Cricinfo - Wicket to Wicket

Posted by Amit Varma on 04/27/2006 in The two Indias

Well, it's time to wind up this particular discussion. My thanks to Anand Vasu, Ashok Malik, Dileep Premachandran and Prem Panicker for taking part, and to everyone who took the time to comment. We've had divergent views on whether India is getting better at Tests or worse, and on Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly, and many suggestions about how matters can be improved. It is written into the DNA of sport that it defies consensus, and whether India go downhill or uphill from here, I'd expect such a discussion two years from now to have a similar divergence of views. That's the fun!

Comments will be open on earlier posts of this discussion for another two days, and will then be closed. Feel free to have your say until then. And do follow Cricinfo's coverage of India's upcoming tour to West Indies, where some of the questions raised in this discussion will, one hopes, find answers.

Posted by Dileep_Premachandran on 04/24/2006 in The two Indias

The questions that Amit poses are interesting ones, and I think Indian cricket is nearer to finding the answers than it’s ever been.

Are there enough world-class bowlers out there? Yes, and no. Some of the pace-bowling talent that has come through is outstanding. Provided they can stay fit and enthusiastic, and steer clear of the glamour-laziness route that plagued a couple of their predecessors, Munaf Patel and S Sreesanth will have a lot more to offer. Rudra Pratap Singh has already given glimpses of his potential, and Vikram Raj Vir Singh will certainly improve with time and experience. He certainly has the raw pace to trouble batsmen. The key is not to expect too much too soon.

Posted by Prem Panicker on 04/20/2006 in The two Indias

Amit, the word 'produce' seems to imply a well-planned system, a well-honed assembly line, a premium on R&D.

When has that ever been the case with Indian cricket? Our feeder system has traditionally been the streets and gullies and maidans, where the emphasis is on batting and where bowling well is important only to the extent that if you could get a batsman out, you got a turn at bat.

Posted by Sharda Ugra on 04/19/2006 in The two Indias

This post is in response purely to the questions raised in this one -- editor.

Start at the boring bottom: work out what has happened to our fielding in the Tests, particularly our close-in cordon, who are the spinners' biggest allies when playing at home.

Our slip cordon has vanished, there is no specialist bat-pad/short legs and the result of that was there for all to see versus England-B in Mumbai.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04/19/2006 in The two Indias

This discussion was supposed to be about how India fares in the two forms of the game, but somehow got held up around the narrow subject of whether Greg Chappell is good for the team or not. Comparing the Wright-Ganguly pair with Chappell and Dravid is, at this point, somewhat premature. Firstly, Chappell and Dravid haven't been in charge for long enough to pass judgement on them. And secondly, causality can never be so simply ascertained.

There are a multitude of factors that go into the making of a team: the coach, the captain, the selectors, the times, the resources available. That last is a critical point: Wright and Ganguly would certainly have done much better had Mahendra Singh Dhoni been around in their time, and much worse if Virender Sehwag had not. It's a complicated business, determining levels of responsibility.

Anyway, to take this discussion off personalities, let me throw a few questions to the participants.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04/18/2006 in The two Indias

Although not a part of this discussion, Different Strokes contributor Krishna Kumar has an excellent post up on the topic we are discussing: "Bringing some perspective." Do read.

This discussion will, meanwhile, continue late tonight or tomorrow. It ain't over yet!

Posted by Anand Vasu on 04/16/2006 in The two Indias

Coming into this debate I feel a bit like Yuvraj Singh did a few years back. It was great to be part of it, and to contribute, but perhaps I was a few places too far down the order, for Dileep Premachandran and Prem Panicker have already put the team well on the way to the target, leaving me with little to do. I think it has been quite comprehensively established that there is no decline to speak of in Tests, while in ODIs India have gone from being a team that went into the fifth match of a bilateral series 2-2 with such regularity that it was a joke, to one that presses so hard on the pedal that series are being decided at the earliest possible juncture.

There has been a quantum shift in what we want to do, and the "we" in that sentence is worth looking at. While all the stakeholders that are involved in Indian cricket broadly want one thing – success for the team in all forms of the game, it might be useful to see how the immediate, short-term, and long-term goals of these parties are set.

Posted by Prem Panicker on 04/15/2006 in The two Indias

Presuming for the sake of argument that the breast-beating over the Test side has to do with Greg Chappell's tenure as coach (a presumption based on Ashok Malik's kick-off argument about the coach's Machiavellian machinations), what exactly are we talking about?

Posted by Dileep_Premachandran on 04/14/2006 in The two Indias

India’s prosperity in the one-day game, and austere times in the Test arena should surprise no one that’s even remotely clued into the game. The more complex skill-sets needed for the longer version mean that revitalisation will take longer than it would in the one-dayers, where a fresh face or three can engineer an immediate turnaround. Frankly, it’s laughable to read anguished columns about India’s decline as a Test side. Decline implies a previous state of excellence, a tall claim for a team that hasn’t won a series of note outside the subcontinent since Rahul Dravid was playing schools cricket.

There were three great results in the time that Sourav Ganguly and John Wright guided the team beyond the turbulent waters of the match-fixing scandal. The first was a stunning home win against Australia, the result of three scarcely believable individual performances – VVS Laxman and Dravid (never forget that he was Butch Cassidy to Laxman’s Sundance Kid) at Kolkata, and Harbhajan Singh over the final two Tests. That was followed nearly three years later by a draw in Australia, albeit against a side lacking the irreplaceable Glenn McGrath, and an epochal first series win in Pakistan, against opponents riddled with problems.

Posted by Ashok Malik on 04/13/2006 in The two Indias

I blame Greg Chappell. I wouldn’t want to call him Dr Faustus – too literary and dramatic a metaphor for someone I’ve come to associate with low cunning – but he’s struck a bargain with the devil, in this case with one-day cricket.

Chappell knows he’s here for a year – I can’t see him sticking around in India after summer 2007. He knows he’s coaching the team of a society that can’t tell the difference between good cricket and facile victories against an English C team. He knows he’ll make a fortune if he wins India the World Cup. He’s ready to pay a small price for it – scupper the Indian Test team.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04/12/2006 in The two Indias

The Indian side seems oddly scizophernic, doesn't it? India played lukewarm cricket in the Tests in Pakistan, losing the series 0-1, and then were held to a series draw by an England side racked by injury. The one-day side, on the other hand, has won 16 of the last 20 games it has played -- I'm writing while the Jamshedpur one-dayer is in progress -- and all of the last 15 in which it has chased. India appear to be serious contenders for the 2007 World Cup, but are slipping in Tests. What causes this difference?

To discuss this, we've assembled Anand Vasu, Ashok Malik, Dileep Premachandran and Prem Panicker. Over the next few days we'll talk about the various factors that have caused India's resurgance in ODIs and the dangers that lie ahead, as well as the reasons for their dismal Test performances, and what can be done about them. Watch this space.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04/07/2006 in The age of batting

Many thanks to the participants who agreed to take part in this discussion: Bob Woolmer, Gideon Haigh, John Stern and Sambit Bal were all pretty much agreed that the shift in the balance of the game is worrying, and something needs to be done about it. Some suggestions came forth: Bob recommended (here and here) that the bowlers be allowed to make the ball more conducive to reverse swing by rubbing it in the batsman's footholds; Gideon wanted artifically short boundaries to be restored to their original length as they "advantage a particular kind of mediocre slogger, introducing greater uniformity into the game"; and John mused on the prospect of allowing uncovered pitches.

What Bob and Gideon and John want is irrelevant, one would think, if the majority of cricket lovers like run-filled matches, for the cricket boards, understandably focussing on the bottomline, will cater to the masses. But is this a misconception? Do you want a contest between Bat and Bat or Bat and Ball? What about your friends, and all the cricket lovers you know? Are the default assumptions of the authorities all wrong? If so, how do you -- and I understand that 'you' are not one homogenous mass -- communicate this to them?

Thanks for all the comments so far -- comments on this and the previous posts will remain open until Sunday night. We hope you enjoyed the discussion.

Posted by Sambit Bal on 04/05/2006 in The age of batting

A wicked thought flashed in my mind after two of the first three balls of the one-day match between India and England at Goa passed the off stump about a foot above the ground: what if this turns out be a sub-100 affair? Would the ICC send out inspectors under their new regulations for pitch monitoring? Would Goa become the first venue to be banished?

A pitch that isn¹t fit for cricket ought be banished. But who will decide what is not fit for and how? Physical danger to batsmen is a reasonable criterion. A Test match at Sabina Park was once abandoned because the state of the newly laid pitch was deemed dangerous. The other concern should be about a pitch making it impossible for players to exhibit their skills. A pitch that produces ankle-high bounce hardly gives batsmen a chance?

Posted by Gideon Haigh on 04/03/2006 in The age of batting

Like Bob Woolmer, I’m grateful for the many interesting commentaries on my remarks. This is clearly a topic that exercises many nimble minds, although some of my contentions many not have been completely grasped. Many respondents, for instance, took my reference to the 1984-85 Worrell Trophy series as being rheumy-eyed nostalgia. In these Panglossian times, it seems, one cannot even describe the past without being accused of trying to bring it back; my only purpose was simply to illustrate how different the game has become in less than a generation.

I think it’s worth contemplating what we would be saying if the issue was the other way around. What if the average one-day score was in sharp decline? What if Test teams were regularly being bowled out for 150? My suspicion is that the comments here would be twice as long, and thrice as anxious. The perception would be that the game was in crisis, and people would be recommending that the cricket ball be replaced by a beach ball, and bowlers be restricted to running in off two paces. As for bowlers getting smashed all over the park – well, we can live with that.

Posted by John Stern on 04/01/2006 in The age of batting

Bowlers will tell you, with heavy heart and knackered limbs, that it's always been a batsman's game. Stereotypically, batsmen were the amateurs who ruled the game (and plenty else besides) while the bowlers were the professionals paid to amuse the amateurs by bowling at them.

But we do seem to have reached a strange point in the journey where one doesn't have to look hard for conspiracy theories. This is the age of the batsman yet within the last 10 years or so, there have been huge rows about ball-tampering and chucking. Bowlers accused of either or both have essentially been criminalised, treated with the sort of disdain normally reserved for aging rockers caught doing unspeakable things in south Asia. Yet there is barely a murmur and a stifled yawn when a manufacturer has to withdraw a bat from production because MCC deems it illegal. If Test batsmen the world over couldn't get the ball off the square then the reactionaries might have a point. But imagine where we¹d be without doosras and reverse swing: 200 for none at lunch and bored out of our minds, that's where.

Posted by Sambit Bal on 03/31/2006 in The age of batting

Though this discussion is titled "The age of batting,” inevitably, the starting point has been that match. I caught the last 25 overs on television. I had spent the whole day out, and when I first found out the score on my mobile phone, South Africa were about 100 in 12 overs. And since I thought it was a day-and-night match, it took me a while to figure out that they were chasing, and chasing 434.

I watched every ball after I reached home, and even my little daughter, who, despite my best efforts, has rarely betrayed any affection for cricket, was hooked. And on cricinfo.com, we called it the Greatest Ever Match, and we were perhaps the first ones do so because our headline went up a few seconds after Mark Boucher hit the winning four.

Posted by Bob Woolmer on 03/30/2006 in The age of batting

I was interested in all of the feedback to my original article: thank you! On reflection I felt it necessary to qualify some of my statements, and indeed to respond to those who mentioned the type of ball involved! The ball story is close to my heart: amazingly the cricket ball over the years has virtually remained the same in manufacture and content, with only minor changes.

Historically it was for many years a cottage industry plied by excellent craftsmen maintaining a very high skill level; this is all but finished now. There were two main ball manufacturers in the UK in the 1970s: Tonbridge Sports Industries, based at Chiddingstone causeway near Penshurst, and Readers of Teston. Both factories operated in the heart of Kent cricket, and the balls were all hand-made. As the demand for cricket balls increased, coupled with spiraling labour costs, both companies started sourcing the subcontinent, where the labour was cheaper and more intensive, vastly reducing the price of the balls. Jalandhar in India and Sialkot in Pakistan today produce 98% of all balls used in club cricket, and even Kookaburra have a factory in the subcontinent. In addition sports shops and mail-order companies have their own balls, and prices to the consumers are much cheaper.

Posted by Gideon Haigh on 03/28/2006 in The age of batting

Amit Varma’s preliminary remarks are unexpectedly poignant, as some of us in Australia have been experiencing Rip Van Winkle moments of late. A month or two ago, the ABC’s barely-watched pay channel replayed at length the 1984-85 Worrell Trophy series. Past masters strutted their stuff anew: Lloyd, Richards, Greenidge, Gomes, Dujon, Marshall, Garner v Border, Wessels, Lawson and, all too briefly and forlornly, Hughes. It seemed both only yesterday but, in the character of the play, also long, long ago. Bowlers enjoyed the ascendant. The ball moved and bounced. In order to reach boundaries set right on the fence, batsmen really had to find the middle. I felt a wave of nostalgia, in fact, at the sight of bats that were obviously favourites of their owners, exhibiting heavily marked middles and signs of repair.

It was actually a better series than I remembered, with a strong sense of contest and commitment. There were letdowns too: the slow bowling was nugatory and the fielding was ordinary. But the contrast with what was on show in Australia last summer, when runs were in plentiful supply and bowlers bore a hunted look, could hardly have been more acute. If you studied modern average tabulations, I dare say you’d not only find a higher proportion of batsmen averaging 50 than at any other time in Test history, but a higher proportion of runs being obtained in fours and sixes. And in one-day cricket, as Bob Woolmer suggests, the ante seems to be upped weekly.

Posted by Bob Woolmer on 03/27/2006 in The age of batting

After the second one–day international against Sri Lanka, played on a worse-than-average one-day pitch at the Premadasa stadium, Inzamam-ul-Haq turned to me and said that batting on this wicket to score 130 was like scoring 438 at the Wanderers (only different!).

One of the great strengths of cricket is that pitches around the world offer variety, and therefore you are never sure what you are going to get – as a spectator, coach or TV commentator. Some great predictions have been made as to how the pitch might play, what the score might be, or how many runs this wicket will concede. Some have been spot on and some have been extremely wide of the mark.

Posted by Amit Varma on 03/27/2006 in The age of batting

Imagine a modern-day Rip Van Winkle who goes to sleep sometime in the 1980s and wakes up on March 12, 2006. He is a fan of cricket, and the first thing he does when he wakes up is turn on the TV to see what game is going on. It’s a one-day match between South Africa and Australia. Australia make 434 in 50 overs. South Africa win. “Damn,” thinks Rip, “the world sure has changed.”

Well, yes. That SA-Aus game was not an aberration, but a sign of how cricket has been transformed in the last few years, and we have gathered a team of experts to discuss the implications of these changes on this game we love. Over the next few days, Bob Woolmer, Gideon Haigh, John Stern and Sambit Bal will discuss a number of knotty issues. Has the shift between bat and ball come because of market forces, or are other factors involved? Is it desirable? If not, should the men who run the game take some steps to restore the balance? What steps can the authorities take to turn things around?