http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/ en Copyright 2009 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:03:59 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

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.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/enjoying_a_win_and_a_draw_in_a.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/enjoying_a_win_and_a_draw_in_a.php India in New Zealand, 2008-09 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:03:59 +0000

It will be a little difficult to swallow at first. The players themselves have spoken about the confusion over ‘home and away’ matches. There is concern that crowds may not be as supportive of the city-teams when they move to play abroad. Experts on television have drawn derisive laughter over the question: ‘How do you expect a supporter in Yorkshire to get excited over a team from Chennai?’ 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. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/ipls_move_is_inevitable.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/ipls_move_is_inevitable.php Indian Premier League Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:59:57 +0000

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. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/no_first_test_blues_for_aggres.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/no_first_test_blues_for_aggres.php India in New Zealand, 2008-09 Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:22:36 +0000

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. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/twenty20_driving_odis_closer_t.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/twenty20_driving_odis_closer_t.php Twenty20 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:13:24 +0000

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?]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/bat_and_ball_make_a_porno.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/bat_and_ball_make_a_porno.php India in New Zealand, 2008-09 Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:32:07 +0000

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. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/i_was_in_denial_most.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/03/i_was_in_denial_most.php Shootout in Lahore Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:02:47 +0000

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

  Recently I found myself defending the principle of celebrating it, although I don’t think much of Valentine’s Day itself. Likewise, without being a fan of the ICL or indeed Twenty20 cricket, I have been defending its right to exist without being harassed by the Indian cricket board. Fascism, in one form or another, makes extremists of us all! 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. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/02/the_unpeople_of_icl.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2009/02/the_unpeople_of_icl.php BCCI Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:05:42 +0000

Having decided too early that it was not possible to get England out a second time, India decided to focus on individual records - the bane of Indian cricket © AFP

It is easy - and tempting - to be harsh on the two captains and their teams for the way the series ended, with a giggle preceded by a yawn. But these same teams had given us in Chennai one of the finest Test matches of recent years, and anyway, the series was never going to be about the cricket alone. To begin with, India and England have probably altered the meaning of the word ‘series’. Do two Tests constitute a series? Is this the precursor to the one-Test series? Captains have a responsibility towards Test cricket, especially at a time when interest in this form of the game is waning worldwide. But it cannot be the captains alone. Administrators have an even greater responsibility. The Indian cricket board pays lip service to Test cricket, but shows by its actions that its real interest is the shortest form of the game. Senior board members, who ought to be concerned with the big picture, run private IPL teams - and in this clash of interests, it is Test cricket which loses out. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/safety_first_isnt_always_the_b.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/safety_first_isnt_always_the_b.php Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:13:50 +0000

It has been torture watching this pillar of Indian cricket go through a phase when he couldn’t do anything right © Getty Images

After his successful Test debut following the car accident that cost him his right eye, Tiger Pataudi was asked when he thought he could make runs with only one eye. “When I saw the English bowling,” replied the player who was then not yet 21. Whether Rahul Dravid thought he could make a century when he saw this English team and climb out of the hole he had been inhabiting in recent weeks is difficult to tell. After scores of 3 and 4 in the previous Test, he was probably among only a handful of people who thought that a century was round the corner. Luckily that handful included his captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who made the pertinent point that Dravid would continue to bat at No. 3 in Mohali because shifting him to No. 5 would mean India had already lost three wickets. It also included the selection committee, four of whose members had played for India and were thus able to empathise with a player of proven ability struggling to find his touch.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/dravids_inspirational_comeback.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/dravids_inspirational_comeback.php England in India 2008-09 Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:33:49 +0000

He needs to dine at the high table with the captain, planning strategy and ensuring that India’s pre-eminent position as the home of spin is retained © Getty Images

During the Chennai Test, Harbhajan Singh went past Lance Gibbs’ aggregate to become the second most successful offspinner in the game behind Muttiah Muralitharan. For his 309 wickets, Gibbs played 79 Tests over 18 years; Harbhajan’s 310 have come in ten years and 73 Tests. He is only 28 and given different circumstances might have been pushing for the captaincy. That question does not arise now, with Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a younger man in charge and inspiring the team to famous victories. But on the evidence of the Chennai Test, the question that needs to be asked is this: Is Harbhajan suffering from the No. 1 syndrome, the pressure of being the top spinner in the side? He is trying too hard, bowling too fast and too flat and on a track he should have thrived on, he finished with just four wickets in the match. India’s victory and yet another failure by Rahul Dravid will ensure that the focus will be elsewhere, but India’s leading spinner needs to introspect. He needs to play the kind of mentoring role to the younger spinners that Anil Kumble did when Harbhajan himself was making his debut. He needs to dine at the high table with the captain, planning strategy and ensuring that India’s pre-eminent position as the home of spin is retained. But none of the big picture contribution will be forthcoming if the bowler lacks the confidence that comes from having wickets in the bag.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/harbhajan_should_take_on_a_men.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/harbhajan_should_take_on_a_men.php England in India 2008-09 Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:40:42 +0000

Can Rahul Dravid work his way out of a slump? © AFP

One of the saddest sights in sport is the ageing, once-great player struggling to come to terms with his game in full public glare. Struggling architects who have run out of ideas can repeat themselves or rely on their juniors, struggling politicians can hire a PR agency and bluff their way back into power. But struggling sportsmen have no such cushion: when the goals dry up or the runs stop coming there is no place to hide. The past is no guide to the future. The present is all. Sport is cruel. And right now Rahul Dravid, one of the few players of his generation both loved and respected, finds himself facing the question that two of his contemporaries, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, thought had only one answer. Ganguly gave himself a tension-free Australia series by announcing at the start of it that it would be his last. Kumble’s end was hastened by injury. Even his worst critics, however, hope that over the next two days, as India begin a fourth-innings chase, Dravid rediscovers his old form. He might still decide to quit, but at least that will be out of choice and not because of circumstances. In the recent past, he has been a piece of classical music played at the wrong speed. Even when he has looked good, every note in place, he has suddenly faltered, and even when he hasn’t faltered he has looked like going off key any moment.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/does_dravid_have_one_final_inn.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/does_dravid_have_one_final_inn.php England in India 2008-09 Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:08:57 +0000

The players are putting on a show to help us regain our poise, we must respond by allowing them to find their own peace © AFP

Cricket often stands for something beyond itself. It has been the symbol of an empire and the symbol of the colonies striking back. Cricket matches are seldom bereft of symbolic content; the baggage of history ensures that. No India-Pakistan series, for example, can ever be about the cricket alone. The game takes the shape of the vessel it is poured into - the vessel made from the prevailing political and social thinking of the period. Today in India it stands for anti-terrorism. It is a heavy responsibility. Few matches in recent years have had as much symbolic power as the one set to commence in Chennai. It will be seen, at the very least, as a match between England’s bulldog spirit and India’s resilience. Cliché, yes, but clichés become clichés because they happen to be true. And before we are through, other symbols are bound to be imposed on the game. Sport is convenient that way. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/lets_give_this_clash_what_it_d.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/lets_give_this_clash_what_it_d.php England in India 2008-09 Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:29:28 +0000

England have another 5000 or so kilometres to travel before they land in Chennai and hopefully someone will get close enough to the team to recognise the players and confirm that they have indeed arrived. Security is bound to be a bigger bugbear than the traditional Indian welcome which comprises confusion and noise in equal measure, but the players are not likely to complain. The Indian captain, we must remember, has an entourage of 22 policemen protecting him and an escort car every time he drives out of his home - so we can understand the scale of these things. According to newspaper reports, Mahendra Singh Dhoni is unhappy with this meagre protection, and expressed his unhappiness by ditching his security and riding to the airport on his own. Kevin Pietersen is unlikely to do likewise. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/india_have_a_responsibility_to.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/12/india_have_a_responsibility_to.php England in India 2008-09 Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:48:53 +0000

'If England are forced to return, and come without some of their top players, we will understand' © Getty Images

Either England return to India to play two Test matches and show the terrorists that sport is eternal and sportsmen, nay, a country cannot be bullied into submission or they stay back in England because the situation is fluid, safety is paramount and motivation is low. For most, it is a black-and-white situation. Ranged against human emotions and the futility of sport in times of danger are the symbolism of regained strength and the power of sport in times of danger. What happened in 1984 when Mrs Gandhi was assassinated or in 2005 after the London bombings (both times a cricket tour went ahead) is irrelevant because in neither case was a specific group of people targeted. Any reassurance from security agencies can only sound hollow after what they failed to do to prevent the Mumbai attacks in the first place. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/11/we_ought_not_to_forget.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/11/we_ought_not_to_forget.php Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:07:55 +0000

Sourav Ganguly: big on killer instinct, and backed players regardless of where they came from © AFP

It is possible that we are witnessing the erasure of some of the cliches associated with Indian cricket. The lack of a killer instinct - for so long a catch-all phrase used as excuse for defeats - is not heard any more. Both the Test series against Australia and the one-day series against England have shown that whatever instincts the Indian team might lack, killer instinct isn’t one of them. But there is a wider, happier trend emerging. For years, what many considered a bane of Indian cricket was the “quota” system. Five selectors, one from each geographical region, each with his own compulsions, each with limited knowledge of players in the other zones, picked teams that paid a tribute to the quota system. Many players from weaker zones were accommodated in the national side merely to keep that section of the country happy. Often a better player from another zone was overlooked because there were already too many players from his zone in the team. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/11/enter_killer_instinct_exit_quo.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/longstop/archives/2008/11/enter_killer_instinct_exit_quo.php England in India 2008-09 Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:05:11 +0000