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?

A lot to play for

For England, there is a lot to play for at Edgbaston on Saturday, as they usher the weekend in with a handy lead of 214 runs with four wickets in hand.

All is forgotten as Paul Collingwood cements (why does that verb seem most appropriate for the man?) his place in the test team again with a handy hundred. (He got there with a six, didn’t he? Well, well, what’s the world coming to? Now they’ll expect Michael Vaughan to score runs as well, those unreasonable media men.) The captain of the one-day team not finding a place in the test team? That’s a sure way to get the selectors into recalling Graeme Hick.

Ryan Sidebottom gets a chance to do another Bob Willis (as a colleague said, it’s more than the bobbing hair, right?) as he steams in to bowl with a not-so-heavy target to back him. That may put paid to the hopes of Darren Pattinson’s comeback, but who cares for Aussies in England any way?

Andrew Flintoff completes a dream return to the test fold. Was he match fit? Did Michael Vaughan over-bowl him in the first innings? Is he good enough to bat at No. 6? All such questions will be forgotten. Until the big man injures himself again. (Can anyone please lead me to an online video clipping of his two overs to Jacques Kallis in the first innings?)

Andrew Strauss will get one more opportunity to prove that he is worthy of the sparkling whites after back-to-back twin failures following a relatively massive 44 in the first test. With Michael Vaughan preferring to give the opposition two quick wickets at the top of the order, the selectors will find it tough to look beyond a reluctant Marcus Trescothick (remember the man?) to partner Alastair Cook. And if Marcus jumps the ship again… well, let the selectors do their job, I’m not paid to do so.

Ian Bell’s not doing too badly, notwithstanding the twin failures in the second test (and that horror of a shot today), but all it takes is one more loss for the wise men to start looking at Ramps and other assorted veterans for the middle order.

Finally for the skipper. Notwithstanding my cruel jibes at him earlier in this piece, Michael Vaughan redeemed himself somewhat by making a whole fistful of runs today (it constitutes 42.5 percentage of his aggregate for the series so far). But no, Vaughan’s not there in the team to make those runs – that’s for Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar to take care of. A win this weekend and Vaughan will be English captain for life, even after he retires. He will also be unquestionably named the best English captain of all time. Mike Brearley, who’s that? And all those whispers about knighthood will be happily amplified.

There is a lot to play for tomorrow.

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

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

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.

The Great Indian Captaincy Challenge

So Sachin Tendulkar has given us a good topic to chew on. Should MS Dhoni be India’s test captain and thus ensure one captain across all forms of the game? Should Anil Kumble be offered an opportunity to show us what might have been? Should Saurav Ganguly be given another tilt at the world champions in their backyard? Or should VVS Laxman be chosen because he has a track record for tormenting the Aussies?

Well, the debate will go on, and any decision is bound to disappoint three-fourths of the cricketing pundits and fans in the country. Are there different ways of looking at the Indian captaincy than just considering some individuals?

Greg Chappell showed us one way, when he kept mixing up the Indian middle order – one day Irfan Pathan came in at No. 3, the next day it was MS Dhoni, and Rahul Dravid came back on the third. Is there a learning from here? Can we have captaincy by rotation? Imagine a core group, let’s call it the Board of Captains, comprising the four contenders mentioned above (add a couple more if you want). The captain for each game will be picked from this committee. Surely Ricky Ponting and gang will be stumped because they won’t know what to expect?

But how would we select the captain for the game? Well, there are a couple of ways of doing this.

The simplest approach would be to draw lots in the press conference the day before. This would ensure a filled room, and more than a bit of excitement. Dilip Vengsarkar goes, “The captain for tomorrow’s test match is…” and Shantakumaran Sreesanth struts into the room. “Oops, sorry, wrong room. I was looking for the dance floor.” Of course, a draw-of-lots approach could mean the same person getting lucky twice in a row, but in the long run, the laws of probability should even things out. After all, we need a long-term orientation in captaincy.

A second approach could be to select the captain on the morning of the match, based on the pitch conditions. So Saurav is the captain for the Melbourne opener, Kumble leads the team at spinning Sydney, Laxman calls the shots on the Perth trampoline, and Dhoni takes over in the dead rubber game at the Adelaide Oval.

May be there is an alternative way to look at the captaincy, with a small tweak of the laws of the game. Law 1.1 says, “A match is played between two sides, each of eleven players, one of whom shall be captain.” Perhaps the BCCI can negotiate with the ICC and get them to change the law to enable a 12^th man to be named captain of a team. Look at it this way: the player-as-captain is relevant only when a team is fielding. And it is increasingly true that the 12^th man is almost always on the field, especially when India is out there – if Ganguly is not tired, then a pace bowler has just finished a spell or someone else needs to be hidden. And by virtue of being the 12^th man, the captain will be spared the pressure of bowling or batting, and can thus concentrate on the captaincy. A focused captain is what we need for the tough Aussie tour.

Extending this logic to having a non-playing captain is a thought, but then we would still have Sunil Gavaskar captaining the Indian team, so may be we shouldn’t go that far.

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.

Am back (with tail between legs)

OK, I can never make it as a soothsayer. Almost all my predictions for the previous fortnight have come to naught.

I opined that South Africa would beat India 3 – 0 in the one-day international series in Ireland. But thanks to Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh, India came up on the right side of a 2 – 1 result. I doff my hat to the Indians; they insist on defying the odds. If only they can retain this form against the Englishmen. The bowling does look a bit threadbare for the test matches particularly, but considering my score in the prediction game, I shall not say any more.

More surprisingly, West Indies managed to best England in their one-day international series. After the Twenty20 series was predictably shared, England did get off on the right note, winning the first game. Then they suddenly remembered that they don’t know the one-day game well, and proceeded to lose the next two matches. They must be happy that Shivnarine Chanderpaul is not part of the Indian team. What a series he has had!

I believe Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are playing a three-test series. Did I say anything about that?

The next fortnight

I am off on vacation so the Cow Corner will remain unoccupied for the next couple of weeks. Before I go, some predictions for the forthcoming fortnight, and a bit beyond.

South Africa beats India 3 – 0 in the one-day international series in Ireland. The sparse crowd of 100, all Indians, sportingly applauds. India manage a total less than 200 in each of the first two games. Sachin Tendulkar, after failing in the first two games, scores a tortuous century in a losing cause in the third game. Saurav Ganguly pitches in with a pedestrian half-century in the same game.

England and West Indies share the Twenty20 series over at The Oval. Considering that it is still considered festival cricket at an international level, it is important that teams share the spoils.

Notwithstanding terrible team selection, England manage to beat the West Indies 3 – 0 in the regular 50-over series. This West Indies team cannot beat England A. And that’s not just owing to current form – take away Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo, and none of the others deserve a place in the one-day team.

Sri Lanka play Bangladesh in a three-test series. Is anyone interested?

Bye for now.