India steps into uncertain future

About an year back, India's Test match team, spearheaded by its storied batting line up, arrived in England for a four Test series.

At stake was not merely another Test series but India's No.1 ranking in Test cricket. In a somewhat anti-climactic outcome, India lost the Test series 0-4 and, in doing so, surrendered the No.1 ranking to their hosts. Worse followed that eminently forgettable result as the exact same outcome in Australia hastened India's slide in the Test rankings. Soon the highs of the 2011 World Cup had become a distant memory, and the IPL failed to provide any real solace from those defeats. Subsequent lack of success at either the World T20 or the Champions League T20 only served to deepen the gloom.

By the end of 2011 England series, Indian fans have been waiting to return the result when England visited India next, and some measure of that was extracted with a one-sided 5-0 win in the ODI series when England came calling. However, the Test defeat continues to rankle and so the upcoming series is going to be closely watched in the hope that India can get back some of the bragging rights.

But, as management specialists will always say, change is the only constant and the amount of change in Indian cricket since the England and Australia series has been substantial and dramatic. India's strong batting line up has lost two of its three pillars, with the retirement of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, and while Sachin Tendulkar continues in the side, age appears to be catching up with the greatest batsman of the modern era.

Inevitably, as it is with Indian cricket, the transition from Dravid-Laxman to a newer generation has been characterised by a lack of clarity about who will fill their shoes. Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara remain the only names almost certain to retain their places. However, a combination of circumstances - Kohli was around when Dravid and Laxman were playing, so he is not really a replacement, India's quest for batsmen to fill the No.3 and No.7 slots remains an enigma, and the presence of a horde of contenders for these slots such as Rahane, Tiwary, Yuvraj, Raina, Badrinath, Irfan Pathan, Vijay has meant that India's batting, often the difference in all conditions, has an unsettled look about it. In addition, with the exception of Kohli and Pujara, India's batting is hardly looking in the best of health. Sehwag and Gambhir have struggled to provide India strong starts either home or away, and that has often put the rest of the batting on the back foot from the very beginning. Their decline has been most telling in the recent two away series where they average a paltry 13.60 for the first wicket, which has in turn helped the opposition bowling tighten the screws and, as a consequence, yielded a number of sub-par scores.

So, as India enters the England series there is nothing to suggest that the team has the ammunition required to return the 0-4 drubbing to the visitors. In addition, despite losing the top ranking to South Africa, the present England side is no pushover. Not only is this still the No.2 ranked team in Test cricket - hardly the worst ranking in the game - but it would be no exaggeration to contend that England have not fielded such a strong team to an India tour in recent times. And though it looked for a while that the Pietersen stand-off would restrict KP's role to trying to emulate Chris Gayle's rendition of the Gangnam Style dance number, saner counsel prevailed and England's most effective batsman is now back in the fold - even if the use of fancy terms like "reintegration" appears to be no more than a management-like form of eating humble pie. Pietersen's presence lends England's batting some much needed all-weather strength, something which they seemed so sorely lacking in defeats to Pakistan and Sri Lanka not so long ago, even with KP present.

So, while India appear to be well-armed with the right spin weapons - Ashwin and Ojha, with Yuvraj Singh probably solely in to do his pie-chucker number on Pietersen - they are still up against a challenging England team.

However, India's biggest mistake would be to focus too much on the England series alone. While there is no doubt that beating England would be good - from a cricketing perspective and for putting behind the results of the last series between the two teams - India's Test team has more long-term challenges which could be instrumental in determining the long term future of the Test team.

The England series quickly gives way to the visiting Australians, after which India travel to South Africa, their last good overseas result before the defeats in England and Australia.

In that context the England series is the first of several opportunities which the different contenders for vacant batting slots will get to prove their credentials. And the sooner the young batsmen fit into those roles, the better it will be for Indian cricket.

At the same time, though, this is also the time to embark on what promises to be no less challenging an exercise for Indian cricket, and one which has been pushed to the periphery after the retirements of Dravid and Laxman. The series in England and Australia also demonstrated how dangerously low India's stocks of quality bowling options are running. As the statistics show, in the two series India managed 20 wickets in a match just twice, and picked, on average, 8 wickets per innings. The number of big scores - both team and individual - that india conceded in both series was testimony to a bowling line up which lacked penetration.

Considering that India's most effective bowler in recent times, Zaheer Khan, is not too far away from retirement himself and, of the newer crop of bowlers, only Umesh Yadav has looked consistent home and away, it would seem that India's bowling challenges need more attention than the batting. The success of India's Test teams was built around a strong batting line up backed up by a bowling attack which had enough teeth to be competitive - the bowling was led by Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan, well supported by the likes of Harbhajan Singh, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma, and provided enough firepower to give India a realistic shot at wins in home conditions and overseas. However, the recent lack of penetration and the struggle to stem the flow of runs or take wickets should cause much concern among those who run Indian cricket. Some alternatives are already available - R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha, for instance, have been more than a handful for visiting sides, with both the West Indies and New Zealand teams struggling to play them and India will bank heavily on them if they have to win against England. The spin twins, though, have not had the same degree of success away, with Ashwin having a somewhat poorer Australia series than Umesh Yadav. The trio of them - Yadav, Ashwin and Ojha - appear to be the best placed to build upon the initial promise, though it would be risky to focus too much on just these bowlers without developing a full complement of bowlers to call upon as replacements should the need arise. At the same time the more established names - Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh - will continue to have a role in leading the bowling and guiding the next generation, as long as their form and fitness allow them to command a place in the side, for reasons more valid than sentiment alone.

Cliched as it might sound, the fact is that Indian cricket is in the cusp of major change with a real possibility that the bowling and batting line ups an year from now looking very different from an year back - that change is not going to be easy and the results it will yield will not be early enough for many. But as Australia's experience shows, the transition from a strong team to a new one can often be difficult. It requires time and investment, with liberal doses of patience, all of which Indian cricket can afford. England is just the first of several challenges that the new order has to overcome.

Pietersen v ECB - not a zero sum game

Kevin Pietersen has been thrown out of the England test team after reportedly refusing to confirm that the content of text messages he sent South African cricketers was not derogatory to Andrew Strauss or Andy Flower. And, despite much speculation that his value as a cricketer and batsman would far exceed the differences he has had with the ECB, he has been dropped from England's World T20 squad - it was probably to be expected following his omission from England's World T20 "long list", but it still came as a surprise. England are, effectively, seeking to defend their World T20 title without the Player of the Tournament of the last edition, and one of the biggest draws of the IPL - though it might not be mere idle speculation that the latter helped contribute to the current situation.

This latest news is yet another chapter in an often stormy relationship that Pietersen has had with the ECB. Starting with his difficult stint as captain, his twitter rant over being dropped from England's T20 squad and the recent rap on the knuckles for his criticism of Nick Knight, Pietersen has been in the midst of most of the recent controversy in English cricket - only pausing briefly to cede ground to his old teammate, Andrew Flintoff, for an alcohol-fuelled rant regarding Michael Atherton.

While the flap over Pietersen's latest run-in with the ECB is likely to blow over - England's hasty loss of the No.1 standing in Tests to South Africa, the upcoming England contracts process, and the World T20 seem to have enough news value to push Pietersen off the news pages for now - it leaves the average cricket fan with a sense of wonder at how the key people in cricket - players, coaches, boards - stubbornly refuse to learn from the lessons of cricketing history, whether past or recent.

As recently as last month, West Indies cricket welcomed Chris Gayle back to the fold after what seemed like at eternity - but which really lasted around 18 months of international cricket, two editions of the IPL, and one each of the Bangladesh Premier League and the Big Bash League. Gayle spent that time as a T20 specialist, regaling audiences the world over with some truly enjoyable T20 batting - and probably yearning, at the same time, for the adulation that would have been his as a member of the West Indies team. West Indies cricket congratulated itself for being firm in the face of such insubordination - and proceeded to try out a number of cricketers to replace Gayle, with generally little success. The protracted process leading to the eventual patch up left neither side looking good. If there was a lesson in it for cricket as a whole, then the ECB and Pietersen showed that they had not bothered learning from it - a bit like this Dilbert cartoon.

Pietersen's case might well avoid traversing the same path - but, for the present, the parallels are disturbing in their familiarity. Talismanic world-class cricketer, game changer, hugely popular - all these descriptions apply to Pietersen just as easily as they do to Gayle. As does the manner of his ejection.  With his exclusion from the World T20 squad, the possibility of the latest episode in the Pietersen-ECB imbroglio becoming an extended slow motion movie looms large.

Pietersen's case - and that of Gayle before him - also brings into focus the whole question of what matters in cricket. The famous - or notorious, depending on how one sees it - WG Grace is supposed to have once refused to go after being given out by the umpire arguing that people turned up to watch him play, and not to watch the umpire giving him out. Pietersen's recent "I love playing for England and people love watching me play" has shades of that.

There have been a number of articles in the aftermath of the Pietersen-ECB falling out, which have argued that the game of cricket is bigger than the people who play it, and hence Pietersen has no real reason to expect to be treated differently from any other cricketer. There is truth to that - cricket is a team game and no one, not even the likes of Bradman, Tendulkar or Warne, is ever going to be bigger than the game itself. But repeating a truism is hardly the most effective way to address the current mess.

From an outsider's viewpoint it is almost impossible to say what has led to the current  impasse. But the conclusion that the intransigence of all parties is contributing in some way to making resolution that much tougher is inescapable.

Pietersen is by far one the biggest “impact” cricketers England has. His importance to England has been demonstrated several times in the past - whether in the final test of the 2005 Ashes, or the World T20 win, or in his much-lauded innings in what might well turn out to be his last Test for England for a while. On its part the ECB would probably have done better to take note of the concerns of such a key member of the squad. Whether it could have been done without causing a rebellion in the ranks is a matter of conjecture, if not certainty, but it is debatable if such unhappiness would have caused the England cricket team to fall apart - especially after Hugh Morris has so publicly declared unity as being the central theme of the team that Strauss and Flower lead.

For his part, Pietersen would probably do well to take a look at how far greater cricketers have played the game. The likes of Tendulkar, Lara and Warne not only had outstanding career records but also did not carry the baggage of the periodic dust-up which seems a necessary part of the Pietersen-ECB relationship - this despite the fact that the testy relationship Lara shared with WICB came closest to that which Pietersen and the ECB seem to have. Similarly, Warne made no secret of his disregard for John Buchanan. This behaviour has lessons for both the ECB and Pietersen - given that Pietersen is a professional, and the ECB one of the leading cricket boards in the world, it should be possible for both parties to retain a relationship - despite disagreements and dissent - which is for the good for their common cricket interests without needing to rush off to the Press or Youtube or committee meeting rooms at the slightest hint of disagreement.

Pietersen claims that his private discussions with the ECB were finding their way into the open through the media. Such claims are not unusual - Pietersen is neither the first sportsman to make this claim, and he is unlikely to be the last. What is unusual, and possibly disturbing for those that follow and support English cricket, is that there does not seem to be any record of either the ECB or the England team management offering even a token denial, leave alone a vehement one, to counter Pietersen's claim. If that silence amounts to an admission of guilt, Pietersen would appear to have valid reasons to feel aggrieved at the treatment being meted out to him by the ECB.

As Jarrod Kimber argues in this well-written piece disagreement is a given in any workplace - and if the England cricket team were to be considered  a workplace, then  the ECB and the key players in this drama - Pietersen, Flower, Strauss - have a collective responsibility to resolve this jointly.  

Pietersen's absence from the England team might lessen the pressure on their opposition - and Dale Steyn has said as much. He may not even be irreplaceable, though it is doubtful if England will find it just as easy to find a comparable impact player. 

In the final analysis though, England cricket will have to go on - there is still lots of cricket to be played, there are still challenges to be overcome, and there will always be cricketers who will want to play for England and will be good enough to play. But for a marquee player like Pietersen and leading cricket board like the ECB to let things end this way would be tragic for cricket as a sport - and coming not long after the nightmare which was the Stanford saga, it would call into question the managerial abilities of those who run the ECB. It is difficult to see winners in this entire saga which does not need to be the zero sum game it currently appears to be.

Celebrate South Africa’s rise, not England’s decline

The Number One spot in Test match cricket is now South Africa's.

Chasing 346 to win the Test and retain the No.1 ranking, England's spirited fightback would have given Graeme Smith some cause for anxiety. It was however not enough as up against one of the better bowling attacks in the world, consisting of two of the most lethal new ball bowlers in the business, a rookie with a fabulous Test bowling career so far and a veteran who seems to go on and on – with a leg spinner with promise South Africa took the third and final test to seal a supremely dominant 2-0 series win.

South Africa's climb to the top spot in the Test rankings is a well-earned accolade for the seemingly perpetual almost-there team of world cricket.

It will also means that they have overcome their hoodoo of taking the early lead in a series only to let it slip as the series progressed, something that India have benefited from, both home and away, and which helped India retain the No.1 ranking in Test cricket. For South Africa to do so and reach the top of Test cricket in the same series must surely be a sweet moment, for the devils it banishes.

It is a worthwhile achievement for a team, which nowadays looks like it is caught in a time warp of the nice kind – one where its best players from the not-too-distant past have come together with yet another top class group to produce impressive results. Gary Kirsten, whose impressive record as coach – first of a World Cup winning Indian team which was also No.1 in Tests, and now South Africa’s rise to No.1 – tends to overshadow his terrific batting record, works alongside former teammate Allan Donald, who is the bowling coach. Combine the Kirsten-Donald duo with the likes of Smith, Kallis, Steyn, Amla, Morkel and the rest, and you have a South African team which boasts of its best talent of the last two decades. All it probably needs is Jonty Rhodes as fielding coach!

For South Africa, this success comes after some agonising disappointments. Their infamous collapse against New Zealand in the World Cup quarterfinals was an indication of the baffling frailties of one of the strongest teams in world cricket, especially when it comes to the big stage. Now, however, it appears that South Africa have put that behind them to become the truly world leading team they have always been expected to be. South Africa are deserving No.1 in Test cricket.

Since the end of Australian cricket’s golden era, after the 2007 Ashes, rarely has any team looked like dominating world cricket as thoroughly and for as long – South Africa might be the team that comes closest. They have slowly but steadily built a world-class team which has now shown its ability to play in all conditions and turn around any situation.

Their batting has been built around the solidity of Smith, Amla and Kallis while De Villiers has been the flamboyant stroke-player. It says a lot about the strength of this team that a batsman as explosive as AB De Villiers has really not had much to do this series. That batting quality has been complemented by a potent bowling attack led by the redoubtable Dale Steyn, whose bowling pedigree promises to elevate him to all-time greatness by the time he retires. Steyn has displayed tremendous adaptability in all parts of the world and rarely does it look like the conditions affect him - whether Test cricket or the IPL. Every spell seems to be something special and there is a certainty that he will make things happen. That he does all this not only at tremendous speeds but also with marvellous control puts him on par with the legends of fast bowling. Morkel might look the scatter-gun who could get it right but who could get it very wrong too. However, the disconcerting bounce that he gets is enough to unsettle even the best and he seems to be thriving in an atmosphere where he is given the freedom to be an impact bowler. It would be too simplistic to say that the presence of such high quality bowlers makes it easier for a newcomer like Philander. Philander's bowling in the second innings at Lord's coupled with an average of 6 wickets per match is ample proof that his is a very special talent. He still has not visited the subcontinent where lower and slower wickets might not give him as much to work with but his accuracy is impressive and that could be his biggest asset when playing on wickets less suited to fast bowling. South Africa have had less success with their spinning options - the transition from the attritional Paul Harris to the leg spin of Imran Tahir has not yielded the best results, and it probably reflects South Africa's ambivalent approach to their spin bowling line-up.

No team can get results without the right leadership, and it is a role that Graeme Smith performs well. Smith sometimes comes across as a stubborn captain unwilling to deviate from a set script, and as that World Cup match against New Zealand and the defeat to Australia in the two-test series showed, that approach has hurt South Africa at times. However, like all good things he has matured with age and his captaincy calls have been brave and also intelligent as he shown in this series - getting Philander to open the bowling, for instance. Being an opener he has been able to set the tone for his team and the contrast was stark between a confident Smith and an unsure Strauss. South Africa have also shown adaptability as a team - the decision to go with AB de Villiers' part-time wicket keeping skills when faced with Boucher's withdrawal after that sickening eye injury was brave, and has worked well.

And what of England? For cricket fans who have watched England over the years, it has been a story of a team that has often had its share of talented cricketers, professionals who play cricket for a living and who have always been a formidable opponent. That changed during the ‘80s and the ‘90s as England went through a sustained slump with not too many positive results – the one high point was a World Cup final, which they lost to Pakistan. Since those dark days, a number of people have contributed to the revival of England’s Test and ODI fortunes and those efforts culminated in in their ascent to No.1 in both forms of the game, though a World Cup title continues to elude them.

But, to trot out an oft-worn cliché, England have, as the No.1 Test team, struggled to look the part. Maybe it has to do with unease which comes with wearing the crown, maybe the recent Pietersen-ECB spat is symptomatic of the underlying problems which success helped gloss over, or maybe the sustained pressure of performing at a level required to stay No.1 is telling.

Whatever it may be, England’s showing since becoming No.1 has been underwhelming. Now that they have surrendered that ranking a sustained period of analysis – some critical, some honest, some over-the-top – will follow. For, of all the teams that are capable of such public bemoaning of poor results, England comes second only to India.

There will also be no dearth of cricket fans who are waiting with their most withering, most sarcastic remarks to celebrate the fall of England from No.1. In a form of one upmanship that has become a regular feature of world cricket writing, commenting, blogging and tweeting, India’s fans are waiting for pay back – not for the loss of the No.1 ranking in Test cricket, but for an opportunity to give back the criticism that followed India's own loss of the No.1 ranking.

Parallels will be drawn between how long India took to lose the ranking, how England have fared away in the time since they got there, and the inevitable comments about England being home wicket bullies (or as Mark Nicholas called it, a “fortress”) will follow.

There will be much laughing at England’s expense – and even if the England team deserve it or not, the collection of press, fans and others who have celebrated England’s success at India’s expense will have earned their team this derision. But while that might indeed be payback, there is something fundamentally wrong with that approach.

For, the passing of the crown from England to South Africa is to the latter’s credit – it is not merely about England’s failings. South Africa have got to the pinnacle the hard way – by playing consistently good cricket against their opposition, and to succumb to the temptation of gloating over England’s misery would be to do South Africa a disservice. And so, it would be better to celebrate South Africa's ascent to the top of the rankings than take joy in England’s misery. It is not about being noble – it is what the Spirit Of Cricket stands for.

As for South Africa’s success, they will realize, as England have already probably done, and India before them, that staying No.1 is as much a challenge as getting there.

Test cricket is in for interesting times. At present, South Africa and England look like the deserving leaders. Behind them, Australia and India are both grappling with the problems of transition, and doing so inconsistently. Pakistan continue to blow hot and blow cold, while Sri Lanka’s quest for replicating their home success in foreign climes remains their biggest challenge yet – much more so, in fact, than most other teams. West Indies and New Zealand are rebuilding, a process which the former seem to be doing a bit better, if the last series between them is any indication. Bangladesh know that as the clamour for a Test place for Ireland grows, they need to make the transition from being a threat to a winning team.

But whatever the long-term outcome of this joust for top place, South Africa deserve the congratulations that will come their way having arrived at the summit. Any other way of looking at it would not be fair to them.

The BCCI's National Shame

"We do not have fast bowlers in India." a young man, and aspiring fast bowler, at a cricket camp was apparently told when he complained about the quantity and quality of the food being served to him and his fellow fast bowlers at the camp.

The name of the dismissive panjandrum is not worth recalling – for it is people like that who make one marvel that India produces world class cricketers nonetheless.

As for the young wannabe fast bowler, he would go on to indeed become India's first genuine fast bowler, one of the greatest all-rounders in the sport, and, until last year, the only man to lead India to a World Cup win.

Kapil Dev's contributions to Indian cricket made him one of India's greatest players.  Along with the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev did more than just represent India with distinction - their efforts helped change what it meant to be a cricketer in India.  It would be reasonable to contend that the golden years of Indian cricket - as represented by Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble - were inspired, in part, by the achievements of these men. And even if the latter did go on to make being a cricketer by far the most remunerative professional sporting option in India alongside golf and tennis, the change from the days when cricketers were notoriously poorly paid owes much to the feats of Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar, and the generation of players they led.

Kapil Dev represented a new approach to Indian cricket – if the initial days of Indian cricket characterised teams which struggled to win, or even draw, they were then replaced by the MAK Pataudi/ Ajit Wadekar years when Indian cricket began to win, and not just at home, but away as well, when they overcame giants of the sport like West Indies and England. They, in turn, made way for the years when India was led by Bishen Singh Bedi, S Venkataraghavan and eventually Gavaskar – the emphasis on Test match wins remained, but as Gavaskar’s captaincy record shows, the tendency to win a Test and then try to draw the rest of them to win the series dominated India’s approach.

However, India under Kapil Dev, a younger captain with a bolder approach, were more positive in their outlook. Not only did they strive to win more consistently, but they also looked to build upon their successes rather than revert to the more traditional conservative approach. The story goes that in his first series to Pakistan, Kapil Dev, still a young, fiery fast bowler, had no qualms bouncing the strong Pakistani batting line up – represented by some of the biggest batting names of those years – Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal, and, of course, Imran Khan.  That story was typically Kapil Dev, at least to the normal Indian fan, whose experience of Test cricket, more than three decades back, was limited to crowding around little transistor sets and trying to imagine the scene that All India Radio’s commentators so vividly described. Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar and others like GR Vishwanath and Mohinder Amarnath were heroes of those pieces, among the handful of truly world class cricketers India then had.

And yet, while India began to belong in international cricket they arrived at the 1983 World Cup anything but favourites. The West Indies were still looking unstoppable, Australia continued to be serious contenders, and Pakistan, who had adapted and understood one-day cricket better than India, were expected to post a challenge. India, though, were not expected to be a major threat, with bookmakers offering generous odds on India winning the title. India started reasonably, beating the defending champions in their opening game, but losses to Australia and the West Indies made their second match against Zimbabwe a must-win game.

However, at 17/5 batting first, yet another loss to a non-Test playing nation loomed, as did exit from the tournament. Kapil Dev, though had different ideas, producing an unbeaten 175, one of India's most memorable one-day knocks and perhaps fittingly, the first ever ODI century by an Indian.  India did enough to win that game, the tide turned, and Kapil Dev led India to a famous World Cup win, but not before he took a fabulous running catch to dismiss a rampaging Viv Richards in the finals at Lord’s. The knock against Zimbabwe and that Richards catch were testimony not just to Kapil Dev as a cricketer, but as an all-rounder to rank among the best that world cricket has seen, and as an athlete, a description which has rarely been applied to India’s cricketers - before Kapil Dev and after as well.

Between that World Cup win, the 434 wickets he took in his career, the 5000+ runs he scored in Tests, and his tremendous commitment to Indian cricket, Kapil Dev earned himself a place in Indian cricket which is as invaluable as it is indisputable.

So how is it that such a fine cricketer, and a man whose success as a world cup winning captain took nearly three decades to be emulated by those that followed him to that role, is not in the BCCI’s list of past cricketers receiving the board’s recent, well meant, financial recognition package that has been delivered to so many of India’s past cricketers?

Rajiv Shukla, IPL Chairman, is on record as having said that Kapil Dev is indeed eligible for the award – what stands in the way of his being able to receive it is the that he has not yet accepted the BCCI’s “amnesty” offer for being associated with the now-defunct Indian Cricket League (ICL).

The stand of the BCCI on this particular issue is untenable on two counts.

One, by treating Kapil Dev’s association with the ICL as an offence for which he needs to accept an offer of “amnesty”, the BCCI is effectively declaring that its own commercial considerations trump any of several cricketing merits of one of India’s greatest cricketers.

And two, by declaring that Kapil Dev would still be eligible for the reward if he were to accept the “amnesty” offer, the BCCI is, effectively, offering to bribe Kapil Dev back into the fold. Irrespective of how remunerative cricket as a career was for Kapil Dev, this bribery is shameful. That it is so blatant only makes it that much more unpalatable.

That Kapil Dev is being denied what he so richly deserves is ironical - India's success at the 1983 World Cup signalled the start of Indian cricket's commercial transformation - which has in turn made the BCCI both rich and powerful.  The need for "amnesty" due to his association with the ICL is even more ironical – the ICL was, after all, the template from which the IPL, the BCCI’s show case event, evolved.  

Whether the BCCI has the courage to set aside its politics and recognise one of India’s finest cricketers, will demonstrate if it truly values the interests of Indian cricket, and how seriously it takes its role as the organisation which has seen Indian cricket from Lala Amarnath to MS Dhoni.

It would not be exaggeration to suggest that the BCCI is the custodian of cricket’s interests in India – and in that sense, it needs to be a more mature organisation than one which is acting as it is.

The current office bearers of the BCCI are just that – they do not represent the past of the BCCI or Indian cricket, nor do they represent its future. Furthermore, Indian cricket is, and will always be, about those who don the India colours and represent the country on the cricket field – the BCCI and its office bearers are not the ones winning India accolades on the cricket pitch. And if indeed the BCCI is serious about honouring and rewarding those that have done so, it should do so without favour, and without letting a commercial grudge override the very contributions it ostensibly seeks to recognise.

India has a history of sports bodies letting down those they are supposed to be nurturing – Indian hockey’s decline, the sorry state of Indian athletics, the national shame that was the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee are excellent case studies that best illustrate this tendency.

But for the BCCI to be able to avoid going the same way, and to assure cricketers that it does genuinely care for them, Kapil Dev needs to be feted and celebrated for his contributions to Indian cricket – anything else would convey the message to all cricketers that they either toe the official line, or risk being treated as pariahs.

Anything else – and that includes statements from the likes of Rajiv Shukla – will be a national shame.

Fixing dangers return to haunt Indian cricket

"First over, second ball" those words used by TP Sudhindra agreeing to bowl a no-ball off the second ball of his first over in the hitherto unknown Indore T20 league match, represent the first-known instance of spot-fixing in Indian cricket.

Sudhindra and four other cricketers - all of whom are contracted to play in the IPL - have been suspended by the BCCI pending an inquiry, in what promises to be the toughest test yet for BCCI, the richest and most powerful cricket board, and Indian cricket.

That these events will have a major impact on the IPL is inevitable - however, the ramifications of this for Indian cricket might be far greater. Even though the evidence on an IPL link presently appears to be thin - the ultra-competitive nature of the media business could well mean that India TV, the channel behind the sting, has more to offer - but it would be myopic to see this as an open-and-shut IPL-only case, as it involves players at state level, who eventually go on to play for India. Another point which would be pertinent and again ignored conveniently is that three of the five players were caught on tape being encouraged to negotiate deals with other teams and not fixing, per se. The worry for Indian cricket should be that a current domestic cricketer was indeed willing to bowl pre-arranged no-balls and that this cricketer was also part of the current IPL edition.

Indian cricket would not be the first time a sport has been haunted by fixing allegations. In the last decade every major sport has had to deal with the prospect and reality of results being influenced by external factors. Tennis, Football, Formula 1 and even bids for Olympics have had incidents which resulted in investigations. And contrary to the general perception of sports governing bodies being lethargic once enquires established the allegations of fixing as true sanctions were quite severe. Cricket itself has barely recovered from blow after blow suffered over the last decade starting with the HansieCronje match-fixing saga in 2000 all the way to the Butt-Amir-Asif spot-fixing case followed immediately by fixing allegations in English county cricket which led to Mervyn Westfield sentenced to prison in 2011-12.

Cricket is never going to rid itself of the dangers of fixing and at times it would certainly look like a losing battle. However, the Boards of all major test playing nations have to put in place punishments, procedures and safeguards for players to be punished when found guilty as well protected in cases where they have reported such approaches. It is essential that the confidence of the biggest stakeholders in any sport – the fans – is not eroded and that cynicism (already quite prevalent) does not become the overwhelming response to every unusual shot played, ball bowled, dismissal, fielding effort or even match result. It might be tempting to argue that cricket has seen crises bigger than this and has survived but nothing turns fans away from a sport than a feeling that the result is contrived or manipulated by forces outside the field and once the fans leave, the broadcasters, advertisers and sponsors cannot be far behind. Fixing will hurt many more than just a few teams or individuals and strikes at the very foundations of the sport.

This is also the right opportunity for the BCCI to show that it has a strong intent to keep Indian cricket clean. It is probably a blessing in disguise that this particular stain that has now hit Indian cricket is not yet IPL-linked. The incidents in question where the spot-fixing occurred were for Indian cricket’s other domestic competitions. The banning of the five players is the first and the right step and has to be followed up with a full-scale investigate and the BCCI has done well in acting quickly. However, that is not where they should be stopping - mere press statements and banning of players will not make cricket any cleaner. These illegal bookmakers cannot be kept away from the game if the body responsible for running the sport does not show the commitment and determination to act. The BCCI has to control what it can and in this particular case it has to be the players, and the IPL teams.  Of the factors the BCCI has to control the most obvious would be to educate the players and support staff about the dangers of fixing. Having a round-the-clock helpline where players can report approaches by bookies would be a great step in giving players the assurance that the Board will stand by them as long they do not deviate from the straight and narrow and stay away from aligning themselves with dubious individuals. The players, many of them at an impressionable age in terms being exposed to the riches, the glitz and the glamour of the sport, have to be educated that there is never a solitary instance of fixing and it quickly becomes a vortex from which they would never be able to extricate themselves. Importantly, the BCCI has to convey to the players that it will always be there to help.

Where the IPL is involved the franchises also become part of the equation and they play a huge role in insulating their players from influences which could sway them towards fixing. While the incidents involving Pakistani cricketers and English domestic cricketers were for the longer formats of the game, the T20 version is the most prone to spot-fixing. The action happens in such a blur relative to the other formats that a no-ball, or a wide really goes unnoticed. This makes the IPL very fertile ground for fixing. In its inaugural year and already the Bangladesh Premier League has been rocked by fixing allegations and the IPL can consider itself quite lucky that is has not been majorly affected by any spot- or match-fixing controversies since its inception so far.

The outrage in the forums and social media of the online world following India’s disastrous tours of England and Australia were ample proof that the Indian cricket fan still values the performance of the Indian team above everything else. The threat Indian cricket now faces in relation to spot-fixing is that it will be rapidly downhill for the game and the team if the Indian team itself falls prey to fixing allegations and that is bound to happen if no lasting action is taken to ensure this stain does not spread. It will not take long for fixing which has affected one obscure domestic game to next be in an IPL game and from there on a Ranji trophy match all the way to an international contest featuring India. A lot of confidence following the dark days of the Hansie Cronje affair in 2000 had been restored as Indian cricket entered its own Golden Era with legends like Tendulkar, Dravid, Kumble, Laxman, and Sehwag being led admirably by Saurav Ganguly. Now as we come full circle and these legends near their respective retirements India cannot afford to step into an uncertain future lugging the same baggage of doubt it hoped it had shed a decade ago. In addition to the fans, the BCCI also has a responsibility to those hundreds of cricketers who slog day in and day out just so they can make their dreams come true. If all of them were of the same corrupt mindsets this game would have been finished in India long ago. The fear of everyone being painted with the same brush is a real one and a grossly unfair for the majority who are still honest in their endeavours and playing the game for the sheer love of it while also hoping that one day they get the biggest reward – selection to the Indian team.

The BCCI is the richest and the most powerful body in the world of cricket. While that does not mean they be blamed for other teams playing two-test series there should be not a shred of doubt in the highest echelons that it is the Board’s duty to protect Indian cricket and more than anything else (even more than influencing the FTP, wrangling over DRS, the rejection of the WADA clauses or the non-invitation of Bangladesh to tour India) the BCCI has to ensure it remains strong enough to be able to repel fixing from at least Indian cricket. Once the intent is shown to do something about match- and spot-fixing the game can try to clean itself up on a more global level. Now is the time to open those coffers and get the best brains on board to tackle fixing.

India - bully or benefactor?

"India, your sport needs you".

This imaginative and evocative choice of words from Lawrence Booth is significant because, through these lines in the 2012 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, world cricket and those that run it have formally acknowledged the substantial role the BCCI plays in shaping world cricket's commercial fortunes. In the same breath, however, the line appears to place the blame for the falling fortunes of every format of cricket other than T20 squarely on the shoulders of the BCCI.

The reactions to Booth's piece are almost predictable.

The BCCI has so far met it with the deafening silence that it reserves for such exhortations.

Cricket media at large has hailed it as a well-meant plea requiring a responsible and mature response from the BCCI while concluding that the latter is too obsessed with the IPL and other commercial interests to care.

And there is the inevitable argument that seeking leadership from the BCCI at a time when it is cricket's biggest financial stakeholder is just convenient because the request comes from the same entities which failed to exercise the very same responsibility and maturity when they ran the sport before the BCCI emerged became cricket’s biggest financial powerhouse.

World cricket is on the cusp of major change. This change is visible in a number of ways. The World Cricket League competitions now resemble a geography lesson - names like Denmark, Singapore and Tanzania are beginning to find their way into cricketing summaries. The T20 format and the success of the IPL have combined to give impetus to a number of similar leagues like the Bangladesh Premier League while the Big Bash League has become shinier and more visible. And the emergence of disturbing trends like spot fixing has brought into dramatic focus the increasing financial stakes in the game and their sometimes insidious side effects for the health of the sport.

Booth's comments, coming as they do when cricket is having to do what it does not always do too well – coping with change – underscore a somewhat worrying aspect of how cricket is run currently.

While there is no denying that the BCCI carries substantial financial clout in world cricket, the fact remains that cricket still is, and should be, run by the ICC – that is its primary role. Cricket boards like the BCCI, ECB, CA, CSA and others are all stakeholders, but the ICC should run the sport.

Hence, declaring that it is the responsibility of the BCCI to make sure that Test cricket is in the best of health amounts to abdicating responsibility for the state of the sport – a responsibility which is as much the ICC’s for cricket as it is FIFA’s for football. At the same time, turning to the BCCI and India, often portrayed as the bad and the ugly of world cricket, when cricket is seemingly in crisis, smacks of opportunism.

There is, though, one aspect of cricket where the role of the BCCI has dramatically altered the cricketing landscape – and that is through the IPL. It is easy, and convenient to dismiss the IPL as a money-centric, tawdry spectacle.

But as with any sporting event, spectator turnout remains the biggest barometer of the success of the event – and this is an area where the IPL does rather well. Most matches appear to be well attended, and in some cases, sold out and there is a generally impressive mix of spectators.

The commercial success of the IPL contrasts sharply with the tragicomic caper that was the Stanford Super Series – which remains one of the shadier chapters of cricketing history, as the ECB cavorted with the man now accused of Ponzi-scheming his way through several billions of dollars, money that was made up mainly of small savings entrusted to Stanford’s companies. The success of the IPL is also ironic – in that the BCCI, one of the early cynics of the T20 format, has managed to successfully sell the format, while England and the ECB, the inventors of the format, appear to have suddenly lost interest in it.

Booth appears only too willing to buy into one fallacy about the IPL – that is to believe that India’s love of the T20 format has something to do with the fortunes of the Test team – as evidenced from such clichés as “T20-based nationalism” alongside “the disintegration of India’s feted batting line-up”. Considering that the rise of the IPL preceded the fall of India’s test batting line up by some distance, such a perspective, coming from a man who has supposedly witnessed the IPL at close quarters, is disingenuous. Additionally, Booth insults the intelligence of the Indian cricket fan by insinuating that successes in the ODI format, like the World Cup help alleviate the pain of recent Test failures – and in doing so displays his ignorance of the how Indian fans feel at the 0-8 results the England and Australia series have produced. Hopefully Booth has not extended that further to suggest that with Dravid retiring, and Tendulkar and Laxman likely to follow suit, India will cease playing Tests altogether!

The central argument of Booth’s piece is apparently that the emergence of the T20 format, with the IPL its most visible manifestation, has damaged Test cricket, an outcome which he expects the BCCI to set right. However, the BCCI’s commitment to Test cricket shows itself in several ways.  The BCCI has shown willingness to commit to the FTP, and the BCCI regularly schedules Test series against all the marquee names – South Africa, England, Australia – on a home and away basis. Besides this is the rather unusual fact that the BCCI remains the only board which has recently begun offer home Test series free-to-web – admittedly only the India-WI series so far – in addition to the IPL and the main domestic tournament, Ranji Trophy.

So does the BCCI really have a role to play in the future of Test cricket, which goes beyond merely being a stakeholder? The numbers appear to support that contention – after all, India continues to be the biggest market for cricket at present.

But whether the BCCI would be really willing to do that would be determined by factors beyond its control. And the starting point, it would appear, would be to attempt to engage the BCCI in a more positive and constructive manner, rather than seeking to consistently portray it as the big bad bully of world cricket – a perspective which is all too easy to find on the web nowadays, and all too convenient an excuse in world cricket.

Why away performances matter

Mahela Jayawardene's twin centuries in the recently concluded test series against England were vital rearguard actions when he came in to bat with Sri Lanka in trouble having lost 2 wickets off consecutive balls on both occasions. However, Jayawardene’s heroics are probably to be expected from someone who not only has undoubted class but also has the third highest home average of batsmen with more than 4000 Test runs at home. It also brings into focus the value of performing in unfamiliar conditions.

Cricket attracts in many ways. Test cricket is a battle of endurance and skill, and the latest entrant to cricket, T20s - at the risk of angering the self-styled purists - requires a calm head in high-pressure situations, while the 50-over one-day version falls in the in-between category of requiring skills and composure but both in equal measure.

Despite all these varied challenges the game, when stripped to its most basic form, is about batting to score runs or bowling for wickets. But even there a player’s great challenge is that the exhibition - or the more new-fangled term "execution" - of these skills is greatly influenced by the conditions in which the game is played. This is where the emphasis lies on knowing the conditions - the weather, the ground, and the way the pitch is likely to behave - very well. To be able to perform even when these conditions are not familiar is what separates the good players from the great ones. To be able to do that consistently places players in a different league altogether.

Football has, for many years now, placed such an emphasis on away performances that a winner of a home-away series of games if tied on goals is the team that has more away goals. This, even though almost nothing changes in terms of the major factors like dimensions of the field, and the quality of the pitch with the only major change being the crowd which is so overwhelmingly backing the home team that it many teams consider the home crowd their 12^th player, an advantage the visiting team does not have.

In comparison, with cricket matches so much more matters than the crowd alone – with the pitch being the biggest factor along with the size and, in some cases, the shape, of the grounds, and the weather conditions, a player’s away performances have to be seen as the benchmark of quality. Batsmen and bowlers have to adapt to alien conditions when they tour and in the non-stop international schedule they have to come to terms with the conditions in a handful of practice games, and net sessions.

Sambit Bal made an excellent point of how Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara were the two finest batsmen of the generation for him because they averaged over 50 even in the 1990s when bowling attacks and pitches were much tougher. 

If cricket in the 2000s has tracks that tend to be more batsman-friendly then it is even more pertinent to focus on away performances since the basic nature of each country’s wickets is almost never lost. A flat track in Australia still bounces more than anything in India and a placid-looking wicket in Sri Lanka would still turn more than any pitch in England. Visiting batsmen have to adjust to these subtle changes which they probably would never have encountered in their years of development as a batsman. Then there are the totally different conditions like a green wicket at Headingley, a bouncing track at Durban or a square turner in Mumbai. These raise the bar on the skills and concentration required to a new high and many a batsmen generally recall those knocks as being their finest essentially because the conditions were so tough.

When playing in alien conditions batsmen have to make adjustments to a technique which is very well-developed in terms of the basics of footwork, back-lift and shot-selection. This adjustment is not easy as a lot of it also depends on the form the batsman is in. When in bad form and playing away from home shortcomings in technique get more easily exposed as a player tends to fall back on his natural game and that natural game is suited generally to home conditions. Batsmen from India playing in England have to be less gung-ho going after anything pitched up as the seam and swing could take it further way and induce an edge while a South African batting line-up cannot just lunge forward with hard hands against spinners with close-in fielders prowling about. Batsmen cannot learn new tricks overnight like coming down the track to spinners or playing the pull and the hook so it is all about knowing what they can do and adapting that to suit the conditions. It is fascinating to watch how different players approach these away conditions.

Differing conditions do not just affect the batsmen. The bowlers too have to do things differently. Pace bowlers have to learn to be more patient and less attacking on drier and flatter wickets while spinners cannot just toss the bowl around the off stump and let the pitch do the rest in places like Australia and New Zealand. Conversely pace bowlers from the subcontinent when playing on fast/bouncy or seaming/swinging wickets tend to get too carried away on finding pace-friendly conditions and in trying to do too much spray the ball all over the place. Bowlers end up having to do more to adjust to different conditions because a subcontinent tour can help spinners in the touring team while a tour to England can help the visiting fast and medium-fast bowlers.

If the thrill of watching players perform in alien conditions has to remain then cricket has to take a hard look at how it tends to regulate and over-react to the perceived quality of wickets. More damage is done to this game and especially the Test match format when both teams pile on a mountain of runs in an innings on wickets which are totally unresponsive than in  a Test match that gets over in three days. A short game full of wickets tumbling is a much greater exhibition than a meaningless one where even tail-enders help themselves to centuries. Cricket has to put an end to sanctioning pitches which are unpredictable and make scoring difficult just because visiting teams are not good enough to perform on those surfaces. The utopian wicket is one where there is seam and bounce on the first day, settling into a batting track for the next two before beginning to crack for the last couple of days. Such ideal pitches cannot be produced so it is best that pitches are allowed to be prepared favouring bowlers than batsmen.

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What next for DRS?

Legend has it that the great Imran Khan once declared in his playing days that if he had fellow-greats Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev in his team he could beat any team in world cricket. Legend also has it that the irrepressible Gavaskar’s response to that was to declare that he could beat any team in world cricket as well – all it required was two Pakistani umpires in the game.

Not that such talk was limited to Pakistani umpires alone – visiting teams to India have been known to go away complaining about the poor standard of umpiring in India. Indian fans will swear that Sri Lankan umpires played a role when Sri Lanka hosted and beat India for their first test series win. Wisden was moved to begin its match report with a mention of the eight LBWs that went against the visiting Indians at Adelaide in 1992, quite a few of which were down to a debutant umpire, Darrell Hair. Umpiring again distorted “real” perspectives as to the outcome of a match, this time at Sydney in 2008, where a slew of poor umpiring decisions made headlines. And in his autobiography Sunil Gavaskar described umpire David Constant as being constant in his support of the England team. 

As the quality of cricket coverage on TV has improved, umpiring has become as much a talking point as the rest of the game. In keeping with their objective of getting TV viewers more involved in the game, broadcasters have turned to innovations like snickometer, ball path prediction (as provided by HawkEye and VirtualEye), and the most recent innovation, Hot Spot. These, in turn, have not only got viewers involved, but have also driven cricket towards its most significant change on the playing field – the introduction of the Decision Review System (DRS). The significance of DRS is not so much in that it greatly increases the role of technology – the change is more from a purist’s point of view in that it allows players to challenge an umpire’s decision, hence altering one of the most fundamental tenets of the game. The use of the term “review” could well be considered euphemism and sugar-coating in equal measure.

As is only to be expected, DRS evokes a wide range of reactions – from its most ardent of proponents, to its most trenchant of critics, and to those who are somewhere in between. The likes of Tony Greig remain the most visible – and unabashedly vocal – of the advocates of DRS, who not only bat for the mechanism but also make no secret of their dislike of its opponents. And while the likes of the BCCI oppose the DRS, there is a larger collection of the somewhere-in-between group, the most significant representative of which remains, strangely enough, the ICC, as it vacillates between the need to keep the various stakeholders of world cricket in good humour – including umpires, who possibly will endure the most pressure from DRS, and the players, the people who are most immediately impacted by how the use of DRS impacts umpiring decisions – and implementing a mechanism which is seen as being consistent and reliable.

It is a combination of these attributes – consistency and reliability – which could well hold the key to the future of the DRS, and its acceptability over the long term.

Of the two challenges facing the ICC when it comes to DRS, consistency might yet prove to be the lesser.

It is possible to argue that consistency should not be a challenge for DRS, which is a technology centric mechanism. After all, technology can generally be expected to produce consistent results when the inputs remain the same.

However, the recent India-England series provided two examples which helped demonstrate the importance of consistency even when technology is in use – in the two cases in question TV umpires arrived at completely different decisions based on almost similar evidence in cases of referred catches against VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. If the whole idea of introducing DRS was to eliminate such cases, a consistent approach to interpreting the available evidence has to be the starting point. The right decision was made in both cases but imagine the brouhaha if one or both of those decisions were to be subsequently proven incorrect.

DRS shifts the responsibility for the final decision from the umpire on the field to the TV umpire. If, in doing so, it is unable to eliminate the perceived inconsistency which led to the clamour for a review system in the first place, it would not represent a step forward – it would merely have the effect of replacing on field human inconsistency with technological inconsistency, and the blame for bad decisions would move from humans to machines.

However, while this need for consistency is real and needs attention, DRS’ bigger challenge remains the reliability - or otherwise - of the tools it uses. In fact, the reliability of the tools holds the key to the credibility of DRS. And ball path prediction remains the one technology within the DRS suite which generates the maximum debate in this regard.

If Sachin Tendulkar was one of the early beneficiaries in the 2011 World Cup of the sometimes baffling results ball path prediction produces, Ross Taylor and Phil Hughes were among the more high profile cases of batsmen who seem to have got a bad deal from the technology. Worryingly, in the case of the Ross Taylor dismissal, there was also talk about how the cameras predicting the ball path "lost" the ball - not the most comforting endorsement of a much-touted technology.

However the biggest and most significant concerns over the reliability of ball path prediction are likely to persist until the technology can successfully pass the definitive test of its accuracy - the clean bowled.

In a World Cup 2011 match that  will be remembered for the dramatic manner in which South Africa were knocked out by New Zealand, JP Duminy was bowled by Nathan McCullum when he misread and missed a straight one. However the ball path prediction of that dismissal, still available on some websites, shows the ball turning a long way and missing leg stump - a baffling result, considering Duminy was bowled off-stump.

In a sense, being able to produce the exact same results as the real action in the case of bowled dismissals will hold the key to ball path prediction gaining credibility and acceptability. Indeed, the question of whether the predicted path of the ball, in case of LBWs, can be accepted without question is closely linked to how successfully and accurately ball path prediction is able to mimic clean bowled dismissals – it will remain, possibly, the final frontier for the likes of Hawk Eye and Virtual Eye.

The question of reliability is not limited to ball path prediction alone. The decision against Dravid in England was a case of the TV umpire rejecting the evidence presented by technology to make a decision, and hence casting doubts on the reliability of the technology itself. 

Eventually though, the DRS question is one with several dimensions – but establishing the tools of DRS as being consistent and reliable has to be the first step in ensuring greater acceptance of DRS.

The idea behind getting the TV umpire to review replays to conclude if the on-field umpire’s decision holds is a fundamentally sound one – as evidenced by how dramatically it has altered the accuracy of stumped and run-out decisions. Using technological aids to assist the third umpire appears to be just as sound, and a very important complement to DRS. But for DRS to shake off the perception that it is, as Joel Garner described it, a technology gimmick and eventually get to a stage where it has universal acceptance will take a combination of perseverance, ironing out the current irritants with the technology and, as with all new ideas, a lot of selling before the naysayers and the radicals can agree that it is good for the sport.

It has to be either that, or no DRS.


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