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June 19, 2009
Why Twenty20 needs other forms of cricket
Posted by Cricinfo - on 06/19/2009 in Extras
From Binu Thomas, India
I recently read an article from Aravind Panchal in "Inbox" observing that in Twenty20 cricket, there are no definite favourites. I do not think that anybody can argue against it. But what I want to contend is the proposition that the chance of not having favourites or champions is good for the game. I am not quite so sure.
Surprises as good as long as they remain only as surprises. But more than this simple fact of life, there is one thing about Sports - that unless the game do not consistently reward quality, the game itself cannot compete with other games who nurture quality, over a long period of time. The reason why we celebrate the failure of Australia is: they have a set of players who are proven champions in "OTHER" forms of cricket.
For the time being let us assume that cricket as a game is played only in the Twenty20 version and that there is no Test cricket or ODI (which is very much possible going by Chris Gayle's words). Even though it is too early to judge, the predictable patterns emerging from the world of Twenty20 is that there are no champion cricketers in Twenty20. Every tournament, every match has its own heroes. Twenty20 most probably is not going to throw up a hero for a decade or even five years, forget about a Pele or Maradona or Bradman or Sachin. I am not sure whether a Sporting game can sustain in the long run without the so-called "Legends".
My understanding is that legendary players play an equal role in the growth and sustainability of the game as the attractiveness of the game itself. How many of us can imagine Brazilian soccer without Pele? I am almost sure that eighty percent of school cricketers in India in 1990s dreamt about becoming "a Sachin Tendulkar" rather than "a batsman". If Twenty20 does not produce its legends who perform consistently over a period of time, can it sustain the public imagination across generations? Is Twenty20 capable of producing its legends without the existence of other forms of cricket? I will not say no, but I am pessimistic, because, let me quote "it is easier to play at your top level for three hours" and hence a lesser-skilled is almost equally rewarded as a highly-skilled.
My theory is that as much as cricket needs Twenty20 for its growth, Twenty20 may need Test cricket for its survival. As a game, T20 needs champions and Test cricket is the source where it can hope to get get champions from. In future, Twenty20 may become the basis for entry into cricket, and whoever does well in Twenty20 may have to adapt themselves to become consistent Test Players (I seriously doubt if it is going to happen the other way, which is bad news for the Rahul Dravids of the cricket world). Test cricket, then, is going to produce champion players and teams, and whose failure we are going to celebrate as "upsets" or "surprises".
Comments (4)
June 13, 2009
Group bug
Posted by Cricinfo - on 06/13/2009 in T20 World Cup
From Ankit R Gulechha, India
The group stages of the ICC World Twenty20 are over and the Super 8 leg kicked off two days back. It would interest many of us to see how rules laid by ICC has left a few matches insignificant in group stages and also led to formation of one sided groups.
According to the rules, irrespective of the number of matches a team wins in the Group stages or the position in which they finish in their group, they will move forward to the next round based on their ranking which was determined after the last edition of world cup. Just to give an example, though South Africa finished on top of group D, they were ranked as D2 and moved to group E. If ICC had not made such rules South Africa would have moved to group F.
Now what this did is that it made the last league match between South Africa and New Zealand insignificant, because irrespective of result South Africa would go to group E and New Zealand to Group F.
Similarly the Sri Lanka and West Indies match became a practice match for them before super Eights. If the rules were, and should have been, that group leaders are ranked based on performance in this world cup, and not last years, then the groups would have been like these: Group E: India (A1), Pakistan (B2), Sri Lanka (C1), New Zealand (D2) and Group F: Ireland (A2), England (B1), West Indies (C2), South Africa (D1).
If we look at the current group we have to feel for England, West Indies and South Africa on having lost out on a match with Ireland. What this bizarre rule has done is placed three group toppers (India, England and South Africa) in one group, which is unfair.
The team which has gained most from this is Sri Lanka. Not only do they play Ireland in Super 8, but also two other teams which finished runners up in their groups. Overall the group E looks tight with the favorites being South Africa followed by a three way race between India, West Indies and England for second semi-final spot from group.
Whereas Group F is a three way race with Sri lanka and New Zealand favorites to go through to semi-finals after a dismal performance by Pakistan. I hope the ICC will take into consideration these factors for the next edition of world cup or Champions trophy.
Comments (8)
The thing about T20 cricket
Posted by Cricinfo - on 06/13/2009 in T20 World Cup
From Arvind Panchal, United States
Probably T20 is still in its nascent stage at the international level and probably things will change further in the years to come, but a few basic things that have emerged out of T20 world would probably remain the same. And I hope so, because that is good for cricket. One of such things is the end of dominance of a few teams over others.
Compare it to Test Teams and the One day teams, where we have definite favorites going into a series or tournament. Agreed, upsets are a part in those formats too, but not to the same extent as we have been seeing in T20. After all, the Australians have ruled the world of Test and One day cricket for almost a decade now.
Only three days into the World Twenty20 and one of the Kings of cricket teams thus far is out of the tournament. An associate member of ICC, Ireland easily Pushed Bangladesh out of the second round and England the host team were galloped by the nascent Netherlands in the opening game. Another finalist for the last World Twenty20 is struggling to move to the second stage. So who is your favorite for World Twenty20?
Yes, now you have the luxury to keep Australia out and probably by tomorrow you would also be comfortable to keep a few good teams out. But the question is, coming into this tournament, how many of us believed that Australia would crack like this? How many of us believed that Netherlands would punish a team that is considered to be the father of this format? How many of us thought that Pakistan would be so unsure about its place in the second stage? Do we still dare to have a favorite?
One of my favorite writers, Harsha Bhogle, recently mentioned in his article about the impact of the duration of a game by saying "If football was played over 20 minutes Manchester United and Barcelona may not have been in the final." This is the underlying difference between a T20 and other fatherly forms of cricket. When the game is reduced to shorter duration, the strategies must change and at the same time, it adds an element of surprise into it. It is easier to play at your top level for 3 hours, but not so easy when you have to stretch the same to over a day. At the same time, there is a little room for making mistakes when you are up in the short format, since there is a little room for recovery.
In the longer format of the game, even if you make some mistakes, there is time for you to recover, your team and the captain can plan out counter attacking strategies. But such luxuries are not accepted by T20. Such basic things have allowed us to see surprises more often which in fact are not surprises, because there have been far too many. This probably is the core of T20. And probably this would be the reason for T20 to be a huge success.
Comments (2)
June 6, 2009
Beer chaos at The Oval
Posted by Cricinfo - on 06/06/2009 in English cricket
From Richard Seeckts
"It wasn't until I got there that I realised one of the 20s was the duration in minutes of the queue for beer." PP of Kent, 2008.
On the evidence of last week’s Surrey v Sussex match, things have got worse, not better, in 2009. Twenty20 games at Surrey’s south London ground are advertised as turbo-charged cricket. The experience in the stands has not been so thrilling.
Spectators visiting The Oval for ICC World Twenty20 matches should be reassured that "the problem with the (bar) tills has been rectified and we have had no further problems". This is wonderful news, though it comes too late for those who endured woefully inadequate bar provision at last week's Surrey v Sussex Twenty20 match, when the recent dry spell took on another meaning.
That Tuesday evening saw people wanting an after work pint at the cricket queuing for up to half an hour to be served. 'Man waits 25 minutes for beer' is not, in isolation, a matter of great concern to anybody. However, 'World's oldest Test venue fails to cater for crowd of 7,500' doesn't sound so clever. The problem with standing in a queue for 25 minutes during a Twenty20 game is that you miss about seven overs of action, or one third of an innings. And if you fancy a second, or third pint during the evening, you'll see less cricket than on a good day at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
I don’t know the exact nature of the alleged (and now resolved) bar till problem, but I do know that Surrey CCC infuriated many spectators last week, compounding their blanket ban on taking alcohol into the ground by making it virtually impossible to obtain inside. Surrey claim that the ground was one third full, and that five of seven public bars were open. It’s an interesting claim when the shutters were down on every drinks outlet bar one (pardon the pun) at the Vauxhall end of the ground. If true, it doesn’t bode well for an Ashes Test in August.
Whatever the cause of the chaos, all major sports venues have an obligation to cater for their paying customers swiftly and efficiently, enabling them to optimise their time watching the main event. When getting a drink becomes the main event, something has gone horribly wrong. Tickets are not cheap at The Oval, a cheeseburger and chips costs £8, a pint of beer £3.50, and a replica shirt is £39.99, if your favourite colour happens to be brown. The public deserves better.
The Oval was, however, amply prepared for the queues at the bars to develop into full-blown riots. 190 security / stewards were in attendance, gloriously intimidating in their fluorescent jackets, many radio-linked to Big Brother and ready to pounce on any sign of drunken (fat chance) or inappropriate behaviour. Most of the spectators were family groups on a half term treat or professional types in suits who had just rolled out of their offices. An east London football derby it was not, and yet there was a steward for every forty spectators.
Needless to say they had no riots to crush, perhaps we should have asked the 'Green Team' to fetch the beers for us.
Comments (4)
June 5, 2009
The Gautam Gambit
Posted by Cricinfo - on 06/05/2009 in Indian cricket
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Gautam Gambhir has played a key role in India's recent victories
© Getty Images
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from Sriram Dayanand, Canada
On the 20th of August 1969, the Beatles finished recording the song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, marking the last time all four band members were in the same studio at the same time. Indian cricket’s “Let It Be” moment came in Nagpur on the 10th of November, 2008, the last time Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman would be on the field representing India in a Test match for the final time.
Since 1996, these four names had been music to ears and meant brilliance, class, imperiousness and the sheer artistry of batsmanship to cricket watchers here, there and everywhere. But not all bands are perpetual in their existence like the Rolling Stones. All things must pass and a time comes in the life of every band when their musical collaboration will cease to exist. But unlike the Liverpudians imploding due to their own internal fissures and frictions after they recorded Abbey Road, the breakup of Indian cricket’s Fab Four came after a chorus and at times, a crescendo of public opinion that seemed to deafen the senses.
The swift and unsettling exit from the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean was the beginning of the whispers, which amplified into arguments and it was not too long before it was a national free for all. The fallout from the acrimonious departure of their erstwhile coach Greg Chappell, who they thought was just a fool on the hill, added fuel to the fire. Two new words entered and dominated Indian cricket’s jargon for the next year - “Juniors” and “Seniors” - and the country seemed to be in a tizzy trying to expedite the granting of retirement privileges to the quartet. Even the mailman and the taxman piped in with their opinions about who should depart first and when. Cricket experts and writers the world over waded in needing no prompting and poured their supply of lighter fluid into the inferno which burned eight days a week.
Since their debuts, this Indian line-up always had a look to it that caught the eye of the connoisseur. Embedded in the middle order was cricket’s version of Mount Rushmore, with four faces you couldn’t resist gazing at admiringly. Now that very edifice demanded dismantling and structural engineers from across the country weighed in with opinions on where to bore the holes to lay explosive charges. But when you are talking about destruction now, the pieces need to fall in order, while others stay up on their own support to survive for another day. Another day when the next set of holes will be drilled in.
Indians may not be able to articulate it sufficiently, but this parting with the Gang of Four, this impending breakup with a once-in-a-lifetime group of wizards, was the prime cause of their collective twisting and shouting. They had enraptured the Indian cricket fan’s psyche in a vice-grip for so long that there was bound to be wrenching reluctance to let go. They had promised a lot and yes, they had delivered in spades too. A first-ever series win in Pakistan was not something to be sneezed at nor was an exhilarating win against Australia in 2001. There were coruscating moments to cherish in Calcutta, Adelaide and Lahore. Periodically, they had had also produced clunkers that made one cringe, as in South Africa and the West Indies. But somehow, the achievement sheet didn’t quite tally up to people’s satisfaction in the end. There was no World Cup victory or a series win in Australia to show for. Time was running out and inevitability was setting in. As fans saw the sun going down, visions of red sails in the sunset were proving to be more unsettling than they had bargained for.
Two years later, Indian cricket’s milieu is sanguine in comparison. The tumultuous and helter-skelter days are a distant memory now. The sun is up and the sky is blue. The grim-faced demolition experts, the mailman and the taxman are all sleeping like logs. A relaxed and confident country is reveling in being glued to their television sets watching their cricket team duke it out at home and in faraway lands. Even an extended loss of form of the backbone of their batting for a decade, Rahul Dravid, skipped across the surface of Indian cricket’s tranquil waters with just a ripple. Those two words, Junior and Senior, have been abandoned curbside, as the nation hops on the team’s caravan and barrels on to the next stop on the magical mystery tour. Any old way you choose it, the smile is on permanently on the nation’s cricket visage.
Two reasons can account for this sea-change.
The first was that the dam finally cracked. Yesterday came suddenly when Saurav Ganguly announced his intentions to depart on the eve of the first Test against Australia. The band lost its first founding member. The dreaded deed was done. On the tail of the furore and melancholy this generated, followed the exit of Anil Kumble, the unassuming, unyielding and unsurpassable giant of Indian cricket. Coming off an Australian tour seeped in acrimony and recriminations, Anil Kumble’s leadership and dignity, punctuated by his Bill Woodfull impersonation in Sydney, had shone in the sky like diamonds. As India said goodbye to him, it said hello to the new leader, a zen-hunk on a motorcycle, capable of Dirty Harry’s ruthlessness but with a devilish smile. The abundance of confidence, calm and street-savvy that he possessed calmed the fears that the country had nervously accumulated.
The second reason, to put it simply, was Gautam Gambhir.
For a decade, the Indian team’s opening salvo had been akin to a gambit, to use the parlance of chess. It was an offering that only served to clear the way to advance the prime piece on their board - Dravid. A look back at the long and winding road travelled with makeshift opening pairs reveals an astonishing picture. Among the list of batsmen who have ventured out at the top of the order for India in Tests since January 1999 are: Navjot Sidhu, Sadagopan Ramesh, VVS Laxman, Devang Gandhi, MSK Prasad, Wasim Jaffer, Rahul Dravid, SS Das, Hemang Badani, Sameer Dighe, Deep Dasgupta, Sanjay Bangar, Virender Sehwag, Aakash Chopra, Parthiv Patel, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir and Dinesh Karthik. Twenty-three batsmen in various permutations and combinations have walked out only to return minutes later, crossing paths with Dravid on his way in. Exceptions to this are the occasions when this ceremony was dispensed with altogether and Dravid was shoved out of the pavilion to open the innings with whoever was the flavour of the day. This certifiable act of lunacy was extended to VVS Laxman also, causing no end of anxiety and heartache to him. Promising combinations that begged nurturing, like the Sehwag-Aakash Chopra one, were discarded before their expiry date. An encore appearance by any opening pair was a luxury and never a guarantee in Indian cricket during this period.
The angst and churning the World Cup 2007 disaster begat had a flip side to it. This was when the tether of patience that had been keeping Sehwag in the team snapped. He was banished, with the writ to get his head and his walrus profile back into ship-shape. India spent the rest of that year watching the Jaffer-Karthik combination holding fort in England, Bangladesh and against Pakistan. But in their hearts, everyone knew that the absence of Sehwag was nothing to get hung about. Surely his common-sense and class would resurface rapidly and he would get back to where he once belonged. Their proven opener gone AWOL, all their attention now focused on the Seniors, who bore the brunt of their ire and the burden of their dates of birth. The tour of Australia ensued and exasperatingly, it was Dravid’s umpteenth turn at carrying the world upon his shoulders. With Jaffer, whose under-achieving front foot was bound to be feasted on Down Under, he was sacrificed to clear up a spot for Yuvraj Singh. One shining moment in a dark series for all the wrong reasons, was the return of a saner and more svelte Sehwag and his redeeming performances at Perth and Adelaide. Returning from Australia, Sehwag having resurrected himself at the top of the order as expected, India persisted with Jaffer as his partner against South Africa. Meanwhile the fire raged on. With Ganguly and Dravid having been jettisoned from the ODI team by now, their future in Tests was still a topic on the front burner.
It was on the how-in-hell-do-we deal-with-Mendis tour of Sri Lanka that the current pair of Sehwag and Gambhir were back to opening the batting. India hasn’t looked back ever since. With a marauding Viru (proven by his 319 against South Africa) providing the happiness of a warm gun at one end, Gambhir came in to his own and proceeded to realize all the promise that his talents had hinted at for years. His run of scores since the first Test at Colombo provides a crystal clear picture of this:
Sri Lanka: Columbo (39, 43), Galle (56, 74), Columbo (72, 26)
Australia: Bangalore (21, 29), Mohali (67, 104), Delhi (206, 36), Nagpur (suspended)
England: Chennai (19, 66), Mohali (179, 97)
NewZealand – Hamilton (72, 30 no), Napier (16, 137), Wellington (23, 167)
As a feisty and spunky counterpart to the meditative mayhem artiste Sehwag, Gambhir has been insatiable. His aggression, which no one had doubted, is now laced with a determination which was lacking in his earlier incarnations as an opener. Big scores and even bigger hundreds reveal a new facet to his personality and a will to embrace the responsibilities entrusted in him. His aggressiveness did get the better of him in his hometown against Australia, leading to his suspension for the subsequent Test. But he more than compensated for this flash of impetuousness with a startling display of obdurate doggedness in New Zealand to help India bat the Kiwis out of a possible victory.
These are uncharted waters the Indian cricket team is in. Inured to the trauma of having a gaping hole at the top of the order, the settled, productive and aggressive picture Sehwag and Gambhir present is a novelty. Any time at all they are firing in tandem, the surge they provide is something no one would have conjured up in their wildest dreams in the last decade. Scrutinized through the glass onion of lopsided expectations for so long, this luxury has provided welcome breathing room to the middle order. It is incomprehensible that Dravid would have been allowed the time and space he needed to claw his way out of the awful slump he went through last year without the assuredness afforded by Sehwag and Gambhir. While Sehwag was not really a surprise, Gambhir has been the revelation that has settled the nerves of the nation’s cricket mad populace more than anything else.
When the Indian team returned after the convincing ODI series win in Australia, a reporter at the airport in Delhi asked Gambhir (who had topped the batting averages) what he was planning to do, now that he was home. Gauti replied “I just want to go home and eat my mother’s rajma chaval” (spicy red beans and rice).
Rajma chaval, comfort food for millions of Indians across the country, is what Gambhir has been of late. Tomorrow never knows, but he might have played the biggest part in giving the remaining three faces on the mountain the time, space and dignity that they so deserve. And a ticket to ride into the sunset on their own terms avoiding a cacophonous and unsettling sendoff. That is the least they can expect and with a little help from their friends at the top, they might just get it!
Comments (13)
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