It's not too fantastic to imagine a scoresheet, that along with the batsmen and bowlers' names, also records the fielders' names as well © AFP

A few weeks ago, I wrote a little piece suggesting cricket take a leaf out of baseball's book and maintain statistics for fielders. The practical difficulty with this suggestion is that cricket scoresheets do not contain this kind of information: fielders do not figure on scoresheets except for when they take catches. The runouts and boundary saves they make, the catches they drop, the misfields the inflict on their team are all missed.

But for a few years now, a scoresheet has been present which could potentially address this difficulty. I am referring to the Cricinfo ball-by-ball commentary, which currently records brilliant fielding, catches, drops, some misfields (if they are particularly egregious), and sometimes information on the fielder.

Consider the following excerpts from the Ashes:

9.4 Harmison to Ponting, 1 run, oh dear! Huge run-out chance missed there by Ian Bell! Ponting prods to cover and takes off for a single, but it's misjudged and Ponting had given up on making it as Bell's throw bounced over the stumps. Ponting was about three metres out there. Enormous chance missed.

And:

26.5 Broad to Ponting, no run, prodded out to third man - no, brilliant stop from Anderson at gully! He's a lithe and brilliant fielder for a fast bowler.

In this commentary/scoresheet, besides the usual recording of dot balls, runs, batsman and bowler, we have information on the fielders, on what they did or did not do. Thus the Cricinfo ball-by-ball is in fact, an annotated scorer's sheet, which could be used to generate the kind of fielders' statistics I had in mind in the piece linked above.

Of course, the annotations in the Cricinfo commentary are voluntary; they are placed there by the commentators on duty at that time and the level of detail can vary. The commentary still does not record fielders' names when there is no error as in:

25.2 Harmison to Watson, no run, shorter delivery, slapped to point

Here, we do not know who was at point, and thus we have no way of finding out, for instance, whether a particular fielder commits more errors at point and is better placed somewhere else. Adding this information would certainly add to the burdens of the (possibly already overworked) commentator/scorer. But it's not too fantastic to imagine a scoresheet (suitably tweaked to make the commentator's task easier), that along with the batsmen and bowlers' names, also records the fielders' names as well.

How would fielders' statistics be extracted from such a scoresheet? That task would be made considerably easier if the commentary facilitated the use of keywords that would allow for automated processing of the commentary transcript (another requirement would be a form-like entry for fielders for each delivery). Hopefully, such a tweak to the commentary software would not be too involved.

Fielder's statistics for too long have been ignored in cricket. Instead, we are left with a host of entirely subjective statements like "he is worth 30 runs in the field" or "his fielding has declined over the years" and so on. Quantification and recording of fielder's statistics would not only allow for comparison and record-keeping, it would also permit a ranking and recognition system for fielders that is long overdue. Annotated commentaries like the Cricinfo version point the way forward in this regard.

	Ian Botham and Viv Richards - one of the greatest cricketing friendships © PA Photos

I read the late and great David Halberstam's little gem, The Teammates, this past weekend and like many of its other readers, was struck by the simple story of the multi-decade friendship of four sportsmen (in this case, Boston Red Sox luminaries Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dominic Di Maggio and John Pesky).

Halberstam's tale concerns friendships amongst members of the same team, and of those, I've heard, a few when it comes to cricket. But one cricketing friendship featured two giants of the game who played for opposing teams in international cricket (albeit the same team in a domestic cricket competition): Ian Botham and Viv Richards.

The reasons the Botham-Richards friendship struck me as so distinctive (in clearly idealized ways) were numerous: they were both cricketers I admired for the way they played their cricket; there was something undeniably romantic in the notion that men used to fierce competition against each other in one context, could then put shoulder-to-shoulder in another; a camaraderie amongst sportsmen in a sport centered largely on international bilateral contests was uncommon; the political overtones of a proud black cricketer finding comradeship with a Somerset lad; and so on.

While tales of friendship amongst team-mates were common in cricket (in the Indian context, the friendship between Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath was well-known), this kind of trans-border mateship was rare (though admittedly, in English county cricket, these had become increasingly common), and thus, there were more contrasts to be seized on, many more differences to point to as having been bridged, and many more commonalities to note amongst the two.

The stories that surrounded the Botham-Richards friendship were numerous and of varying quality and veracity: that Richards was responsible for ensuring that Botham never signed for the rebel South African tours because Botham could not have faced Richards' disapproval thereafter; that Botham was resolutely on Richards' side in any dispute including the famous ones with Peter Roebuck; that Richards haughtily waved off a congratulations and a handshake from Botham in a Test, because "this isn't a county game"; and of course, my favorite, that Richards introduced Botham to the pleasures of an occasional toke of cannabis (is that why Sir Ian gained so much weight in the 1980s?)

But I suspect the real reason the Botham-Richards friendship appealed so much to me (especially when I was a teenager) was because the idea of a cricketing friendship spanning the divisions of national sides was a romantic one that brought relief from the tensions engendered by Test cricket. One theme common to many positive reactions to the IPL's first two editions was the sight of erstwhile opponents celebrating together when brought together for an IPL outfit.

I suspect that while we celebrate nationalist rivalry on the ground, some of us like to be reminded that it is a bit of play-acting, that the same men who snarl at each other on the ground, and gladly knock each others' heads off, would in other contexts, put that nastiness aside. That is, despite the quasi-xenophobic bluster, most notably displayed in the comments sections of cricket blogs, we're softies at heart, and such friendships reassure us that all is well, that these men acting like brash warriors are really just folks like us in many ways. Maintaining and sustaining an edgy sporting rivalry can be exhausting, for players and fans alike. The friendships that international cricketers strike up in the course of their careers aren't just valuable for them; they bring us much pleasure too by humanizing the players, and bringing them down to earth.

And as the story of Richards waving off Botham in a Test reminds us, we know that when they step back onto an international arena, they'll go right back to being flag-waving ogres.

My weekend got off to a rough start, but the news I read this morning, that India and Pakistan might play Test matches at a neutral venue (sometime after 2012) has put a huge smile on my face.

Hopefully, the sensible thing will be done by staging these in England. India and Pakistan need to stage their Test cricket somewhere else; in stadiums that might actually fill up with loud, enthusiastic fans, of which there will be plenty in England for both teams. Pakistan can regard North England as "home" and India can do the same with the South. Many expats will fly in to watch the games (I would seriously consider flying over for one Test at least), and hopefully, English pitches will co-operate with the weather to produce some result-oriented cricket. The India-Pakistan cricket relationship needs a shot in the arm, and this might do it.

The fact of the matter is that even without the politics that has been getting in the way, India-Pakistan Test cricket in recent years has been a bit of a crashing bore (and not just because both boards have staged too much cricket between the two). The series in 2004 was played in empty stadiums, an especial irony given all the pre-tour hoopla about how desperate the Pakistan cricket fan was to see the Indian team in action. The two series played in India since then have been impressive showcases for India's inability to close the deal in Tests. In both series, India held the upper edge, and managed to royally stuff things up. In the 2004-05 series, they won one Test when Pakistan obligingly rolled over, but failed to drive home the advantage in another, and then completely lost the plot by putting together a nice last-day collapse in the third Test.

In the last series played in India, Pakistan sent over a team which looked so lackluster on the field that I almost felt like asking them to walk back to the pavilion for an intravenous coffee drip. India failed to put this bunch out of their misery as well, managing only a 1-0 win when by all rights they should have wiped the floor with a 3-0 margin. The last Test featured that perennial favorite of Indian Test captains: the meandering, cautious move toward a declaration, which is then delayed so much that a draw is the only outcome possible.

But the crowning glory of India-Pakistan Test cricket in recent times was the series in Pakistan in 2006, which showcased dead pitches and horrendous run-fest snoozes in the first two Tests, before India redeemed matters with a spectacular display of incompetence in the third game (it takes special talent to lose after your quick bowler has taken a hat-trick in the opening over of a Test).

I can only hope with fingers crossed, that the games will be staged in England and that plans will be finalised soon. The current enforced gap is a good thing; it has made cricket between India and Pakistan a little less common, a little more desirable. A good India-Pakistan Test can be the best of the best. But it needs some large crowds and a co-operative pitch or two. I think these will be found in England; I'm sure about the first and optimistic about the second. India and Pakistan will both have attacks capable of exploiting the conditions, the locals will be looking to pick up some bragging rights, and many English fans will turn up to watch as well. It has all the makings of a good summer of cricket. Bring it on.

Cricketers have mentors. Those that inspire them to reach heights they might not have dreamed of. I think cricket fans have mentors too. Those that inspire our fandom, pointing us to corners of the game we might not have thought of exploring, whose influence makes us the fans we are today.

My mentor in cricketing-fandom was (and is) my uncle (my mother's younger brother). He taught me how to read cricket scorecards, to calculate batting and bowling averages, to find cricket commentary from England and Australia (and to tune shortwave radios), and introduced me to many of the game's greats. Indeed, he made me aware of so many different facets of the game, that it would take a column considerably longer than this one to do justice to him. Before I came to the US, it was no exaggeration to say that if I had experienced a pleasurable moment in watching cricket, the odds were high it was in his company.

I still remember the day I was first struck by what seemed like his uncanny ability to read a game. We were watching highlights of a Test between Tony Lewis' English side and the Indians in 1972-73. BS Chandrasekhar strode out to bat. My uncle calmly said, "Watch, he'll be bowled first ball." And so it came to be. I gazed at him in admiration; this man was prescient!

But more seriously, his utter and total devotion to the game - from tracking its minute variations, to his raw emotion when denied victory and his joy when the cricketing gods smiled upon his efforts, served as a model for me to emulate. Nothing quite impressed me like his logbook of cricket scorecards, faithfully copied out from newspapers, with every attendant statistic carefully noted. Here was devotion to the game, writ large in his careful handwriting.

Over the years we watched Test cricket on television, we heard it on the radio, we saw one-day internationals and we dissected games to bits. Some of my favourite cricketing memories (among others) involve him: listening to Pakistan make a brave attempt to chase down 294 against West Indies in the 1979 World Cup semi-final, and Kapil Dev lashing 89 off 55 balls against England at Lord’s in 1982 in a brave attempt to ward off defeat, and of course, watching the 1983 World Cup semi-finals and final on a crystal-clear BBC broadcast.

There were crushing disappointments too: we still haven't got over India's failure to
wrap up the 1985 Boxing Day Test. Denied by Border and the rain sure; but really, by India's inability to close the deal. The memory of that cold Delhi morning, huddled next to a radio, waiting and waiting for the last Australian wicket to fall, and for the Indian openers to get a move on, still rankles, and colours my perceptions of the modern Indian side.

My uncle had a rogue's sense of humour: he taped the end of the radio commentary of the fifth Test in the India-Australia series in 1977-78, played it back for me, and almost convinced me the umpire had called back Chandrasekhar for a second chance at batting. Only his giggling gave the game away.

He perfected the art of playing hooky to watch cricket with me. He would have his elder brother drop him off at my place on their way to work so he could watch the ODIs beamed live from Australia during the 1985-86 season (and then, he would be picked up in the evening; my grandparents never found out). As the game progressed, his old statistics-obsessed self would come to the fore: he would faithfully track the run-rate at the end of every over, and call out projections and predictions. When India won the Benson & Hedges World Championship in 1985, we both agreed it was a better win than 1983, simply because India had been so convincing, and best of all, we had beaten Pakistan in the final. There was no else I would have wanted to share the moment with.

Of all the cricketing losses I've suffered by moving to the US, not having him by my side to watch a game has been the worst.

Four years ago, he turned 50. I called him to wish him a happy birthday and knew there was only one way I could do it. I asked him to take fresh guard and go for his ton. I hope Mamaji does it. Heck, I'll run on to the ground and garland him if he does.

I've just finished reading Satadru Sen's remarkable book, Migrant Races: Empire, Identity and K.S. Ranjitsinhji. As might be evident from the title, the book is not primarily about cricket, and neither is it a straight-up biography of Ranji. But to read this academic, yet accessible, study is to understand a little better what a remarkable life Ranji lived, to add another piece to the jigsaw puzzle relationship of colonialism to cricket, and finally, to view today's world of cricket in just a slightly different light (compare the language used by colonial authorities to describe lazy natives in the 19th century with that used by cricket commentators to describe South Asian cricketers and you might just squirm a bit in your seat).

Sen's primary objective is to illustrate the multiple identities Ranji claimed and had foisted upon him: an exotic Indian in England, evidence of both the Empire's civilizing influence in making him an honorary Englishman, while simultaneously being a subject resistant to Englishness because of his inherent Otherness, and an England-returned Indian appearing both as a potential agent of modernizing change and a visible symbol of the decadence of Indian princely life. More than any other sportsman of the era, he was Englishman and Indian both.

Ranji's movement between these identities was fluid, and he was not always possessing of full agency when it came to transitions between them. In many ways, he was a tabula rasa for fertile imaginations: those that saw in him the magic and the darkness of the East and the power and brutality of the West.

Ranji was conscious of his multiple identities and he certainly aspired to occupy these roles when it suited him. Ranji moved physically, and he moved psychically: he lived in England, and then moved back to India. Among other things, he studied and played cricket in, and for, England, served in the Great War, returned to India to rule his princely state, became embroiled in disputes with colonial officers over the familiar issues of allowances, jurisdiction and federation, wrote books, cultivated long-lasting friendships with Englishmen (and women), and attended the League of Nations.

In doing all these, he managed to offend those that saw him as a symbol of Eastern decadence or indolence or insensitive princely power. He tried to please many, and didn't always succeed. When he did, it was often as a cricketer, sometimes as a friend, and only rarely as a ruler or Indian. The language used to describe Ranji, his cricket, and his character, is well worth calibrating against that used to describe subcontinental cricketers and cricket today.

The particular plight of the immigrant, his involuntary schizophrenia caused by his locational and cultural displacements, is a familiar trope today. The story of Ranji is a particular instance of this, except that Ranji was an exceptional immigrant in being possessed of a talent colonial masters of the time found useful to celebrate because it enhanced their standing.

In reading these transitions between identities, there is no point in asking, Who was the real Ranji? For the salutary effect of Sen's scholarship is to also illustrate just how much a function of our climes, our backgrounds, and our locations, our supposedly fixed and stable personalities are. Ranji just happens to have played a game which thrust him into the spotlight, and which made his struggles to stabilize his self an intensely public one.

Sen deserves the appreciation (and readership) of any cricket fan interested in understanding why cricketing politics and its attendant literature is such a rich, varied and complex business. This book is about a 19th century cricketer but it continues to illustrate the 21st century version of the game. Much has changed, but power and those who wield it, and resent its usurpation, are still players today.

	"I could have sworn Duleep Mendis' square-cutting and driving was the fiercest I'd ever seen in my life" © Getty Images

One of the things I promised myself I would do when I started writing on Cricinfo was to point out cricketing achievements that didn't seem to have been noticed enough by the cricketing world. I'm not sure I've done that adequately yet, but thought I'd make a start by talking about two Sri Lankan batsmen who played two of the most amazing innings I've ever seen: Roy Dias and Duleep Mendis. And they did it in the same Test.

I saw Dias and Mendis bat - on television at least - for the first time during Sri Lanka's first official Test against India at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Madras, in September 1982. The monsoons had just ended in New Delhi but their traces remained: I was down with a viral fever. This meant I couldn't attend school, and would have to stay in bed. And be forced to watch Test cricket. Truly, it was a tragic time.

I knew enough about the Sri Lankans by then to know they weren't pushovers. They had handed India a crushing loss in the 1979 World Cup when they were (unfairly) regarded as minnows, and in their first ever Test, had put up a brave fight against England. Still, they were relative unknowns in my mind. I didn't know what to expect when the first day's play started.

To say that I was taken aback on the first day was an understatement. Mendis smashed 105 off 123 balls with 17 fours and a six. I could have sworn his square-cutting and driving was the fiercest I'd ever seen in my life. Indeed, I thought this short, burly man with bulging forearms would decapitate an Indian fielder or two by the time he was done. I had seen Viv Richards and Collis King batting in the 1979 World Cup final, but I was suddenly doubtful whether they hit the ball as hard as Mendis. Later that evening, when I was talking about the day's play with my uncles and brother, I struggled to explain just what a revelation his batting had been. The flair and style on display had been staggering.

The Sri Lankans might have been unknown, but they had suddenly created an indelible impression; they had rattled along on the first day, scoring 311 for 8, at a run-rate then unknown in Tests in India, before ending up with 346. India easily outstripped this relatively modest total and posted a 220-runs lead - they did have a strong batting line-up of their own.

Some time was lost to rain on the third day but the Lankans still faced a daunting task when they began their second innings on the fourth day. Matters quickly became worse as the first wicket fell with only six runs on the board. At this stage Dias walked out and launched into an amazing counterattack.

	Roy Dias on the attack © Wisden Cricket Monthly

The best way to describe this innings is to mention one simple statistic, which I've never forgotten, and never will: when his score reached 61, Dias had hit 15 boundaries. I've never seen that percentage approached by any batsman in any class of cricket for a score of over fifty since. The boundary rate slowed down thereafter, as did Dias. Finally, when he was out - almost sparking tears in me - at 97, the score was 157. The Sri Lankan second innings continued on the fifth day, and amazingly, Mendis hit a second ton as they went on to make 394 at four an over. India needed 175 to win as time started to run out, but were thrown into a spin by Asantha De Mel who grabbed a five-for to reduce them to 130 for 7 before Gavaskar batted out the last few overs to ensure a draw.

Phew. What an impression to make in your first Test against the local big league. And how. Thanks Duleep. Thanks Roy. I'll never forget those innings.

PS: Wisden disputes my memory of the Dias innings in saying "Dias scattered the Indian attack, reaching his 50 in 53 minutes with twelve 4s." By that calculation, he would have had to make 62 to include 15 boundaries and not 61. But this is one occasion where I trust myself more than the Almanack. Part of the reason Dias' innings sticks out in my mind is that it was always 'fours plus one', and I kept waiting with bated breath to see when he would score his second non-boundary run. And the reason I remember 61 so clearly is that that's when it happened. So I'll back myself against the Almanack. Only the scorer's sheet can settle this dispute.

Here is a question I'm often asked by people who know of my obsession with cricket: why don't you play cricket in the US? The answer to that is a little tricky and I struggle to express it clearly. It goes something like this: I prefer playing cricket in a context where the game fits in organically with the rest of its surroundings. I know this is not entirely rational, and I welcome feedback from folks who do play cricket in the US on how they experience the game here.

I've played cricket in India and Australia, and indeed, after arriving in the US some 22 years ago, played a few games at my university (with the usual grab-bag of Indian, Pakistani and West Indian students). Since then, I've never picked up a bat or ball in the US. And given my present location in Brooklyn, which is one of the hotbeds of cricketing activity in the US, this is a surprising business.

For, somehow, I do not feel a strong desire to play the game here. I often see students at Brooklyn College playing a quick game on the grounds; I often see Bangladeshi boys practicing close to Prospect Park, and more than once I've seen young men walking around with cricket kit bags on their way to a game. But I never feel the compulsion to walk up and ask for a bowl or a bat.

It’s not because I've become too old. In the intervening years, I've played cricket in Australia and will do again in Sydney this January. But I look forward to those games in a way that I don't in the US. When I played cricket in Australia, I was surrounded by the game and its trappings. Walking around in the city center in whites, carrying a cricket kit bag, felt normal. We played on city council grounds meant for cricket; during innings, as I relaxed on the sidelines with my team, we checked cricket scores on the radio; when games were over, we retired to pubs where we ran into other cricketers as Test cricket was shown on a big screen. And when I went to parties later at night, my other friends would ask me how the day's game went, and would respond appropriately when I told them of a duck or a four-for.

In short, cricket was everywhere, and we contributed to the big picture. In contrast, in the US (in a way well described in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland), cricket, despite being proudly played by large, important, immigrant communities, sticks out, and is played on sufferance. To play cricket meant participating in an oddity, something out of whack with its surroundings.

Perhaps the best way to explain this state of mind is to draw a parallel with my music tastes. I noticed on my trips back to India after living in the US that many artistes and genres that I was fond of listening to in the US, sounded discordant when listened to in India. In 1992, I played Ministry in my brother's living-room in Ambala, and quickly turned it off. Al Jourgensen felt jarring in those surroundings. And conversely I felt less comfortable with listening to Indian artistes and genres here in the US; somehow Pandit Jasraj didn't blend with Manhattan street sounds. It’s almost as if I needed an organic, seamless meshing between the music and its setting to become fully lost in the listening experience.

I know this is an entirely personal, idiosyncratic and possibly ill-founded reaction. But I cannot deny its presence in my decision to abstain from cricket in my present setting. It's not as if I decline invitations to play cricket; if I were to be asked, I would probably say yes, because, what the heck, it is cricket. It's just that I've never taken any active steps to play the game.

The music example is perhaps illuminative in other ways: cricket, as a game, has a cadence and a rhythm of its own, one that demands a certain location, a certain tuning with its setting. In the US, that co-relation has been missing on a deeply personal level. Perhaps, as the game grows, even if only in small ways, - like becoming a recognised school game in New York City - that adjustment will take place and I will be able to play my beloved game in my adopted home.

Everyone is talking about The Oval, so I might as well get into the act.
But not by talking about the fifth Ashes test, but about a match that took
place 38 years ago. The 1971 Oval Test remains the only Test match whose
scores are committed to my memory. England 355 all out. India 284 all out.
England 101 all out. India 174 for 6. India wins by six wickets as Abid Ali
hits the winning runs. India's first Test win in England.

It’s a little strange, really. I didn't see this match live (or even hear
any radio commentary). The only parts of it that I've seen on television
highlight reels are those clips that feature BS Chandrasekhar's 6 for 38 (one of
those few Indian bowling figures that I also know by heart). It just
happens to be one of those matches that is hard to forget, whose memories,
by virtue of being so frequently imprinted by the written word, are now
locked away securely, impervious to the ravages of time.

But I've seen a little bit more this weekend. And a tiny video clip
reminds me of how much the cricketing world has changed. And what makes
this clip puzzling is that it is not clear to me whether the change is for
the better or worse.

Pay attention, then, if you will, to the closing moments of this Test in this linked YouTube
video, pay attention from 3:15 onwards. India need two runs to win.
It's 170 for 4. Farokh Engineer and Ali are at the crease. After hearing out
Engineer's advice that he stay calm and knock off the single required, Ali
square cuts for four. As the crowd invades the pitch, the players scramble
for the pavilion, but only after the obligatory scramble for stumps.

Here is where things get interesting. Ali is rushing off, but without a
stump, and so, tries to take a stump from Alan Knott, presuming that stumps are
victor's booty. Knott, however, is having none of it, and a little tugging
match ensues (there are some verbals but obviously, we can't hear those).
Finally, Ali, who was not expecting this resistance, turns and sprints for
the bowler’s end, where the stumps are still standing. Knott turns and gives
the stump to the umpire coming up behind him. After this, the video shifts
to scenes of the milling crowd carrying Engineer on their shoulders, and
then cuts to a black and white photograph of the Indian team. I do not
know what happened to Ali and whether he managed to get himself a
little souvenir.

I've played and replayed this little clip and still don't know what to
make of it. I know a similar scene would not occur today. For one thing, a
losing team simply does not bother with the stumps. Secondly, it is hard
to imagine a losing team's player actually resisting a winning team's
player's attempts to obtain a trophy even if the stump happened to be in
his possession. It is even more unlikely that the player, having
successfully resisted the invading marauder, would then turn around and
hand the stump over to the umpire.

So, what was Knott up to? Was he disapproving of the process of
trophy-grabbing? Was he simply collecting stumps to make sure they didn't
go to the crowd? Would Knott have resisted an Australian player's
attempts to obtain a trophy? Were crowd invasions a new enough thing in
England at the time that the "right thing" for Knott to do was to make
sure they stayed with the umpires after the game was over?

These questions might seem trivial, but answers to them would be useful I
think, in figuring out English players' perceptions of various opposition
teams, the proprieties of souvenir hunting, the changes in crowd behavior
as a function of the success of teams other than Australia in England, and
lastly, the changing standards of player behavior on the field (on what
was considered proper and what wasn't).

Knott's actions appeared to be petty and ungenerous to me, but perhaps he
knew of no other way to react, and perhaps my perception of his actions as
such, reveal a great deal of how much the cricket world has changed since
that memorable day in 1971.

Yesterday, on my personal blog, Eye on Cricket, I penned my 1000th post. In a comment offered in congratulation, one of my readers complained about the excessive use of cliches in sports journalism. To use a nineties Brooklynism, word.

One persistent complaint of mine is the East versus West cliche in cricket journalism. A glaring display of this came in the aftermath of Pakistan's World Twenty20 win (I'm not referring to any particular article for these sentiments were present all over the place). In this art versus science view of cricket, Pakistan's victory in the World Twenty20 was a triumph for flair over persistence (this sentiment was especially on display after the semi-final win over South Africa). While believing this story about the modern cricketing game would certainly aid in the construction of a narrative that says 'unpredictable, divine genius' will always trump 'solid, old-fashioned, mechanical competence', it did nothing to help us understand South Africa's loss to Pakistan from a cricketing perspective.

Pakistan beat South Africa in the Twenty20 semi-final because, in fact, they did certain very ordinary cricketing things better. They had the better spin bowlers on a turning track (how extremely unpredictable to pick good spinners and bowl them on a track that turns) and they had a better exponent of reverse swing in their bowling line-up (how delightfully erratic to have a reverse-swing bowler saved up for when the ball gets a little older). Pakistan's batting was not particularly different from the Twenty20 efforts of many other teams: an opener that flails away in the opening Powerplay, a hard-hitting allrounder, some canny single collection when the pace went ever so slightly off the ball.

Pakistan played better cricket and won. There was nothing mysterious, or oriental, or wholly unpredictable about their cricket. South Africa did not match up to the Pakistani spinners and to Umar Gul's dead-set accurate bowling. If Gul had been an Englishman or a South African, everyone would have been raving about how his bowling spell reflected a "canny, pragmatic, level-headed, strangulation of the opposition."

But because this young lad possesses a Pakistani passport, suddenly he becomes a poster child for the dark arts. It is not surprising then that when so much of what he does is classified as mysterious and strange, that he suddenly becomes the dusky assassin, mysteriously strangling the white explorers in his part of the world's cricketing jungles, and provoking complaints by the New Zealand cricket captain.

I'm not sure cricketing teams from 'that part of the world' are done any favours by the maintenance of this mystery about the game they play. It aids in the construction of a narrative where Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan cricketers are representatives of the Strange East, all dazzle and no substance, who do no hard work to master the skills of this difficult game, who have no tactical nous. That virtue seems to be reserved for the science side of the aisle, inhabited by dour, businesslike Englishmen, South Africans and Australians, all grit and no flair apparently, who don't play cricket as much as execute a business plan in their flannels.
This description of their cricket is no less an injustice, disregarding as it does the very real dazzle that they are able to bring to their cricketing performances.

These descriptions of a supposed divide in the way cricket is played and understood and mastered by its various exponents worldwide have some truth to them, just because players from different parts of the cricket world do display some differences in their approach to, and execution of, cricketing skills. But to insist on it as a lens through which the cricketing world must be viewed is to ultimately do disservice to talented and hard-working cricketers. Their cricketing skill, rather than being viewed as the understandable result of what happens when perspiration meets inspiration, is lost in the rush to shoehorn it into a tired old storyline about the Pragmatic West versus the Mysterious East.

To this list, one must add, "alone, slumped in a work chair, in front of a nineteen-inch flat screen monitor." Well, at least, that is how I watch a lot of cricket these days. On broadband video, at home (the work connection is a little slow, unfortunately). And in general, these pleasures of cricket watching are experienced in splendid isolation.

When the hours are right, I can turn on the speakers and enjoy the sensation of the crackle of crowd sounds and commentators permeating the ambience of my apartment, otherwise, when the timezones are not favorable, I have to slip on a pair of headphones and enter further the illusion of being confined to a tiny sphere, my activities incomprehensible to most around me. Nothing confirms my sense of isolation as an immigrant, an exile in the world of cricket, quite like that feeling which steals over
me when India play their home games, when my hours of vigil commence just
as my wife turns out the lights and goes to bed, and I stay up in the living room, headphones strapped on, struggling to stay awake, as a cricket game goes on, thousands of miles away.

But watching cricket like this is a frustrating business. Because those that watch cricket games like to talk about it, to offer an opinion, to do both in real time, and sometimes, to even listen to what other folks might have to say. In the old days, even if I watched part of a game alone at home, I was guaranteed conversation about it if I stepped out on the
street, or on the university bus the next morning.

This role, obviously, has now been taken up by the internet, with all its attendant mixed blessings. Like legions of graduate students in the 90s, I whiled away many hours on rec.sport.cricket, delaying a dissertation and a healthier bank balance for the love of cricket. I finally left in 1995, exhausted by the flaming and the inevitable recycling of discussions. A few years later, living in Australia meant a return to the pleasures of off-line conversations about cricket, to the day-after office conversation, the discussions of scores throughout the day.

But that relief was temporary and soon I found myself back in the world of the polite New York Times references to cricket, the late-night telecasts of World Cups, and the social query of "You're really into cricket, aren't you? How come you guys wear so much body armor?"

Under these circumstances, starting blogging was a non-brainer. I began in 2004, got nowhere, tried again in 2005, and only made some headway in 2006. But blogging has not removed all of the isolation; I still detect in the writing of bloggers, writing from cricket playing lands, a level of connection with the game that I do not always experience. Sometimes the disconnection is mundane: I'm not always as familiar with all of the world's players that folks exposed to more telecasts are. Sometimes it is about failing to catch a mood: I've been assured by many friends that I would not be able to resist the IPL fever if I was back in India. There is a distancing from the game that is not always physical.

But like many other aspects of my stranded position, I've come to appreciate this place, set slightly apart from the cricketing world. It lets me offer a slightly different perspective, an alternative take, if you will, on cricketing affairs. The value of that perspective, admittedly, is sometimes only visible to me (as the comments section assures me). Still, it offers one more viewing panel, and in our more generous moments, I'm reasonably sure we could acknowledge that wasn't such a bad thing.

But at most times, the isolation is a chilling one. Hooping and hollering at a computer monitor is a strange business at best; dashing off a few words on a keyboard for an instant display of one’s emotions on a blog takes some of the edge off that jonesing for an audience, but not all. When it comes down to it, there is still nothing quite like having a fellow fan at hand to receive, amplify, and enhance, one's immediate, unvarnished take on a game of cricket.

I'd stand accused (and rightly so) of being an utterly naive fool were I to say that I had not anticipated some of the comments section flaming that followed on the heels of my post about Ricky Ponting. But that doesn't make it any less depressing. I'm not counting the posts here that simply criticized Ponting as a captain, batsman or whatever; I mean the posts that were pointedly personal or generalized remarks about the respective countries' teams, players and fans. The India-Australia bickerfest shows no sign of abating, and while it might provide the occasional entertaining moment, it is by and large, a very unedifying business.

Now, I have gotten into net spats myself. I have not followed the simple policy of thinking long and hard about whether I really want to post the angry retort that I've just typed up. I'm a flame war veteran, and will be the first to acknowledge that I've exploited the anonymity the Internet affords when it comes to online disagreements. But in the particular context of the India-Australia rivalry, there is a certain line I don't cross (or at least, I hope I haven't), and the reason for that is quite simple.

I have Australian friends. Most of whom are passionate cricket fans. Very knowledgeable ones. And I love discussing cricket with them. They know their cricketing history, they are very appreciative of Indian cricketers. I've lived in Australia for two years and played cricket with Australians and loved every single minute of it. This winter (the southern summer) I will travel to Sydney again and hopefully play a game again with my old team.

In these circumstances, there is no way I can bring myself to negatively generalize about the country, its cricket teams, fans or the cricketing culture. If I've ever done it in the heat of the moment, I've regretted it deeply.

So in that spirit, I'd like to make a simple suggestion as the fourth Ashes Test gets underway. I might be accused of being cheesy but I'll take that risk.

Find a way to watch a game with a fan from the Other Side. This won't be easy for Indians in India, but if you're a member of the Great Diaspora, try and find an Aussie expat and a venue for cricket watching. If you're an Aussie, you won't have a hard time finding an Indian cricket fan in your town. Find a pub that shows the game, buy a few rounds of pots, middies or schooners (or whatever the standard measure happens to be in your state) of beer, and watch a game of cricket together.

It's hard to be rude and offensive when you have to do it in person. It's easier to listen when the other person is talking face to face to you. And it's harder to generalize when there is a concrete counterexample to your generalization sitting in front of you.

The India-Australia relationship in cricket is a special one. On the cricketing field, it has provided some of the best cricket of recent years. Indian fans know their history and their game. So do the Aussies. This constant puerile flaming online does no one any credit. The rivalry is intense sure, and I've even joked about it here, but really, does everything need to get so personal?

And besides, the Ashes are on, and there is a Common Enemy to confront! If that doesn't bring us together, what can?

Question: What do a snowball in hell and an Indian fan of Ricky Ponting have in common?

Answer: They are both non-existent entities.

Yes, that is an exaggeration. But such hyperbole captures one uncomfortable fact about the Australian captain: he is not popular among many, many cricket fans all over the world. Given that Indian fans make up a majority of the world's cricket fans, it's a fair call to say he isn't a very popular man in the world of cricket. So as a corrective, I'd like to offer a tribute to Ricky Ponting on the occasion of his having surpassed Allan Border's run aggregate in Tests. And I do not for a second think that I'm alone, even amongst Indians, in holding these opinions of Ponting.

The truth of the matter is that Ponting is one of Test cricket's best batsmen of all time, has been one of its most entertaining, dynamic and attacking batsmen for the last 14 years, and is a superb fielder to boot. He has been a classically Australian cricketer: an aggressive, purposeful batsman who loves, besides all the fierce cuts and drives in his repertoire, two quintessentially Australian shots: the hook and the pull, and is a great slip catcher and a quality patroller of any part of the cricket field he happens to be placed in. I have never seen a boring innings by him (yes, I'm including the ones where he has struggled against spin), for Ponting is attacking down to the core of his being when he has a bat in his hand.

One innings that always stands out in my mind's eye was the first one I saw him play in a Test match. It was a little gem of 88, played at Brisbane in the first test of the 1996-97 series against the West Indies. Matthew Elliott had gone early for a duck and Ponting strode out to face Ambrose, Walsh and Bishop for the first time in a Test (it was the fifth of Ponting's career). Taylor and Ponting added 126 runs for the second wicket; Taylor's contribution was 39. Ponting's innings was full of his flashing pulls, hooks and squaredrives; but he had to work for it.
There were edges through slips aplenty and some evasion as well. It was a classic, hard-fought session of test cricket which continued after lunch.

The West Indian quicks pressed for another breakthrough but to no avail. I watched it utterly spellbound; Ambrose and company could have broken through that morning and wrested the initiative early in the series but a youngster had resisted and counterattacked.

There was a buzz while Ponting was at the crease. Part of it had to do with his restless, shuffling, body language, one that suggests early vulnerability in his innings (especially when he appears to fall over as he plays across), but which later, is more indicative of a coiled energy
waiting to strike. Once he left, Australia buckled to be 5 for 196 before the old firm of Waugh and Healy bailed them out again.

Over the years, Ponting has lived up to his early promise (Ian Chappell was one of those talking up this new Tasmanian Bradman in his debutant days). While small weaknesses have been found by opponents over the years, such as against high-quality swing (but really, who doesn't have a weakness against this?) and offspin, he still remains a quality batsman, one to be feared, whose wicket is prized over any other by the opposition when they play Australia.

He has hit purple patches (like those double tons against India in the 2004 series), he has hit lows (like those off-spinning blues in the 2001 series against India), and as Australia
struggles in the post-McGrath-Warne-Langer-Waugh-Hayden era, he has struggled too.

Still, whatever his problems as a captain, and a communicator, and he has quite a few in that regard, I have nothing but admiration for him as a batsman and fielder. I like watching him when he steps on to the field; he is, as he might like to hear, "very good value."

It has been a long time since I've felt genuine affection for an English cricketer. More precisely, since David Gower and Ian Botham packed up their kitbags and left. Freddie Flintoff stepped into the breach, and despite my initial viewing of him as a drunken soccer oaf, he managed to impress me with his ability to ratchet up the atmosphere in a Test match with his justifiably famous spells, to be combative with batsmen while not descending into puerile abusiveness, to hit the ball hard and long, and with all those other ineffable qualities that make disbelievers into
Freddie fans. Flintoff evokes feelings in me that remind me of my childhood following of cricket.

But in all of this, I have never considered Flintoff a 'great' cricketer just like I never considered many other darlings of mine (like Kim Hughes for instance) to be greats. And it dismays me to see that term thrown about so freely in this Ashes summer as the English media gear up, almost hopefully, for a final orgy of Freddie-anointing. Good yes, talented yes, mercurial yes, brilliant to watch yes. But great? No.

If one is to believe the emanations of the English press after the Lord's Test, it is possible for a bowler to be called great despite possessing the mediocre statistics that Flintoff does (he has, I might like to remind readers, not even taken three wickets per test over his career), for a player to be called a great Ashes performer despite leading his side to a 0-5 whitewash at the hands of the Great Enemy (and visibly losing all control of his team as the series wore on), for an allrounder to be called great despite only being able to swing an occasional match in favour of England with his bowling and batting.

While statistics do lie on occasion, there is something to be said for reserving the adjective 'great' for those cricketers able to maintain and sustain a high level of cricketing performance over an extended period of time. To call Flintoff a 'great' Test cricketer is to admit him to an exclusive club whose membership has taken far more work, dedication, skill and longevity on the part of its members than Freddie has been able to show.

Flintoff's famous injuries have managed to obscure the fact that he has not taken smart decisions with his body, in choosing to play certain games and not others. The Flintoff legend makes these injuries sound like the fates conspiring against him, a biological conspiracy of sorts. But reality is a little more prosaic than that.

Cricket fans are familiar with the archetypal figure of the talented-but-not-great cricketer: men who showed dazzling displays of brilliance but were unable to sustain it over their careers. These men provoke passionate defenses on the part of their fans that typically take the form of "You say X is a great cricketer but I'd rather watch a short innings by Y any day" and so on. These men encourage a disdain for statistics, for the stories the scoreboards and record books tell.

Flintoff will always prompt such defenses and it is tribute to him that he does so. I have defended him in similar fashion on my blog in the past. But I've done so knowing the charges against him have contained a kernel of truth.

A great cricketer leaves his mark on the game over an extended period of time, by performing well at home and away, by setting standards (yes, statistical ones too) for others to try and emulate, by being a pioneer in some fashion. Flintoff has come close to doing some of these things but he is not there yet.

Flintoff will always be remembered as a wonderfully exciting cricketer that managed to make a couple of Ashes series played in England the stage for some great cricketing theatre. But the rest of his career, his away performances, his inconsistency, his early retirement from test cricket, will ensure that he will not be considered a great cricketer - at least in the eyes of many folks who don't write for English newspapers.

	'I don't think sports teams should be using war cemeteries as venues for training' © Getty Images

I come from a military family (more precisely, of air force pilots). Thus, I'm generally inclined to agree with sentiments of recognition directed towards the service of war veterans, the commemoration of the war dead, and more broadly, with a sympathetic take on folks who serve in the military. Still, I would be lying if I did not say that both the Australian team's visit to Gallipoli in 2001, and the English team's visit to Flanders yesterday filled me with some unease.

What bothers me about these trips is the idea that paying a visit to war cemeteries or memorials is a "bonding exercise" for sportsmen about to engage in a major sporting encounter. This notion is deeply problematic on two counts.

First, it encourages a facile identification between sport and war (note, I'm not saying the visits do it - they just encourage it). This identification has already infected sports journalism - what with its language of "sporting battlefields", "fierce battles", "thrashings", "humiliating defeats", "gallant resistance", language that is the stuff of headlines and which often makes me cringe. Some of the borrowing of this language is unavoidable; I'm sure it slips into my blogging as well.
After all, sports is a competitive encounter with winners and losers; war is a "competitive encounter" as well. But there the similarity should end.

The terrible realities of war are a far cry from even the fiercest sporting rivalry. Rick McCosker, broken jaw and all, would be the first one to acknowledge that his "battle" with the English pacemen in the 1977 Centenary Test bore as much resemblance to war as a passing shower bears to a category five hurricane. Given this dissimilarity, it would be nice if all of us could ease up on the "sport is war" analogy-making. It dangerously elevates passions in sport, and it trivializes an activity that is perhaps mankind's most terrible invention. No matter how fierce the 2009 Ashes will be, they are tiddlywinks compared to war. (Cue Keith Miller's comments on pressure here).

Secondly, at the risk of sounding like an old conservative fart, I don't think sports teams should be using war cemeteries as venues for training. Whatever the expressed emotion, these visits are clearly some coach's brainchild, part of a strategy to prepare a team for a game. But if you visit a cemetery, come to pay your respects and nothing else. Do not use the cemeteries as a means to an end, to facilitate some sort of organizational success. Who wouldn't find it tacky if we heard a corporate board was visiting Ypres as a bonding exercise, as part of a day-long "strategy planning retreat"?

If you feel your wards are in need of a little maturity, and should appreciate that no matter how tough their lives, other young men had it much, much worse, then encourage them on their own time to visit war museums and other memorials and read some history (perhaps buy them all a copy of John Keegan's The Face of Battle). But this programmed, publicised with photo-ops package tour, which uses the graves of thousands of men as part of an elaborate training routine is lacking in some desperately needed good taste.

By all means, pay your respects to the men who died in distant lands, often fighting for causes they only dimly understood. By all means acknowledge the horrendous toll in life that wars have exacted, and remember the men who could not have full productive lives, and the families who lost them. But to be truly respectful to them, leave your agendas out of it. Especially if those are part of a new-wave sports coaching plan.

Yesterday, Mike Holmans found the singing of the national anthems before the Women's Twenty20 final tear-inducing. And a week or so ago, Rob Steen wrote that the singing of the national anthems before the WC T20 games was a "tacky and transparent attempt to assert the primacy of the international game". But Rob is also someone, I think, who would like the primacy of the international game to be maintained (if I'm mistaken, please correct me). As someone who quite likes the national anthem ritual before sporting encounters, I feel obliged to throw in my tuppence.

Perhaps part of the reason Rob does not like the performance of the national anthem is because it is an overtly nationalistic gesture (in a time when a prima facie reaction to nationalism is that it is pretty darn unfashionable). Perhaps the disagreement is just about tactics. Rob might want to assert the primacy of the international game, he just doesn't want it done via the national anthem route. Fair enough. But I'd like to argue that national anthems aren't tacky and transparent and in fact, when it comes to trying to frame the international game in terms of some pomp and circumstance, it's a very good option (compared to the alternatives we have).

Now, I'm in an odd position when it comes to speaking up on behalf of national anthems. I don't live in my country of birth; while I stand for the US anthem at public events where it is played, I don't do the hand-over-the-heart routine; and in general, I dislike sanctimonious patriotic clap-trap as much as anyone else. So what is the deal?

Quite simply, I like national anthems before international sporting encounters, for quasi-aesthetic reasons, if they form part of a relatively simple nod to nationalist sentiment before the game (i.e., I'm not in favour of trotting out war veterans, politicians, screaming jets lighting their afterburners, parades etc). National anthems hush the crowd momentarily, which is always a good thing for getting the atmosphere of tension and anticipation just right; they remind everyone present that this game is played by national representatives; for spectators, national anthems can be marvelously evocative, largely because of childhood memories I suspect, in a way that other nationalist gestures simply aren't; and lastly players get a kick out of the anthems because it sets up the prizefighter-chomping-at-the-bit imagery quite well.

Compared to other nationalist gestures, the national anthem is relatively tasteful: some of them are harmless little ditties about how beautiful the respective countries are, which isn't too far from the truth, really, if you think about it; some are slightly triumphalist but I don't think any of the cricketing nations anthems do too badly on that account. For instance, Jana Mana Gana; Quami Tarana; Advance Australia Fair; God Defend New Zealand; the South African hybrid of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and The Call of South Africa etc are relatively harmless and unlikely to cause offence. Indeed, the people most likely to complain about these national anthems are folks from their respective countries themselves because they find them boring or archaic or whatever.

And my attitude is that if it doesn't cause offence, and it helps to assert the primacy of the international game, then I'm all for it. Because one thing we don't have too much of these days are attempts to do just that. And international cricket needs it. Just like it needed this great Twenty20 World Cup.

	Batsmen, and not the batting order, should be flexible in the approach to a match situation © Getty Images

It is not my intention here to offer a full-fledged post-mortem of India's early exit from the ICC World Twenty20. All I would like to do is to point out a mistaken emphasis in India's planning for its batting line-up. Which is that the Indian captain seems to think that flexibility in approaching match situations is achieved by changing the batting order. I'd like to suggest that the flexibility should inhere in the batsmen themselves, and not in the order in which they are sent in.

That is, a cricket team should concentrate on making sure the batsmen in the batting order are flexible in their approaches to a particular match situation. If you are a No. 3, and an early wicket falls, you play a little differently than you do if there are a hundred runs on the board. If you are a No. 6, and the team is in trouble, as opposed to looking for a declaration, you bat a little differently. And so on.

Yes, I know, its obvious. But if it's so obvious, then why can't the Indian team settle into a stable batting order, with instructions to its members that read, "When you go out to play, keep in mind the match situation and play accordingly?" Why, instead, does the standing rule appear to be "We'll send in different batsmen in every game, depending on how things are panning out in the middle?" The latter doesn't seem to indicate great confidence in the batting order's ability to be flexible and capable of raising their level depending on a given match situation. And a batting line-up that is not capable of responding to a variety of match situations doesn't sound like a very good side.

I realised, with a little start of surprise, as this World Cup went on, that I have absolutely no idea of what the Indian batting order, is, or has been, for a while. I've associated Sehwag and Gambhir with the opening position. The rest is a bit of a blur. Who is our No. 3? Who is our No. 6? I have no clue. Do the batsmen in the team know which position they will be playing in on a given day? Sure, sending them in at different positions challenges them. But why not give them stability in their expectations of where they are to play and instead demand adaptiveness in their responses to match situations?

The game of cricket throws many, many, variants at its players. The good teams adapt and alter their game in response (as do the good players). The Indian team has the right idea. But the tactic it has chosen, that of constantly chopping and changing the order, is backwards. Make a player own a position, and tell him he needs to change as the game demands. He
will be a better player for it; and the team, having established some stability in one part of its tactical arsenal, can get on with planning around it. Having to decide, before every single game, what the batting order is to be is an unnecessary increase in workload for both captain and coach. A relatively stable batting order would be one step towards enabling a greater focus on improving cricketing skills (such as fielding and playing the short-pitched ball, for instance). Which really seems to be where the Indian team's attentions should be directed at this point in
time.

A couple of weeks ago, I announced my intention to give this year's IPL a go, i.e., to try and see if I could get myself to support a team in cricket that was not a national representative side. I picked two teams: the Delhi Daredevils, because, I'm from Delhi (I still say that even though I left 'home in 1987), and Kings XI Punjab, because, well, my last name says so. I went for hometown and ethnic affiliation. I bought myself a broadband video package that gives me live telecasts,replays and highlights of all the games. I even baited Mumbai fans, just to get myself pumped up.

I'm not sure that all of this has worked for me. The first indication of this came in the Delhi vs. Chennai game on May 2nd. Delhi were chasing Chennai's 163, and to be honest, I was getting into the swing of things. After Dilshan fell with the score at 53, Dinesh Karthik and David Warner came together, and seemed to be taking Delhi toward Chennai's total. Both were batting well, and victory looked within sight. And since both players are not Delhi locals, my support for them could be seen to be a reasonably good indicator of the IPL's ability to overcome my desire to have just homegrown folks playing for my hometowns team. Of course, I've admired Karthik as a player for the Indian team (and even had high hopes he would find a permanent place in the side) so I'm sure that played some part in my perceptions of the situation.

But something interesting happened in the 16th over. Shadab Jakati, a young Goan spinner, who had already impressed me by bowling Dilshan with a beauty, was in action, and after being hit for two fours by Karthik, came on to bowl to Warner. At that moment, rather than wishing that Delhi continue their charge, I found myself cheering for the Indian youngster
against the Australian newbie. Suddenly, my desire to see Delhi, supposedly my team, beat Chennai, was eclipsed my desire to see an Indian spinner put one over the Aussie bludgeoner. When Jakati had Warner stumped, I was delighted. Guile had done in power, always a good result to see in Twenty20, and an Indian lad had done in an Aussie one. National pride had poked its head up.

Delhi lost the game, and I went back to being disappointed when locals Manhas, Sangwan and Bhatia all failed to support Karthik adequately. Somehow, in the midst of a Delhi-Chennai game, Id managed to let an India-Australia matchup distract me.

And then of course, there was the Delhi-Mumbai game; if there was a game I should have been able to get excited about, it was this one. But somehow, at the end, when Delhi had won, it was hard to convince myself that we had put one over the old enemy. Indeed, I couldn't even bring myself to send a gloat or two to my Mumbai friends (the ones who cared about the result, that is). I'm really not sure why this was the case, and to date, I'm no closer to understanding why a Delhi-Mumbai game didn't get me riled up. Was it because I don't think these are 'real' Delhi and Mumbai outfits? I've heard some Mumbai fans disown this unit as just "Ambani's lot", and yet others say "A Mumbai team is a Mumbai team". But I do know that my reactions on beating Mumbai in a Ranji game would not have been as muted as they were in beating them in their IPL matchup.

So the IPL's charms haven't worked on me as yet. Perhaps if I was matching the games with friends in tow, my reactions would have been different. It's hard to get really excited about an IPL game when you are watching it alone at home on a 19-inch monitor. The lack of such company (noted in the comments section in my last post on the IPL by reader Anabayan) is crucial, and it will be the subject of my next post.

I've just finished reading Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket , Christian Ryan's biography of Kim Hughes and have a few thoughts to offer (to add to Michael Jeh's piece). First off, this is a good read. Ryan writes fluently, and conveys the sheer physicality of cricketing action remarkably well. There are many colorful turns of phrase, and they are all needed when describing a) a cricketer as interesting as Hughes and b) a cricketing culture as hard-boiled as the Aussie one. Ryan's English is unmistakably Australian, with its directness and verve, and he has done well to construct the book as a kind of oral history, based on extensive interviews with many of the participants--players, coaches, journalists--in the Hughes saga.

I've always wondered whether my unbridled admiration of Hughes's dazzling, fleet-footed strokeplay was an aberration and I'm glad to find out that other kids (including some that went on to become Test cricketers) thought just as highly of his dancing down the pitch, his cover driving on bended knee, and his luscious pulling and hooking of the world's best fast bowlers. It's a pleasure to read about the three Test innings played by Hughes that have entered cricketing lore as all-time classics: the 213 at Adelaide vs India in the 1980-81 series, the 100* at Melbourne against the West Indies during the 1981-82 series, and the 84 against England during the 1980 Centenary Test at Lords. If you like extravagant strokeplay, you should buy the book just for the photographs of Hughes batting in the Centenary Test. There is one photograph in particular, that will leave you breathless, and wondering "How the hell does someone play that?" (If you are curious, go to Patrick Eagar's website, search for Kim Hughes, and browse; you'll know when you hit it).

When it comes to describing the bad old days of Australian cricket, the Chappell-Lillee-Marsh saga of relentless conspiracy and non-cooperation is depressing but in the end, it is just one component of a larger dysfunctionality in Aussie cricket at the time. Ryans most salutary contribution to Australian cricket writing is debunk some persistent Aussie myths about the cricketing scene (besides mateship). No one who reads this book will ever again believe that when it comes to sledging, what happens on the ground stays on the ground, and that folks just shake hands after a game and make up (at the least, such feelings about on-ground conflicts don't seem to be universally held amongst Australians). At times, in Ryan's telling, Australian cricket seemed to have as much factionalism as Indian cricket, and that's saying something. But it is no surprise to find out just how badly cricketers were treated by administrators. At times, one marvels at the sheer feudalism of crickets managers.

As I wrote to Christian earlier today, there is an interesting book waiting to be written about the relentless image construction of Australian cricketing lore and history, as conducted by CA/ACB/PBL/NineMSN et al over the last 20-25 years. The souvenirs hawked on Channel 9 are just one part of it. Christian has already contributed to this process with his revelatory article on the singing of Under the Southern Cross and it's place in dressing-room post-match rituals. Next in line should be a piece on the mythology of the baggy green, which Ryan alludes to in the book, which Ian Chappell has already sought to dispel, and which might, in many ways, be by far the hardest to do.

Kim Hughes was not a simple man; he had many personal and cricketing faults. But in full flight, he was a sight to behold, and brought pleasure to many cricket spectators, including a young Indian schoolboy in India in 1979, who intends to write a blog post describing that obsession in the next couple of days. Ryan has written a book as only a fan of Hughes the batsman could, as one who struggles to understand why the glory of a an epic innings is not consonant with the considerably less glamorous facts of the politics of cricket. I'm glad he has written this book; I hope he has others in store.

In a couple of days, I'm going to try a little experiment. I'm going to declare my allegiance to two cricket teams I've never given a damn about before and see if it gets me all worked up.

My loyalties as a cricket spectator are directed toward supporting India and Delhi. The former for all international games and the latter for domestic cricket; it has worked so far. For games involving other teams, a variety of other factors have always gelled to enable the identification of a clear-cut favorite. Growing up it meant the West Indies and Australia, two teams whose style of cricket promised plenty of attack and aggression. Later, it meant supporting the plucky Kiwis during their glory run in the 1980s. I cheered for the South Africans when they returned in the 1990s; it was an improbable return and demanded recognition. I cheered for Pakistan when Zaheer, Asif, Majid and Imran were my heroes. In domestic cricket, as in international cricket, the villains and the heroes were clearly defined: bold, bustling Delhi against those stodgy, tiffin-packing Bombay-wallahs. I identified with the Delhi players; they had gone to colleges I had heard about, they played in clubs with names that were familiar from the local newspapers. Heck, I even knew where they had grown up.

Last year, during the IPL's inaugural season, I found myself not caring about any of the teams performances. I didn't really care who won or lost, even though there was a Delhi team in the tournament. How could I ever get excited about it if true-blue locals weren't involved? Even though the Delhi team was largely made up of Delhi players, something about the overseas hires made it a bit fake. Part of the problem was that I hadn't subscribed for a broadcast package and so only read about the scores and the action after the games. The highlights seemed over-accelerated; the razzle-dazzle a bit jarring. But most importantly, where was all the nationalistic fervor that seemed to mark serious international cricket? Without it, cricket seemed to have lost a bit of bite. Sure, it was interesting to note Delhi players running up to McGrath and Asif to congratulate them on a wicket. But the tension of the games seemed artificial; how serious about the games could these players be, I thought, if an international game wasn't on the line?

I've lived for 21 years on the East Coast of the US, and have clear-cut favorites in all the New York teams: the Giants, the Jets, the Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks. But the constant rotation of players, the clear knowledge that these are players who could be playing somewhere else next year because of a better contractual deal ensures on my part a certain lack of attachment (and as a result, I don't buy into the contrived intra-New York rivalry either). Manny Ramirez should be playing for New York; he is from Washington Heights. But he plays for Los Angeles (and before that, for the RedSox!). Try as I might to reconcile myself with this fact intellectually, at some emotional level it means that I don't really get upset about the games' results. As someone pointed out a long time ago, cheering for large professional franchises in sport is a bit like cheering for Ford v. Chrysler.

But still, perhaps the city-based-professional-mercenary league is a good thing. Perhaps this detachment is required from the game. To be honest, after the incessantly nasty India-Australia spats of 2007-8, it was a bit of a relief to not have so many controversies lingering over every single game. And players play the game hard because they have professional pride and a competitive instinct (the hard-fought games in the EPL, the NFL or whatever else bear adequate testimony to this fact). Certainly, the IPL's games didn't seem to lack competitiveness; that I didn't get into them didn't mean the games weren't played hard and contested right down to the last ball.

So this year, I've gone ahead and purchased a broadband video package for the IPL. Ill try and cheer for the Delhi Daredevils and the Kings XI Punjab. I don't know if I'll get into it; I don't know if I'll be heartbroken if the Delhi Daredevils lose to the Mumbai Whatchmacallits. But it's worth a shot.

I do know one thing: I'll care much more about the T20 World Cup. And I'm still happy about the fact that in cricket, unlike any other sport, the bilateral international encounter still remains the pinnacle of the game.

Given the large number of responses to my previous post, I thought it only fair that I write some sort of response. I've tried to organize this into a series of questions and answers. More broadly, I would say that it doesn't really matter what my (or anyone else's) background is when it comes to writing on cricket or on anything else. What needs evaluation is the argument, not the person making the argument. Anyway, here we go.

1. You're just drawing on the benefits of hindsight. Why didn't you say this before? Actually, I did. On the third day of the Test before tea-time, I wrote in Eye-on-Cricket, "I'm glad that it has rained a bit at the Basin Reserve. And I hope someone has pointed out to MS Dhoni that it'll get darker an hour sooner there. For hopefully, this lunatic suggestion going around that India should just keep on batting, and batting and batting will die the quick death it deserves. Get the lead to 500 and declare, and give yourself time and plenty of runs on the board to set attacking fields and get the 20 wickets to win. Why imagine the Basin Reserve will remain sunny and dry till the end of the fifth day? And if you don't think you can win despite setting a target of 500 I'd suggest a hunt for the proverbial chullu-bhar". I followed this up with a post on the fourth day as well. I had hoped for a declaration on the third day. When India batted on, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, thinking that NZ might not have batted anyway, given the poor light. Perhaps they could declare overnight? But I also thought, that at most, please at most, don't bat more than an hour. In the end, India batted on for some 90 minutes. I had a bad feeling then, given the clouds hovering around over the Basin Reserve and given the light situation. Just a reminder, once again: India was up by 231 runs with nine wickets in hand at the end of the second day.

2. What would you have said if New Zealand would have chased down the 500? My post above should give the game away. Those of North Indian origin will recognize the reference in the last line of the post I quoted above (for the benefit of others, I was saying something like "you should drown yourself in a thimble-full of water if you can't defend 500 in the fourth
   innings"). I would have said the Indian bowlers were pathetic, that the fielders needed catching practice, because almost certainly some dropped catches would have helped the NZ team, and quite possibly I would have lambasted Dhoni's field placings, because he might have contributed to the disaster by panicky field settings. I would have also have congratulated
   the Kiwis for pulling off the well-nigh impossible. I wouldn't have criticized the declaration, that's for sure. I like attacking declarations.

3. History is irrelevant to what will happen in the future, surely? In the strict sense, yes. However, there is a reason why teams don't make big scores chasing in the fourth innings. The pressure factor is qualitatively different.

4. Captains can only pay attention to impending rain not to rain forecast the next day or day-after. Actually, they can and they should. The former, because forecasts are better now. The latter, because cricketing strategy demands it. Captains should be aware of local conditions. Any captain that doesn't plan on rain in New Zealand is being a bit naive. Should a captain touring India in the later part of the season not account for the fact that the afternoons get scorching hot, when thinking about whether to enforce the follow-on? How is that not planning around the weather? But let us discard this point for a second. Let's forget about planning for the rain. Should Dhoni have waited till the lead was over 600? My answer to that would still have been a No.

5. Do you think Dhoni should be fired as captain? No. I think he is a very good captain. He is pretty canny; he clearly inspires the team. I do think he is a better T20 and ODI captain than a Test captain. Perhaps he will get better as he gets used to the idea of winning tests. But he needs to snap out of a conservative mind-set before it becomes too deeply ingrained in him.

6. Lastly, have you ever played cricket or captained a team in your life? Yes; I captained Mathematics in the Inter-Departmental Competition at Hindu College in 1987. We lost in the first round to Chemistry.

	The much-predicted rain came down soon after lunch on the final day in Wellington © Getty Images

Joy to the world, an Indian team has won a Test series in New Zealand! Let earth receive her kings. Congratulations to the Indian team. And a resounding well-played to the Black Caps. But reactions to the lack of a result in the third Test, forced upon us by bad light, and a forecast-well-in-advance-rain-shower on the fifth day, puzzle me. For, Dileep Premchandran says: "I don't think you can plan for rain" and Sambit Bal says "You can't really plan around weather". As do a few comments on my regular blog. I must be living in some alternate universe (entirely possible, given that I'm in Kings County, New York State), but for as long I've watched and followed cricket, the one thing Test captains have always done is planned around the weather. They have sent out instructions to batsmen, telling them to hurry up because rain clouds are threatening; they have sent out instructions to batsmen telling them to hang in there because the rain clouds are threatening; they have hustled to get wickets or overs completed for the same reason; and lastly, they have always, always, thought about how much time could be lost to rain (or light, or morning dew) when planning a declaration, or indeed, other tactical moves.

At tea time on the third day of the third Test, when Laxman and Gambhir were walking off the field to have a cup of Dilmah Masala Chai (and possibly some complimentary batata vadas and dhoklas sent over by the local Indian tea-shop), India were 448 runs ahead of New Zealand. Let's just stop for a second and examine these figures again. At tea-time on the third day of a Test, the world's No. 3 Test team, had a lead larger than any target successfully chased in the fourth innings of some 1918 tests played in 132 years. Over the world's No. 8 team, one they had bowled out for 197 runs in the first innings of the same Test. Two days later, when the Indian team trooped off the field, they were still looking for the last New Zealand two wickets.

When all the various defences about Dhoni's canny captaincy, India's dismal overseas records, the lack of a series win in 40 years in New Zealand, and the apparent incapacity of captains to plan for the weather are done with, something is still a bit rank in all of this. Something was rotten in the fair city Wellington on Tuesday.

Why did Dhoni need 600 plus runs on the board? To set attacking fields? Why were 500 runs not enough? Because New Zealand had scored 600 runs in the first innings of the last Test? And if he wanted to set attacking fields then why didn't he set them? I didn't see fields that were consistently the hyper-aggressive fields that a captain with 600 runs on the board could set. (If you want to see aggressive fields for spinners and pacers alike, go find a video of Imran Khan's field settings during the 1982 series against England, his first as captain). If the idea was to get 600 runs on the board and go on all-out attack, then why was the Indian team's demeanour in the post-tea session on the fourth day that of giggling schoolboys? They didn't look like meanies that had put 600 runs on the board and were in your face thereafter. This slackness affected their catching as well; three catches went down on the fifth day itself. (Dileep Premchandran notes that had those been held, India would have won anyway; perhaps; but perhaps the reason they weren't held was that the team's mind wasn't fully set on winning the game as opposed to the series).

Dhoni wanted to save the match first. A win was a bonus. He didn't get it and it didn't matter to him. A series win was more important. Fair enough. Those are his objectives. But if he is going to be a truly different Indian Test captain, he will need to snap out of a conservative mind-set that has been characteristic of most that have preceded him. And part of the way to do it is to back yourself and your team to win in lots of different settings. That might include thinking that 500 runs in a fourth-innings chase is enough for most teams in the world. It has been for every team in every Test played thus far in the history of the game. That might also include backing your bowlers to not get worried if someone does attack them a bit during their fourth-innings chase. Such expressions of confidence go beyond making your own team more secure; they also send out a message to your opponents. Doing it the first time might be hard but it can rapidly become a habit. Try it, MSD. I think you'll like it. You have the team for it.

[Editor's Note: Samir will be posting a follow-up article responding to the comments.]

I wonder if other cricket fans have had this experience: you read expert analysis of the game, you hear television commentators dissect a game finely, and you wonder, do all these fine-grained distinctions really exist, are all the things being talked about--reading the ball out of the hand, setting the batsman up with a sequence of short-pitched deliveries--real, or are they just stories, entertainments for the benefit of the fan? And then, one day, while playing the game, you realize, no, it's true, this thing really does happen out in the middle. When that happens, your appreciation of the game changes, and the next time you watch the game, you aren't watching remote, abstract, heroes any more, but rather, players just like yourself, albeit far more talented, skilled and diligent, that have conquered a challenge you faced as well.

In this post, I'd like to be self-indulgent, and talk about an experience of mine that led me to partially understand how the state of mind of a batsman could change in the course of an innings, from utter diffidence to one of supreme confidence. I focus on this experience because in my professional academic career, it became evident to me that what separates the men from the boys is not so much raw talent as a work ethic, a state of mind that permits diligence to take precedence over distraction. And thus I've wondered about the mental aspects of cricket, about how it is some batsmen can construct long innings while others seem congenitally incapable of doing so. In this experience, while I didn't solve the mystery of how a state of confidence could be maintained over a long period of time, I did come to understand what it felt like, and why staying in that zone can be a pleasurable experience in its own right, and by being an end in itself, lead to the construction and maintenance of a long innings.

Back in 2001, I played in the Northern Sydney Suburbs C-grade competition. We played both one-days and two-days, with outright wins in the latter format ensuring the most points. In one game, we gave up some 270 odds run to the opposing team, and when our turn came to bat, lost 7 wickets rather rapidly. There was plenty of time left on the second day, and we were facing an outright defeat if we got bowled out again after following-on. I went out to bat at #9. The opposition's quick bowlers were making the ball fly all over the place; the slips and gully cordon was chattering away, making perfect nuisances of themselves. I batted for a couple of overs, unable to get bat on ball, all the while fearing for my own physical safety. Two more wickets fell, and we were nine down. Number 11 came out to join me, and somehow we put on 50 or so runs, and more importantly, chewed up a huge amount of time, which resulted in us avoiding an outright defeat.

In the course of my innings, as bat increasingly made contact with the ball, my sense of my abilities grew and grew. I began to play more strokes, I ran harder between wickets, I even sledged back at the slips. I grew to believe I could not get out; I felt I would not even feel the ball if it crashed into my body; the fielding side's visible frustration fed into my confidence; and I wondered if there was any way in which I could possibly be dismissed. More to the point, I felt an intense pleasure at experiencing such total, utter, confidence. And like any good hedonist, I didn't want it to end. Playing cricket can often result in cruel blows to one's self-esteem: was I really that hopeless when I dropped that catch or bowled those full-tosses? This experience was uplifting and exhilarating, and I realized, as I was walking off the field after the No. 11 had been dismissed, that great batsmen, unlike the minnows, are much, much better at finding ways to guard this treasured emotion, this feeling of being at the top of one's game. Perhaps the mystery of how batsmen maintain their concentration in long spells is to be found in their deeper enjoyment of such moments of mastery of this very difficult game.

In Don DeLillo's White Noise, its central protagonist, Jack Gladney, in a meditation on the mixed blessings of the post-industrial age, notes sunsets are more spectacular than they used to be, a result of the increased particulate matter in the air causing increased scattering of the evening light. Thus truly, what the Lord taketh away with one hand, he giveth with the other. In the cricketing context, while one-day night cricket might have led to the pejorative term "pajama cricket" and to the purists eye, a gaudiness and razzle-dazzle unbecoming to the game's dignity, it has also provided a new set of spectacular backdrops to the cricketing action.

I was reminded of this the other day when watching the fourth ODI between India and New Zealand at Seddon Park in Hamilton on March 10th. Even as the rain came down again, disappointingly curtailing the match and introducing umpteen interruptions, the angry black-grey clouds, the gathering Stygian darkness, the bright, angular glare of the floodlights, and the crimson-orange sunset all collaborated to provide an appropriately apocalyptic setting to Virender Sehwag's 125 off 74 balls.

In an earlier post of mine, I noted how cricket photographs have a hold on the cricket fan. But there is more to cricket photographs than just noting players sporting skills. Part of the pleasure in looking at a photograph of the game lies in noting the unique tableau of the game: the cavernous MCG illuminated by the bright, skin-burning Australian sun, the depressing fences of Indian grounds that conjure up gladiatorial action, the English crowds pressed up to the tiny parapets of the boundary lines, the soaring hills behind Port of Spain and Kingston, and of course, Table Mountain at Newlands.

And I've never forgotten the first photograph I saw of the Sydney Cricket Ground (on the back cover of the now sadly defunct World Cricket Digest): a night game between Australia and New Zealand, the white ball and multi-colored cricket uniforms set off beautifully on a tableau of lush green outfields, soaring green roofs of the older stands improbably held up by what seemed like slender cast-iron pillars, and yes, a spectacular sunset in the background.

When the idea of night Tests was first mooted, my initial reaction was one of resistance. How could one imagine Test cricket being played at night? All of the imagery of Tests was bound up with green fields, white uniforms, bright sunlight, and red balls. But watching the spectacular setting of the India-New Zealand encounter, experiencing the sense of a larger drama being played out as the background of frenetic cricketing action, reminded me cricket is capable of taking new settings and making them its own, that the beauty of Test cricket at night may be worth exploring. Many dramatic one-day internationals have been played at night (my personal favorite, the India-Pakistan WC 96 quarterfinal was one such game). The drama of the close chase at night is now an iconic feature of the shorter version of the game. Who knows what intense crackling Test action would be played out in the setting of a night game? Who knows what spectacular light show might illuminate a late collapse, a gritty match-saving partnership (perhaps one involving Fidel Edwards), or a brilliant last-session century?

I might be a purist but this sort of experiment is likely to override my conservative leanings on purely aesthetic grounds.

Last night, as I watched the India-New Zealand one-day international, Simon O'Doull and Ravi Shastri broke the news of the attack on the Sri Lankan team. I checked the headlines to make sure I'd heard them correctly, looked for updates, and then, still stunned, posted a brief note on my blog, which ended, "What a tragic way to refute the stupidest argument ever made in favor of playing cricket in Pakistan: 'the terrorists won't attack cricketers'". I never found that argument convincing (an attitude implicit in my post last year on why the Australian team was justified in not touring Pakistan), and it clearly doesn't have much mileage now.

Besides attempting to read the minds of unhinged killers, that argument committed the singular fallacy of imagining the terrorists had some stake in winning the hearts and minds of the Pakistani populace. They don't. They were, and are, interested in destabilizing the Pakistani polity, damaging its economy, and showing the Pakistani state is incapable of protecting the lives of its citizens. Why anyone would imagine that a mere cricket team would get in the way of their fascist ideology is beyond me. These folks were killing hundreds of innocent Pakistani men, women and children every year. That wasn't alienating the Pakistani populace? These killers were going to somehow spare international cricketers because they thought that would affect their public relations profile? That somehow the attack on a cricket team was going to be more damaging for their public profile than the much-repeated shots of women and children grieving for their dead?

Imran Khan, who for all his cricketing genius, always struck me as a political and intellectual lightweight, was fond of making the "the militants won't attack the cricketers" claim. Imran had in mind the idea that the violence in Pakistan was part of some massive expression of post-9/11 anti-American sentiment. But far more perspicuous analysis, by Pervez Hoodbhoy the distinguished Pakistani physicist, after the Lal Masjid events of 2007, always suggested the designs of the terror groups were more straightforward and ideological: destroy the Pakistani state from within.

The idea that these killers are cricket fans who in their spare time fire off a few AK-47s was always ludicrous. Indeed, one could make a very convincing argument that given all the focus on the international cricket scene and its security hassles, the terrorists, who do not lack a certain kind of deadly single-minded nous, would step up their efforts to attack a cricket team to completely discredit the Pakistani government. That they have done. In doing so, besides killing innocents, they have set back international cricket in Pakistan by a very long way. I assure you: they do not give a damn what cricket fans think about them.

In all of this, let us not forget that somewhere in Pakistan the families of the slain policemen are grieving. That is the true tragedy of today. The Sri Lankans are safe; one should be grateful for small mercies. And the Pakistani team will find other venues to play in. But the toll in human lives in Pakistan exacted by this insane violence shows no sign of diminishing.

My gut reaction to India's losing the two T20s against New Zealand was disappointment. Not because a couple T20 internationals had been lost. In the larger scheme of things, these still rank third behind Tests and ODIs. But because, these days, every time India loses a match overseas, I instinctively sense a lost opportunity to give the "boys overseas" - the large, vocal, Indian diaspora--something to cheer about. It's yet another burden for the Indian team to bear but it is one they should be familiar with.

When the Indian team first played in the West Indies in 1953, they provided plenty of joy for the Indo-Caribbean spectators that came out in throngs to see them play (the best description of this reaction can be found in Mihir Bose's A History of Indian Cricket. And when India won the World Cup in 1983, an Indian expat living in London on a visit to India, said to an uncle of mine, "World Cup jeetne ke baad hum mahinon tak chati nikaal ke chalte te London mein". [For months after India won the World Cup, we walked around with our chests stuck out in London]. Like it or not, when the Indian team plays overseas, they do duty of a sort very different from that when they play at home.

When they play at home, they provide entertainment, razzle-dazzle, and a display of sporting skills. When they play overseas, they provide ammunition for bragging rights, comeback lines and a cushion of respect (which might help, for instance, in making sure you get picked up early in a pickup game).

Back in 2004, shortly after Amit Varma had started his now-defunct blog 23 Yards, and had written a post wondering why Indian fans treated their teams so harshly, I wrote to him, offering a tongue-in-cheek explanation:

Lots of Indian fans that write to you are writing from the great diaspora, and part of the frustration expressed in those emails comes from the team's perceived failure at backing them up in those edgy conversations they seem to be perpetually having with other expats about cricket...by far the most vocal is the Indian expat who gets to work and has to listen to his English, Aussie, South African or Kiwi office-mate ask him, "Say, Vijay, what about your boys last night?" The Indian, used to endless jokes about his accent, his country's poverty, the weird movies with the actors that run around trees in saris singing songs, seethes internally and curses himself for having been born in a country whose cricket players do not provide him sufficient rhetorical ammunition for these encounters. When he gets home, he fires off his emails.

But speaking more seriously and from a broader perspective than just jousting with the locals, Indians overseas are aware they are slowly settling into societies not fully adjusted to all the differences between their respective cultures. The Indian cricket team gives them a point of contact with the local culture. They want that point of contract to be one they can take pride in, one that is not to be hidden away or disowned, but to be highlighted and bragged about. Like it or not, their expectations, even more heightened than when they lived back in India, add to the Indian team's already heavy baggage.

From personal experience I can tell you that after Kolkata 2001, the best place in the world to be an Indian fan was Australia. Nothing will quite match the feeling of walking out on Cleveland Street in Sydney's Surry Hills, hearing the hooping and hollering of all the "locals" that had turned out at the Crown Hotel to watch the dramatic final moments of that game. And nothing will quite match the pleasure I took in all the conversations over morning coffee the next day at work.

This is the day after the Oscars so it's only natural that I would write about Slumdog Millionaire. My central critique of the movie has already been made, much more eloquently than I ever could, by Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph. I have, however, as a fan of cricket and the Indian fan, another complaint about the movie, which centers on roughly the same complaint that Kesavan made: the movie does not make the suspension of disbelief easy.

For a crucial question in the movie, the one which catapults Jamal into the realm of the big bucks involves a question about cricket. Right off the bat (pun intended), this is a mistake. Why would a question about cricket, and cricket statistics at that, be placed in such a crucial moneyed category of the quiz? Especially when that quiz is taking place in India, home to obsessive statisticians and numerologists, trained for years by the brutal alphabet soup of school exams like the ICSE, CBSE, NTSE, ISC, IIT-JEE, AFMC, and all of the rest, to be the world's best crammers and memorizers?

But that's not the worst part. The true indicator that the film-makers thought so poorly of Indian fans and their cricketing knowledge is that the question asked is (no, not how many centuries Don Bradman made - that's printed on each Indian child's janampatri), wait for it, "Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket?" I was watching this movie at a large suburban movieplex, and I'm afraid my loud guffaws and chortles at this point might have made me a bit unpopular. It certainly earned me a dig in the ribs from my wife.

Oh, sure, I'll acknowledge the film-makers were clever enough to make this question one that Jamal struggles with. See, they seem to be saying, this is one question that every Indian would know, and that precisely is the question that our Slumdog seems to be ignorant about. Doesn't this show his disconnection from the mainstream? Yes, but what the heck is it doing as the 10-lakh rupee question? In the pantheon of cricket statistics questions, this one is not even a minor deity. Rather than the police torturing Jamal, they should have hauled the show's question-devisers off to the brig for a well-deserved thrashing.

However, Slumdog has done well with regards to cricket in another regard. It dutifully includes a scene in which cricket is being shown on the television, as a vital encounter between the movie's central protagonists takes place. And that little bit of cricket captures a painful moment for Indian fans. Not as painful as say, losing to Pakistan in the 1999 Chennai Test, but reasonably heart-ache inducing. The frustration it induces in Javed the Ganglord is palpable and quite likely to evoke sympathetic reactions in those viewers who watched the incident in question.

So, perhaps Slumdog's best contribution to the role of cricket in future editions of Kaun Banega Crorepati (er, sorry, Who Wants to be a Millionaire) will be two questions.

Question 1: In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which ridiculously easy question about cricket was masqueraded as a challenging one?

a) Who made the most centuries in Test cricket
b) Which cricketer was nicknamed "The Don"
c) Which country did Donald Bradman play for
d) Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket

Question 2: In Slumdog Millionaire which cricketing incident serves to induce a fit in the gangster Javed?

a) Tendulkar being run out for 99
b) Steve Bucknor giving Tendulkar out LBW
c) Mark Benson giving Ganguly out in the Sydney test
d) Andrew Symonds speaking

While cricket has produced some of the finest sporting literature there is, it has not been served well in the domain of the documentary. Sure, telling a compelling a story about a sporting event that runs for fivedays can be difficult (and this is compounded when dealing with Test series or entire careers). But even accounting for that, the lack of the definitive cricket commentary is still mysterious. After all, skilled film-makers find a way to bring dramatic stories to life on the screen even when dealing with long, complex events like wars or political crises.

Most cricket documentaries tend to be poorly put together highlight clips, interspersed with a few interviews with the dramatis personae and a couple of journalists. Cricket documentaries are stuck in the "Lets-get-this-DVD-out-for-Christmas-shopping" mode. Once in a while, the sheer quality of the cricket action on display makes one remember one of those productions. "Botham's Ashes", the DVD of Australia's conquest of the West Indies in 1995, or the hour-long summation of the 2005 Ashes come to mind.

Or sometimes the weight of including enough historical footage is impressive in its own right. The DVD titled "A History of Cricket" (presented by David Gower, and put out by Marks and Spencer) was a fair stab in this regard, but it still left me cold at the end. I didn't think justice had been done to the rich history of the game (Of course, Ken Burns' Baseball series ran for 9 DVDs, and even then, not everyone was happy with the seemingly excessive time spent on the Red Sox and the Yankees).

So, for me, what seems to be lacking is the kind of documentary, that by a judicious combination of the action on the ground and television news clippings, behind the scenes reportage, and powerful narration and interviews, makes for compelling drama, and in the best cases, truly transports the viewer and leaves him experiencing a complex welter of emotions. And long after the cricket fan has finished his viewing he comes away with the feeling that he has understood the game just a bit better. No Ken Burns or Berlinger & Sinofsky seem to have turned their attention to cricket.

I find this state of affairs genuinely puzzling. This game brings out the literary best in its writers. But it seems to have provoked no such inspiration amongst its fans in the film-making world. Cricket provides plenty of subjects in this regard: the story of a historic, dramatic, or controversial tour; great innings or bowling performances; the politics of cricket; player biographies; the list goes on. Is the problem lack of access to archival footage? That can't be the problem when it comes to modern series (indeed, there is a wealth of high-quality material covering cricket from the 80s onwards). Or is it that cricketers tend to make for poor interviewees? That could be tackled by good interviewers and good editing. The mystery only deepens.

So this post is partly an expression of wishful thinking and I'd like to think, partly a throwing down of the gauntlet. The definitive cricket documentary has yet to be made; the eager documentarian has the field left open for him.

PS: Please send on your recommendations for your favourite cricket features.

	Andrew Strauss departs ... and the Sabina Park crowd are delighted © AFP

One of the oft-repeated lines in the aftermath of the English defeat in Kingston has been (no, not the business about how it's all the IPL's fault, and no, not the KP-Flintoff Mutual Dislike Society) a mention of the crowd at Sabina Park. To a man, correspondents reporting on the fourth day's play noted the electric atmosphere, the hooping and hollering, the dancing, the egging on, or quite literally, the willing, of the players to bigger and better things.

I knew exactly what the correspondents were talking about and it wasn't just because I had watched the 51 Debacle live on my 19-inch flat screen monitor at home with the speakers turned up (well, the one good one). It was because I had once sat in the middle of a Sabina Park crowd that had gotten pumped up similarly. On that occasion, another West Indian quick had triggered a collapse in an opponent's batting line-up. The collapse was not so spectacular, and the opponents recovered, but the experience was enough to let me know what an opposition side could feel like when confronted with that famous combination: a hyped-up fast bowler and an excited West Indian crowd.

On the third day of the first Test (in Kingston) during India's tour of the West Indies in 1997, the visitors resumed at 108 for 1 facing a West Indian total of 427. VVS Laxman, on 54, and Rahul Dravid, on 28, walked out to do duty. All was well as they took the score to 127. Then, a young debutant called Franklyn Rose bowled Laxman. The crowd celebrated vociferously; it was the first wicket of the day, cause for celebration, but still, it wasn't that big a deal. Laxman was a relative unknown. But Sachin Tendulkar was now out in the middle, and he was the man for whom, as a beer vendor at the ground had assured me, the crowd had "respeck".

Dravid went next at 140, caught behind off Rose. Now, the crowd was up and about, getting louder and louder. There was a stir around me, the chatter had gotten louder, I could see folks dancing in the upper stands. Perhaps the folks rolling those fatties up in the nose-bleeds had put their rolling papers away.

And then, at 145, Rose bowled Tendulkar with a ball that kept slightly low. To make things worse, Tendulkar made that familiar exaggerated squatting move which he employs when balls keep low. He gave the impression of being utterly defeated.

The Sabina Park crowd went ballistic, in all the ways that Saturday's correspondents reported. And at that moment, the sound levels threatened to deafen me, while simultaneously evoking a curious emotion: I think I genuinely felt scared. I saw a young Indian fan walk past me, his face stricken. I knew how he felt. I felt like a force of nature had been cut loose and that no one, not the Indian fans in the stands, and certainly not the Indian team out in the middle, could resist it. Azhar fell at 153, again to Rose, and it seemed our worst fears were confirmed.

India survived that day. First Ganguly and [Nayan Mongia, and then later, Mongia and Sunil Joshi, put on useful, dogged stands, to bail out their team. But for that magic hour, I had been able to experience what many, many teams and batsmen before me, had felt and not enjoyed. And probably never will.

Reading the recap of the 1979-80 Australian season was, at the risk of descending into cliches, a trip down memory lane. For that season was the first time that I tuned into radio commentary from Australia for a match not involving India (my uncles and I had spent many hours glued to the radio during the 1977-78 season when India went down 2-3).

Whether it was the impressionability of youth or the magic of radio commentary, that season stands out quite clearly in my mind (and I have not seen, or at least I don't think I have, a single second of video footage of that summer). On a purely cricketing level, I was excited by the return of the Packer cricketers to the fold. I had been shattered by the schism in world cricket: it had taken all the worlds best players to the WSC and threatened a great deal of confusion in my mind between official and unofficial cricket.

But all was well. The Chappells and the Lillees and the Marshes were back in my then favorite team, the Australians. The West Indies were back as well, and to top it all off, the English had obligingly agreed to play the part of the Prissy Poms by refusing to contest the Ashes. And the icing on the cake was that Kim Hughes and David Hookes, who I worshipped, were going to play in the full-strength side. More than anything else I wanted to see how my two new heroes would do.

The first time I tuned in to the morning commentary from Australia, Joel Garner and Colin Croft were putting on 56 for the last wicket at Brisbane in the first Test. Croft, amazingly, hung around to make 2 off some 70 odd deliveries while Garner bashed 60 at the other end.

It was during this session that I discovered that despite all the distortion from the radio set, ones comprehension of the spoken word improved over time, almost as if the audio-processing component of one's brain was carrying out its own corrections and filtrations over time. My mother walked into the room where I was and was flabbergasted at the sight of her son listening to what sounded like a banshees wail. But to me it had become crystal clear.

That winter, once I had figured out the best frequencies and timings for the commentary from Australia, I became a diligent listener. There was plenty to admire and mourn from a distance, plenty of material to imagine and let grow wild: Richards batting, the hostility of the Windies quicks, the mixed run that both Hughes and Hookes had, the heartbreak of Hughes 99; the oddness of Boycott carrying his bat for 99 not out; the blast from the past vibe associated with Ian Chappells presence in this series (Ian played his last Test in it); and so on.

But retrospectively, the real heroes were the radio sets: the large GEC set at home in Delhi (which seemed to take forever to 'warm up'), and my grandfather's portable Phillips set in Central India. For hours and hours, they became my portal to a distant land where giants roamed, fantasies were realized, dreams were crushed and cricketing drama was enacted. If I have overblown impressions of the cricketers in that season, its because my imagination did double-duty that memorable summer.

We are in a similar period now, following the Test wins at home over Australia and England. Sure, no one is going overboard in their claims (leaving aside some suggestions that the Indian bowling attack was the most varied or the most incisive or whatever, in the cricketing world). But the feel-good vibe is present, with the twin Test series (and the 5-0 ODI thrashing of England) putting a convenient distance between the team and its recent past. But the anxiety that underwrites this bluster has, for me, been most intriguingly revealed in the discussion over whether Dravid should remain in the Indian team, especially for the forthcoming tour of New Zealand.

For the central claim of the pro-Dravid camp in this regard is that Dravid is needed in Kiwiland, on its spongy, seaming, pitches. That without him, the Indian middle-order will be at the mercy of those dreaded seamers, cutters, swingers that are the hallmark of the New Zealand attack.

On the face of it, there is something very odd about this claim. The Indian cricketing world is currently glowing in the glory of its new opening pair (confidently proclaimed by some to be the best in the world); we have rediscovered the glories of Tendulkar and Laxman; and only one batting retirement, that of Ganguly, has taken place. The Indian team has not replaced its entire middle order and the New Zealand team is judged by most folks to thoroughly deserve its position in the Test cricket rankings table. Given the bluster about India and the brick-batting of New Zealand, it would be plausible to claim that India should do just fine and win comfortably (we do have a very effective pace attack, after all).

Whither this anxiety then? Will the replacement of Dravid by a relative newbie (and not necessarily at No. 3) do such damage to the Indian team, if it really is poised for greatness? I think what this argument reveals is that there is considerable worry about the Indian batting. Most of Gambhir's heroics have come at home; Yuvraj remains untested overseas as well; Laxman might be going off the boil; and you can insert your favourite worries about Sehwag (loose cannon) and Tendulkar (will age catch up soon?) here. (I only worry about Yuvraj and Gambhir but I sense insecurity about the entire order out there).

The caution that pervades the latest spell of boosterism for the Indian team is appropriate. Much needs to be done: the Holy Grail of away wins over South Africa and Australia will only come when the batting order can do well there and if the quicks can remain injury-free and turn in consistent match-winning performances over an extended period.

For what its worth, I cannot make up my mind on whether Dravid should stay or go. But the arguments made on his behalf have been very revealing of the justifiable guardedness the Indian fan has at this point in Indian cricket.

Somewhere out there in bittorrent land is the video of Sehwag's debut innings against South Africa in the 2001 test series. I watched that innings, live on a large screen television, at the Crown Hotel on Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 3rd November 2001. This past weekend, just because I felt like reliving one of my favorite cricketing memories, I decided to view it again.

I didn't regret that decision and have played the 22-minute long video again and again reminding myself this was someone playing his first Test innings. As far as debut tons go, it is hard to imagine another innings which so definitively sounded an advance warning to the rest of the world that a bright new talent was on the world's stage.

Earlier that day I'd played cricket with my Northern Sydney team, the Centrals, and had enjoyed a good, hard day in the sun. We won our match and shortly afterwards, a friend and I were dropped back in the City center before beginning the walk back home. I knew the Test started in the late afternoon, so we decided to stop off at the Crown for a couple of beers (the atmosphere was all skank, but they had several large televisions). When I checked the score, I was taken aback. India had already slumped to 68-4, and a young debutant was batting at #6, heading out to face the music, to join Sachin Tendulkar in the middle. The partnership that followed was worth 220 runs, and it took all of 46 overs. South Africa did not know what hit them. But fans like us were equally gobsmacked.

I have one abiding memory of that evening. Which was that of sitting in the pub, still wearing my sweaty cricket whites, sore all over from bowling and fielding, drinking my cold beers, stunned by the audacity and brilliance of the Tendulkar-Sehwag partnership. It was hard to believe Sehwag was making his Test debut, hard to believe this lad was playing away from home, dealing with a collapse, and a South African pace attack, at home, in their element. That he survived was not such a mystery. The manner of his survival was the truly revelatory feature: he batted with the solidity of a Mumbai opener, the flair of a Napoleonic hussar, the power of a Bajan middle-order bat. His shot-making was precise and powerful, his demeanor utterly relaxed. He looked like someone playing his 20th Test, playing a role familiar to him.

I should have known more about Virender Sehwag; he is from Delhi, and I followed all Delhi hopefuls' careers with great interest. But all I knew about him was his reputation as a power hitter. I had thought of him as a one-day type. But this innings convinced me he was radically different. Seven years on, he's already done enough to convince me he is moving into the pantheon of Indian greats. If the Indian team had not wasted so many of his stellar efforts over the years, his place would have been assured a few years ago.

There are plenty of writers in the cricket world that love to dismiss Sehwag as a slogger, a mere stand-n-hit type. These slaves of technique, of the cold logic of the cricketing manual, of the merely conventional, are denied the pleasure of being able to appreciate this man's talent. That is their loss.

For all of us, the rest, those that enjoy the contact of bat and ball, and the changing of games' fortunes by singular talents, Viru is a delight. May he continue to entertain and astonish for years to come.

Sometime ago on Different Strokes, I questioned the value of the national cricket coach. I accused them of being redundant in international context. Now, to make my point, here comes Mickey Arthur, with his ten tips for succeeding in the subcontinent.

"Deal with pressure", "adjust to the game's pace", "make the first innings count", all sound like prize contenders for, as I like to call them, Outstanding Missives from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious.

"Stay leg-side of the ball" sounds interestingly different but it's also interestingly useless, in that it is so over-theorised that I have a hard time believing any cricketer would take it seriously. But bully for Mickey's wards if they did so. So let us give him this one.

Then there is "plan against spin". Imagine that, going to India, and you need to be told to "plan against spin". Brilliant, innit?

"Handle reverse swing" comes next. Yes, indeed, one must handle reverse swing, given that most potent quick bowling attacks in the world employ it. Very good, coach, very good. Now, what next? "Use your bouncer". Not the big man outside the pub but the short-pitched delivery. Do quicks really need to be told this is a good strategy to stop batsmen getting onto the front foot? And to be told to "bowl reverse swing"? Which quick out there in the world doesn't think that that is a worthwhile addition to his armory?

But more interesting is "Role definition: You have to be able to take 20 wickets, so you need to allow certain bowlers freedom to attack" This is truly devious stuff. And of course, teams touring India must "play with field settings". Like most captains do, sometimes to the detriment of over-rates.

Perhaps I'm being too catty but I think this is very silly stuff, and I remain unconvinced. South Africa's drawn series result the last time they were in India came about largely because of a spectacular collapse they induced in the Indian batting line-up on the first day of the second test. Perhaps it was because they played with field settings and allowed certain bowlers the freedom to attack. But then they lost on a turner, a result which Arthur described as a "hijacking". Perhaps they forgot to plan against spin.

In any case, I'm going to announce my ten tips for success in Australia. If any team likes these, could I please be appointed coach? Come to think of it, isn't South Africa touring Australia? Why won't they have me instead?

1. Watch out for the Australian media.

2. Be prepared for the Australian captain to sledge you in the press.

3. Adjust to the extra bounce at the WACA.

4. Hold your catches (the Australians will hold theirs).

5. Keep your cool when getting sledged.

6. Don't go on the defensive too quickly.

7. Don't put your emotionally fragile players on the boundaries.

8. Wear sunscreen at all times.

9. Maintain line and length; the Australians' aggressive batting could play into your hands.

10. Make the fourth-innings count.

Or, you could just take Mickey's list, change "plan against spin" to "plan against pace", and change "stay leg-side of the ball" to "play horizontal bat shots" and you would have a perfectly good list for Australia.

Nice work if you can get it.

The day after the Mumbai bombings, an Australian friend of mine who had read my piece on Australia not touring Pakistan (which provoked many flames despite my pointing out that terrorist violence in India hardly received any international attention), wrote to me and said, "See, Chop? All it took was a few dead Englishmen and Americans. The Mumbai attacks are all over the news". There is a huge dollop of cynicism in that email, one that I partially share, as I've not failed to notice that fact myself.

But cynicism is not what I intend to traffic in today. I'd simply like to offer some skepticism about the constant refrain that cricket can act as a healing balm. For the fact of the matter is that cricket can be a good and a bad distraction. And right now, cricket seems like a bad distraction.

India has been attacked, and I'd rather the country, its people, its leaders, its intellectuals get down to the business of figuring out how it is that every year, due to planned acts of murderous violence, hundreds of Indian citizens die, of all religions and socio-economic orders, and yet, nothing concrete seems to happen on either the security, planning, or domestic and foreign policy fronts. It's a great thing to talk about getting back to day-to-day life. But getting back to normality can be overrated, especially if that return involves a dangerous forgetting of the fact that a sovereign nation is seemingly helpless to protect the lives of its innocent citizens.

If the absence of cricket forces a remembering of why the cricket is not on the television, then so be it. Let's watch images of the burning Taj instead, or perhaps some more shots of the dead, their limbs grotesquely askew, at the Mumbai railway station, and ask ourselves, what can we do to make sure this does not happen again? What will it take?

This rush to want to get back to watching cricket has a slight undertone of "Can something be done to get my mind off this disaster, please?" That emotion is understandable, but it should not turn into the dangerous complacency that seems to settle over all and sundry a few days after the site of the latest atrocity is cleaned up and all the bodies are consigned to the flames.

Indian cricket fans won't be starved of cricket. ESPN or Star Sports will show Australia vs. South Africa, and the Ranji Trophy is on. And of course, on any Indian sports channel, you can watch endless highlights shows, famous centuries, great bowling performances or whatever. The suspension of cricket is not going to be indefinite. We will get back to playing cricket soon enough. No test cricket was played anywhere in the world between 1939 and 1946. When the war ended, cricket resumed. We are not in the same situation, but would a temporary suspension for a couple of months hurt people so much?

The skeptics will say that complacency will return anyway, that the suspension of cricket will not bring the dead to life, that this is a problem too big to be fixed by suspending normal life, that the suspension will be counterproductive. But perhaps some of that skepticism might be dispelled by thinking of this as a mourning period instead. No one pretends mourning will bring the dead back to life; but it enables reflection, a sizing up of the world and our place in it, and it does not last forever. That's all I'm asking for now.

PS: In my blog, a couple of days ago, I'd written that I didn't care whether the English tour went ahead or not. But my feelings have changed. Right now, I don't think it'd be a good idea. Given my addiction to cricket, I'd land up paying attention if the games were played. But I'll be pretty distracted.

	Replays have made run-out decisions and stumpings much simpler © Getty Images

Many theories have been put forward to explain the recent (say 1990s onward) increase in the number of Test matches that have not ended in a draw. The usual suspects are better fielding, the dominance of Australia, faster scoring, better catching, more aggressive batting habits inherited from one-day cricket, and so on.

I'd like to think that a small contribution has been made by technology, more specifically, the use of side-on cameras to help decide line decisions like stumpings and run-outs. I do not have precise dates or numbers at hand, but I would be very surprised to find out the number of these dismissals has not increased since the introduction of television replays and third umpires. Any statheads out there that are willing to do the hard work and put some empirical meat on the bare bones of my wild speculation?

The run-out decision is a notoriously hard one, and always has been for umpires. They need to quickly get into place to make an effective call, and while this is not so difficult when the batsmen are running two or three, it can take some nimble stepping when a quick single is on. Batsmen have been given out when they were in, and not-out when they were out. (I suspect the latter was more common.) But there is also something about the nature of the call itself that makes it a hard one. Two events must be tracked simultaneously, the advance of the batsman, or his bat, towards the crease, and the dislodging of the bails, and then the judgement made which one occurred first. It sounds simple, but it can be a dodgy call when people are screaming (both the fielders, and the crowd).

Stumpings are a little easier when the batsman is dancing down the track, but the overbalancing ones and those where the batsman is dragged forward and then tries to slide his feet back into the crease are hard to give. I'm willing to bet we've seen many more stumping decisions of this kind in recent years due to the use of the third umpire.

The use of the third umpire has also affected umpires themselves in the way they handle these decisions. Very few umpires now raise the finger when it comes to these calls. Now, everyone turns to the television screens to find out the result of the appeal. Even dismissals which should have been total no-brainers (c.f. Amit Mishra running out Ponting at the Nagpur Test) are now referred, and unsurprisingly so. Why take any chances when a quick check can be carried out? Indeed, when Tiffin gave Collingwood out in the third India-England ODI, I almost fell out of my chair in surprise. The non-replayed decision has become so rare.

Of all the technological additions to cricket over the years, this one gives me the most satisfaction. The referrals don't take that much time, the decisions are correct 99% of the time, and there is no scope for complaint. I suspect umpires don't mind this particular intrusion too much. Sure, it's taken away some of the pleasure of watching an umpire's finger go up, shortly after the stumps are sent flying by a direct hit and an appeal shakes the remaining timber, but that's a small price to pay for knowing that the decision came out correctly. And that the game is one wicket closer to a result.

My favorite kind of philosophical discussion involves one where after a lengthy argument about some X, a participant finally throws up his hands and says, "I don't think we have a determinate concept of X".

After many attempts to process the sound and fury generated by Dhoni's 8-1 field placings (day three) and Ponting's bowler handling (day four) in the Nagpur test, I'm starting to think we don't have a determinate concept of "the spirit of cricket". For what else can explain the simultaneous blasting of both captains, one for violating the spirit of cricket, and the other for not?

Let me try and explain my puzzlement at this state of affairs. Dhoni was castigated for violating Clause 2.3 (a) of the Spirit of Cricket, which reads "Thou shalt not set fields that inhibit scoring excessively for doing so may lead to spectator boredom, opposing captain (and fan) disenchantment, and the demise of test cricket." (And bring the wrath of Peter Roebuck and Malcolm Conn down upon your head)

Ponting was castigated for NOT violating Clause 3.7 (b) of the Spirit of Cricket, which reads "Thou shalt always strive to maximize over-rates in Test cricket because failure to do so will lead to spectator boredom, opposing captain (and fan) disenchantment, and the demise of test cricket." (And besides Christopher Martin-Jenkins told us many years ago that the West Indian quicks were destroying all cricket with their dastardly over-rates)

Dhoni was lambasted for playing within the rules of the game, but playing excessively hard and being cynical, for saying "The hell with balanced fields, I've got a series to save, a trophy to win" (Whatever happened to the wonderful land of Hard-But-Fair? Why was Dhoni denied even a tourist visa for that wonderful place?)

Ponting was lambasted for not playing harder, for not saying "The hell with the damn over-rates, I've got a match to win here, goddamnit, a series to square, a trophy to win". Sure, a lot of the hostility directed at Ponting suggested he was merely trying to save his own skin, to not suffer the humiliation of a ban for over-rates. But Ponting was trying to up the over-rates. Why wasn't he praised for sacrificing his team on the altar of the Spirit of Cricket[tm]? The Spirit of Cricket seemed to demand that of Dhoni, didn't it?

I know that the anger directed at Ponting has to do with his general slackness in maintaining over-rates. On which point I agree, he needs to stop his endless waffling on about field placings, his desire to hold lengthy consultations with bowlers and so on. But still, I thought everyone had agreed that over-rates were a Good Thing At All Costs. So Ponting was slack about it. So he fell behind. So he tried to bring them back on board, even at the cost of his team's fortunes (and the enhancement of his own in terms of being able to play against New Zealand next week). But that's not cool. Because one thing captains should not do is sacrifice their team's fortunes for the sake of the Spirit of Cricket. Or should they?

So should Dhoni have messed with India's chances of trying to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy by not setting the fields that he thought gave him the best chance of messing with Australia's strategy? And over-rates are only a Good Thing till the point they start messing with your chances of winning a game? And at that point all worry about the spectators, the
demise of test cricket and so on, goes out the window?

Do we have a determinate concept of the Spirit of Cricket?

One thing the India-Australia series was bound to do was generate a few flame wars between Indian and Australian fans. One didn't have to wait long, starting with the sniping in the press, the release of Adam Gilchrist's autobiography and ElbowGate.

One common thread in these debates, at least from the Australian side, is the sense of disbelief that Indian fans could be so unbelievably over-the-top in their sensitivities. Do they really think the world is out to get them? I don't think the world is. But I want to highlight a small part of the subtext to the sensitivities of Indian fans. I do not speak as a representative of the group, but merely want to offer a small personal glimpse into the set of accumulated feelings that could lead to this state of affairs.

Consider umpiring. The Indian distaste for Steve Bucknor was most notoriously on display at Sydney earlier in the year, and we haven't heard the end of that debate yet. But why would Indians ever think particular umpires were against them? What could their motivation be? I'd like to suggest that while there might be no overt prejudice in umpiring decisions against the Indian teams, the alert fan has not been ignorant of what might politely be called an "attitude" towards the Indian team. And that isn't a trust-engendering state of affairs.

Here are two, small, anecdotal vignettes. In the 2001 'Kolkata' series, Peter Willey was umpiring at Kolkata. The Indian 12th man ran onto the ground with either gloves or a bottle of water or a message or all three. Willey waved him off the ground imperiously, much like a District Collector might have waved his khansama off the gymkhana polo grounds. I wonder whether he would have employed that body language to an English or Australian player. I think Willey would have waited till the player was on the ground and gone over to talk to him. In the Delhi Test, Billy Bowden called a dead ball on VVS Laxman, cancelling the runs made by the batsmen because they had run on the pitch. When Laxman asked Bowden why the runs had been cancelled, Bowden put a finger on his lips, much as a schoolmaster might chastise a schoolboy. Again, I wonder whether Bowden would ever have used such a patronising gesture to an English or Australian player.

What does this have to do with the quality of umpiring decisions? Aren't they professionals doing a job? Yes. But they are also human beings, prone to all the foibles of our species. So are Indian fans, in suspecting prejudice subconciously underwrites patronising behavior. And they express themselves the most vehemently on the Net, not the best venue to express subtlety in arguments (those happen best over beers and face-to-face).

Back when neutral umpires were first introduced, I'm ashamed to say I was worried about Pakistani umpires officiating in Indian matches. I wondered whether they would actually be neutral when it came to Indian teams (all the umpiring controversies in India-Pakistan games had left their mark on me). It is both an indication of my current (mild) mistrust in other umpires because of many little incidents like the two I have cited above, that I now feel the most relieved when I see Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf umpiring in India's games. Their umpiring is of decent quality (Taufel beats everyone hands down) and best of all, I never worry about whether they have got their backs up during their interactions with the Indians.

Perhaps my worries are unfounded. But I'm speaking here frankly as an anxious Indian fan, one used to Murphy's Law balefully staring down at the Indian team. I do not offer this post as an exculpation for any over-the-top expressions of national paranoia or insecurity, but just a small glimpse into what might ground the expressions of this very large, very vocal, and very passionate group of cricket lovers.

The Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi is an odd place. I first noticed it when watching John Lever rip the guts out of India's batting in the 1976 Test. Delhi's bright winter sunshine lit up the Kotla that day and emphasized several things which I would come to associate with the ground over the years: it was small, most of it was uncovered, and it had a slightly ramshackle feel to it.

That feeling only grew when I visited it for the first time to watch Clive Lloyd's West Indians in the 1983-84 series. It was the first and only day of Test cricket that I observed in India. The approach to the ground was over an unpaved road, the parking lot was a dusty, disused field, and the entrances to the ground similarly nondescript. A friend of mine had secured what were supposed to be very good tickets but the sight lines still weren't great. The crowds were raucous; their hardest hitting lines were reserved for the Indian players. I still blush when I think of some of the lines directed at Shastri, then often fielding close to the boundary line.

The Kotla already had a reputation as a dead pitch by then. One that had, in Lala Amarnath's immortal phrase, "taken an overdose of sleeping pills". But that day’s cricket turned out to be surprisingly competitive. Richards did hit a brilliant 67, including a first ball four that sped to the fence before I had processed his entry and taking guard. But otherwise the West Indians stuttered before Lloyd and Logie put together a fightback. That Test, like many other Kotla Tests seemed to, ended in a draw.

Later, I went on to watch more cricket at the Kotla, but almost always domestic fare. Something about the ground was discordant and didn't mesh with my imagined visions of what Test cricket grounds should look like. The Delhi team won many Ranji Trophy games there, and so it acquired some lustre by virtue of being home to a champion team. But it remained a small ground: legend was that some of Tom Moody's sixes, hit during his tour with the Aussie U-19 team in the mid-80s, had actually landed outside the ground next to the bus stops.

It was while watching a Wills Trophy game at the Kotla that I enjoyed one of my most pleasant Indian cricketing experiences. A bunch of us lads from the University had gone down to see a match-up between the Challengers and the Indian side in a one-day game. We showed up with little money in our pockets other than the odd rupee that would aid in the buying of cheap cigarettes and possibly a cup of tea later in the day. Food seemed like a minor detail at the time. The sun was out, cricket was on, what more could we need?

An elderly gentleman sat in front of us, and at lunchtime, proceeded to unpack what seemed like a gigantic lunch box. We looked on hungrily, our appetites suddenly aroused by this sight. Our friend, who had chatted gaily with us about matters cricketing before, proceeded to share his lunch with us, handing out delicious parathas left right and centre, all gratefully and ravenously consumed by us. He was generous to a fault, and he knew his cricket. It was a uniquely Indian moment.

The Kotla has improved over the years though some parts of it still look ugly. Its pitch has gone from being a dodo to a spinner's delight (or so people say). But my relationship with it is unique: looking at images of the Kotla from thousands of miles away is guaranteed to make me homesick, bringing back memories of radiant Delhi winters, bus rides to Delhi Gate, but most of all, memories of the university, chatting about cricket with mates, and deciding impromptu, to head down to the local ground to catch the cricket action.

As I watch the match, I'll be straining to catch glimpses of the city outside. More than any other ground in India, this one is "home", for better or worse.

	Why are Indian stadiums empty? © AFP

While I am concerned about the future of Test cricket in a world that seems to be increasingly headed towards the moneyed pastures of the Twenty20 World, I disagree that Tests are on their way out in India. And furthermore, I believe the Mohali schoolchildren experiment provides a very good model for how Tests could be further bolstered in India.

First things first. I do not think Test cricket is fading in India. Television audiences still remain gigantic, and there is no shortage of discussion about the game whether on the street, at homes, at schools and colleges and so on. Yes, there is more competition for spectators (most notably from English Premier League Football) but if interest in Tests is measured by whether it is on people's minds, and by whether advertisers think people are watching, then its levels remain high.

But why are Indian stadiums empty? The reasons for this are manifold. Indian stadiums are not comfortable places (BCCI please note), and there is competition for a family's live-cricket-watching budget. Why not just go watch a Twenty20 or an ODI instead when you are guaranteed a result at the end of the day? And of course, television coverage is of high-quality and you can make more frequent trips to the kitchen for snacks and drinks at home (and pay less)

Still, the spectacle of a keenly contested Test being played in front of empty rows of seats rankles, and it does not comfort me too much to know that plenty of interest is being shown in people's living rooms. How can this problem be fixed?

Here is my solution (perhaps applicable only in the unique economic context of the BCCI and Indian cricket). Tickets are sold in order to make money for the local cricketing association. It also makes money from the advertising hoardings that line the ground, and presumably it picks up a piece of the action from the television rights deal. What I suggest is that admission to the ground be made free. Don't charge anything. Let people walk up to the gate, go through the security check, and walk right in.

In order to make up the associated loss of gate receipts, the BCCI and the local association should carry out a calculation of estimated revenues, and simply add that on to the television rights and ground advertising deals. The television company in question will not only get to show an Indian Test team at home, they will be able to show a reasonably packed stadium, which can only add to the spectacle. Advertising rates can also be adjusted upwards in order to reflect the reality of more eyeballs at the ground. And the state association will see increased revenues from sales of food and drink at the ground.

Or perhaps some other subsidy deal can be worked out. The details are not as important as the idea that Test entry should be made free. If it is a form of the game worth preserving (and hopefully the BCCI and the state association can agree on this), then it behooves them to come up with some other revenue model that lets the ground association make up their gate receipts.

Yes, I'm saying that attendance at the game should be subsidised. But this is not such a radical idea. Giving away something for free so that a larger customer base can be attracted, who might then go on to become bigger spenders on other forms of the game, is an idea that is present in many other forms of entertainment (most notably in the modern music industry where music might be given away for free so as to attract a larger fan base to live concerts who then spend money on T-shirts and the like). The BCCI could land up creating a whole new generation of cricket fans brought up on Test cricket.

I think some simple number crunching will show that this is a viable idea. I welcome reader suggestions on other possible subsidy arrangements to make Test entry free in India.

A couple of weeks ago when writing about the impact of the first live telecast from Australia to India (back in 1985), I commented on the immediacy of the action that Channel Nine's stump microphones introduced into the cricket watching experience. Over the years, I've come to regard the stump microphone as the single biggest change in that sphere (the varied angles for slow motion replays is a close second).

The stump microphone has done several things over the years. The most obvious effect is that it has made real two sounds that are part of cricketing lore and literature but which, before its advent, were not too clearly heard by those not at the ground: the "willow on leather" and the "death rattle". It also introduced us to the different sounds that bowlers make at the moment of delivery: the heavy thud of the fast bowler, the scraping and grinding of the spinner's pivot.

Most famously, it has let all of us become voyeurs as we listen to players sledging, chatting, complaining, joking and indulging in all of the little conversational moments that take place during the game. There are plenty of us that wish commentators wouldn't talk over the stump microphone!

And of course, players often aren't happy about the stump microphone for precisely the same reason: too much of what they say leaks into living rooms, a complaint most famously made by Shane Warne after the "f**king arsey c*nt" controversy.

In giving us access to these conversations, the stump microphone also performs one salutary function. It demystifies cricket by reminding us that it's just a game played by a bunch of men (in all their glorious imperfection). And often it does so by reminding us of the informality that lies behind the sometimes ponderous cricket analysis that accompanies each Test match.

I was reminded of this when watching the last over of the second day's play in the Mohali test when Amit Mishra, India's new leg-spinner trapped Michael Clarke with a googly on the penultimate ball of the day.

What made the last over even more enjoyable for me (besides getting the crucial wicket of Clarke) was picking up on the stump mics just how informally the entire cricketing conversation went. For Dhoni did not walk up to Mishra and go into a long conference, and gravely decide to implement the change. Instead Dhoni simply yelled out in Hindi "Try it from the other side" (note not, "Amit, I think you should try bowling around the wicket"). The interesting thing is that Mishra did not comply the first time this was suggested. It was almost as if Mishra shrugged off that directive, and went on bowling over the wicket. Dhoni persisted, calling out the same line again. Mishra finally complied and dismissed Clarke.

I found this little moment hugely entertaining. For one thing the conversation took place in Hindi, which provided a flashback to the games that I played as a youngster back in Delhi, with its particular slang and inflections. Secondly, it reminded me that I was watching a couple of cricket players trying something out on the spur of the moment, which is often how most games proceed. And lastly, the informality of it all was like a breath of fresh air for one subjected to several hours of television commentary.

Like most additions to media coverage of sports, the stump microphone has had mixed effects. But at moments like this, it delivers on what it promises: access to the sporting action in a way that changes the way you think about the game.

	Expect Matthew Hayden to bounce back © Getty Images

The just concluded first Test in Bangalore confirms a lot of my pre-series thoughts: the Australian batting line-up will not be pushovers; their bowling attack lacks some of the punch of old; the Indian batting line-up is still not firing on all cylinders; the Indian spinners have lost some zing; the Indian quicks will be more of a threat than the spinners; both sides' captains are inclined to let games drift and quickly go on the defensive, though Ricky Ponting outshone Anil Kumble in aggression; both captains can't seem to get a decent over-rate happening; India don't generally bat to win matches especially on fifth days; and lastly, injuries will do more to affect the 'Fab Five' than selections.

While Australia's first innings was uninspired at times, they did well to get themselves into a good position. 430 is always good batting first in a Test match. Ponting is likely to be very confident about his chances in the remaining games, which isn't good news for India, while Hussey showed that he is capable of succeeding just about anywhere thanks to his technique and temperament (I have a very hard time getting work done and thus tend to admire just about anybody with a serious work ethic!). Hayden failed but I don't think this will go on forever unless Zaheer sorts him out the way he did Graeme Smith last year in a one-day series. Katich looks solid but could also clog up Australia's attempts to force the pace unless he is willing to play out of character (I'm well aware of the fact that Katich has played some furious innings in Shield cricket). For my money the weak link lay in the trio of Watson, Haddin and White but it's too early to tell how they will do. Certainly Watson and Haddin did well on the fourth day but they were also let off by rather insipid captaincy from Kumble.

It's in the bowling front that Australia will continue to worry. This pace attack is 'McGrath-less', and it shows, especially when it is unable to knock a tail over. And White remains quite raw for now, but he will learn as the series goes along. Still, he will find it hard, and the quicks will have to be disciplined at all times.

On the Indian front, while the top-order didn't score heavily, there were some flashes of form from most of the top six. It isn't clear to me that Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman are back in top form, but every single one of them had an extended knock out in the middle, and they'll be happy with that. However, I will say I did something on the second day that I would never, ever have done before: I went to sleep (at 1AM) when Sehwag and Gambhir were dismissed, and Dravid and Tendulkar were at the crease. Perhaps it was because I didn't expect them to take the game by the scruff of the neck.

Meanwhile the Indian spinners looked out of it: perhaps Kumble's shoulder is busted but he's looked ineffective for a few Tests now, and Harbhajan only seems to look dangerous on occasion (mind you, that Hussey dismissal was something else!). The most encouraging news for Indian fans is that we have a dangerous, penetrative pace attack. Zaheer and Ishant looked good, and provide a nice mix of right-n-left and swing-n-pace. They will trouble the Aussies in this series and hopefully, will get a chance to show that India can win Tests with pace at home.

This series also confirmed my suspicion that there will be a fair amount of sniping between the teams via the press. Ponting and Sehwag had their moments before the Test, and Zaheer has now stepped into the fray with his post-match comments. Much as I wish this would go away, it won't, so we'll just have to grit our teeth and bear it.

This Test resembled a boxing match in which each opponent landed a few punches, won a few rounds on points, and created headaches for the judges when it came to calling a winner. It was a draw and that was the fair result. But some of this probing will have some effect in the later tests: weaknesses and vulnerabilities will have been noted, and new strategies charted out. A Test series is a campaign. This encounter was merely the opening battle.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the hold that cricket photographs have on us fans. Besides the many genuinely aesthetic pleasures they make available to us, photographs play a central, historical function: they inform us of a time gone by.

Here is one difference that photographs reveal between the present and the past: the post-wicket celebration. Exhibit A: the famous photo of Jim Laker celebrating along with the rest of the team (or perhaps just noting) the end of an Ashes test in victory for England, a test in which Laker claimed 19 wickets of the 20 Australian wickets to fall. Laker and the rest of the English team seem to have wrapped up the win with as much visible display of emotion as one might make on receiving a receipt at a pawn shop.

Compare this with any photograph of the 1970s West Indian team celebrating. The exuberance on display is unmistakable. But this is not just a facile "Look at all the excitable non-white folk celebrating" or "White men can't party" point. For all teams now celebrate with the whooping exuberance of the West Indians. Some of them, the Indians for instance, take it even further: rumor has it that the famous slap heard round the world was actually just a congratulatory whack on the cheek. Some still display some reserve: Australians, for instance, pat each other's behinds in rather self-conscious fashion and shrink from the more affectionate hugs of their teammates. But in general there is no meekness on the cricket ground when it comes to celebrations: the English team is just as full of beans as anyone else. And almost all teams of the 1950s, even the West Indies, were relatively sedate in their on-field merry making.

Having observed this change we are now free to speculate on its causes. Is there too much coffee served in today's dressing rooms? Did other teams confuse the West Indian celebration as the cause, and not the effect, of the wicket falling? Is some of this put on for the television cameras? Is it, so to speak, part of the show, and the players know they are the actors?

The answer, as always, is somewhere in the middle of all the speculation. Players of years gone by grew up in environments that required considerably more conformism, and social manners were more reserved. Every one of the cricketing nations has recorded in its social histories, this change in the social demeanor. It was inevitable too, that the West Indians would serve as models; not just for their fast-bowling and batting, but also for their vibe.

The high-fives and its various variants were bound to be picked up by impressionable youngsters the world over. Are there any young sportsmen anywhere that don't copy the stars in all their mannerisms? And lastly, as media and cultural theorists, and perhaps particle physicists, never tire of pointing out, our observations rapidly turn into participation: the players are ever more conscious of photographs and video coverage of games, giant screens remind them of their mannerisms, sometimes in close-up, and the sensation of living in a parallel world, that of the television production or the glossy sports magazine can take hold quite quickly. On that razzle-dazzle stage, there is no prize for sedateness and plenty of temptation to turn up the demonstrativeness a notch. The worst aspect of all this is the obnoxious, unprovoked, send-off.

But I'm not complaining. The excitement of the players is infectious; and watching a team celebrate a hard earned wicket in tests is enough inspiration to keep us watching a bit longer, hoping for another vanquished foe whose grave we can dance over. And that gives us a clue to what might be the *purpose* of the celebration: a warning to those in the pavilion of the fate that awaits them, and a signal to the friendlies that all is well. When all is said and done, sport somehow manages to turn us back to battlefield metaphors. More on that later.

	The India-Australia rivalry matches the hype surrounding it © AFP

Much is made of the India-Australia rivalry these days: that it rivals the Ashes, that it supersedes the India-Pakistan series, and so on. But I live in a city where one sporting rivalry - the New York Yankees versus the Red Sox - sets the standards, and so I must evaluate this hype accordingly.

I’ve done the needful examination and I’m glad to report that this rivalry matches the hype. For what mattes in a true blue sporting rivalry is squabbling and nastiness, completely divorced from reality, and plenty of it. And that’s something this particular match-up has in plenty.

The Ashes hype is a bit silly. The English love the Aussies and vice-versa. I'm not taken in by all the "Pommie bastard" and "convict thug" lines. The Australians let in approximately two million English backpackers into Bondi Beach every year, and the London police has to be called out periodically to quell stampeding Aussie expatriates at Heathrow. They happily drink each others beer, eat each others food, and praise each other. Heck, some of them - Warne and Pietersen for instance - would marry if the laws allowed it.

Aussies play in county cricket, hand out their wisdom, and are revered. Tell an English cricketer he played like an Aussie, and he'll blush. Tell an Aussie Freddie Flintoff wants a date with his missus, and he'll hand her over. True, the 2005 Ashes victory parade was something to behold. But does anyone think it was about the cricket? No, folks just came out to cheer at the news that their cricketers were also prone to all-night drinking binges like them.

The India-Pakistan thing is even more silly. All we have now is one big love-fest. Gushing Indians write about the kababs, the free cab rides in Pakistan, the hospitality, and how "Pakistanis are just like us." Pakistanis lap up Bollywood, the ICL, the IPL, the BCCI, heck, anything with an I in it. The players check out each other's iPods, and go to parties together. And some fans even hold up giant India-Pakistan flags at games. It’s all enough to make you barf a bit. Why can't we have Shoaib and Sourav going at each other any more?

But India-Australia, now that’s a piece of work. Everything comes to the fore here. “Your mama wears handcuffs!” “Yours is a curry-cooking Ganguly groupie!” And this is just the more mature stuff. Senior journalists are not immune to this fever. Gideon Haigh has succumbed to the bug and now refuses to order Indian takeout. Sunil Gavaskar has been placed on the No-Fly list at Qantas. History, dietary preferences, accents, everything is up for ridicule in this particular flame-fest.

No rivalry works without a good dose of sanctimoniousness to underwrite it. (For instance, the Red Sox, that poor, struggling, high-school team, frequently complain about how rich the Yankees are). Thus Australia, that impoverished sporting power, complains about the riches in Indian cricket. And so it goes. There are exceptions of course. Australian cricketers manfully trudge off to the obligatory charity photo-ops; Brett Lee tries to learn love songs in six different Indian languages; Laxman expresses his desire to have his ashes scattered in the Yarra; and everyone on both sides agree that the other side is so tough, so competitive. But really, what these guys want to do more than anything is settle down with a cold one, and watch Harbhajan do Hayden impersonations (or vice-versa). And then break wicker chairs over each other's heads. (The fans too).

But what you really need to get a rivalry all stoked up is a nutty media corps. And that’s what India and Australia have in ample measure. The Indian side gives us conspiracy theories about Greg Chappell. The Australian side gives us half-baked social commentary on the caste system. This series might lack fast pitches, attacking captaincy and a legspinner that can actually turn the ball. The one thing it won't be missing is stories on, about, over, and under the game.

A couple of days ago on Different Strokes, I wrote that it would be fun to start talking about the playing of cricket again. Today, I'm going to ignore my advice and talk about cricket's political context. The recent bombing in Islamabad has forced my hand.

Folks might remember that Australia's decision to tour India had resulted in extremely loud denunciations of its "hypocrisy" in choosing to go to one country where bombs go off and making excuses to not go to another where bombs go off as well

I'd suggest the Aussies are on reasonably good ground, if what guided their decisions is their overall perception of the countries. There is a quite simple reason why teams tour India rather than Pakistan. Pakistan has been in the headlines (literally) for a very, very long time with regards to its internal political instability and violence. Think about all the things the West associates with Pakistan since 1979: Afghanistan, the mujahideen, refugee camps, military coups, the Taliban, the ISI, assassinations, the wild Northwest, fear of nuclear weapons falling into jihadi hands, Dr Khan's proliferation network, the Daniel Pearl beheading, the list goes on. And when a country is led by Army generals for a long time, it is quite difficult to remove the aura of political instability around it. Pakistan's problems have been on the West's radar for a very long time and are associated with a set of issues that the West is obsessed about. No one in the US or UK gives a hoot about the PWG in India or violence in the North-East or wherever, no matter how many Indians die. The patron of the Pakistani government, the US, has elevated and demoted Pakistan simultaneously to problem child and critical geo-political player.

And since 911, Pakistan cannot stay out of the news even if it wanted to. Pakistan's violence appears systemic, and embedded in a larger narrative about the "unstable, violent, Islamic world". India's violence appears sporadic, and discordant with a broader narrative about the rising economic superpowers of Asia. I live in the US and the constant stream of articles in the press about Pakistan's wild NorthWest, the ISI's implication in the activities of the Taliban, and the prospects of its civil government falling next year to another military coup is supplemented by articles about India's corporations going on acquisition sprees, the growth rate of the Indian economy, Snoop Dogg going to Bollywood and so on. Under these circumstances, I'm a little surprised that so many people consider the Australians utter and total hypocrites. This is the information they read about on a daily basis. Why wouldn't their perceptions of the country in question be affected?

I'm willing to bet good money that more English and Aussie backpackers have visited India than Pakistan in the last seven years. Are they also all hypocrites? Are they all also getting fat checks from the BCCI when they alight from their flights at Delhi International Airport? What guided their decisions?

The clincher is in the comparison between how the Delhi and Islamabad bombings were covered. Delhi did not even make it to the front page of the New York Times. Heck, it was hard to find any coverage on it. But the Islamabad incident went to the front page and stayed there. Why? Because this is supposed evidence of Pakistan's vulnerability to the Al-Qaeda and so on and so forth. Delhi's bombings? Oh, the usual stuff the US can't care about. I wonder if the Presidential candidates even commented on it

Pakistan's violence is of interest to the West. It imagines its interests are implicated there. This brings attention. Plenty of it, and it ensures that the country acquires a scary aura. And honestly, if folks read that in the Pakistani capital, a 600 kilo payload of high-explosive can be transported in, assembled, and then driven around in a VIP area, then,
well, what reassurance can the PCB provide to already apprehensive boards?

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It is commonplace amongst Indian commentators to trace the beginning of a particular kind of cricket mania to June 25th, 1983. I tend to agree, but only partially. My preferred date is March 3rd, 1985, when India played Australia at the MCG in the final Group A match of the Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket, held to commemorate the Victorian Cricket Association's Centenary. For that was the day that Indian cricket viewers first watched the live telecast of a cricket game from Australia (and since my memory isn't perfect, the first by Channel 9). And that was the day that cricket presented itself as a perfectly packaged televised spectacle, with plenty of glitter and gloss, 100 overs long, with a definite result at the end of it.

Those of us settling down on that rather chilly morning (Delhi winters sometimes packed a late punch) had little inkling of what was in store. It began innocently enough as Kapil sprinted to bowl the first delivery to Graeme Wood. As he did so, a scraping, knocking sound issued from our television sets, followed by the unmistakable sound of bat on ball. What had happened? It took us a few seconds to figure out that this was the famous "stump microphone" that we had read about. A few minutes later Robbie Kerr was gone, bowled Kapil Dev, and the sound his stumps made as they rattled was a sweet one indeed. Cricket had gone from being a game played far away on the ground to one that had a sudden, dynamic, physical immediacy. We were at the ground, in the midst of the action.

We watched the endless replays, the clarity of the images, the varied and multiple angles that covered the dismissals, and the clever graphics (prompted by Geoff Lawson's duck). We had not realized that all of this could be possibly associated with a cricket game. When India had won the World Cup in 1983, it had made cricketing success in one form of the game possible. What this Australian telecast did was make cricket into a form of entertainment that could be enjoyed by a much wider demographic; it made the far away spectacle of a game played by men in whites into a living-room tamasha of brightly attired athletic performers, displaying a perfectly tuned entertainer's sensibility. And of course, all of this on the magnificent stage of the cavernous MCG.

There were purely cricketing reasons too that day. India's 'quicks' smashed through the Aussie top-order, leaving them tottering at 4-17. Was it really possible that Indian opening bowlers could do this, in such brilliant clarity, to an opposing side? Especially one like the Australians (never mind that the Australian team that year was not particularly strong, it still held a certain fascination for Indian fans). A partial recovery saw the Aussies to 160. But with a mixture of Srikkanth-freneticism and Shastri-phlegmatism India strolled to that target. They had beaten Australia in Australia, on Australian television. The telecast magnified all of this. Our cricketers, in slo-mo, in close-up, viewed from various angles, praised to the high heavens by all these seemingly knowledgeable international cricketers whose names we had only read about, turned into demigods.

A week later, India beat Pakistan by the same comfortable margin in the final. The razzle-dazzle of the awards ceremony, the victory lap on the Audi, put the final touches to the pictures drawn for us that week. From now on, the game would always be linked with the televised spectacle, and Indian fans knew what they wanted to see on the tube.

	A refreshing aspect of Ajantha Mendis' bowling was that it forced cricket conversation back to playing the game © AFP

Back in the days of Limited Media Coverage of Cricket [tm], the world seemed quite simple: there was the time that cricket was played, and there was the time it wasn't. One somehow found the means to get through those gaps as best as one could, and one dealt with the deprivation with a stiff upper lip (or a downcast one, depending on your personal style). Gaps between games were painful, and I dreaded the closing credits of television broadcasts. Cricket analysis only appeared when games were on, and the surrounding discussions were sketchy at best (or so it felt). One's anticipation was sharpened, and the limited diet of games only added to the sense of a scarce and valuable resource.

But now cricket coverage is 24/7; the administrative, political, and financial trappings of the game are quite extensive and obscure (and hence invite commentary); and thus, we are exposed to a lot of material on all that surrounds the game. While some of this is genuinely illuminative, there comes a time when I find myself thirsting for the very business that prompts all this verbiage in the first place. For this conversation, rather than magnifying the game, sometimes starts to make the game feel a bit small, a bit incidental to the business of television rights, travel permissions, player contracts, personalities, labor relations and all of the rest. And sometimes this conversation doesn't act as a filler or illuminator; sometimes it just makes me miss the simplicity of the game more.

One of the most refreshing aspects of Ajantha Mendis' debut in Test cricket was how much he forced the conversation surrounding cricket to be about playing: the different deliveries; how he was to be combated; the various minor successes against him; his tactics; all of them very good cricketing discussions to be had, and all directly relevant to the enjoyment of the game in front of us. For one brief period, the discussions about cricket were about the performances and the battles that make the game worthwhile. It was a splendid break from the Political Economy of International Cricket or The Power Relations of Post Colonial Sporting Economies or Race Relations in 21st Century Cricket or whatever.

I enjoy that sort of analysis myself and dabble a bit it in it from time to time. Indeed, our appreciation for the game can be enhanced by a consideration of the contexts it is played in, its history and its internal relations. Still, it's a game (a fact always enhanced by an actual visit to a cricket stadium), and sometimes it cries out for simplification to bare essentials, to a revealing of its basic nature and its fundamental simplicities.

As the guard in ‘Run, Lola, Run’ says at the beginning of the movie, when speaking of football: In the end, its 22 players and a ball. The rest is detail.

	The beers and beards come out at the cricket © Will Luke

I found Michael's piece on the desirability of looking beyond national boundaries in one's cricket appreciation quite thought-provoking, especially since the appeal was being made on the Internet, which has done a fair amount to both stoke and assuage nationalist frenzy in cricket fans worldwide. My relationship with the Net in this regard is a love-hate one. While it has certainly made possible contact with a larger body of cricket fans (with all the attendant benefits of travel when it comes to exposure to different cultures) it has also enabled a particular kind of xenophobic conversation that is extremely dispiriting.

Before I moved to the US, I had met very few cricket fans from other countries. A couple of Australian and English friends and acquaintances were the extent of my contact. My exposure to other cricketing cultures was largely a textual one: books, magazines and the like. I saw players and grounds on television, read about them, made up fantasies about how I imagined them to be. (Thus Australia was always sunny; imagine my shock when I found that Melbourne in August was nasty, cold and wet.) But moving to the US changed matters. I now met cricket fans from other countries in the flesh, talked to them, asked them about their favourite players and grounds, told them about mine, and traded the odd "favourite cricket moment" story and so on. Going online to talk about cricket (this was in the late 1980s) further changed things.

I met cricket fans here too. But the medium of conversation was very different, and the nature of the conversation radically so. The anonymity of the net, the speed and size of the distribution of messages, the 24-hour asynchronous link all led to a conversation that was rich with a diversity of insights, factual detail, analysis, and unfortunately infected by a great deal of rudeness, misunderstanding, and invective. The flame war was, as far as electronic conversations on cricket were concerned, an early, persistent, and tiresome companion. And the content of the flame wars was not just passionate disagreement; it quickly degenerated into xenophobia, chauvinism and deliberate ignorance. For cricket has its nationalist lines, most clearly visible in the teams and the fans that support them. These lines can be exhausting ones; I stopped reading cricket discussion fora for a very long time because I had become worn out by constant exposure to nationalist bickering. While I enjoyed reading a lot of the material (and being exposed to the passions of other cricket lovers) too much of it was trapped in a sludge of juvenilia.

I am not the first (nor will I be the last) to note that the Internet has its good side and its bad side. As a medium for getting in touch with an international community of fellow cricket lovers it remains unparalleled. When my desire to engage in a conversation with them and express my thoughts about the game grew too strong, I took up blogging. For the expat cricket lover, it is the only way to maintain one's sanity. But that doesn't mean it cannot exacerbate misunderstandings, shade subtlety and often lead to more corroded discourse. And at this present time, with the game facing a critical moment that could affect its future, it behoves us to try and evolve a conversation online that could approximate our favourite moments offline. Which in my case are talking about the cricket, while at the cricket, with a cold one close by. If only our Internet encounters could be as mellow.

	In the worst case scenario, there is confusion about lines of authority and the team falls apart (c.f. Greg Chappell and the Indian team) © AFP

Most cricket fans have, at some point, while listening to the ponderous pronouncements of an 'expert' television commentator, said words that approximate the following: "No sh*t, Sherlock!" In short, we are used to being deluged with Missives from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious.

We are told early wickets are important, that while chasing a victory target, the openers should provide a good start, and that line and length is key (feel to supply your own personal favourite). My intention in reminding us of these tautological dictums is not to make merry at the expense of an oft-vilified demographic, The Expert Commentator, but to try and segue into a brief questioning of the latest addition to international cricket's evolving cast of characters: the national coach. For, like some cricketers, I often wonder at what precisely the role of the coach is. To slip into corporate mumbo-jumbo for a second, what is the ‘value-addedness’ of this entity, what is its core competency?

Does the coach supervise the nets? Does he run catching drills? Does he map out tactics and field placings? Devise team selections, batting orders and bowling combinations? Perhaps the answer to this set of questions is "Yes". But in each case, the tasks described are better done (and have been for ages) by the captain in co-operation with other members of the team, with the captain picking and choosing his partners on the basis of assessed competency at the task. The captain and the rest of the team are the ones executing these tactics and strategies; they are the ones whose professional success is inextricably linked with the team's performance.

In cricket, it is the captain who is given unique responsibility for the operation of the game on the ground. Given this, it is appropriate that the captain have corresponding authority off the field in order to run his campaigns efficiently. To introduce a coach into this picture is to unnecessarily muddy the waters of authority, to introduce incoherence into a straightforward situation (perhaps with embarrassing psychobabble about motivational strategies) and to run the risk of players constantly being subjected to a barrage of obvious throw-away lines ("I think we need to restrict the lead tomorrow and hold all our catches"). The world of professional cricket provides all the wisdom needed for any cricketer, available to anyone who bothers to watch and listen to his contemporaries, whether friend or foe. If a cricketer isn't picking up tips from this grapevine, he isn't a very good listener or learner, and no coach can help him.

The best you can hope for is that the sheer cricketing talent of the team will render the coach harmless (c.f. John Buchanan and the Australian team). In the worst case scenario, there is confusion about lines of authority and the team falls apart (c.f. Greg Chappell and the Indian team). And as has been noticed in Pakistan, New Zealand, England, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Bangladesh, and South Africa, the coach cannot make up for the cricketing deficiencies of 'his' team. The experience of those teams is roughly the same all over the world: in terms of positions on the cricketing ladder, the teams are where one would expect them to be given the quality of their players, captains, and cricket administrations. Their results show no overall positive or negative bump depending on the coach. In short, the coach is irrelevant to the success of the cricket team. There have been some success stories that may be linked to some coaches (e.g., Wright, Woolmer, Fletcher) but in each case it seems to me there are perfectly good alternative explanations.

Most irritatingly, the national coach seeks to turn the Test captain, a singular figure in international sport, into a glorified quarterback. Here, here is the playbook, printed off from my laptop; now, run out on the field and execute it. The introduction of the coach into the international cricketing setup has been the introduction of the second sword into the scabbard: pointless and counterproductive.

	Anil Kumble, captain of India's Test team, chosen by the Board of Control for Cricket in India © AFP

In response to my previous post on the alleged linkages between national character and cricket, reader Ajax wrote (in part): "Who exactly are the 'national boards'? This is the greatest marketing gimmick in the Commonwealth. Is a player unpatriotic for joining the ICL?" If I've understood Ajax correctly, he is asking, "What makes the national teams playing today the 'official ones'?" In return, I'm going to be self-indulgent, and quote myself from a post I wrote on 'Eye on Cricket' a few months ago. Talk about subversion.

I'm watching the ICL India XI get their caps from Kapil Dev as I write this. This moment is one of those that philosophers love; it shows something we took to be a conceptual given, is actually a matter of convention or arrangement. For as long as we've known cricket in India, it was assumed there was only one 'Indian' team. And the BCCI was its lord and master. This India XI, for trademark reasons, I'm sure, is called the "ICL India XI" and not just the "India XI", but it's an India XI as much as the BCCI's XI is. Team India might be the team we call the "Indian team" but really it's just the "BCCI India XI", just like the English team at one time was the MCC XI (before the TCCB and then the ECB took over).

The point I was trying to make (slighly loosely) in response to watching a bunch of players taking the field calling themselves an India XI, is that when people say "That's my country's team", they are referring to the group put together by the organisation 'in charge'. And the 'in charge' just means "doing it for long enough in a situation where they are (or have become) the only ones". And over that period of time, the entities in question, both the organisation in charge and their selected group become identified with the game in the 'national representative' sense. But that is a matter of established convention, not some otherworldly linkage, and they remain 'official' only so long as they don't face competition.

Had Kerry Packer's WSC stuck around long enough to fully permeate the consciousness of a generation of spectators, the confusion over which team was the 'real Australia' would have been pronounced and genuine. Indeed, by the time the WSC Australian XI went to the West Indies in 1979 for the Supertests, I had become seriously confused myself. What I seemed to be reading about in the papers sure as hell sounded like Test cricket to me. (And I still consider Greg Chappell's batting in the series one of the finest performances against the "West Indies team".) This thought experiment is well worth playing out.

Imagine the Packer dispute had not been settled. How long would it have been before fans would have started wondering which side- the Packer XI or the ACB XI -made claims on their allegiance and support? Perhaps they would have supported both but the intensity of their nationalist ardour might have been dimmed somewhat. The raising of the question of which team was the 'real' one would have brought the awkwardness of the answer to the fore. There is no 'real' 'official' Australian XI. But to expect one is to expect that anything could be more 'official' than what is already at hand: a bunch of players selected by the (hopefully only) organisation in charge of the game.

The moment there is more than one organisation in charge, the confusion begins. Witness the situation in boxing, where it is not clear who the 'world champion' really is. Surely there must an 'official' world championship (or there must have been one in the glory days of Ali, Frazier et al). But there wasn't. There was just the championship of the dominant boxing council (Good Lord, what was that alphabet soup again? IBF, WBC, WBA?) When it lost its dominance, we had the spectacle of multiple world champions and the urge to find unification champions. The chess world championship underwent similar confusion.

The existence of the ICL India XI served to remind me of the origin of the Indian National Team[tm], the BCCI and the linkages between the two. The BCCI is not identical with some mystical entity called "Indian cricket"; the 'Indian team' just happens to be their team. And I sure as hell support it like a good Indian fan. Why wouldn't I? But still, it's worth acknowledging the convention at hand. (And conventional arrangements are nothing to sneeze at; think of how languages got to be the way they are!)

The ICL might not survive but hopefully, it will have reminded people of how things got to be the way the things are, and how things could change in response. Because when organisations act like monopolies, they have the bad habit of displaying laziness, complacency and greed.

The list of virtues cited for Kevin Pietersen as England captain is well-known: he will be aggressive, he can hold his own in terms of playing ability in all three forms, he is confident, will be unafraid to take the attack to the enemy and so on. Running through all these expressions of support is also a hope, implicitly or explicitly expressed, that he "will shake things up"; that, fundamentally, he will work in a not-English way.

It is the expression of this particular sentiment, sometimes expressed by pointing out how the very fact of his being South African is an advantage, because he will not be caught up with being English in all those ways that contribute to losing cricket games, that I find by far the most interesting.

For this sort of suggestion, that somehow national character, a particular nation-wide psyche or characteristic, is to blame (or praise) for lack of success (or failure) at cricket, is exceedingly common in cricket journalism and in conversations amongst cricket fans. Indian fans are quick to indulge in long bouts of psychoanalytic speculation about the lack of national "killer instinct" when it comes to finishing close games, with their diagnoses ranging from weather conditions to colonial histories to religious inclinations; Pakistani fans have had a long tradition of pointing to the success of their cricket team and their endless production of fast bowlers as vindication of national aggressiveness (and sometimes a rejection of vegetarianism); Australians would have us believe that it is a particularly Aussie brand of 'mateship' that contributes to 5-0 Ashes victories (nowhere has this been better exemplified than in the visits to Gallipolli and the Buchanan Boot Camps[tm]); the self-flagellation of the English fan is well-known; the list goes on. I could supply more examples (and I invite readers to send me their favourite examples) but my slightly facetious list above should be sufficient reminder of how much speculation, conjecture and theorizing about nations and their alleged characteristics infects discussions about failures and success in cricket.

And all of this is inevitable. For what cricket provides in heaps, quite unlike any other sport, is something quite unique in international sport: direct country versus country competition, understood as the highest form game. Till the advent of the IPL, there was no international league in cricket. The closest we ever came to it was World Series Cricket a long while ago, and part of the reason it suffered initially was that people associate top-class cricket games with "official" national teams playing against each other. More than any other, the cricket fan aches for the stamp of "Certified International Contest" upon the game that he is watching. And as such, cricket is bound to provoke not just some of the nasty nationalist spats that are now a depressingly common feature of fan interactions (what the Internet giveth, it also taketh away), it also invites the sort of analysis pointed to above.

While some of this quasi-social-science theorizing is infuriatingly reductive, some of it is entertaining, and as such, should be welcomed. After all, what is not funny about linking vegetarianism with failures to produce fast bowlers? Or in the alleged linkages between military victories and defeats and performance on a cricket field? Sometimes it is in the most allegedly serious of claims that one can find the most humour; and mostly this is because of the tiny germ of truth in there, blown up to grotesque proportion. Caricature works because it seizes upon a tiny feature and exaggerates it. These wonderfully entertaining theses, masquerading as deep analysis, should be recognized for what they are, and welcomed. They lead to great conversations and might even provoke some folks to read a history book or two. So long as we don't take them too seriously.

	Frozen in time: Alvin Kallicharan effortlessly hooks John Snow during the 1973 Test series © The Cricketer International

A good photo more than just freeze the actions, catching cricketers at moments of poised athletic grace and power. It offers us a hint of what came before and after; it invites us to think about the effect of the action on display on the game being played; it instantly captures a mood, and urges a description, a captioning, on our part. Sometimes the action captured can make us think about the physics of the action at hand, reminding us that one reason we pay good money to watch these men play is that they are capable of doing things we can only dream out. This is certainly the case with two of the most dramatic photographs I've ever laid eyes on.

The first is that of Alvin Kallicharran hooking John Snow during the 1973 Test series. Anyone that has seen this photo knows which one I'm talking about (raise your hand if you do). Kallicharan is poised on his right foot, his left leg raised and bent at the knee, performing a seemingly impossible balancing act as he hooks, crisply and powerfully, over his shoulder. In the background, Snow can be seen, perhaps despairing that his intended thunderbolt has been dispatched.

The second photo is that of Don Bradman stepping out to drive "Farmer" White during the 1928-29 series. (I have to admit, I'm a little obsessed about this photograph, having mentioned it before on rec.sport.cricket and on my blog, and no, I don't have a link to it). In this photo: Bradman is at least six feet out of his crease, and the back face of Bradman's bat is parallel to his upright back. Bradman seems to have sailed down the pitch and whiplashed this furious off-drive, with the bat swinging over his shoulder and then down. The crispness of the action on display is palpable, almost making the photograph itself sharper. (Actually, I do have favourite photographs of bowlers in action as well, but I think I will save discussion of those for another day.)

The look of the game has changed over the years. Helmets now cheat us of the bare-headed batsman, the batsman with the country cap; the sponsor's logos cheat us of the pristine shirt fronts of old; the half-sleeve shirts prevent us from glimpsing the rolled sleeves of the fast bowler as he charges in; the new style pads look spongy and sodden; tyre manufacturers logos sprout on bats. But these do not prevent, in the good cricket photograph, a glimpse of what is really at issue: a cricketer, captured for a moment by an image that expresses his cricketing powers vividly and memorably.

Which photographs over the years did this for you and why? Do you find they express a particular cricketing preference of yours?

	The problem is that due to its depiction in the American media, cricket comes across as a game not worth playing © Cricket Europe/ICC

In response to the comments let me say a few things. No, it is not necessary that cricket become popular in the US; it will probably survive without American interest. Still, wondering why it is not is an interesting exercise that might reveal something about the game and the US too; an examination of cricket's history in the US and its failure to flourish after a good start is a fascinating exercise in its own right.

No, Americans are not incapable of understanding the complexities of cricket. Millions of them take the time to understand baseball's many variations, pitchers' deliveries, the mechanics of baseball hitting or fielding set plays; the closing moments of a tight baseball game when managers change batters, pitchers and try and manufacture runs can be as complex as a good chess game. And the shortest version of the game, Twenty20, is roughly equal to the length of a baseball game; in fact, T20 is guaranteed to end in a definite time-span, while tied baseball games can carry on indefinitely!

The problem instead, is that due to its depiction in the media, cricket comes across as a game not worth playing because it is not athletic enough, is effeminate, is hopelessly complex, baroque, and ultimately pointless because of its failure to guarantee a result. No game can hope to make inroads into the national psyche and pick up both players and audience in the face of such depictions. That is the issue. And this depiction again, does not tell us anything very deep about American culture; it merely shows us that US sporting media can be just as lazy as any other. Attempts to paint baseball as an easy game, a tip-n-run fest where full tosses are served up as the main course are equally lazy; they do not do justice to the game.

Perhaps all this analysis is moot; cricket is unpopular in the US; its flourishing there is not necessary for the game to be profitable; and like soccer, even if it acquires a large playing population, it might not ever capture the national imagination the way the big three--football, baseball and basketball--do. But in the end, what is interesting about this exercise for me is to note how easy it is to mask something desirable, interesting and passion-inspiring as boring, archaic and insipid. More than anything else, it is yet another interesting demonstration to me of the persuasive power of the visual and print media. And as such it sparks fantasies in me of how it could be combated; perhaps via thoughtful comparisons and contrasts with baseball to make it palatable to that fan base.

I dream, for instance, that a good baseball writer might be taken to games and paired with a cricket writer, and introduced to cricket's rules and variations; I volunteer for this task. The baseball writer might be prompted to write a useful comparison of the two games. I dream that American fans might be exposed to a high-quality broadcast of a one-day international final between two high-quality teams. The athleticism and power on display would be seductive. Indeed, whenever I've managed to show some classic catches to my American friends, they are simply amazed, (as I frequently am by the accuracy of fielder's throws in baseball!).

I dream of a well-written description of a bowlers-pitchers summit where Glenn McGrath and Roger Clemens exchange notes on swing, pace, and intimidation. Or a batter's summit where Sachin Tendulkar and Derek Jeter exchange notes on timing, placement and power (and perhaps strategies for dealing with obsessive, nosy media types). These exercises could teach us more about cricket itself and about its place in the sporting world. And perhaps help us all learn a bit more about other sporting cultures. All in good time, I suppose.

Will it ever be possible to get a fair depiction of cricket in the US media? On current evidence, the prospects are bleak. Every television advertisement that features a cricket game, whether it be a tourism clip for the Caribbean or something else, invariably features a rather staid setting, perhaps with cucumber sandwiches and parasol-holding landed ladies in the background, in which portly men in creams amble up desultorily and deliver donkey drops which are clumsily hoicked past geriatric fielders. In these settings cricket does not so much resemble a game as much it does a government-mandated exercise program meant to replace drug prescription benefits for the rich and elderly.

Every print article in the US press meanwhile incessantly harps on the utter incomprehensibility of the game (which is guffaw inspiring given the Byzantine complexity of NFL penalty rules), the jaw-dropping durations of Test cricket (with no attempt to explain what relationship the length of the game bears to the endless variations it allows on a single theme, and how this cultivates a dedicated legion of fans), the inevitable mention of the quaint customs of 'tea' (its almost enough to make one wish this interval had been named differently) and 'drinks' (American readers might be forgiven for thinking gin and tonics are consumed by players to help with the tedium of the game). Much is made of the gigantic amounts of protection worn by cricket players with snickering about baseball players facing faster pitching with only a visor-less helmet for protection. No mention is made of the fact that cricket allows for the ball to bounce before it gets to the batsman, which allows for varying angles of attack by fast bowlers at a batsman's body (I simplify, of course, comparisons between cricket and baseball need more time and space than I can devote here). And it would be too much of course, to ask that any attention be paid to the rich body of cricketing literature, possibly more varied and complex than that associated with any other sport. There are also some half-hearted, superficial attempts at examinations of post-colonial tensions in cricket, most of which involve the phrase "the new economically empowered Indian middle-class." All in all, it's a depressing state of affairs to be surrounded by a culture which specializes in systematic, cliched misrepresentations of one's most abiding passion.

Despite the growing presence of cricket leagues in the US, despite the introduction of cricket as a recognized game in New York schools, despite the presence of large expatriate populations from cricket playing countries and even an American cricket team, cricket remains a profoundly misunderstood game in the US. Still, one should not complain too much. Soccer has a huge following in the US and still remains misunderstood; plenty of soccer artistry is unappreciated by a large segment of the population.

But, how one wishes the television advertisements mentioned above would instead feature Malcolm Marshall sending stumps cartwheeling, Viv Richards smashing one through midwicket or Jonty Rhodes catching swallows at gully. Pigs would be aviators before then, but one is allowed to dream.

	When things get crowded, hectic and tense, there is invariably pushing and shoving and then, voila, police heavy-handedness © Getty Images

I have attended just one day of Test cricket in India: the third day's play in the second Test of the 1983/84 West Indies tour. I left India some 21 years ago, and since then all the Test cricket I've seen has been in Australia, the West Indies and South Africa (well, not really, because the 2001 Pretoria India-RSA 'Test' was demoted thanks to the Mike Denness controversy). I bring this up because my experiences of watching cricket in India have become distinctly second-hand. Thus, I do not have a first-hand take on how well spectators are treated in India at cricket stadiums. But if the reports I've read in a variety of fora over the years are any indication of the state of affairs at the grounds, things are not good for the entity singularly responsible for the untold wealth that has become associated with Indian cricket: the Indian cricket-watching fan.

Lines are long outside stadiums as entry points are scarce (when things get crowded, hectic and tense, there is invariably pushing and shoving and then, voila, police heavy-handedness); plenty of stands are still uncovered (the mind boggles at the thought of folks sitting there in the sun in the later parts of the ever-lengthening season); food and drink are either of poor quality or expensive or hard to get; public restrooms are not numerous or clean enough; the list goes on. Some grounds are better than others, of course. Mohali has worked hard to make sure its attendees are well taken care of (beer is sold at the ground; not surprising for a Punjabi locale), and the Sawai Mansingh Stadium at Jaipur is quite comfortable. (As always, I welcome empirical data from readers to confirm or disconfirm my impressions.)

But overall, it seems that spending a long day at the cricket in India does not count as the most pleasant experience that one could put oneself through. Yet they still come, in droves. Perhaps they don't fill the stands at Test matches any more like they used to in the past but the one-day internationals are still at full capacity. The Indian fan continues to show tremendous patience in the light of this not-so-benign neglect by those who could, and should, be in charge of improving his cricket experience. There is a small hint here at why Test attendance might have dropped; if you are going to spend a long day in the sun without a result at the end of it, you damn well want your experience to be comfortable. Blame can be assigned primarily to the association that runs the cricket ground in question, and secondarily to the BCCI (or is it the other way around?) With the huge sums of money that are now in the Indian cricketing equation is it so unreasonable to expect that cricket grounds in India be renovated, made comfortable, modernized? The current state of affairs spreads a disproportionate percentage of joy to those to at the top, with little regard for those that underwrite their wealth.

When the ICL kicked off last year, one commonly expressed hope was that they would take better care of the spectators that thronged to their few grounds. When the IPL showed up with its bags and bags of gold ducats, this hope might have surged even stronger in the hearts of those worried about the Indian fan. It's not clear to me how much improvement has followed in its wake. I worry about the influence the IPL will have in the years to come; if its corporate franchises can make the fan more comfortable, they will have my gratitude. While their influence on the longer form of the game yet remains to be determined, this would be an undeniably positive fallout, hopefully applauded by fans of all nationalities the world over.

On Sunday July 6th, as the Federer-Nadal final moved into the fifth set and into another cluster of deuces, a Federer-loving friend simply stopped watching the television and started doing the dishes instead: the tension had grown to be too much for her. I looked at her and sympathized. While this particular tennis match did not evoke that same reaction in me I knew from past experience, exactly what she was feeling: a tightening of the gut, a nausea whose phenomenology is distinctive, a holistic anxiety that seems to pervade every atom of one's being.

Ever since I started worrying about the ebb and flow of fortunes in the world of cricket, this sensation has been my constant companion during moments of play when it seems the entire fate of the universe hangs in balance. Of all the blessings that cricket has brought into my life, this has been the most mixed one. Without it, the release engendered by the latest development in the match in front of me is not quite as euphoric; when Ponting was caught by Dravid off Ishant Sharma at Perth earlier this year, my yell and air-punch must have woken up my neighbours. But experiencing it is never pleasant; be careful of what you are wishing for when you ask for a "good, hard, closely-fought game."

Examining my past in this regard, I am inclined to say that one truly becomes a cricket tragic when you allow the game such access to your emotions. I suspect it should be possible for most serious fans of the game to point to a cluster of moments in one's cricket-watching career when this became evident. And it is the slow-build up and development of this suspense that marks a Test match as the highest form of the game. Nothing else quite gets into your system the way a Test match on a slow flame does.

Indeed, one of the reasons why I welcome one-day internationals is that it provides a way for me to watch cricket without some of the intense anxiety generated by a closely-fought Test. While the closing stages of a one-day international often provide the kind of drama that triggers such a tension, these moments are brief, the tension has not been sustained over a long period of time, and more to the point, one-day international finishes have become clichéd over the years.

Of course, when a great deal hangs on the outcome of the game, like say, a tournament final, the same tension can be approximated; I certainly remember experiencing this emotion when Dujon and Marshall inched their way towards 183 in 1983. And I'm certain South African and Australian fans' stomach linings were damaged during that 1999 World Cup semi-final. But could anything come close to the tension I felt as Tendulkar inched toward what would have been a famous win at Chennai in 1999? Nine years on, and I still feel the pain. But 18 lost finals later, including the latest Kitply and Asian cup fall-downs, I'm relatively impervious to the pain of a one-day international loss. It just doesn't mean as much.

Twenty20 losses and wins mean even less. When Sreesanth was getting underneath that Misbah skier, I did hold my breath, but had he dropped it, and had Misbah smashed a four off the next ball, I would have resumed my long walk down Coney Island Avenue, away from all those cheering Pakistani fans, had a beer or two, and felt just fine. I would have been incapable of such sanguinity post-Chennai.

Kingsley Amis famously wrote of the metaphysical, and not just physical, hangover caused by excessive drinking; a bad Test loss can do just that, failing to provide relief for this most insidious of sporting emotions.

	Walking is supererogatory in international cricket; in park cricket it is obligatory © Getty Images

A reminder on how park cricket works when it comes to umpiring: the umpires are drawn from the batting side, and can be changed during an innings; the bowling side agrees, implicitly, to abide by their decisions. When the side bowling gets to bat, they supply their own umpires and soon. The fabric of a park game, and indeed, the entire competition if there is one, holding together is dependent on the bowling side not losing respect for the umpires and this convention continuing to work. When the bowling side starts to think umpires aren't being honest (and not just incompetent), accusations of cheating fly and the game quickly degenerates into acrimony and recrimination (retaliation by bad umpiring just makes things worse; in cricket, like life, revenge doesn't quite bring us the rewards we might like). Unlike international cricket it is quite easy for a park game to end because of a team walking off in a huff. But by and large this does not happen; umpires do their job reasonably well and the world of recreational cricket moves along. Indeed, recreational cricket would not survive if umpires could not be called upon from the batting side. In some lower-level settings it might be possible to call upon neutrals consistently but this is rare.

It should be clear why batsmen should walk in this cricketing setup. Umpires are doing a demanding, required job, and they can clearly be accused of self-interest when decisions go against the bowling side as they aren't neutrals in any sense. The umpires stand out in the middle, they don't relax on the grassy sidelines with the rest of their batting mates as they banter, score, drink beer, and relax. They miss out on camaraderie but cop all the tension and aggravation out in the middle. Under these circumstances, the umpires must be rendered all assistance possible. My feeling is that the following thesis underwrites park cricket conventions about walking: when umpires are not neutrals and are your own team-mates, you must help them do their job by walking when you know you are 'out'.

I hesitate to describe this convention as universal, because I've not played cricket all over the world, but it seems to me batsmen generally co-operate in these settings, and those that don't are not regarded favourably (I welcome clarification and education in this regard). When an edge flies into the wicketkeeper's gloves, batsmen walk. Those that stand around glowering and making faces when given out LBW run the risk of a dressing down from their team-mates. The umpire is your mate; he's doing a difficult job, exposing himself to the chatter of opponents; it behooves you to help him out. To be someone who gives his team-mates a hard time under the circumstances is not a very clever move in lots of ways; you can unravel your own team's fabric for one.

This leads me to my further claims: a) I suspect the not-walking convention comes about in settings where the umpires are not your team-mates i.e., in more organized or higher-level games; b) Not-walking is not universally accepted, even in cultures whose cricketers believe in not-walking in international or state-level cricket. It might be that not-walking even happens in the settings I describe, but I've not seen it other than as a species of behaviour which was not approved of. Walking is supererogatory in international cricket; in park cricket it is obligatory. This is a distinction, I think, which most cricketers recognise. And I think it complicates the easy lines we like to draw between different cricketing contexts and cultures when it comes to the ethics of practices like walking.

Reading Michael ‘Fox’ Jeh’s post on ‘Australia’s Indian affair’ has prompted me to type in a little excerpt from Mihir Bose's A History of Indian Cricket:

This [the 1959-60 tour] was the third visit by the Australians in nine years. On their two previous visits they had played eight tests, won four, and also won both series comfortably. But despite the batsmen and their bowlers proving vastly superior to the Indians they were always the most eagerly awaited of cricket visitors. Outside cricket, Indians still knew little about Australia. But when it came to cricket, India adored Australians....We feared their cricket but we respected them as cricketers. The Australians we felt took India and its cricket seriously. England always sent what looked like 'B' team. Before an English tour the Indian press would be full of stories of major players declining the tour. Australia never seemed to have that problem....England also often appointed a tyro captain to lead the side to India, as if it was a training ground....Whoever was the Australian captain always brought the team to India...it meant more to the Indians to be playing Australia. It was a surer test of ability. Indians felt they were playing a country that did not treat them as an inferior cricket nation

The excerpt is interesting in so many ways: it speaks of a very different time, ordered in its power relations in very different ways; of a very different set of priorities on the part of the nations then playing cricket. Australian attitudes toward cricket, touring, its role in cricketing world affairs, were already interestingly different from the mother nation; it had already struck out a new path in forming its cricketing identity and not blindly imitating England had already been established as a solid guide to action. India looked for respect in the world; at that point in its cricketing history, just being taken seriously enough to play with was a significant gesture. Dreams of ruling the world's cricketing roost were surely distant ones.

Earlier this year as the India-Australia post Sydney fiasco brewed, and as chapter and verse was written about the misunderstandings between the two cricketing nations, I was reminded of this little excerpt from Bose's book. The oft-invoked vision of the realignment of the cricket world invariably points to its racial lines; the history of cricket suggests all sorts of interesting alliances are common. In the 1950s, both Australia and India might have wanted an identity for themselves that lay outside the ambit of England. Australia could do so by building a set of cricketing ties independent of its relationship with England; India by developing a healthy rivalry which acknowledged the sporting prowess of its adversary.

The growing relationship between India and Australia - a crucial one as this brand new world of cricket emerges - would do well to pay attention to all aspects of its history, including those that suggest their interests converged in the past.

There is a fairly well-established stereotype of the Australian cricket fan out there: loud, beer-swilling, male, proudly, passionately patriotic (and did I say loud and beer-swilling?) I want to point to another stereotype of the Australian fan that I carry around in my head: the enthusiastic recreational player come to watch the highest form of the game.

Australia owes part of its cricketing strength at least, to the extensive, well-organised network of recreational cricket that is visible in its summers. And each summer, a large segment of this population turns up at the Test matches and one-day internationals, all keen to see players practice the highest form of the game. Their presence ensures Australian crowds often provide the most knowledgeable spectators at Test cricket. And it reminds us of how the game played in the middle is experienced very differently by those watching in the stands, and how at least one, facile, binary division of cricket fans is possible: those who play and those who don't.

One abiding memory of the Test cricket I watched at Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide is of the fan who while watching the game, revealed a knowledge of the game that only a player could possess. This knowledge is perhaps best revealed by a quiet patience, with player mistakes in particular, and a quick appreciation of cricketing skill, regardless of the nationality of the player.

This fan will not impatiently call for batsman to get a move on regardless of game situation, and will be tolerant of occasional mishaps, largely because he is aware of the difficulty of playing the game well, and knows that mistakes will happen. This fan will readily applaud a display of cricketing competence, no matter what the player's nationality; a good shot is a good shot, no matter who plays it.

The playing fan also pays particular, thoughtful, attention to the players out in the middle, analysing as best as he can, their bowling skills or the structure of a shot; for him, watching a cricket match affords yet another opportunity for study of a game that obsesses him. The player fan is also more accepting of the misfortunes of the game; the loss of a wicket late in the day is borne with fortitude. This fan has not as yet, swallowed completely, the picture of the game sold to him by its television version; he is able to come to the ground and gain access to the essentials, unobscured by several dozen replays and cued music.

The fan who plays the game realises something the non-playing fan often does not: it's just a game. Some people play it better than others; it's not perfect, and everyone gets it wrong once in a while; it's hard, so when someone does something right, its worth noting.

Most fundamentally, for the fan who plays the game, what happens out in the middle is not pure spectacle or performance (what Mihir Bose termed tamasha), with players to
be primarily heckled, applauded or castigated. Instead the doings on the pitch represent striving, first and foremost. It is that striving that the playing fan recognises, in himself, as well as in those flinging themselves about on the field. And it is that recognition that changes his relationship to the game being played and makes him different from other fans.

Cricket was how I learned about time zones. It's how I learned other creatures on this planet experienced very different times of day while being simultaneously co-existent with me.

I knew all about GMT, the International Date Line, and 360 degrees of longitude as a child; these were abstract academic facts about a globe, gleaned from geography textbooks, and I was a nerd after all. But I only really learned what time zones meant when it became clear to me I could be hunched up in bed on a cold winter night listening to a disembodied voice over the radio describing flannelled men playing in bright sunshine somewhere far away. It's how I really learned to grasp that India was a big country, and that the bureaucratic fiat of Indian Standard Time did abuse to the fact of its spectacular east-west sprawl. How else was I to understand that one part of the country (Calcutta) could fall into darkness (as test match cricketers seemed to be pointing out to umpires) while I was playing in the bright winter sunshine with my friends in New Delhi? Cricket sliced up the day into distinct parts, each marked out with its own distinct label, each providing a particular background and locale for a distinct set of cricketing memories.

Test matches in England were about summer heat, burning hot afternoons that shaded into cooler evenings before the radio commentary finally came to a halt just before midnight. Game changing moments happened as the Delhi night wore on outside. Watching cricket in Australia had as its local backdrop, the North Indian winter, its freezing early mornings, its glorious sunny afternoons, and the chance to conduct post-mortems of the day's play from lunchtime onwards.

Perhaps nothing else quite so clearly marked my move to the US, and my subsequent residence on the East Coast, as my realization that from now on, those two locales (England and Australia) would be almost precisely exchanged (a temporal reversal of roles if you will), that other places in the mind's cricketing map would have to be rearranged.

England became associated with summer mornings; with early morning cups of espresso; with the hope that perhaps I could delay my setting out for work so I could finish watching the post-tea session. Australia became associated with winter evenings; snow would fall on my dark Brooklyn street while I watched players do battle at Brisbane; and I could crawl into bed by 2 AM as the day's play wound down. And perhaps most strange of all, the West Indies, that mystical place where giants once slew all those who visited, and which was all about post-dinner commentary and tape-delayed radio in the early mornings back in India, this place suddenly became part of my local time zone: games began in the late morning and ended in the evening. The machinations to watch games in the West Indies took on a similar hue to those employed in India to watch home games: the 'sick' days, the "I think I'll just work from home" claims. The advantage of being located in the same time zone had also brought along its inconvenient companion: the clash with work hours.

Cricket told me the experienced daily world is sliced up into distinct temporal spheres; nothing else brought this home quite so clearly, not even those ubiquitous rows of clocks at airports, each set to a different city. And yet nothing else quite so clearly reinforced the connectedness of the world either.