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May 25, 2009

All pain, no gain

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/25/2009 in IPL

Comments (14)

May 21, 2009

Modi's comedy show

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/21/2009 in IPL

But what was once a brief but pleasant excursion into the world of horticulture has been turned into a five minute comedy audition. Game Fifty-Two saw Daniel Kyle Morrison, former international cricketer and taker of 160 Test wickets, standing on the New Wanderers pitch with a cheerleader on his shoulders. I have no idea why he was burdened with a professional dancer and I suspect neither did he. It is possible that no-one knows, since it is the kind of idea that presumably emerged at the end of a particularly long, drunken night out.

Still, I suppose you have to have some sympathy for the lot of the television producer. Under continual pressure to make things exciting, the pitches in this IPL haven’t really come to the party. For the most part, they just lie there. And they all look the same. Though the tournament has been played in every corner of South Africa, the strips of turf with which we have been presented have borne more than a passing resemblance to one another. Invariably they look like concrete but play like porridge.

So slow have these pitches been that batsmen have had time to write a chapter or two of their autobiographies, answer their fan mail and polish their bat before the ball finally arrives. And by the time it does get there, they have usually played at least three shots already. In contrast to last year’s festival of thwackery, this IPL has been characterised by the bunt, the lob and the unfeasible edge. For example, on Thursday, Mithun Manhas somehow managed to hook a bouncer that was proceeding slowly past his left ear in the direction of first slip, whereupon Jacques Kallis seized it in his paw, like a bear catching a salmon.

Actually, when I look back on this tournament, Kallis is one of the players who will spring to mind most readily. It isn’t particularly because of his feats with bat and ball. I just seem to have spent an awful lot of time watching him. I have enjoyed his sweaty, full-blooded bowling, his general grumpiness leavened by the occasional tombstone smile, his curmudgeonly sledging of his South African teammates and his utilisation of the sarcastic throw.

Kallis is of course, a well-established character in the cricket soap opera. Another of the many treats of this IPL has been the chance to watch young and not so young Indian players with whom many of us outside the subcontinent are entirely unfamiliar. To genuine cricket lovers, this is a pleasure. Every Kamran Khan and Ravindra Jadeja whom we get to know represents another acre of knowledge reclaimed from the sea of ignorance and extends the realm of the world of cricket, which is after all, a country of the mind.

If you’re thinking that this sounds like end of term wistfulness, you’d be right. The sun will soon be setting on the IPL and the sky is already tinged with sadness. For all their buffoonery, I have grown accustomed to the faces of Coney, Morrison and Rambo Raja and to having my afternoons divided neatly into forty-five minute portions. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope without it.

And in recognition of the imminent end of festivities, a certain autumnal chill has been evident at the evening games. The IPL doesn’t really do cold, anymore than it does rain and the response has been charmingly improvised. On Thursday night the cheerleaders had acquired red woollens and on the Bangalore bench, Mark Boucher and Roelof van der Merwe shared a blanket whilst Anil Kumble donned at least three hats.

Still no mere cold weather can stop these crowds from enjoying themselves. Indeed, the spectators have been one of the best things about the IPL. I don’t refer to the be-suited individuals sitting stony-faced in their corporate boxes, fingering their official passes and sipping chardonnay. It is the ordinary people who have made this tournament; the punters in the cheap seats and on the grass banks, with their home made banners, their flags and their quite astonishing, seemingly limitless enthusiasm.

Port Elizabeth crowds are the best. Even through the muffling of the television screen, the carnival atmosphere they create has been apparent. The ground seems to reverberate with music; a song throbbing constantly like a pulse underneath the action. Even when the commentators are wittering on as they do, you can still catch the surge and swell of brass and chorus, the mingling of gospel and Latin rhythms and the joyous percussion of a seething crowd banging their inflatable clackers, singing, cheering and shouting. They deserve a trophy of their own.

Comments (28)

May 16, 2009

In Defence of Sreesanth

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/16/2009 in Extras

And then, of course, there were his graceless barbs directed at Ishant Sharma, who was still finding his feet in world cricket on a tour of Australia. But if this article is about Sreesanth, where does Hayden fit in? He does, you see, because the opponent he dismissed with so much contempt was the same bowler whose bowling proved so vital to India's success at the T20 World Cup in 2007. One of the batsmen whose skin he got under, and dismissed, was Matthew Hayden. But back to Sreesanth.

Like a lot of people, I had never really heard of Sreesanth, nor would I have been able to answer the trivia question that forms part of his Cricinfo player page. When India headed to the West Indies, a rare Test series without Sachin Tendulkar, it was with probably their least experienced bowling attack in ages. Along side Kumble and Harbhajan were three relative rookies - Sreesanth, Munaf and VRV Singh. And yet, some of Sreesanth’s performances stood out - the snorter that got Brian Lara in the decisive final test, the beauty that gave Gayle a pair in that crucial fourth innings of the same test. So when India arrived in South Africa for a Test series, at a time when India's famed batting line up was struggling, the last thing anyone expected was for a nearly unknown Indian quick to lead the bowling to a demolition of South Africa as they were dismissed for 84.

After India had cobbled together a meagre 249 runs, the South African batting line up was laid low by Sreesanth's 5/40, and at one point, with the score reading 45/7, the more hopeful of India's fans, self included, rather naively believed that a follow-on was not unrealistic. As Mickey Arthur admitted after the first Test, India's bowlers taught the SA quicks how to bowl in those home conditions, Sreesanth clearly led the way. Unfortunately, India blew their chances and contrived to lose a series they had started so well. India had it bad, but Sreesanth came away with a good showing. His bowling in South Africa was promising, though he made headlines for his impromptu dance number in response to Andre Nel's sledging, which is probably still on Youtube.

With all this, the series to England should have been the point where Sreesanth "arrived" in Test cricket. After all, so many Indian bowlers have discovered that bowling in England can be so good for their confidence - no, this is not a slight at England's batting, but merely a reflection of how well India's swing and seam bowlers have utilised the conditions to help India win in England, and he appeared to be one of India's better swing bowlers. However, things went totally awry - a beamer to Pietersen and Atherton's subsequent refusal to accept that his apology had been genuine highlighted a series where Sreesanth slipped behind Zaheer Khan and the fast-emerging RP Singh in the quick bowling stakes.

All this while, something else was building up - where his pre-delivery routine drew indulgent admiration from commentators and "fans" alike, his break dancing abilities made him very popular on one of several get-rich-quick Indian TV programs which discovered the "world champs" after India won the Twenty20 cup. But as time went by, and results were not always as one would have liked, his hitherto grudgingly accepted aggression became the focal point for all - "fans" and commentators alike. Players from opposing teams were just as willing to get in and say a few things to him, believing somehow that his overt aggression was in any way worse than the beautifully defined "mental disintegration" tactics.

And there was the break dancing - where it had once been a source of applause and admiration, however grudging, people were beginning to show that there was only so much tolerance they were willing to display. And while some of us, yours truly being in a somewhat minuscule percentage, looked forward to his return at the IPL, the knives were being sharpened. Three matches - one each against the rampaging nice-guy Hayden, Rajasthan, and against Dwayne Bravo, the last being just one over - turned the tide. In between, he was at the receiving end of Harbhajan's anger during the first IPL, an action that seemed to harm the offender less than the one offended against. After Hayden's comments, chat forums were agog with talk that he was overrated. And to make things worse, a nearly unknown Indian movie actress offered her rather self-important sounding tuppence, which included calling him an "insignificant player", the irony of which may have been probably lost on her personally.

To add to his woes, the now widely-read blogger chose to anoint him with a most offensive and unbecoming moniker, probably more out of envy. In an IPL where all but one of India's premier bowlers were struggling to make a mark, this probably damaged Sreesanth more than any thing on the cricket field - and ironically, a cricketer who has been criticised for not being enough of one, was being reviled by someone who sought the comfort that anonymity offered, and whose comments were not in the slightest concerned with cricket, and the cricket-result-loving public lapped up this non-cricketing abuse eagerly.

Having said all that, it is fair to contend that Sreesanth has brought it upon himself. At a time when he should have been focusing on his bowling, he comes across, from the perspective of a cricket fan who does not know him personally, as a man of extremes. When Sreesanth offers praise, it is not always fulsome - it is over the top. When Sreesanth offers aggro, it is ditto. And he seems to fall apart in matches just as spectacularly. It is to his credit that despite all he is having to contend with, he is willing to keep playing and keep trying.

However, there is reason to believe that if Sreesanth can sort out all that is holding him back, he holds tremendous promise. Sample, for instance, the fact that in terms of overall bowling stats he more than holds his own against the current incumbents - the resurgent Zaheer Khan, flavour-of-the-season Ishant Sharma, the extremely promising RP Singh, and other contenders to the quick bowling slots in India's Test team such as Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan and Praveen Kumar In fact when you do a comparison of these bowlers in terms of their strike rates, wickets per match, averages etc, Sreesanth does very well - so well does he perform, that in a ranking of India's top ODI and test bowlers he would be very close to the top on all of these parameters. But, as Cricinfo points out, he loses out on the one parameter that is so critical to the shorter and shortest versions of cricket - economy rates. In a ranking of India's top 50 bowlers in ODIs, Sreesanth comes in at #50 on this parameter.

In the shorter versions, his career is littered with such instances - 21 runs to Bravo in the recent IPL match, three sixes to Sohail Tanvir in the World T20 finals, an expensive first over to Imran Nazir in the same match and so on. There is, hence, probably a strong case for believing that in the case of Sreesanth, he may be the first of his kind in India - a specialist Test bowler, who needs time to evolve into an ODI/T20 bowler. But more importantly, there is reason to hope that if he can sort out his mental devils, Sreesanth will be able to fulfill the promise he offered in South Africa and in the West Indies. The question though is, with a headline-hungry media, an instantly forgetful cricket watching public, and an unwilling cricket organisation - in the form of Captain and selectors - who will give him the chance? More so, will Sreesanth give himself that chance?

Comments (18)

May 12, 2009

The view from Old Blighty - 5

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/12/2009 in IPL

Ahem. You see, I’m not really watching the IPL at all. That’s right. I’m being employed by the ECB, the ICC and the CIA to undermine it. It’s true. Furthermore, the BCCI are a bunch of idiots; Sachin Tendulkar never could bat and Sunil Gavaskar is doing unmentionable things to Ricky Ponting.

There, that should take care of that. And remember, Mr Angry, for extra emphasis, you may want to spell imperialist with a capital letter.

Of course, there is a serious point to be made here about some people’s determination to divide the cricket populace of the world into pro-India and anti-India, with your place on that Axis of Silliness being decided entirely by your geographical location.

But I haven’t time for serious points because the IPL is on again. Yes, it’s Monday, so it must be Rajasthan against Deccan, for what might be the first or possibly the second or even the third time. Never mind strategy breaks, what the IPL needs is a mid-season break or at the very least, a mini-pause, a delay of some kind, to enable us to digest, to reflect and to savour. No-one, not even Jacques Kallis, likes to be force-fed, but that’s what it has felt like in this mid-tournament phase.

Abandoning the idea of a gradual build up of momentum, the IPL accelerated to the spin cycle by the first Wednesday and has remained there ever since, a screaming whirl of games blurring into games, with the only reality being the points table to which we cling like shipwrecked sailors being flung around a whirlpool. When was the curious incident of the dog on the outfield? Which was the game where Preity Zinta swore? When did Ravi Shastri stop shouting? Who played yesterday? Who’s playing tomorrow? Like Kevin Pietersen in a hall of mirrors, I don’t know which way to look.

In addition to a mid-season break, the tournament needs the attention of an image consultant, a man with an aesthete’s eye and quite possibly a top hat and a polished cane. For a start, no-one should be contemplating staging games in the middle of the day. The brassy autumnal sun glares down, the pitches gleam like strips of still wet cement and everyone squints into their sunglasses. It’s like partying with a hangover.

I’d go further. The disappointing quality of the fielding is detrimental to the beauty of the tournament. Now, in order to explain the high number of spilled catches there has been a lot of earnest dug out chat about such concepts as ‘variable air thickness’ and the ‘spongy turf coefficient’, most of it about as convincing as a builder trying to explain why the wall he built last week has just collapsed. Time to cut the bull and fess up. A certain proportion of these players can’t catch. Another sizeable group seem to have difficulty touching their toes (yes, that means you Bangalore).

So to this end, in order to restore some dignity to the occasion, I suggest that in IPL 2010, each side will only have two designated fielders. Only the lithest, most attractive movers will be permitted to bend, stretch or pirouette. Everyone else must remain still once the ball is delivered, though a graceful stoop to retrieve a stationary ball is to be permitted. And a new ‘Aesthetic Play League’ will replace all that Fair Play nonsense. Franchises will lose points for pratfalls, facial stubble, stumbles, yelling and tattoos. Credit will be given for difficult catches taken with nonchalance, stylish leaps, neatly pressed trousers and stifling a yawn.

And speaking of barely suppressed somnolence, I bet all of you non-Setanta-ites are wondering how Ronnie Irani is getting on. No? Well I’m going to tell you anyway. He’s doing great. And I am pleased to reveal that, having completed an intensive home study course in Applied Irani, I can reveal the essence of Irani-ness. The secret is in the five key phrases:

1. Listen
2. To be honest
3. For me
4. Err…
5. I promise you

Slip these beauties into your every day conversation and you’ll regularly be mistaken for the former biffer. I promise you. Now you may be thinking that we’ve been here before, that this isn’t the first time I have mentioned the awfulness of Setanta’s coverage and that I am now merely overstating, repeating and reiterating the same observation again and again and again until you just want to scream out, “For the love of Modi, just please make it stop!” If you are thinking that, then I have successfully conveyed to you the magic of Setanta.

But hang on just one moment. Because Saturday 9th May was no ordinary Setanta day. It was the day they went all competent on us. It was the day of ‘The Bish’. Due to some kind of mix-up in the booking department, the yellow ones had gone and got themselves a high quality studio guest. Now Ian Bishop is a Christian man and so I will refrain from declaring my televisual love for him here. Suffice it to say, he is the anti-Irani. Clear-spoken, intelligent and informed, his Bishopness does not flap his gums just to keep the air warm. He is a purveyor not of silly grins or lame jokes, but of knowledge and insight. The Setanta presenter was almost in tears of gratitude at the beauty of it all. For the first time in three weeks, I didn’t use the strategic break to file my toe nails, de-louse the dog or eat more toast. I stayed where I was. And I listened.

Finally, to the Kolkata Knight Riders fan who was angry at my taking the name of Ajit Agarkar in vain, I can only apologise. It was a glaring error on my part. I meant to type ‘S.o.u.r.a.v.G.a.n.g.u.l.y.’ but my fingers slipped. I hope that clears that up.

Comments (36)

May 10, 2009

Dissecting the LBW

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/10/2009 in Rules

The two significant changes that have occurred in the last twenty years are: a) the introduction of neutral umpires; b) use of technology for line decisions and referrals for clean catches.

So why are we seeing an increase in the percentage of LBW in recent years? Are the rules being interpreted differently? Are the umpires not applying benefit of doubt in the same manner as before? Since neutral umpires were introduced around 1990, we examined the LBW dismissals for the period 1930 to 1989 and for the period since 1990. The summary is given below:

In the period since 1990, LBW dismissals as a percentage of total dismissals have risen to 16.7% from 13% in the period 1930 to 1989. That is a 30% increase in the incidence of LBW dismissals in the last 20 years as compared to earlier years. When we looked for Test matches which had the maximum LBW dismissals, our search showed almost all the top entries are from post 1980 tests.

Next we stacked up 20 batsmen each from the pre and post-1989 period based on the percentage of their LBW dismissals. We found that 17 of the 20 pre-1989 era batsmen have the least percentage of LBW decisions. Don Bradman, Len Hutton and Sunil Gavaskar have been dismissed less than 10% of the time LBW while Garry Sobers, Colin Cowdrey, Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath and Zaheer Abbas have been dismissed less than 11.5 % of the time LBW. The only oldies in our sample with a higher percentage were Ken Barrington (20.7%), Javed Miandad (19.6%) and Vijay Manjrekar (15.9%). In contrast, the post-1990 era batsmen have the higher percentage LBW dismissals. Graeme Smith, Younis khan, Nasser Hussain, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Sachin Tendulkar have been dismissed LBW in excess of 20% of their innings; Ricky Ponting, Inzimam-ul-Haq, Chris Gayle and Alec Stewart have been dismissed LBW in over 18% of their innings and Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Mark Waugh, Justin Langer, Michael Atherton and Sanath Jayasuriya have been out LBW in over 16 % of their innings. Among the post-1990 players, Mahela Jayewardene is the sole exception with a lower LBW percentage (10.5%)

Back then, batsmen enjoyed a consistent and clear benefit of doubt on LBW with umpires. It was an unwritten rule for umpires that when a batsman played well forward, he would not be given out LBW. You wouldn’t want to be the one who gave a Sobers, Richards, Gavaskar or Miandad out wrongly and changed the course of the match. The batsmen of the sixties and seventies with great reputations like Cowdrey for instance, used this advantage well both in shot selection and risk taking. The old English adage-“when in doubt stretch forward” was employed by all great batsmen with little fear or uncertainty. Good batsmen made runs. When they got a start, they made big scores - the crowds came to watch their favourites hit centuries.

The downside was that batsmen could get away with a lot of pad play. In the fifties and sixties cricket was threatened by masters of pad play. The barracker at Sydney became immortal when he angrily asked an English batsman to tie his bat to his legs because he would score more runs that way! In 1967, at Chennai, when Charlie Griffith joined Sobers (with only Hall and Gibbs to follow), there were still 90 minutes left on the last day for India to seek victory. Sobers asked Griffith to stretch forward and take everything on his front pad - with complete confidence that he would not be given out. It is probably to neutralize such pernicious pad play that the rule change to penalize batsmen padding up outside off stump was introduced around 1970.

It is fascinating to note that for the period 1930-89, the higher percentage of LBW against visiting teams as compared to home team is sharply evident in the case of the sub-continent. In contrast there is hardly any difference in percentage of LBW decisions for the home team and opposition teams in England, Australia, South Africa and West Indies. In fact in New Zealand the percentage of home team LBW is greater than the guests.

The picture since 1990, i.e. the neutral umpire era is equally interesting. The difference in LBW for Home team and opposition team has been greatly reduced in the sub continent. On the other hand the percentage of opposition LBW has risen above home team LBW in the case of Australia. See table below.

In essence, neutral umpires meant two things: a) only the best umpires in the world would form an elite panel; b) it would serve to take away the long nursed grudge that home umpires tilted the game in favour of the home team.

While the overall increase in LBW since 1990 is evident, the numbers remain relatively lower in Australia and South Africa. One very strong and logical reason for this is that the wickets are bouncier and so often the ball would go over the stumps. The one caveat about neutral umpires is that sometimes they are not able to judge the bounce as well as a local umpire would do knowing the conditions better.

The current crop of top batsmen - Tendulkar, Ponting, Kallis, Younis, Chanderpaul or Pietersen –unlike batsmen of the earlier era - are being given out LBW more often. The batsman plays half forward defensively or is trying to work the ball to leg, is rapped on the front pad, apparently in line with the leg stump (ball still has to travel 7 to 8 feet to the stumps). You are surprised to see the umpire raising the finger and stupefied to see Hawk-eye showing the ball kissing the legstump. The TV commentator who has played enough cricket to know that Hawk Eye is wrongly named then says with minimum conviction, “Hawk Eye says that would hit leg stump”. The Hawk Eye is positioned high up and has an inherent inability to extrapolate and predict the destination of the ball after pitching. Those who watched cricket before the seventies will remember that umpires in those days crouched low so that their eyes were almost at stump level.

Finally it all boils down to good umpiring – which means consistency in decision making. It does not matter that Dickie Bird or Venkataraghavan would make instant judgments or that others needed to play it over and over in their minds. From Chester to Buller in the early days to Dickie Bird, David Shepherd, S Venkatraghavan and Simon Taufel in recent times, the best umpires understood the essence of umpiring and displayed consistency and predictability in their rulings. In that split second of time an umpire has to look at the bowler’s landing foot, instantly look up and judge length, line, height, deviation, catch the sound of an inside edge and decide LBW or not LBW. Umpires used their judgment and applied the unwritten code of benefit of doubt consistently. The best umpires got most of their decisions right. Today, the pressure on modern day umpires is becoming unbearable with every decision being cruelly dissected by Slo-Mo, Hawk-Eye, Snickometer and Hot Spot.

Having written all this we took the opportunity to chat informally with Venkat about umpiring. We could not have gone to a person with better credentials – the only umpire in the world to have played over 50 Tests and also captained his country in Tests and the World Cup; on the ICC Elite panel of umpires, winner of the CEAT Award and adjudged one of the best umpires and one who earned the highest respect from all, both during his days as a player and later as an umpire. The essence of what Venkat said about umpiring and LBW decisions was: The good umpire, besides integrity needs concentration and competence to achieve consistency. The powers of concentration cannot be over emphasized, when one remembers that the umpires are there for 90 overs a day for all five days without a break. The din and noise from the crowd can make it very difficult. This concentration and consistency is what a good umpire demonstrates in the LBW. He will make the same decision whether the batsman is a No.1 or 2 or whether he is 9, 10 or jack. Though himself a bowler, Venkat said that one must bear in mind that when a batsman plays forward, even to a spinner, the ball is quite likely to bounce higher than stump height, unless it hits him below the shin. As an engineer, he says, he could appreciate the uncertainty of line and height over 8 to 10 feet of travel. This analysis and judgment of whether the ball would hit the stumps is the crux of competence in judging LBW.

Comments (56)

May 6, 2009

Short-lived break in batting dominance

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/06/2009 in IPL

Comments (2)

May 5, 2009

The view from Old Blighty - 4

Posted by Cricinfo - on 05/05/2009 in IPL

Do other people feel like that? If so, then what is cricket about? Why do we watch it? Do we only care about a match because we want one side to win or another to lose? These are big fat hairy challengers that every cricket person should at one time or another get into a wrestling ring with. They are fundamental questions that deserve to be fully explored by a literate, learned and erudite writer.

I won’t be doing that, obviously. For me, as Ronnie Irani would say, it’s simple. I like cricket. I watch a lot of it. Really, far too much of it. Not because I care who wins any of it, but because I like it. I’m watching the IPL because the best players in the world (and Ajit Agarkar) are playing the best sport in the world in the same place at the same time. What other reason do you need?

Cricket is like the works of Shakespeare (yes, really, trust me on this.) When you file in to a performance of Romeo and Juliet, are you carrying an enormous foam hand that says, ‘Chak De Capulets!’ on one side and ‘Tybalt Rocks!’ on the other? Do you come out of the theatre shaking your head because you felt Mercutio was on the wrong end of a poor decision? No. The play’s the thing. So it is with cricket. It’s the game, stupid. As Oscar Wilde definitely didn’t say, there is no such thing as the wrong or right result; there is only good or bad cricket

There is of course, a third way to look at the IPL. I know that there are people in England who have only taken an interest in the tournament whilst the English players were involved. For them, the entertainment has been rather thin, though they have, if they’ve been paying attention, witnessed a fascinating phenomenon, known as the Freddie Paradox. It runs something like this. Pre-IPL, everyone was agreed that Andrew Flintoff was a snip at $1.55m and would do the canary-coloured ones proud. Post IPL, everyone is equally adamant that the big buffoon can barely hold a bat and is so deficient in the important skill of bowling slightly more slowly than usual that he should never have gone in the first place.

I say ‘everyone’, by which I mean cricket journalists, by which I mean former England cricketers. And if you are prepared to be patient, you may see another paradox. Currently, the ex-pro press corps are unanimous that Andy Flower is much better than they said he was two months ago and that the selection of a man named Onions is a sure sign that England can win the Ashes. Make a mental note of this so that you can compare and contrast with what they say amid the ashes of England’s Ashes hopes in mid August.

But I digress. Freddie didn’t do very well nor did the rest of them, with the exception of Ravi Bopara. Still, at least we now know for sure what kind of England captain Kevin Pietersen could have been. For Bangalore, he strutted, he clapped and he chivvied and all of it registered high on the decibel scale. He was a tattooed mother hen with a megaphone. Sure, he lost most of the games he played in, but he did it at an impressive volume. And Collingwood’s and Shah’s familiarity with dug-out facilities at all of South Africa’s main stadia could prove very handy when England tour there later this year.

Coinciding with the departure of the Englishmen has been a noticeable stripping out of dead wood as international class egos are ignored in the pursuit of victory right now. The franchises are like Formula One teams, frantically tinkering and modifying mid-race, with the result that those making the early pace are now in danger of being overtaken. Even Bangalore, now running on Kumble, a lower emission, higher efficiency fuel, are looking like contenders. It’s all very confusing.

Thank goodness then for the old-school incompetence of the Kolkata Knight Riders. John Buchanan’s sequel to ‘If Better Is Possible’ will presumably be entitled, ‘Can It Get Much Worse?’ to which the answer is, undoubtedly. Kudos though to the laptop-bothering Sun Tzu quoting coach. In such an open format of the game where anyone can beat anyone, it takes a special kind of magic to string together six defeats out of seven.

Finally, you may have noticed that these ramblings contain no mention of commentators. That is because I have realised that they are impervious to criticism of any kind. Like a herd of charging rhinos with their Ipods turned up full, they are not going to listen to reason, even if it is shouted in their faces. I realised that satire was futile when I heard Alistair Campbell admit that he had run out of nouns with which to describe the action. Muting is too good for them.

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