Cricket clips

I like quiet Fridays. Production of India Abroad is a time-consuming process, and major events cricketing or otherwise tend to be a distraction — to edit copy or blog? No such problems today, with all quiet on the cricket front. Early morning browsing threw up only two commentary pieces worth your while.

In a column that revisits his earlier argument that the verdict on the Champions’ Trophy and by extension on the future of one-day internationals can be delivered only after this edition of the tournament is over, the part that caught my attention was the afterthought:

I hope though that when the men in blue take the field, attention will be focussed on their performance rather on the content of a privately circulated note which is actually far more thought provoking in the segments that are unlikely to have made it past news editors. So now our young sports reporters have to grapple with conjuring stories on whether having sex on tour is good or bad. Their canvas seems to get broader every day! Time to redo the syllabus in media schools!

What made it into print is clearly the ‘highlights’ package with the question of sex dominating for obvious reasons, but somewhere out there is the full text and judging by Harsha’s throwaway line, it promises to make interesting reading. Hopefully, some time soon.

Elsewhere, Mike Atherton has a couple of interesting points in his piece on the one day game. First, his definition of the problem:

The 50-over game, though, is suffering from more than administrative myopia; it is suffering an existential crisis that was probably inevitable in the wake of Twenty20. Sandwiched between the longest and shortest forms of the game, it neither appeases the traditionalists nor does what it was originally designed to do — to entertain and titillate — now that Twenty20 can do those things much better. Its sole purpose is financial.

And then, his solution — not more regulation, but less:

The answer, surely, is to deregulate, so that the game becomes more like it was intended to be and therefore less predictable and less formulaic. If captains could place their fielders where they wanted to, rather than where regulations dictate, there is a chance they might start to think again and a chance that one side’s tactics might differ significantly from another’s. If a captain could bowl his best bowler for more than the stipulated ten overs, there is a chance that he would and that attacking cricket played by the best players would become more a feature of a one-day match. Powerplays dictate the pace of the game to batsmen; do without them and watch batsmen take the initiative again.

In other late breaking news, Gary Kirsten says he had no idea of the sex dossier, and dumps the onus on Paddy Upton. Revised demand from Rajan Zed expected momentarily.

Doing the split

For discussion and debate: Srinivas Bhogle, Harsha’s geeky statistically inclined elder brother, does a riff on what in ODI-reformist circles is now being called the Sachin Plan.

I’m personally all for sensible reform, but am not so sure the Plan will serve the purpose. For instance, Srinivas points out that the boredom of the middle overs phase will be eliminated. I’m not convinced.

What will happen IMHO is that boredom — otherwise known as the accumulation phase — will be split into two halves, because the nature of the contest does not change simply because you divide it down the middle. The overall objective remains as before: You have 50 overs, and 10 wickets, to try and score more runs than the opposition. Whether you get those 50 overs in one job lot or spread over two ‘innings’, that objective does not change.

Hence, neither will the approach. Teams will still look to maximize run-scoring during the first 10 overs. If they are going really good, they’ll call for a batting PP overs 10-15. If not, they’ll look to consolidate once the restrictions are off, using placement and running as the main scoring options [the part we find 'boring'].

At the 25 over mark, the one thing that will happen is that the other team will come in, and we’ll get 10 overs of preliminary fireworks, before that team moves into consolidation phase. At the end of 25 overs of the second team’s innings, team one comes back with the bat — and does what? Exactly what it would do in the 26th over of a conventional ODI: look to score runs with least possible risk, while conserving wickets for the big push in the final ten overs. [That is to say, overs 15-25 of Team 2, innings one, will be followed by overs 26-40 of Team 1, innings two, and both teams during that phase will in most cases bat conservatively, just like they are doing now].

On the pro side, the split will negate to some extent the role the toss plays in determining the result; it will also to some extent negate the dew factor [only to an extent, because the dew factor typically gets worse as the night lengthens, so the bowling side in the third innings will be somewhat better off than the bowling side in the fourth innings]. Another thing it could do is produce more results in rain-affected games.

Currently, we often have the situation of one team starting out, batting 40-some overs before the rain comes down, and team two either finding an artificially tweaked target in a lesser number of overs, or not getting a bat at all. In the split formula, two 25-over innings would have been completed in the time we now take to complete one innings, so if teams are aware of rain on the horizon, they’ll likely look to go flat out through their first innings, looking to win on the score at that point if the second half of the game is rained out.

Srinivas says the split format could produce interesting tactical and strategic changes. Let’s hear hypotheticals from you.

State of fear

The last time there was so much of a fuss over the “future of the game” was when Chris Gayle in one of his typically nonchalant riffs seemed to suggest that Test cricket should die — the emphasis on ’seemed’, because that is not what he actually said.

There is a world of difference between saying ‘Test cricket should die’ and ‘I wouldn’t be sad if Test cricket died’ — but that difference was lost in the ensuing furor, with Andrew Strauss leaping to the defense of Tests, various past worthies from the West Indies ’slamming’ Gayle for his remarks and demanding his head, or at least his captain’s armband, on a platter, and the commentariat writing reams about how Gayle’s statement could be the thin end of a dangerous wedge that could split the cricket world wide open.

Fear is the key

A character in the Michael Crichton novel State of Fear moots the theory that it is in the

The Culture of Fear

interest of the political class, the scientific/academic establishment and the media to keep people in a state of permanent fear of something or the other. A similar idea drives Barry Glassner’s non-fiction work The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of The Wrong Things.

It certainly seems to be in the interest of the cricket establishment and the media to stoke some fear or other — the imminent demise of the ‘game as we know it’ being the top of the pops. The establishment quaked with this ‘fear’ [and the media recorded every quake] when ODIs began to get popular — and the arguments then were, there is much money to be made [and India, horrors, is the one making it] in ODIs — so, oh, woe betide Tests.

And then, of course, the administration reacted to its own fear by trimming the number of Tests in its global schedule and squeezing in bilateral and multi-lateral ODIs wherever it could, producing a world championship in the format, and then producing an interim ICC Championship as well.

Fear makes you do strange things.

Now, ironically, the same establishment is in a pother about the future of — ODIs and Tests!

The latest to catch a ‘grave’ dose of the fear infection is Stuart Clark:

“What scares me the most is where does it leave the game if people just go chasing large sums of money for a bit of hit-and-giggle,” Clark said. “I think we as players all owe it to Test cricket to try and keep it afloat.

Reminds me of late 1995, when a bunch of us quit our jobs with the ‘traditional’ media to join the yet to be formed Rediff. Friends reacted with shock. ‘What’s wrong with you? You want to give up journalism?!’ Clark, in similar fashion, contrasts ‘the game’ [uttered reverently, to mean Tests] with ‘hit and giggle’ to mean T20s — and to think that a decade ago, that is what they were calling one day cricket. Here’s Clark again:

“I know the administration is working hard at it, but I personally hold grave fears for where the game is heading. But while tournaments like the Champions League are very lucrative, I’d personally like to think at this stage the players at New South Wales would prefer to play for Australia.”

Ah yes, well, as someone said in the comments field of one of my posts yesterday, thank god there are still top players prepared to put country and honor — and even family — above filthy lucre. Like Michael Clarke. Like, so. And on page two of the same article, there is this little nugget about the now fear-raddled Stuart Clark:

Stuart Clark ($US250,000 reserve) almost pulled out this week but remains a starter, according to his manager Richard Errington. “We were thinking, ‘Why bother,’ but the BCCI said, ‘No, we want you there.’ Whether he gets picked up or not, we don’t know. If we do, fantastic, if we don’t, Stuey will be starting his law degree,” he said.

Tag line of the story: Stuart Clark, even at a low reserve price, didn’t attract a single bid at the February 2009 auction. Andrew Flintoff, a day after turning freelance, is already being courted — in Clark’s home country. [Brief digression: Andrew Flintoff might be well served, financially, by his agent -- he is the best judge of that. But Flintoff might seriously want to consider getting himself a new press agent -- someone who doesn't make his principal a laughing stock each time he opens his mouth. The other day there was the bit about turning freelance so he could experience different cultures; today there is this bit about refusing the England contract so he can bungee jump. For god's sake: Just say Flintoff refused the binding tie of a central contract because with his body deteriorating, he cannot last the grind any more and needs to be able to pick and chose, and also because with his use by date approaching, he needs to maximize his earnings. That statement would be unexceptional. It also will have the advantage of being the truth.]

Moral of the story: Those who can, earn; those who can’t, express ‘grave fear’. Bonus moral because I’m feeling generous today: Not everyone can turn freelance, because not everyone has this undefined but very real ‘It’ factor to command the kind of remuneration that makes freelancing worthwhile [why do you suppose even good journalists prefer the security of a steady job to the uncertainties of writing freelance?]

Michael Atherton makes a similar argument in his piece in the Times:

To describe Flintoff as cricket’s first freelance cricketer is a nonsense: Flintoff is doing what generations have done before him, players such as Sir Garfield Sobers, who played for West Indies when international cricket was less demanding than now, but then plied his trade for Nottinghamshire and South Australia, and whoever else would pay him to do so, outside his international commitments. Cricket grew initially as a gambling game, the best players little more than hired hands for gambling gentlemen.

Flintoff’s position is only noteworthy now because it flies against the trend in recent years, which has been for cricketers to tie themselves exclusively to their national boards in return for decent remuneration and extracurricular benefits denied to earlier generations. It is unlikely, though, that Flintoff’s move in a different direction will encourage others to do the same, despite the whisperings from the Professional Cricketers’ Association, which is agitating for a greater role at the expense of a governing body that it deems to be incompetent.

After all, there are few cricketers in Flintoff’s position. Flintoff is not unique, but there are precious few with the reputation already made, the financial clout and the personality to gamble on going it alone. Reputations are still made in international sport, not franchise-based domestic tournaments, and sponsors demand the exposure that is driven by international-based competition. His move does not herald the era of the freelance mercenary, moving magnet-like to whichever franchise pays the most.

In passing, note Atherton’s point underlined in the clip above, ref the recent trend of cricketers to tie themselves to the national boards in return for security. The supplementary point is, a player offered a central contract had no choice, not really: He could either sign, and enjoy a fairly decent wage even if during the period of his contract he wasn’t playing at a high enough level to be picked for the team, or he could sit on the outside looking in, and hoping to get the odd game because the salaried players weren’t good enough.

What has changed now is that players — those who bring high skill and the X factor — have a choice. And that is what is throwing the establishment into a state of fear — a fear of its economic ecosystem being damaged, which it tries to pass off as a more altruistic fear for the ‘future of the game’. [While on this, a story from my archives: the Wall Street Journal on the rise of the 'rabble'.]

In a post on the subject of Flintoff and ‘the future of the game’ yesterday, I was making the point that much of this ‘crisis’ owes to an administration that refuses to rationalize its international calendar, to give meaning and context to its playing schedule. Here, on a similar theme, is Grame Smith:

“I don’t think you can blame the individual, but it’s an interesting time for cricket, and interesting to see where it goes now,” Smith told Cricinfo. “The crucial aspect is the decisions the leadership makes in the future. The ICC needs to give cricket a good direction, and crucial to that is how they look at the Future Tours Programme, because the decisions they make around that are going to be so important for the future of the game.”

And:

“With the greatest respect, the seven ODIs taking place in England at the moment are more for financial benefit than meaningful cricket,” he said. “People want to see strength for strength, they want to see international sides trying their best in competitive tours. I mean, the Ashes was great to watch, it was competitive down to the last Test match, and speaking for myself as a cricketer, that’s how you want to see all cricket being played.

“But all these meaningless tours just sap your body, especially when you are playing away from home for a long time,” he added. “I think the ICC needs to really look at the format going forward, and really take control of the international game.”

Cricket clips

Two angst-ridden themes dominate the press today: the future of ODIs, ditto of the West Indies.

Much of the criticism of the one-day format centers around the middle overs where, experts agree, the game slips into stasis. Matthew Hayden has a contrary viewpoint:

But that’s where your main skill sets get shown: containment, ability to be able to play spin, fitness levels, mental stamina, all elements of the one-day game. And then you can time your run-in with the power play as well. If you do break it up, it will make the game even longer because there will be intervals. It is worth considering but there are bigger fish to fry. It’s time for a consolidation of the cricketing calendar.

Certainly, if you want batsmen to dominate the game then break it down, split the game up. But we have already got Twenty20 cricket. What I want to see in a 50-over game are the nuances of those middle overs. Granted, they can be painfully slow and, granted, in a 50-over game you can be on the end of a shellacking and you have to grind out the last few overs, but in any sport you get a bad day at the office.

If, however, you want to see the skill sets of cricketers tested you need to leave the game alone and let them go about their business. It’s not about moving with the times – we’ve got Twenty20 cricket, of which I am a major advocate. It’s key that we have the three formats of the game and I’m certainly not sure that tinkering round with it is the way forward.

Interesting deviation from the norm of current opinion, but I have a question for Haydos: in the days of high-decibel television coverage, does the average fan even care for the nuances the Aussie great holds dear?

As a mind experiment, try following a one day game only through the commentary, without looking at the visuals: you’ll find a remarkable degree of somnolence in those middle overs.

True, there is skill involved in consolidation. True, it is an interesting battle of wits — the fielding side wants to run through the overs of the lesser bowlers without incurring too much damage and, at the same time, rotate in the better bowlers often enough to try and take wickets and hamper the big push at the end. Against that, the batting side wants to maintain a 5+ per over run rate with a minimum of risk, creating a springboard from which to leap towards the huge total in the death overs.

But does any of that permeate the commentary? No. Bored mike-smiths talk of neckties [vide Arun Lal, yesterday], while keeping half an eye out for an edge that goes to the boundary so they can scream about what a fantastic shot it was [Again, Arun Lal yesterday, though he is by no means top of a list that includes the likes of Tony Greig and Jeremy Coney to name just two serial offenders].

Television coverage, which in the early years did much to make the sport exciting, has in more recent times done even more to take the fun out of it — and that is an area no one is looking at. Contrast Haydos’ impassioned defense of the middle overs with the take of a much-awarded sports writer:

The game has been rumbled. The players have worked it out. As a result, now that 50 overs is the standard format for a one-day international, we have a period between the end of the fifteenth over and the start of the 41st in which the batters tip and tap their way on in nudged and nurdled singles that the fielding side are perfectly happy to concede. Meanwhile, the bowlers send down slowed-down seamers or speeded-up spinners, aimed to prevent boundaries and there, by definition, to permit singles.

It’s become a convention, a sort of non-aggression pact, a Christmas truce that lasts for 25 overs. You score at 4.2 an over in this period and try to restrict the opposition to 3.7. You don’t score too fast and we won’t bowl too nastily. As a result, on Saturday England scored 95 runs during the truce period….

As a result of Barnes’s Law, 50-over cricket is now a busted flush. It is a game that has been totally worked out, to the extent that, like billiards, it has become nearly unplayable and all but unwatchable. Well-meaning tinkering — fielding restrictions, the bowling power-play, the batting power-play, the super-sub — fail to disguise the fact that 50-over cricket is obsolete. The players have become too clever, too competent, too conniving.

If that is how a star sports-writer sees the middle overs — unwatchable, obsolete, conniving, a truce where nothing happens –  how then do you expect the fans to catch fire?

On the other — the subject of West Indies cricket — two stories that, in the run up to Champions’, is worth your while. Peter Simmons laments that the game the islands dominated for so long has now turned that same team into an international laughing stock. And Peter Roebuck is even harsher:

Everyone is sick and tired of the West Indians. South Africa ought to withdraw its invitation to take part in the Champion’s Trophy. Let Ireland come instead — at least they want to play. West Indies have been treating cricket badly for years. It’s high time the favour was returned.

Cricket clips

The debate on reform of the ODI continues, with Ian Chappell — a column I like over recent efforts by others because it examines multiple solutions to make the game more exciting.

ODIs are increasingly exercises in painting by numbers; there has been no real innovation since the 1996 World Cup that institutionalized big hitting in the early overs where the formula, till then, was a quiet start [a Krish Srikkanth, and a Mark Greatbatch, notwithstanding].

To break out of formulaic play will take more than a cosmetic change or two. It requires that the administrators, when setting out to reform, address all aspects of the game. Samples from Chappelli:

The boundaries should be as large as possible, which places an emphasis on daring running between wickets and athletic fielding, two features that originally attracted fans to the limited-overs game. Short boundaries tend to emphasise defending the ropes, and make some fielding attributes redundant, whereas larger extremities make containment difficult because of the big gaps between the outfielders.

There should only be one stipulation about field placings: four men should compulsorily be inside the circle in the final five overs. If captains aren’t told where their fieldsmen have to go then they’ve got to think where to put them, and the regulation is only there to stop teams having nine men on the boundary in a tight finish.

The other restriction on the fielding side should simply say that five bowlers have to deliver a minimum of five overs each. Apart from that the captain can utilize his bowlers how he sees fit. The more overs available to the better bowlers, the more likely a captain will attack rather than defend with stop-gap trundlers. Bowl well and you’ll be rewarded with more overs.

A good contest between bat and ball is the crucial factor, closely followed by a tense finish; all else is forgotten if the final moments are riveting. If every run is scrapped for and earned by skillful, aggressive batting and daring running between wickets in defiance of brilliant fielding, no one can complain about the game providing value for money.

Elsewhere, another worry often expressed by administrators threatens to come true, with Andrew Flintoff poised to become the game’s first official mercenary shortly after a group of New Zealand players made moves in that direction by refusing to sign national contracts until the calendar incorporated a window for them to make money in the IPL. Flintoff’s problem:

The ECB awarded an incremental contract to Flintoff as they hope will be key part of England’s limited-over sides when fit and has stated he wants to play until the 2015 World Cup. But England coach Andy Flower had said his players could take part in only three weeks of the 45-day IPL next year if they toured Bangladesh. That means Flintoff, the joint highest-paid player in the IPL along with Kevin Pietersen, could stand to lose about half of his US$1.55m fee by going to Bangladesh.

And the solution his agent has worked out:

“He’ll play for Chennai [Super Kings in the IPL], he might play for an Australian team, a South African team, maybe one in the West Indies,” Chandler told the Observer. “If he hadn’t have been injured he would have probably played in December-January in Australia. And then at the end of January, early February in South Africa. I was already negotiating with them. We were negotiating with South Australia and the Durban team, the Nashua Dolphins. And there’s been an offer from Northern Transvaal [Northerns] as well.”

Weight and watch

The future of ODIs — a recent preoccupation among commentators — is the theme of Harsha Bhogle’s latest column as well. Only, unlike the bulk of the commentators who have oscillated between writing obituaries and suggesting organ transplants to revive the game, Harsha suggests that maybe the end of the Champions’ Trophy — a tournament that gives one days some weight, some context lacking in either the England-Australia series or the triangular in Sri Lanka playing out now — would be the best time to take the format’s temperature and check other vital signs.

I’d rather wait and see what the Champions’ Trophy, another much maligned format that is going through a makeover, throws up. With just eight teams, well, seven and a nationwide poll to find people who can bat and bowl making up the eighth, it offers much by way of competition. Sambit Bal, the editor of Cricinfo is right. You need to look at things in a certain context and the Champions’ Trophy in this format provides that context. It separates it from the otherwise wild mushrooming of one-day internationals.

Shorn of their context, one-day games are a weaker offering. Put in the right ambience, they could be thrilling. It is a bit like the great violinist being ignored when he plays outside a subway station but being flattered with expensive tickets and applause when he plays in a theatre. Before writing an obituary we need to give the patient a good shot at survival.

Tangential aside for those that may have missed it — the violinist in the subway is a reference to a thought experiment carried out by Gene Wiengarten of the Washington Post two years ago [interestingly, that experiment too was about context providing meaning and a frame].

Weingarten got Grammy-winning classical violinist Joshua Bell to play his equally famous Gibson ex Huberman, a violin made in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari while he was at his peak, in a subway — the object of the exercise being to see if a performance that would have drawn a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall would attract commuters rushing about their daily business. Here’s the story. And the clip:

Context, a frame, is clearly important — but good music can still stop you in your tracks, no matter where you hear it. I remember once, in the heck of a hurry to meet someone, dashing down into the 32nd Street subway and being arrested by the sounds of fabulous drumming.

I stopped to watch, and listen. Anyone would. A train came, but by then I was intrigued by the nagging feeling that there was something familiar about the guy I was watching. At some point during a lull, I asked his name, but the penny obstinately refused to drop until I was finally on the train and heading for my appointment: Larry Wright was none other than the grown up version of the little kid who, in the opening sequence of the Peter Weir-helmed Gerard Depardieu-Andy McDowell starrer Green Card, is seen playing the drums on a NY city street. Clips of the man in action:

And here’s an interview with the man:

Enjoy Friday.