'Greg Chappell can offer some advice – but we should stop behaving like he's got the Watergate tapes in his briefcase' © AFP

Infuriating at the best of times, the cricket media has gone completely bananas in recent days with a series of non-stories. First, there was this controversy over whether the BCCI had broken its rules in making Narendra Hirwani a selector. Apparently, the rulebook said the selector should be a former player, retired 10 years. It seems Hirwani was playing cricket after that date. It’s a stupid rule and its breach shouldn’t really bother anyone. Yet, the cricket press went on and on as if it were the biggest infraction since Bodyline.

Second, the “betrayal” of and “secrets” being carried by Greg Chappell became news. The former Indian coach was now adviser to the Australian team and would allegedly “reveal weaknesses”. I’m no Chappell fan but to suggest he is guilty of some sort of deceit or treachery in this case is baloney.

	Sourav Ganguly was dropped for the Irani Trophy game after a poor showing in Sri Lanka © AFP

Admittedly the Big Four – Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – didn’t have a good series in Sri Lanka. The batting cost India victory and Ganguly’s form was the poorest. As such, I wasn’t surprised when he was dropped for the Irani Trophy game.

Having said that, we’re about to enter a long and interesting Test match season – and it would be appropriate and fitting for Ganguly to walk out after a gripping innings in an international match, at the peak of his authority, having taken his own decision. Yet, time is running out for that aspiration. He says he has another two years in him, I’m not too sure. A few matches and perhaps part or even all of the coming season is plausible. Two years? Too long. India can’t wait

	The Champions' Trophy is an unwanted extra on the international cricket stage © Getty Images

Sometimes crisis provides opportunity. While one can be fully sympathetic towards Pakistani cricket fans, it is important to see the postponement of the Champions' Trophy in a wider perspective. This is a useless, pointless tournament that nobody really wants – not players, not sponsors, not television viewers. The Champions' Trophy is an unwanted extra on the international cricket stage, irrespective of whether it is played in Pakistan or India, Australia or England.

With the Champions' Trophy gone, I suspect the Twenty20 Champions' League or some such IPL-inspired blockbuster will rush in to take its place. It will mean better business for the men who run global cricket and probably keep the players – who wouldn't mind extra money – happy too. Perhaps it will also allow the international calendar to be spread out this winter. With some juggling of dates, the England tour of India could now see three Test matches rather than two. This will gladden purists.

The point I am trying to make is, given the advance of T20 and the fact that Test cricket will always be the classical version of the game, the space and indulgence for long, spread-out ODI jamborees such as the Champions' Trophy is going to contract. Rather than flog a dead horse, let the ICC bury the Champions' Trophy altogether. As soon as conditions are deemed suitable in that country, Pakistan can be compensated with other tournaments or tours.

	Kevin Pietersen after being appointed England captain © Getty Images

As a huge Pietersen fan, I must confess to being deliriously happy. Not since Ian Botham has the most talented and exciting cricketer in the English team been appointed captain.

It was said of the Australians that they selected the XI best cricketers and then simply chose the best of the best as captain. The English did things differently – which is why Mike Brearley had a long, memorable spell as captain and even Keith Fletcher was at the helm for a tour of India, one which he probably shouldn’t have made even as a batsman.

On the other hand, John Inverarity – the bespectacled mathematics teacher and intellectual cricketer who was a sort of Australian Brearley – never came close to captaining the national team.

	Ajantha Mendis: a lethal new addition to the Sri Lankan attack © AFP

For an Indian cricket fan, the first Test match of the series in Sri Lanka was a humbling experience. The Indian cricket community and media not being given to patience, inevitably the attack will begin – on the captain, the poor spin bowling and the ageing middle order.

Frankly, that is an issue I don’t want to touch upon for the simple reason that one Test match is too little time in which to decide that entire careers are over and wholesale changes are needed. If the rest of the series proceeds like this, then perhaps there may be long-term issues to address. Even so, that is meat for another post, another time.

The point I want to focus on today is how Sri Lanka, for the past 20 odd years and certainly since the mid-1990s, remains the most underrated and under-appreciated top quality cricket team in the world. To an attack led by a fine fast bowler and one of the greatest spinners in history, they’ve added a lethal new weapon. Their cricket system has this enviable ability to churn out a series of elegant and/or devastatingly destructive batsmen, one after the other.

	You had to be there © Getty Images

“What’re you watching so quizzically?” I asked. “It’s Kapil Dev,” she said, “I wonder what he’s doing on television.” “It’s the 25th anniversary of the World Cup victory. It’s probably a silver jubilee special.” “Twenty fifth?” she rolled her eyes, “who cares ...”

I stared back, smiled what I thought was a wry smile and tucked into my chicken tikka masala. It was not that I had nothing too say; it was that I had too much. The welter of emotions that June 25, 1983, triggers within me – or, indeed, a few million others of my generation, give or take some years – is too personal and too complex to adequately convey to someone much younger or from another country or culture. At lunch on Sunday, my niece was another country.

In a sense you have to be English to fully understand what the 1966 World Cup meant for your society. For that matter, you have to be Pakistani to fully appreciate what the 1992 cricket World Cup victory stood for. It would help, of course, if you’d been around to watch those games, or just experience them on radio or television.

	Players have a right to be worried and a right to be consulted on security issues, without cricket officials giving them a “take it or leave it” ultimatum © AFP

The ICC should have seen this coming but has been deliberately and cussedly ostrich-like. A few weeks ago, I met a senior cricket official from a south Asian country and asked him if he foresaw problems ahead. After all, nothing had changed between the cancellation of the Australian tour of Pakistan in April and now. Pakistan was unlikely to experience a change in threat perceptions by the late summer. Would not the same logic and the same fear factor that drove away Andrew Symonds and Cricket Australia still hold true?

My question was waved aside with an “It’s all okay.” Now that the problem is beginning to emerge and be heard, the ICC is still insisting that Pakistan is perfectly safe and that the upcoming Asia Cup is an adequate dress rehearsal. Should the Australians and English think otherwise, be certain that somebody will conjure up the familiar “Asians versus Old Empire” argument and sundry Indian and Pakistani busybodies will go around making smug statements about how the West hates cricket’s new power equations.

	It is difficult to re-read Cardus’ prose and imagine him reporting an IPL game © Getty Images

People who had never read Neville Cardus were weeping in his memory. Those who wouldn’t spend an afternoon watching an exacting and gripping run crawl in, say, a New Zealand versus England Test, were shedding tears for the “traditions of the great game”. Critical reactions to the Indian Premier League came wrapped in exasperating hypocrisy.

It is important to understand how we play, describe, consume and celebrate cricket today in comparison with, to pick a random noun, the age when Victor Trumper was justifiably hailed as an artiste even if his Test average – a meaningless bauble that – was only 38. These changes are not unique to T20; they have been true for ODIs (F50, if you like) and even modern Test cricket.

What was once a languid, gentle pastime is today a muscular, rapid-fire sport; there is less grace, more punch. It has given us openers like Matthew Hayden, whose batting has all the charm and delicacy of a butcher but who is so brutally and gloriously effective. It has also led to scoring rates in Test matches routinely crossing three or four runs an over, and remarkable athleticism that is, paradoxically, saving about 40 runs per Test batting day.

On June 25, 1983, India won the Prudential Cup. The run-up to the silver jubilee has been marked by silly controversies and spurious theories. This (June 1) morning in The Pioneer, I looked back at simply the cricket

	For cricket fans of a certain generation, June 25, 1983, remains, quite without question, the date of their lives © Getty Images

Before the Delhi Daredevils, there were Kapil’s Devils. For cricket fans of a certain generation, June 25, 1983, remains, quite without question, the date of their lives. It was the day India won the Prudential Cup and a bunch of nine journeymen and two all-time greats (one of them, Sunil Gavaskar, a trifle out of form) pulled off the biggest miracle in Indian sport.

India has won much since. Especially in the past decade, after the Sourav Ganguly-John Wright duumvirate took Indian cricket into the 21st century, literally and otherwise, and introduced it to a modern idiom, India has reached an ODI World Cup final, won the Twenty20 World Cup, won Test matches in Australia, Test series in England, Pakistan and the West Indies. Yet, a flurry of success and a hyperactive cricket media environment make remembering dates and landmarks impossible.

I’ve spent most of the past week in Hubli, a small city in northern Karnataka that has been, in a strange way, an IPL eye-opener for me. Every evening, as the work machine shut down, the Indian Premier League was about the only entertainment available or accessible to the strangers in town. As such, I spent the week watching T20 games almost uninterrupted.

As I soon discovered, the rest of Hubli wasn’t doing very much different. IPL had captured the imagination. As a friend pointed out, nothing else was selling. IPL and Set Max had crowded out advertising from other channels and soap operas. Few big Hindi/Indian films were being released in the IPL period, because no film-maker was certain he or she could match the frenzy of abbreviated cricket. Thanks to IPL, lean season corporate advertising – summer is usually a dull time to roll out heavy-duty promotional campaigns – had been rendered an oxymoron.

For what it’s worth, here’re my thoughts on the Indian Premier League.

The format: It’s exciting but repetitive, and after the first two or three games the cheerleaders became a distraction, even a chore, getting in the way of the game. To be fair, these are points others have made as well and I can only nod in agreement. Perhaps more judicious use of Indian music and cultural products would make more sense to Indian crowds over the longer term. Somebody in Mumbai has suggested a bhangra troupe; film songs specific to players or descriptive of the situation (a six or a dismissal, as the case may be) could be other, equally corny ideas.

In the vintage years of Test cricket, boundaries were occasional. One-day cricket (F50 if you prefer) made fours and sixes common. T20 threatens to make them commonplace. If a six is hit every other over it is going to cease to be exciting. T20/IPL will need to devise new benchmarks. Perhaps vertical targets will be set: “Hit the red line near the clubhouse balcony and score eight; hit that black line on the floodlight tower and score a 12.”

	Just because Harbhajan slapped Sreesanth doesn’t also mean that he called Andrew Symonds a monkey. There is no correlation © Getty Images

Four months ago, he was the wronged Indian, the “Sikh warrior” who had been done in by malevolent Australians. Today, he’s the villain, the hot-head who’s gone too far, been banned for the rest of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008 edition – and who was probably guilty as charged by Andrew Symonds too.

The most ridiculous aspect of the Harbhajan Singh-Sreesanth controversy – which in any case is the most riveting episode the IPL has thrown up so far – is the fickleness of the cricket media and the regiments of newspaper commentators and sound-bite pundits. With specials programmes like Chhante ki Goonj (The Resounding Slap) and Tamache ka Takkar (The Clash of the Slap) – and I hope I have those names right – making a further mockery of news television, Harbhajan has gone from national hero to international anti-hero, from one ridiculous extreme to another.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. IPL opens on Friday afternoon to excitement and enthusiasm, hype and hoopla. Yet, there is a certain disquiet over the opacity with which its business rules are being written and made up as we go along. The BCCI says it's corporatised Indian cricket, but what about corporate governance? I wrote this in The Pioneer this (April 17) morning.

	Is Lalit Modi a player who is being given authority as regulator? © Getty Images

Much like the Beijing Olympics and China, the Indian Premier League was supposed to be the Board of Control for Cricket in India's coming out party. Much like the Beijing Olympics and China, IPL is turning out to be the BCCI's self-inflicted public relations headache.

With the first ball due to be bowled -- and the first cheerleader squad due to begin dancing -- in Bangalore on Friday, April 18, afternoon, IPL is threatened with a boycott by news channels because it wants them to conform to unprecedented restrictions when showing match visuals. It has singled out cricket websites for special treatment, refused them entry to the media box and even the right to buy photographs from the usual news photo agencies.

The argument of Mr Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, is that the portal rights for the tournament have been sold to an 'American company'. It has exclusive permission to report the match on the Internet and upload pictures. The name of this 'American company' and the address of its Website are, however, unknown. They cannot be revealed because of its upcoming stock market float.

How can one visit a Website one doesn't know the address of? Ask Mr Modi and the BCCI.

	Indian cricket is treating the South Africa series with the same “let’s get this over with” contempt © AFP

Only India could have done this. Just weeks after one of the most rivetting, pulsating and action-packed set of Test matches in history, India is one part – the bad, listless part – of a Test series that is turning out to be a “no contest”.

This is not to suggest there isn’t good cricket on offer. The South Africans are playing brilliantly and imperiously, looking – at least in April 2008 – the best team in the world. Their fast bowling has been impressive and made its presence felt even on the tombstone wicket in Chennai. As for Ahmedabad, any team that bowls out the other in 20 overs in the opening session of a Test match – however helpful the pitch and whatever the state of the opposition – deserves accolades.

As of now, the South Africans are running away with the series. Other than the bauble of Sehwag’s 300, the Indians have nothing to remember it for. They look jaded and tired; their minds are on the IPL carnival. They are not Test match fit – and this is not merely a reference to the physical condition of individual players.

	Pushing the limits? © AFP

Are love of cricket and love of India synonymous – or are they, in a contemporary context, mutually exclusive? It’s a question that has troubled me often, most recently when a respondent to one of my posts – which semi-facetiously suggested an Indian batting collapse could inject some energy into a destined-for-a-draw Chennai Test – implied I was being unpatriotic.

Since I’ve never measured patriotism or sense of national identity in terms of worshipping dead-on-arrival pitches, I must say I was left bemused. What amazes me even more – and has amazed me for years – is how much and how easily a certain Indian type of Indian cricket fan manages to work himself into a frenzy over fairly inconsequential fixtures.

I’m not going to pretend I’m an ivory tower intellectual who doesn’t scream, shout, wave his fist and manically thump the television at a particularly engrossing stage in a cricket match. Of course I do. I respond as a passionate fan, occasionally as a passionate Indian.

A quick response to the negative mail after my previous post. I wasn't comparing Sehwag's batting to Shastri's. The only point I was making was that the two are among the most gritty Indian batsmen ever: hungry, willing to take a deep breath and go on and on. Both want to maximise the gifts they've been given. This is unusual for Indian cricket, which -- from Jaisimha to Sandeep Patil to Sanjay Manjrekar, to pick three random names -- has been a saga of under-achievers.

While statistics don't tell the whole story, Shastri used his limited talent to hit 200 once; Sehwag, obviously a better batsman, used his greater talent to hit 300 twice.

Second, while I'm happy to doff my hat each time Sehwag entertains me and scores big, and scores quickly, it's a little silly to suggest, as one reader has done, that he's better than V.V.S. Laxman. Hayden has hit a triple-hundred and Ponting has not, but nobody suggests the Australian opener is a greater batsman than his captain.

Let's not lose perspective and nuance here.

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March 28, 2008

400 blows?

Posted by Ashok Malik on 03/28/2008 in India

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The umpire famine

Posted by Ashok Malik on 03/28/2008 in The Administrators

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March 27, 2008

Zzzz ...

Posted by Ashok Malik on 03/27/2008 in India

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March 26, 2008

Loosening up

Posted by Ashok Malik on 03/26/2008 in About

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