Climate change?

Apparently the ICC is now enamored of London’s “working environment” — the attractions of which far outweigh the need to pay tax. Righto. We are totally convinced.

Climbing mountains

The latest Aakash Chopra insider column is as readable as its predecessors. What I like, over and above the unique opportunity to see cricket from inside a player’s head, is his ability to peg each successive column to contemporary events and to take us behind the scenes to give context to the events we watch unfold. Here, against the backdrop of large first innings scores in the recent Test series between India and Sri Lanka [and as I write this, the West Indies are mounting a strong reply to a sizable Australian score], Aakash talks of what it is like to be a batsman walking out to confront a monumental score.

When the last wicket falls, or the declaration finally comes, the openers duly take the permission of the batsmen (it’s against protocol to leave the ground before they do) and rush to the dressing room. After all, they get only 10 minutes to get fresh, change into new clothes (at least a dry shirt) and put on their gear. It leaves very little time to gather your thoughts, and that’s why most openers spend a couple of quiet minutes in their seats with their eyes closed just before walking on to the field.

Now the scenes that greet the opening batsmen on the field are quite different from the ones they grew used to after nearly two days of play. There is a crowded slip cordon and most fielders are in attacking positions.

Once bowlers have a cushion of 600 runs, they become more effective, or at least more adventurous. They don’t shy away from experimenting in order to dislodge the batsman, and they don’t worry about the runs conceded in the bargain.

Batsmen on the other hand are advised not to think in terms of runs – those scored by the opposition or how many they need to score themselves to get to safety. If you think about chasing a total of 650, it certainly sounds like a herculean task. Even if you think about 450 to avoid the follow-on, which is slightly less daunting, you’re still starting off on the wrong foot. You can’t be pessimistic right from the outset. A good idea would be to think about stitching together partnerships and batting sessions.

One of the most fascinating cricket conversations I ever had was with Barry Richards. Elsewhere on this blog I’d spoken of the concept of visualizing an ODI game through a differential calculus, which system I worked out on the basis of something the South African legend said during that chat. Another of the topics he touched on was the difficulty of confronting a mammoth score. This is what he said.

Personal note, for regular readers: Heading into a combination of the Christmas/New Year holiday season combined with the need to wind up at Rediff and work out the logistics of moving professional base to Yahoo and home to Bangalore. Blogging apt to be highly sporadic from now till January 11, when I will be fully settled into my new office.

Teen spirit

Courtesy Cricinfo’s reliable surfer, stumbled on this Sandeep Dwivedi piece on the team for the upcoming U-19 World Cup — led by the scion of Udaipur’s temple priest community. As the likes of Virat Kohli and Ravinder Jadeja fight to establish their berths in the national squad, this comes as a handy primer to the next cull of talent.

Indibloggies: felicitations

The Indibloggies 2008 results are out, and several favorites [including some good friends] have won in their respective categories.

The big winner is Arnab, whose Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind takes the palm in both ‘best indiblog’ and ‘most humorous’ categories. Icing on the cake: the blog is now a Hall of Famer — which, like Amit Varma’s entry into the Hall this year, is great news for the rest of us since it means we don’t have to compete with Arnab here on

Ramesh Srivats, another good friend, wins the ‘microblog’ award. But naturally — he is my personal port of call for the news of the day, served up with a twist of irony. And oh yes, Gaurav Mishra — another friend, another daily read — wins in the ‘business’ category.

Great to see the breadth of the winning slate, actually — blogging in India is gradually moving from dilettante activity to serious discourse, and how good is that?!

Direct remedies

In an earlier post, I’d linked to a Chandrahas Choudhury article that offered a rare peak into the workings of the batsman’s mind. Now, courtesy Suresh Menon and Tehelka, an anecdote guaranteed to make you wonder, the next time Viru hits a ball out of the park:

What kind of man is this innocent assassin who has elevated batting, and thinking, to a level of such simplicity? The story that captures him best has been told often enough, but it bears repetition here. England batsman Jeremy Snape pointed out in a match where they were batting together that he was having a problem with the reverse swing. Perhaps it was the ball that was aiding it? Don’t worry, Sehwag told him, I will hit this ball out of the stadium and then they will have to find another ball. And he proceeded to do exactly that. The replacement didn’t swing as much.

This was not arrogance so much as a desire to help out a colleague. It is entirely possible that if Snape didn’t have a problem, Sehwag might have merely pushed the ball for a single. Or not. After all, unpredictability is the cornerstone of his batting. As soon as the bowler thinks he has figured out Sehwag, he does something so unexpected that it is back to the drawing board again. Sehwag only needs to hear the sound the bat makes when it meets the ball to know he is on track. When he is going well it is a treat to the ears as well as to the eyes.

Culpable homicide

#Why is it that the ICC gets its truss in a knot when 10 wickets fall in a day’s play, or when a pitch takes turn, but is totally silent when it comes to pitches on which a grand total of 825 runs are scored in one hundred overs?

Rajkot was, not to put too fine a point on it, an unmitigated disgrace — if bowlers had unions, they would be organizing a gherao outside the curator’s home around now. We’ve had — distressingly often — ‘batting beauties’ in the past, but this wicket was something else: no matter what you bowled — pace, spin and every variation in between — the ball did just one thing: it sat up and begged to be hit.

To speak of the batting feats of Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dhoni, Dilshan, Sangakkara and others would be a travesty — the real heroes of the game yesterday were the bowlers who ran in ball after ball, knowing that ‘victory’, on this ground, was the difference in whether they were hit for a four or a six. Maybe the innovation the ODI format really requires is a rule change that permits teams to have 11 batsmen, and for all the bowling to be done by machines calibrated to serve up 300 half volleys per innings.

#It occurs to me, too, that if some smart entrepreneur were to bring bullfighting into this country as a professional sport, that would be the end of cricket. The crowds that infest our cricket stadia increasingly want blood sport, not cricket. They want Indian batsmen to hit sixes off every ball, and Indian bowlers to take a wicket every over; the silence with which they greeted a brave charge by Dilshan [who, on the day, outperformed even Sehwag with ease] and some classical hitting by Sangakkara, was disgraceful to say the least.

#For all the reasons above, parsing the Indian team’s performance on the day is pointless, yet one point occurs that will, I suspect, recur in course of this series.

The first relates to the question of opening bowlers. You have 414 on the board. You know that the wicket is dead. You want to somehow winkle out a wicket or two early, while the ball at least has hardness going for it. So why on earth would you bowl your best strike bowler as first change?

Zaheer bowled first change for the same reason Ishant has been doing it in recent times — because Praveen Kumar just cannot bowl first change; at his pace, he will be slaughtered on any but the most responsive of wickets. Strikes me that is a half-smart way of managing a bowling attack — because you insist on shoe-horning Praveen into the side, you are forced to use your best bowlers as stock, and that means you lose out both coming and going.

It seems fairly axiomatic that the bowler you pick for a particular slot should be the one best suited to that slot; thus, if Praveen Kumar is given the new ball, it needs to be because he is best fitted to use it, not because he cannot be used in any other position. Equally, for example, if Zaheer and Ishant are your best new ball bowlers, you need to give them the new ball — and then, from available options, pick the best possible number three. Fail to do that, and you not only have a less than penetrative opening attack, you end up blunting the edge of the one bowler who can be your spearhead.

In passing, watching Ashish Nehra bowl yesterday — except at the very end — was an exercise in wanton masochism. Granting that the wicket offered him nothing, Nehra made things worse for himself by carefully picking out the exact wrong line [and/or length] to bowl, at every available opportunity. MS for instance set a packed off field for Dilshan, with on occasion a short cover as an attacking option.

The field cried out for bowlers to bowl as wide as legally possible outside off, and force the batsmen to play into the packed field. Nehra promptly pitched middle and leg or, if by accident he strayed onto off stump, pitched the ball at that precise back of length spot that was guaranteed to invite the batsman to go back and thump through the untenanted off side.

If this was the first time Nehra was losing control to this extent, you could put it down to the mind-melt consequent on bowling on concrete — but this was precisely the problem he had during the T20s as well, so maybe it is time someone spent quality time with the guy.