« October 2009 |

November 21, 2009

Making sense of strange omissions

Posted by Cricinfo - 6 hours, 37 minutes ago in Selection

From R.Giridharan, India

	Rahul Dravid was axed from the ODI squad despite playing his part to a nicety © AFP

All of a sudden assets could become liabilities; strengths turn into weaknesses. I suspect that is what happened to Rahul Dravid, when the squad for the one-dayers against Australia was picked. He played his assigned role to perfection when all around him did not. Still others held their places, he got the boot. Despite obvious injustice, he has held his dignity, maintained his composure and has not murmured anything faintly resembling dissent. What strength of character! Has his armour become his Achilles heel?

To be fair, selection is a zero-sum game and someone has to be axed to make way for someone else. Men in the hot seat prefer not to ruffle feathers, more so when the going is tough. A man who handles injustice with calmness and dignity is the easiest cat to bell. After all he can be trusted not to wash dirty linen in public.

By no means is this malaise peculiar to India. Australians Doug Walters and Brad Hodge, Pakistan’s Aaqib Javed and England’s Matthew Hoggard have been administered with doses of the same poison.

Some cricketers catch the eye with their high-voltage celebrations, designer appeals, and theatrical sledging which embellish their pure cricket. Others are happy chipping away quietly and cloaking their inner fire with outward tranquility. The former appeal more to human memory, even though the latter play an equally vital role.

Everyone rants and raves endlessly on Shahid Afridi’s heroics in the semi-final of the recent World Twenty20. Shoaib Malik’s beautifully paced innings acting as an ideal foil to Afridi, his accurate bowling and calm, assured catching was another highlight, but probably mentioned only as an after thought. The 2005 Ashes evokes memories of Flintoff’s exploits, Vaughan’s calm captaincy and Pietersen’s audacity, but Matthew Hoggard’s sustained hostility is probably in the mind’s recycle bin. Thus, the subconscious mind has already devalued Shoaib Malik and Matthew Hoggard. For the same reasons stocks with sound fundamentals are not always the favorites with investors.

Wars are won in small battles. Some cricketers play out of their skins in the earlier stages of a long campaign, setting the trend and laying the launching pad. Others deliver towards the end. The later acts remain etched in the mind like acid on a photographic plate, the former consigned to the back burner. Any discussion on India’s 1983 World Cup win would centre on Kapil’s 175 and his catches in the final, Sandhu’s magical delivery accounting for Greenidge, Srikanth’s daredevilry and Mohinder Amarnath’s all-round contribution. Yashpal Sharma, who compiled a fighting 89 in the path-breaking opening tie against the all-conquering West Indies, who top scored against Australia in the do-or-die league encounter; who guided India to the doorstep of victory in the semi-final, barely finds a mention in the footnote.

Low-profile men suffer from a double whammy. Their high points are under-priced and their failures, therefore, magnified. If a promising youngster has to be given a break, then they are seen as the most easily expendable. Doug Walters was overlooked for the 1981 Ashes, despite making plenty of runs in both legs of the twin series against India and New Zealand played earlier as the selectors wanted to blood Trevor Chappell and Dirk Welham.

When the superstars return, the more unassuming bear the cross. Aaqib Javed who scalped 16 wickets at 19.56 apiece in three Tests in 1995 against Sri Lanka found himself in the cold when Wasim and Waqar returned. He was forgotten by the selectors who preferred to plump for Mohammad Akram as the third seamer and played very few Tests after that. Sure, sneaking under the radar works your way occasionally. Mohammad Azharuddin became the Indian captain precisely for that reason. After all, it evens out in the end.

Comments (1)

November 14, 2009

Cricket and generation Xbox

Posted by Cricinfo - 1 week ago in Cricket videogames

From Suhas Cadmabi, United States

	Cricket video games haven't achieved the popularity of those of other sports © Getty Images

If age were purely a reflection of musical taste, I'd be in my forties. Common reactions to my choice in artists range from amazement ("Man, that's what my dad used to play during his IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] hostel days!"), to outright concern ("Don't you listen to anything contemporary?"). And yet, thanks to the advent of Guitar Hero, a number of teenage cousins suddenly want to engage me in discussions on how Hendrix died young, or whether Mick Jagger was indeed a better frontman than Roger Daltrey. I'm only too happy to indulge them.

The argument here is that lifestyle choices of the urban teenage demographic are being increasingly shaped by the gaming industry, and this also applies to the sports they consume. Take, for example, the schoolkid who aspires to be able to talk football one day with his classmates; he might find the latest edition of EA Sports' FIFA series to be a very handy companion to the live action on the telly. And, going all the way with Manchester United in the virtual world provides the perfect supplement to watching them clinch the Premiership title in the real one.

By the same token, cricket-based games have been rather conspicuous by their inability to make a dent in this market. Could this be a reason for the (perceived) decline in popularity of the game among metropolitan kids, especially in India? An uncle of mine certainly agrees. We were discussing a Cricinfo article in which the author, intrigued by the fact that his fifteen-year-old son should find greater pleasure in watching Thierry Henry and Arsenal than Rahul Dravid and India, observed that cricket appeared to be "reasonably popular, but not cool" among his son's peer group.

I asked my uncle why cricket wasn't being followed by that particular age group, in the way we might expect it to be. He replied: "When we were growing up we used to play a lot of cricket - with a rubber or tennis ball, or even a regular cricket ball. We used to play in the backyard, in the corridors of our apartment buildings, in the garage and on the road. Many of us had access to reasonably large grounds where we could play cricket on full-length pitches. Today's kids do not have this opportunity. "Their experience with sports is mostly second-hand. They either watch them on TV, or play a video-game version. I think the latter significantly determines the games they follow on television; it is easy to enjoy football or basketball on a Playstation, but cricket, especially Test cricket, simply can't be ported to that medium. To me, this lack of a first-hand experience with the game, or even a reasonable second-hand simulation alternative has drawn our kids away from the magic of cricket as we know it. Blame it on the urban jungle."

I remember learning a great deal about Basketball and Ice Hockey thanks to EA Sports' NBA Live and NHL titles, but figuring out the nuances of cricket through a video game would certainly have been a tough ask. The many variables in cricket which might come into effect - pitch conditions, weather, the state of the ball - are best understood by playing in real conditions, and learning from experience. Hitherto, computer games have been unable to capture the feel of the real thing. When I look back at some of the cricket-based games released over the years (EA Sports' Cricket, and Codemasters' Brian Lara Cricket), these observations ring true; the void is yet to be filled.

Perhaps then, cricket might lend itself better to a strategy-based gameplay than the arcade or simulation type, but efforts in that direction have been equally unsuccessful. International Cricket Captain, the game's answer to Football Manager, enjoys a cult following in the UK; I suspect it will remain at that. How many of us would salivate at the thought of leading Sussex to the County Championship?

And, years ago, Anil Kumble teamed up with Ananth Narayan (a contributor to It Figures, the stats blog on Cricinfo) to come out with a strategy game called Googly. It addressed some of these issues in theory but, in the words of Indian blogger Sidin Vadukut, had "graphics reminiscent of a Rohrschach Test and gameplay marginally more engaging than digging one’s nose." I'm not about to suggest that cricket resonates less among the urban youth of today only because it happens to be poorly represented in the gaming market; there are several other possible reasons, but maybe this factor needs to be looked at more closely by the game's fans.

After all, Lalit Modi has made no secret of the fact that the upwardly mobile youngster - who might otherwise be saving up to buy a much-coveted Arsenal jersey or Ferrari jacket - is a major component of the IPL's target audience. If he and his marketing team are serious about wooing this particular segment, they could do worse than investing in a specialised team of cricket-loving game developers, so that they might finally come up with the definitive cricketing video game.

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November 11, 2009

Restructure the game around Twenty20

Posted by Cricinfo - 1 week, 3 days ago in Twenty20

From Geoff Willetts, United Kingdom

	Club cricket could well be the wave of the future © Global Cricket Ventures-BCCI

Much has been made in recent weeks of the need to rejuvenate the traditional forms of cricket. In the case of Test cricket, there have been suggestions of Test championships, night-time games with coloured balls, and reducing the number of days from five to four. In the one- day arena, there have been an even greater number of “innovative” ideas, such as split-innings of 25 overs each, reducing innings to 40 overs a side, more Powerplays, less Powerplays, and removal of bowling and fielding restrictions.

To get to the heart of the matter, the force behind this drive for change - as so often is the way - is money. Every sport needs to grow to survive. The ICC’s route to growth has been to significantly increase the overall number of international matches played, particularly in recent times with seven-match one day series becoming more common.

It is a continuation of a trend, however. In the last ten years there have been on average around 140 games of one-day cricket played per year, an almost 50% increase in matches per year when compared to the ten years from 1989-99. Unfortunately for the ICC, the size of the traditional supporter’s wallet has not grown at the same rate, and perhaps neither has their enthusiasm. Hence, to fill the stadium twice as often, and retain the same number of TV viewers per game, probably requires a market comprising twice as many cricket enthusiasts.

So, how to broaden the appeal of cricket? The rejuvenation suggestions mooted above have all been made in the name of increasing the interest of the game to the masses. The goal has been to try and introduce more excitement into what has always been a purist’s sport - one complete with its own set of complicated rules, statistics, and jargon.

Looking at other sporting codes, some have done it well, others not so well. Baseball is an example where teams can now play more than 160 games per year, any night of the week. Matches are typically played in packed stadiums even though games can be long, boring, the outcomes predictable, and with a number of dead rubbers.

Football is the same. In the UK, the big premiership clubs play 60-odd games per season, and every year the same teams inevitably dominate. Still each game is passionately supported by thousands of fans. A third example, rugby league, also prospered in Australia well beyond its original “working class” fan base.

The formats and rules for these sports have not changed significantly in recent history, yet the crowds still show up, every week. The three examples above all have one major thing in common: simplicity. You can explain the sport and its basic rules to someone who knows next to nothing about it in around 60 seconds.

Cricket is not simple - say the words “dead ball”, “reverse-sweep”, “LBW”, “silly mid-on” and “batting Powerplay” to the average American and their eyes glaze over. That’s before you tell them games can last five days and be declared a draw at the end.

In its present form rugby union is not simple either. Like cricket, it has been dogged by dwindling support in recent years. Both codes have made repeated attempts to improve their respective spectacles, and whenever this has resulted in increasing the complexity of the game, they have failed. An easy lesson for cricket’s administrators is therefore if you must do anything, then simpler is better.

Realistically, simplification of one-day cricket and “commercialising” Test cricket (a euphemism for day-night excursions) will not be enough to allow cricket to grow to meet the escalating financial demands of the game’s administrators. Stadiums need to be filled, and games that last a minimum of seven hours simply won’t cut it - even in the most simplified form imaginable.

This is where Twenty20 comes in. Twenty20 is the only true vehicle to grow the appeal of the game beyond the niche market that is one-day and Test cricket. Administrators have made no secret of their efforts to be “careful” to not saturate the market with Twenty20 matches. Too much Twenty20, they believe, will result in a failure to preserve the sanctity of the traditional forms of the game.

I would argue that limiting Twenty20 puts unsustainable pressure on the traditional formats to meet growth targets. The only option available is to tamper with the traditional form of the game, pushing it further away from its roots. How do you cater to the marked demand?

Increase the number of Twenty20 matches. This is the money spinner that will effectively fund Test and one-day cricket for the purists.

Play less “meaningless” one-day cricket, with shorter bilateral series and points systems that contribute to tournament seedings.

Continue to play Test cricket as it is today, but ensure a spread of games where the top teams don’t only play each other as often, and the likes of Sri Lanka, West Indies and New Zealand play more games.

Done this way, the masses would get to see the games they are interested in, and the purists can still enjoy the traditional formats the way they are.

Now here is where the radical ideas begin. I would propose that the way to rejuvenate the game is to completely restructure it around Twenty20, where games are played once or twice a week (like football) for six months across a nine to ten-month season every year. This would allow for specific windows for Test and one-day cricket to then be created, and there would be additional rest periods for players as seasons overlap. Tests would count towards a Test championship, with a final to be played perhaps every 2-3 years, and one-day matches would all count towards seedings for World Cup and Champions Trophy style events that alternate every two years.

The club-based format, that has worked for most other sports, including football, rugby league, rugby union, baseball, NFL, AFL, ice hockey and basketball, would be the logical platform to do this. Additionally, a club-based format will enhance the relevance of international fixtures between countries, again in the same way as it does in football. The increased number of short Twenty20 games, coupled with a lower number of ODIs and shorter Test series spread across the year will relieve pressure on players complaining of burnout (though again, the baseballers playing 160 games a year don’t tend to complain about burnout, neither do the midfielders playing premiership football who run up to 15km per game, 60 times a year. But that’s an issue to be dealt with another time).

A model for the new system might look something like this:

Three Twenty20 premier leagues operate across different seasons around the world. These might be in India, Australia, and England (as examples)

Players play primarily for their Twenty20 club, and there are clubs from each of the eight major nations in every league. (For instance, New Zealand has a few teams in the Australian competition; Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have teams in the Indian competition; and the West Indies and South Africa teams in the English competition)

Each club has a number of feeder “first-class” teams who play local Twenty20, first-class and one-day cricket throughout the season in an attempt to earn a place in both the club’s premier Twenty20 team and their national one-day and Test team.

Matches will be scheduled such that the top players are not always playing Twenty20 and there is time for some domestic first-class cricket.

International windows lasting three to four weeks (enough time for two-three Tests and three ODIs), occur at four points in the year, perhaps December/January, March/April, July/August, and October/November - whatever suits the seasons of the most international teams best. In between, the club Twenty20 and feeder matches are played.

There would be no requirement for a player to represent a club from his country, in the same way Europeans and South Americans play in the English Football leagues. Granted, this is quite a radical idea, and it is hard to see the ICC agreeing to its format and implementation, let alone the cricket boards and players of each of the major nations. There would be multiple obstacles to work out, including how to share revenues, player allegiances, salary issues, club v country debates and all the other things that sports such as football deal with today. But in football there is evidence that the idea can work, and work well.

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November 6, 2009

A cricketing renaissance

Posted by Cricinfo - 2 weeks, 1 day ago in Twenty20

From Ram Srinivasan, United States

	Tillakaratne Dilshan shows off his innovative scoop shot © AFP

A lot of ink and bits have been spent discussing the evil that is Twenty20 and the IPL. However these primarily identify the effects of Twenty20 cricket, good or bad, on the players and the business of cricket. The focus here is different; understand the effect of Twenty20s on the game of cricket. Not the business of cricket.

Batting The batting equation has changed considerably. Ten wickets and twenty overs, instead of fifty overs. This has encouraged, or even forced, batsmen to dance on the thin line that separates recklessness and aggression. The most famous addition to the cricketing manual in recent years has been the Dilscoop. While it was pioneered by Tillakaratne Dilshan, it is fast catching on. I have had to sit through Lendl Simmons try, and miserably fail, to play the shot at least five times during the Champions League Twenty20.

The reverse-sweep, which has been the pariah of cricketing shots, is now legit and has been endowed citizenship status. Even as late as 2007, a batsman getting out on the reverse-sweep was morally culpable for any subsequent defeat. Twenty20 cricket has simply increased the percentage in the shot. First, with a number of captains (foolishly, if I might add) deciding to do away with the third man in Twenty20, the reward has increased. This has motivated players to practice the shot in the nets, reducing the risk in the shot.

I see a trend to exploit the vast uncovered expanse behind the wicketkeeper for runs. All recent innovations, the reverse-sweep, the upper-cut and the Dilscoop serve to illustrate my point.

Though Kevin Pietersen played the switch-hit first in an ODI, the key question here is whether he would have developed the shot if there were no Twenty20s. While the best answer to this can only be provided by the man himself, we can speculate. I might be wrong but barring the upper-cut, I can't think of a single new shot that was developed in the period 1990-2005. The Stanford game was announced and in less than a week KP unfurled his switch-hit. While precedence is no proof of causality, it is a strong indicator.

Bowling In gully cricket, we have a brand of bowlers called the Nerus. Nerus bowl with an offspinner’s, or left-arm orthodox bowler’s, action but the ball does not spin. They simply fire it into your legs. The word has its roots in the Tamil word near, which means straight. Nerus are now becoming a regular feature and case in point being Sulieman Benn, Chris Gayle and David Hussey. Real spinners like Harbhajan Singh are resorting to Nerus, the 2007 World Twenty20 semi-finals against Australia being an instance.

In terms of fast bowling, I have noticed two new weapons. The first is the 'oxymoronic' slow bouncer that has been used to good effect by Brett Lee, and with lesser success by Dale Steyn. The second is the slow yorker pioneered by Lasith Malinga that got him the first two in his four in four trick.

Tactical Twenty20 has been criticised for providing an unequal battleground between the bat and the ball. While 'unequal' is fairly subjective, and even if we do manage to agree on a universal definition I fail to see why this is of any concern. It is the same for both the teams.

The biggest effect of Twenty20 cricket, as I see it, is the return of spinners to prominence. During the Champions League, Nathan Hauritz did a Dipak Patel and opened the bowling for New South Wales. Even Dilshan opened the bowling for Delhi Daredevils, and less than a week before that Trinidad & Tobago played with three complete spinners, Sherwin Ganga, Dave Mohammed and Samuel Badree. What the World Twenty20s and the IPL have shown is that spinners are effective in keeping the runs down, either directly or by taking wickets, in the middle overs.

It would be wrong to claim that without Twenty20 cricket we would not have these innovations. Twenty20 has only fast tracked these into the cricketing game, and in the old order, they might have been spread over a decade or so.

As I see it, cricket, is undergoing a cultural movement akin to the Renaissance. In the spirit of individualism, players are realising their worth and shaping their own destiny. Coaching manuals, which were supposed to be scared, are being questioned. As established, we are undoubtedly seeing a period of great innovations. What is missing is a sense of regard for classical antiquity, ie, Test cricket.

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November 4, 2009

Grandmasters of cricket

Posted by Cricinfo - 2 weeks, 3 days ago in Rankings

From Mahendra Mapagunaratne, Canada

	Which of these legends is not in the ICC Hall of Fame? © Getty Images

I feel that ICC should commence an honorary title system for the greatest players in the game. One may coin a suitable title but for the sake of this article I suggest Grandmaster or Cricketmaster. No one except the most passionate cricket fans would know whether a certain player is in the ICC Hall of Fame by hearing his name, but certainly a Cricketmaster/Grandmaster title would make people note that he has been honoured and even later generations with little idea of history would realise a certain player with a Grandmaster Title besides his name would have been special in the past. Wouldn't it be marvellous for instance to address Sachin Tendulkar as Grandmaster Sachin Tendulkar? ICC could take a cue from chess. Here is the chess hierarchy in descending order: Super Grandmaster [SGM], Grandmaster [GM], International Master [IM]. I think if you poll the players they are bound to like the idea of having a title beside their names.

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November 2, 2009

Where are my slippers?

Posted by Cricinfo - 2 weeks, 5 days ago in Fielding

From Mark Browning, Australia

	Limited-overs cricket has reduced the importance of the slip cordon © Getty Images

The popular saying goes, “Bowlers win matches.” In the longest form of the game they can’t without help. First-class and Test matches are also won by guys who are usually the least athletic members of the team. They are the fieldsmen who don’t run much and stand with their hands on their knees; sticking out their backsides at the spectators. For these are the “slippers”, the unsung heroes of Test cricket.

And they have been the true litmus test as to what constitutes a great team. Without the support of “slippers” many bowling legends of the game might be forgotten. Fifty-over cricket diminished the importance of the “slipper” while Twenty20 makes the spot almost redundant. How many know that Cameron White is a fine snaffler of edges? Will a time come when it won’t matter if he’s any good in the cordon or not? One of the main reasons why the Indian team were able to push their hosts in the 2007-08 series Down Under was the reliability of Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid in the cordon in making the most of the opportunities provided.

In his final summers Richie Benaud’s television commentary role has been reduced to intermittent observer, but he was spot-on when he lamented the absence of slip-catching specialists. Their type played a large part in Australia’s dominance in times gone by. Benaud himself was superb in the gully and in his era Neil Harvey took some beauties.

It was Bob Simpson who really turned slips catching into an art form. In the classic coaching manual, Cricket; The Australian Way, Simpson’s whole chapter is devoted to “soft hands in the cordon”. “When I played Neil Harvey was in the cordon with me and he was in the top bracket,” he said. “Clive Lloyd was an excellent slips fieldsman in the great West Indian sides of the 1980s. I always admired the work of Colin Cowdrey during my day and I thought Greg Chappell was brilliant as well.”

The West Indies also had Viv Richards, Richie Richardson and at times Roger “Inspector Gadget Arms” Harper taking the fliers frequently on offer. In the mid 70s in Australia both Ian and Greg Chappell made sure the explosive efforts of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were not wasted. And their support staff was also excellent. Ian Redpath was great close in, and Doug Walters was capable of horizontal acrobatics. Offspinner Ashley Mallett had two great summers in the gully between 1974 and 1976. Legendary Australian cricket writer, Ray Robinson labelled the zone, “Octopus Alley”. Ian Redpath said everyone was at a constant fever pitch of anticipation with Lillee and Thomson bowling. Their expectation and skill resulted in even the toughest chances being taken.

As a quality pairing though Australia were never in better shape than when Mark Taylor stood at first and Mark Waugh at second slip. They were equally brilliant catching spin or pace and added pressure to opposing batsmen who must have believed any mistake would be their last. Taylor like Colin Cowdrey and Greg Chappell at one time topped the tree for Test catches. In one of the greatest fielding feats of all time he won the Man-of-the-Match award in a one-day international against West Indies at the SCG in 1992 for taking four slips catches.

Mark Waugh, who has now be pushed to second spot in the Test catches list by Rahul Dravid, has said, “Slip is a position where you have to be a natural at it. Really, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You have to have reflexes and the ability to concentrate every ball. You might be in there all day and the ball comes to you once and you have to be ready for it. It’s a tough spot.” Waugh’s spectacular ability was best demonstrated with the low right-handed horizontal dive when he caught Alec Stewart at Leeds in 1993. It is available on recorded vision and one of Waugh’s own personal favourites. The anticipation, speed and flexibility will leave any viewer gob smacked.

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