the fast bowler walking ponderously back to the top of his mark – these are the non-active images that fuel the test match.

There are more such interesting and provocative suggestions and arguments in the lecture, none more than the reference to a bidding system suggested by David Harris, a coach from Herefordshire, to replace the toss. I’ll let you access the original lecture to read it.

And Jenkins ends with the ominous prediction that every one has been cavilling about:

“They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing” (The Merchant of Venice)

How to resurrect English cricket, vol. ∞

An evidence based approach to the identification and development of England Test cricketers in the County Championship. (including the full stop at the end) is the simple, unprepossessing title of a paper written by Neil Davidson, Chairman, Leicestershire County Cricket Club and released by the club recently. The 69-page paper is available on the county’s web site – click here to access it. (Caution: opens a pdf file.)

Based on an analysis of England test cricketers from June 1996 to December 2006 and of the 2006 County championship season, the author comes out with a “unique development system which will deliver a high quality Test team over a sustained period.”

The development system set out in the paper comprises seven recommendations.

1. The creation of branded ‘Academy Showcase’ cricket to funnel under 17 talented young England qualified cricketers into the First Class system.
2. ‘Senior Academy Showcase’ cricket to bridge the gap into First Class cricket, replacing the current 2^nd XI Championship.
3. A combination of regulation and incentive to ensure that young England qualified cricketers get proper opportunity, across 18 counties, consistent with Phases 1-3 identified previously.
4. A mature and informed debate about the role of unqualified players as part of such a unique development system to create the best standard of First Class cricket in the world.
5. A salary cap to deliver a level financial playing field.
6. Clear communication to all stakeholders by the ECB PR machine.
7. A phased approach.

A couple of reviews have started coming in and more are likely to follow. Better worthies than this blogger will no doubt pore over the report, identify the good points (there ought to be some), slam the bad ones (there might a contest on who finds the most here) and pass overall judgement on the paper. The inevitable comparisons with the Schofield report (and innumerable others of its ilk) are bound to crop up too.

But there is one sentence hidden rather unobtrusively in the report that made one wonder.

Premiership football is now ‘big business’, thankfully cricket has not reached that stage and hopefully it never will.

Cricket is not big business? Ask any Asian cricket administrator. Even in England, isn’t Twenty20 an effort to make cricket big business? Even assuming cricket is not big business yet, why be hopeful that it never will? Is being big business necessarily bad? After all, cricket moved from being amateur to professional long long ago. Therefore, a professional cricketer is as much a businessman as a financial consultant or any other professional. And which businessman would not want to become a big businessman?

Associated with this is the fifth recommendation above: A salary cap to deliver a level financial playing field. What were you thinking, Mr. Davidson? That cricket become a government department, with fixed salaries and pensions?

An alternative cricket league

Pondering over his future, Ashley Giles spent some time at a camp for youngsters. While there, he said, “When you play at the highest level a lot, that love of the game is perhaps taken away from you because of the pressure on you and everything that goes with it…”

Is this Giles statement a throwback to the old era, when amateurs played cricket purely for pleasure? Have the times changed?

How many Australians and South Africans talk of enjoying playing the game? They seem to be more into enjoying the winning feeling, enjoying performing well, enjoying getting under the skin of the opposition, even enjoying the pressure of a tight finish… all performance oriented responses.

May be England can start a breakaway cricket league where the focus is on enjoyment, pleasure and entertainment? Where the results are not declared? Where people are paid for just landing up and feted for the attractiveness of their game independent of the outcome? Ah, Marcus Trescothick can play without pressure, Steve Harmison can grin widely. And yes, Giles can fancy a comeback.

Whither West Indies?

Now that the test series is over, the predictable noises about the decline of West Indies cricket have cropped up again. It’s a refrain we’ve been hearing for quite a while now – decline of a great team, attitude to play well, developing a winning habit, consistency, commitment, where have the quickies gone… Jonathan Agnew bemoans the West Indies’ fate here, Daren Ganga spouts brave-but-hopeless words here. Pitiable really.

Without denying the truth of it all, is there hope for the West Indies? Are the players interested in winning at all or are they just turning up for their pay cheques? The way Marlon Samuels and Chris Gayle celebrated yesterday after getting Kevin Pietersen out, when the horse had long bolted, told a depressingly insightful story. Are these cricketers playing for irrelevant, personal, cameo victories alone? Is that all they are capable of?

These are questions that are not easy to answer, there probably aren’t any answers even. And while we leave the worthies to sort out the mess, it may be worthwhile to just take a step back and examine what made the West Indies a world-beating team in the 1970s and 1980s.

To begin with, they had a great bunch of players. A lot has been said about the West Indian fast bowlers of that age, and without doubt they defined the West Indies of those days. Superbly talented, relentlessly aggressive and wonderfully complementary, they were able to take on all comers.

While one half of their cricket was taken care of by the fast bowlers, the West Indies also had a great set of batsmen. They were fortunate to have as contemporaries, batsmen of the stature and durability of Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharan, Sir Vivian Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Roy Fredericks, Desmond Haynes and Larry Gomes, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others. Intersperse these with the short-term exploits of batsmen like Collis King, Lawrence Rowe and Faoud Bacchus, and you have a batting line-up that will have any bowling attack queuing up – in the opposite direction. Some longstanding glovemen like Deryck Murray, David Murray and Jeff Dujon (with their more-than-useful batting) did not hurt either.

While the fact that the West Indies had such great players is well-known, what were the other differentiators that the team had?

For one, I think the fact that they (specifically Lloyd) ushered in the era of the all-pace attack took a lot of the opposition off-balance. This remorseless pace barrage was an innovation of the highest order, and it took West Indian cricket to the next level. You look at Australia’s dominance today – it’s a function of an all-round aggression on the field in every act – openers scoring at close to four runs an over in test matches, fielders pouncing on the ball like hungry lions on scampering prey, captains playing mind-games with brittle opposition captains or star players, spin bowlers with the face cream and aggression of fast bowlers – total cricket, anyone? West Indies cricket perhaps needs to bring in an innovation to change the way the game is played. Do they have it in them? Well, if they do, it is a very well hidden secret, indeed.

A second aspect that differentiated the West Indies of the halcyon days was that almost all the worthies in it played full-time English county cricket with a passion and commitment that saw them perform as well there (if not better than) as in the international arena. Be it the batsmen or the pace bowlers, they are as much legends in the counties they played for as they are in their native isles. Greenidge was (more than) half an Englishman with Hampshire, Richards and Somerset, Lloyd and Lancashire, Marshall and Hampshire, the list is endless. This drive to play cricket through the year is what characterized them. They earned their keep, did those West Indians. How many of the current crop play English county? And with what degree of success? The West Indies don’t have much of a domestic set-up and are unlikely to, so why not utilize the cradle of English cricket?

One final sobering thought: the great West Indies teams of the 1970s and 1980s did not emerge because of any great cricketing system in the islands – it came out of some great cricketers who came together at the same time. So duplicating their success is not likely to happen at a systemic level. That is where a mature, organized cricketing set-up like Australia looks more likely to stay on top at a more sustainable level. As for the West Indies, I suppose they can sit and pray. I fear they will disintegrate.

Courting different pitches

The French Open concluded yesterday with yet another victory for Rafael Nadal on clay. The opponent may have been the top-seeded Roger Federer, but Nadal has been well-nigh unbeatable on clay – this was his third successive win at Roland Garros, and his zillionth victory on the surface over the last three years. However, Federer has been close to unbeatable on all other surfaces. And if you look back at men’s tennis over the last few decades, take away Andre Agassi and no one person has won all the Grand Slams in his career – not the incomparable Bjorn Borg, not the feisty John McEnroe, not the phlegmatic Ivan Lendl, not the seemingly invincible Pete Sampras. No, this is not a post about tennis champions.

Tennis is the only game that seems to be played formally on different surfaces. And while true champions tend to play well on all of them, you do have four formal Grand Slam championships every year, played on distinctly different surfaces. It certainly adds to the beauty of the game. Watching a Lendl play those marathon games with Mats Wilander on the red clay of Paris was very different from watching the same Lendl struggle against Boris Becker on the sylvan lawns of Wimbledon. No, this is not a post about tennis champions.

Inasmuch as tennis has clay, grass and synthetic surfaces, cricket has the bouncy wickets of Australia, the swinging conditions of England and the dustbowls and shirtfronts of the Asian sub-continent. I sometimes wonder at the hue and cry about the differences across pitches – especially the “expert” view of the need to prepare bouncy wickets in the sub-continent. Why is there no demand to prepare absolute shirtfronts in Australia? Or spinning dustbowls in England? Why should the Asian pitches alone have to change? Is the trampoline of Perth better for cricket than the dustbowl of Barabati?

So why can’t we leave pitches the way they are? And introduce the concept of playing on different surfaces in the formal sense in cricket? The administrators want to promote the game aggressively. Wouldn’t a pitch-defined definition work better for drawing up schedules than organizing random series at arbitrary times of the year in unsuitable locations? (Of course, this might tempt the ICC to have a World Cup every year, on different pitches!)

It will also preserve the sanctity of the pitch and weather conditions in different nations. For a real cricket fan, I would imagine there is a charm in watching different contests on different conditions. It also preserves an unpredictability that is supposedly inherent to the game.

An approach like this could also lead to different possibilities in terms of team selection. Just as there are clay court specialists and grass court specialists in tennis, cricketers may also prove themselves to be adept on some kinds of surfaces more than on others. Thus leading to interesting team selections and opportunities for different kinds of players. Just as teams increasingly have test specialists and limited-overs specialists (and Twenty20 specialists soon), they may also have pitch specialists. There are odd occasions when teams (especially England) have followed the horses-for-courses approach to team selection, but if we have a formal set of “Shirt Front Series” and “Dust Bowl Tournaments”, we might just have formal specialists for each of these.

And the real world champion emerges out of a composite calculation of performances across all surfaces, not just performance in one World Cup. (Though for now, Australia win every which way, England can at least hope to be the Swing Champions some day. And India, the Dukes of the Dust Bowl.)