The outcast league

A Cricinfo piece titled ‘BCCI bars its players from counties with ICL staff’ reveals that the BCCI has decided that Indian cricketers cannot sign up for English counties that have ICL players in their midst. The honourable secretary of the BCCI Mr. Niranjan Shah said, ‘We don’t want our players in teams that have other players playing in unauthorised tournaments.’ Considering 15 out of the 18 English counties have ICL players in their midst, this sage decision of the BCCI all but rules out Indians from playing in the English county.

So the ICL has officially been declared an outcast, so if they go one way, the rest of Indian cricket cannot take that route. So you play for the ICL, then travel to England and play for Notts, then VVS Laxman can’t sign up for Notts. You go to Aberdeen for a vacation, and Rahul Dravid can’t vacation in Scotland for the rest of his life. You book in to a British Airways flight to go to England to watch the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, and you’ve denied Sachin Tendulkar the opportunity to meet Lewis Hamilton.

However, there is some silver lining faintly visible in the grim horizon. The BCCI does not have a problem if ‘non-ICL’ players from English county teams take part in the IPL. Someone please explain that to me.

I wonder whether it is possible to ban the BCCI and the IPL.

Absolem, Absolem!

A little-known man called Alfred Absolem playing for a little-known team called the Hyderabad Heroes against another little-known team called the Ahmedabad Rockets in a little-known (well. . .) tournament called the Indian Cricket League has picked up a scarcely credible seven wickets in a Twenty20 game. After starting off with two wickets in his first over, Absolem underwent the mortification of a wicketless over, before picking two more in his next, rounding off with three wickets in his last over to finish with 7 for 15 off four overs. Local players aside, Absolem’s wickets included Wavell Hinds, Murray Goodwin, Damien Martyn and Heath Streak. A pity then, that all these worthies are long retired and the matches are part of a rebel tournament, so Absolem is unlikely to be in contention for a slot in the national team. But 7 for 15, he’ll take that I reckon. Here’s the match card.

Whose side are you on?

A reflection on my closing thoughts from yesterday’s post. I had suggested that we as spectators may end up following games from the stable of the Indian Cricket League (ICL) just as passionately as we follow international games. On second thoughts, I am not so sure.

One of the key aspects of following cricket (or for that matter, any competitive activity) is that we end up taking sides. Even if our home nation (or county/state) is not involved, we support one of the teams. This support could be based on different reasons.

Some people tend to support Australia nowadays (or the West Indies in the 1980s) because they are more likely than not to win, and to be part of a winning side is not such a bad feeling. Especially if your country does not win too often, this could be your best chance to experience a winning feeling.

Some others lean towards the underdog because they think that their support gives the underdog a much-needed shot-in-the-arm. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more people in this category than in the first. Who would’ve got a greater thrill? A neutral fan who supported Australia in the 2007 World Cup final or one who backed India in the 1983 version?

Then there are those who back a team for the way the team plays the game. At various times, Pakistan had a fan following for their mercurial performances. What greater thrill than watching a destructive spell from Shoaib Akhtar followed by a comic run out of Inzamam-ul-Haq?

There are also those people who stand by one team because they can’t stand the opposition. There are just too many instances to cite here, and I am sure you can imagine some of them, and then have some of your own.

I can also think of people who take a team’s side because of one or two key players in that team. At one time, I used to support the West Indies team for the sake of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

The last group is the only one that could conceivably exist in the ICL format. But is that enough to sustain the ICL? Will that generate a big enough following for them to earn advertising revenues to compensate for the huge sums they are reportedly forking out to the players? I am not too sure. Unless the ICL forms teams around clubs and sells memberships to those clubs. Now that may be an idea.

So which team would you support when watching an ICL game? What would be the basis for that support? And if you don’t back a particular team, how much of the ICL games would you watch?

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.