Gautam Gambhir is emerging as the leading batsman of the new generation © AFP

India’s magnificent performance that helped draw the second Test was nearly as satisfying as the comprehensive victory in the first, and for a very different reason. While the greatest batting line-up in the world has won Tests in style, once memorably after following on, it has sometimes disappointed by its inability to bat through six or seven sessions in the second innings. When the last century has been scored, and the final figures are tallied, greatness will be decided as much by the ability to win as the skill to bat on for a draw.

It has been a decade since India batted 180 overs as they did in Napier, to draw a Test match. That was in Mohali, when centuries from Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid saw them bat through 183 overs to save a match where they had been dismissed for 83 in the first innings.

By batting for over ten and a half hours, one of the side’s most attacking batsmen, Gautam Gambhir, indicated that at 27, he is emerging as a leading batsman of the new generation. He is also the allrounder of the new generation, a certainty in all three forms of the game. Among batsmen, only Virender Sehwag and MS Dhoni can make that claim.

Continue reading "Enjoying a draw and a win in almost equal measure"

But the fact is, Twenty20 and IPL are rewriting not just the rules of cricket, but carrying it forward into the new century.

Many years ago in an essay on the future of sport, I had written that international sport would break away from the narrow confines of nationalism, time and place. The example I gave then were the Olympic Games, which was an exercise in jingoism (the examples are too well known to bear repetition here), and thanks to the arrival of sponsors and
professional athletes might soon become a set of competitions among corporate houses rather than countries. Coke and Pepsi and Adidas, and many such would be in the happy position of being able to call upon their players from across the world to participate in their colours.

This is already happening with Formula One. It is Ferrari versus McLaren versus Renault and so on. Drivers are professionals hired for their sporting prowess and not dependant on country of origin. It is Ferrari which wins, not Italy. The only concession to tradition is the playing of the national anthem, which, considering everything, is incongruous.

Continue reading "IPL's move is inevitable"

Briefly, in the last two away series, in Sri Lanka and Australia, India
seemed to revert to type as poor travellers, losing the opening Tests in
Colombo and Melbourne respectively. By winning in Hamilton they have
arrested that brief trend, and got back on track with their record in the
five years before that where they won first Tests in Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Zimbabwe and South Africa and drew the opener in Pakistan, West Indies,
Bangladesh and England.

For decades, India suffered from the First Test Blues where, after losing
the first Test they found it impossible to get back into the series. In
this decade, they have reversed that record to a large extent, and shaken
off their reputation as poor starters. Hamilton, therefore, is important
both for itself, and for what it says about the recent Indian teams.
Perhaps in the past, apart from the problems of acclimatisation, there was
also the mindset which was happy to settle for a draw at best. Captains
were reluctant to take risks, and in cricket, as in life, fortune tends to
favour the brave.

Continue reading "No First Test Blues for aggressive India"

The one-day series in New Zealand is testimony to the amazing pace at which
this form has shed its complexity, rid itself of formula and arrived at a
simplicity that might, in the end, bring about its own ruin. A couple of
years ago, the complaint against the 50-over game was that it had become
too predictable, with a beginning, middle and end that, like Greek drama,
followed a pattern. The technical committee of the ICC then went about
introducing some complexity - the revolving substitute, the Powerplay -
which it hoped would shake the game up and make it more interesting.

However it is not legislation that is pushing one-day cricket now, but the
influence of Twenty20 that is making it advance to the past. Rather
abruptly, the game has been reduced to its simplest terms - hit into the
stands. And the ease with which batsmen do this is making a mockery of
tactics, field placings and bowling plans. There might be a shakeout soon
enough, with bowlers righting the balance with something new - but history
is against them. Bowlers haven’t had as much of an influence in the
shorter game as they’ve had over Test cricket.

In a sense, this is going back to the future, at least where Indian
cricket is concerned. In the 1970s, when India were reluctant players of
the then new one-day format, batsmen played as if hitting sixes and
boundaries was all that the game was about. Other countries had already
worked out that singles were important, and by the 1980s, Bob Simpson, the
Australian coach had demonstrated that reducing the number of dot balls
was crucial. Slog overs were designated thus.

Continue reading "Twenty20 driving ODIs closer to extinction "

The philosopher Umberto Eco has written thus about pornographic movies, "whose true and sole aim is to stimulate the spectator's desire, from beginning to end, and in such a way that, while his desire is stimulated by scenes of various and varied copulations, the rest of the story counts for nothing. Substitute 'six-hitting' for 'copulations' and you have a pretty accurate description of the Christchurch one-day international.

Thirty one sixes were hit on the day, and cricket, ostensibly a game between bat and ball was reduced to a game between bat and bat. This was cricket as pornography, in the finest traditions (if we can use that word for a format that is so young) of Twenty20.

It was magnificent, they said of the charge of the Light Brigade (cannons to the left of them, etc), but it was not war. Likewise, the one-dayer was magnificent, but it was not cricket. How can it be when bowlers were around merely to play straight men to batsmen who supplied the punch with all the joy of stand-up comics?

Continue reading "Bat and ball make a porno"

	How the trauma has affected the talented, happy Sri Lankan cricketers will not be known immediately © AFP

I was in denial most of yesterday. Perhaps the terrorists didn’t actually mean to kill the players, I reasoned. Perhaps they merely wanted publicity. How could a rocket launcher miss from so close? Or a grenade refuse to go off? I was in denial because I had bought into the prevailing myth of the region - that cricketers would never be touched. Not in India, not in Sri Lanka, not even in Pakistan. No organization would want the adverse publicity.

But terrorists are not in the public relations business. They have gone beyond attracting minds and hearts to their cause and are perpetrators of the 21st century’s greatest threat, the motiveless murder. Old certainties have been overthrown by new realities; you can be the most stylish batsman of your generation and still be shot at in someone else’s war. You can be the finest left-handed batsman in the world and still take shrapnel in your shoulder on your way to work.

Continue reading "Dealing with the demons "

	Anyone, anything to do with the ICL must be banned © Cricinfo Ltd

If the Indian board had its way, it would, metaphorically speaking, dig a mass grave for the likes of Kapil Dev and anyone remotely connected with the ICL. Perhaps erase their impressive records from international cricket. Pretend they didn’t exist, make them un-people. How dare they take our copied idea and run with it originally? Anyone, anything to do with the ICL must be banned.

Grocers who supply the Kapil Dev household with their monthly foodstuff must be banned. Butchers who supply the meat must be asked to leave Delhi. Anyone seen saying ‘Hello’ to ICL players, from taxi drivers to bookshop owners to airline pilots, must have their licenses revoked. No one whose initials are ICL - Inderjit Chandra Loknath, for example, or Ian Carmichael Lewis - should be allowed to play for India, or get his meat from the same butcher as Kapil Dev.

Silly? Ridiculous? Perhaps. But not sillier or more ridiculous than the board getting all pompous and deciding that Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik cannot play in a friendly Twenty20 game with a bunch of old timers just because a player involved, Hamish Marshall, once played in the ICL (he no longer does). What did the board achieve, apart from showing New Zealand Cricket who is boss (the cricket world knows that already), depriving the two Indians of some cricket, even if it is of the pointless Twenty20 variety, and robbing fans of the pleasure of watching them play?

The board never misses an opportunity to stick it into its counterparts around the world. This is a strange mixture of arrogance and uncertainty; of egotism and diffidence. How much longer before it insists India will not tour a country unless a certain number of Indian victories are written into the contract? Or - the more likely scenario - the rest of the world gets together, tells the Indian board to stuff itself and gives up on the money (India’s trump card) in exchange for self-respect? India argues the rest cannot exist without them, but the reverse is also true: India cannot exist without the rest.

The louder he talked of his honour, said Emerson, the faster we counted our spoons. The more often India speaks of principles, the louder grow the guffaws. This is the board which sees no clash of interests in its secretary (and perhaps others) owning a team that participates in its IPL. This is the board which has given itself the authority to clear the commentators who sing its praises on television.

It would be a pity if, just as the players work themselves into the top position in the world rankings, the board implodes with its own self-importance and India become the pariahs of world cricket.