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November 28, 2005
Posted by Amit Varma on 11/28/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
We could go on talking on this subject endlessly, but it's time to bring this particular discussion to a close. My thanks to Ashok Malik, Devangshu Datta, Harsha Bhogle, Mukul Kesavan and Sambit Bal for taking part in it so enthusiastically, and for their insights. And also to those of you who took the time to comment and add value to the discussion.
Some of us were optimistic, some were not, but I think all of feel a sense of great hope for Indian cricket, and a tinge of despair that we can't actually do anything about it, that we must simply hope for the best. It's a roller-coaster ride for any Indian fan.
Continue reading "A week is a long time in Indian cricket"
Comments (15)
November 26, 2005
Posted by Devangshu Datta on 11/26/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
By definition, sporting talent lies outside the normal curve – only somebody with extraordinary skill (1 in 8 billion in terms of hand-eye coordination for a Bradman [sigma of population 1908-2005] or flexibility for Korbut) has sporting talent/genius.
If the pyramid of practitioners has a large base, we are likely to have more sporting talent thrown up. Russia has a population of 125 million chessplayers and it possesses an outstanding array of chessplaying talent. The US has a base of 6 million bridgeplayers and it throws up an outstanding array of bridgeplaying talent.
Continue reading "Why cricket in India will thrive"
Comments (46)
November 25, 2005
Posted by Devangshu Datta on 11/25/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
OK. Definitions (for the benefit of readers rather than for Mukul).
"Strategy" is generally used to describe decisions/actions with broad long-term implications. "Tactics" is generally used for actions/decisions with short-term impact. For example, a decision to play two spinners/two fast bowlers is strategic whereas a decision to put an extra slip into the cordon when a quick man is bowling is tactical.
Continue reading "On strategy and tactics"
Comments (10)
November 24, 2005
Posted by Mukul Kesavan on 11/24/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
When Devangshu says that the one-day international has become “a game of rich strategic content” does he mean that it requires more strategic thinking than Test cricket does, or merely that it has more moves now than it earlier did? Because if he means the former, I’d suggest that it’s truer to say that the tactical choices in an ODI have public cues -- they are more heralded and therefore more obvious. But in terms of actual strategic potential, Test cricket is the more fertile and complex form.
From how long you keep a bowler on, to when to take the new ball, or how far ahead you should be to declare, or whether you should enforce the follow-on, or whether Ashley Giles should convert the paying public to rugby by bowling over the wicket forever, or how to deal with a threatening bowler who can bowl at your batsmen without an over-limit, these are decisions that captains and players make routinely in Test matches. I agree about the wider range of skills. You have to be a better fielder for one. The downside is that a utility player who can bowl a bit is more likely to make the team in ODIs than in a Test match. Though with Sourav Ganguly being touted as a batting allrounder for the Test squad, maybe I should take that back.
Continue reading "The reforms that one-day and Test cricket need"
Comments (28)
November 23, 2005
Posted by Devangshu Datta on 11/23/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
A few reactions to what some of my fellow participants in this discussion have said:
With regard to Harsha's post, I'd say that the incentive structure has indeed changed. The superstars are now entrepreneurs - they don't hold sports-quota jobs. It is entirely upto them how much money they can leverage out of their talent. This wasn't true in any earlier era where even the Gavaskars and Viswanaths collected salaries as employees.
Continue reading "What Gavaskar and Viswanath didn't have"
Comments (13)
November 22, 2005
Posted by Amit Varma on 11/22/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
I was quite glad when Mukul Kesavan shifted the focus of the discussion, with the last post, from the Indian cricket team to Indian cricket. In the long run, Indian cricket has greater problems than whether the Dravid-Chappell duo is better than the Ganguly-Wright duo. So here’s a larger question I’d like to raise: Will cricket survive in India, and if so, in what form?
Why do I raise the issue of cricket’s survival before you? After all, isn’t the game thriving in the subcontinent? Well, yes, at the moment. But my hypothesis is that the same process – one that I support wholeheartedly, by the way – that has made the subcontinent the commercial centre of cricket is the biggest threat to the game here: globalisation. Let me explain.
Continue reading "The biggest threat to Indian cricket"
Comments (74)
November 21, 2005
Posted by Mukul Kesavan on 11/21/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3, 4.
I want to leave Oliver Chappell and his New Model Army out of this for a second. This isn’t easy to do. Like Devangshu Datta who wrote the last post on this subject, I spend more time than an adult should trying to work out how many Test matches and series this Indian team will have to win to qualify as different or better or unprecedentedly better than Indian teams gone by. I re-read, with a strong feeling of déjà vu, an article I had written in the run up to the last World Cup, that tried to assess the Indian team’s chances in the context of the excitement and anticipation generated by that justly celebrated management firm, Ganguly & Wright. Messrs G & W very nearly pulled it off — and look where it got them: in two years every stakeholder in Indian cricket from the BCCI to Cricinfo had joined forces to nudge Wright into retirement and Ganguly, poor wretch, finds himself cast as Charles I, dethroned, though not yet beheaded.
Are Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell going to make India a consistently successful team? I’ve no idea. Will they win the World Cup for us in the Caribbean? Who knows. What I do know is that even if they do, the victory will do nothing to change the condition of Indian cricket for the better. If you are worried, as I am, about the health of Test cricket, winning the World Cup might make things worse.
Continue reading "The strange death of Test match cricket"
Comments (47)
November 20, 2005
Posted by Devangshu Datta on 11/20/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2, 3.
Sourav Ganguly and John Wright set the bar pretty high for their successors. They won Tests at home and abroad and they took India to the finals of a World Cup.
The only way Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell can improve on that record is by winning Test series abroad and winning the 2007 World Cup. In the final analysis, anything else is a letdown.
Continue reading "How to win the 2007 World Cup"
Comments (91)
November 19, 2005
Posted by Ashok Malik on 11/19/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1, 2.
You know it's a rare era in Indian cricket when an inspirational captain, the most non-parochial in decades and a customer who plays hard, gives as good as he gets, is dropped – and not even missed. The period after the dark winter of match-fixing has been a dazzling, extended summer of brilliance and sunshine. The Indian team has won everywhere – well, almost everywhere – and made it to the World Cup final.
Some of this happened because the BCCI got out of the way. Jagmohan Dalmiya did start with writing letters to John Wright demanding explanations for "bad performance". Of course, that Wright had been appointed by AC Muthiah – Dalmiya's predecessor and, in the best traditions of the Board's byzantine politics, former friend and current foe – may have had something to do with it.
Continue reading "The question that gives me the shivers"
Comments (54)
November 18, 2005
Posted by Sambit Bal on 11/18/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier posts: intro, 1.
I agree with Harsha that the current state of well-being in the Indian team is born out of chaos, both within the Indian team and in Indian cricket in general. I doubt if Greg Chappell would have got the space and the freedom to start acting on his vision or Rahul Dravid would have got the chance to lead India had Sourav Ganguly not looked so shaky, and, more crucially, the political situation with the BCCI not been so volatile.
Chappell’s high-risk approach to the problem he found himself facing in Sri Lanka and in Zimbabwe could turn out to be one of the most crucial, even seminal, points in Indian cricket. The six-page email he wrote to BCCI was brutal on Ganguly; more critically, it left Chappell with no escape route. He would have perhaps known that the mail would find its way to the public domain and it would force the board to act. It could have cost him his job. That he put his job on the line in order not to compromise his beliefs was a strong statement about his character.
Continue reading "Chappell's brave gambit"
Comments (96)
November 17, 2005
Posted by Harsha Bhogle on 11/17/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Earlier post: Intro.
Over the last fifteen years India’s extraordinary economic progress has been accompanied by some pretty staggering political upheaval. From single-party-majority rule India hurtled into one coalition after another, the love affair with the Soviet Union gave way to a grudging but increasingly strong infatuation with the US and the number of legislators with criminal records grew alarmingly. But it only required a couple of visionary budget proposals and the corresponding unshackling of the economy to unleash Indian entrepreneurship. Soon governments became irrelevant.
So what is this political treatise doing on Cricinfo? Interestingly there is a parallel. The two most significant forward movements in Indian cricket were accompanied by bitter power struggles within the BCCI. When John Wright was appointed AC Muthiah was locked in battle with Jagmohan Dalmiya, and the first few months of Greg Chappell’s stay in India have been accompanied by some pretty forgettable administrative manoeuvres. And yet, in either case, a couple of key decisions, either through a sudden, unexpected burst of foresight or sheer accident, let loose critical positive energy for Indian cricket.
Continue reading "Cricket and the Indian economy"
Comments (58)
November 16, 2005
Posted by Amit Varma on 11/16/2005 in State of Indian cricket
Welcome to our second discussion on Wicket to Wicket. Our first was on the use of technology in umpiring, and you can read its archives here. This one is on the state of Indian cricket. The participants of this debate are Ashok Malik, Devangshu Datta, Harsha Bhogle, Mukul Kesavan and Sambit Bal.
We had conceived of this topic before India began the series against Sri Lanka, and Indian cricket seemed a matter of somewhat greater concern then that it does now. The team was in disarray, unsure of its leader. The Board of Control for Cricket in India was in disarray, unsure of its leader. Fans were disillusioned and fed up.
Continue reading "The state of Indian cricket"
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