Champions League T20 - A Post-tournament Insight

  On a certain September 10th, when the rains were pouring down here in India, the “Cricket Monsoon” had started elsewhere in a land far away from here in South Africa. The two IPL teams, Mumbai Indians and the Bangalore Royal Challengers were touted to be the favorites of the tournament. How could they be more wrong?  There has not been and still is not a great history of favorites actually ending up as the “Champs” The only team that I can remember of doing that are the Australians. The Opening match was a slap in the face with the Lions downing the Mumbai Indians. Perhaps that set the precedents of the tournament. The teams in this tournament can be grouped under three heads; chumps, also-rans (Name courtesy @diogeneb)and champs.

   The Chumps are like “hmm” “ah” “oh” just fillers. This tournament certainly proved they dont belong to this stage. Lets start with the Guyanese who lost all of their matches. They might have fancy Indian names with mutations like ‘Devendra Bishoo’ et all  but they did not have any fancy batters or bowlers. Along with them are the “Central Stags” who were tied with the Guyanese for the ‘Top Chump’ perhaps we need a super over to break the tie. The Stags looked absolutely pathetic against even mediocre spin bowling, let alone top class spinners. The sorry tale is that the Central Stags are just a reflection of what New Zealand cricket is right now, totally dried up. Wayamba 11 aren't far behind, in my eyes they are equally pathetic. They have ended up 3rd in the chumps list only because they beat the Central Stags.

There are teams who were 'also-rans'. Barring the 3 chumps, the rest of the 7 teams can beat each other on any given day. These teams just couldn’t replicate their domestic form to make it to the semifinals of the tournaments.  The lions, Bushrangers and Mumbai Indians just couldn’t bring their ‘A’ game. Bushrangers were pretty unlucky to not make it to the semis despite winning 3 of their 4 matches.

  Usually only the best teams make it to the Knock out stages of any tournament. Beyond that it is purely how the team performs on that day, previous performances hardly matter. The classic example would be the Red Backs. They have pretty much won everything in their league and ended up loosing just one in the semis to be sent ‘Down Under’. RCB were also unlucky to lose Kallis in the league stages and then Steyn in the middle of the semifinals. Yesterday the SA champions and IPL champions locked horns and we all know who won it. No wonder Warriors are under the Kings. It wouldn’t be an understatement if i say they were the 2 deserving teams.

  Many players came to fore in this tournament like Davy Jacobs, Aaron Finch, Michael Klinger, Colin Ingram and Dan Christian. You can really see the dominance of CSK if you look at the ‘Top Scorers’ and ‘Top Wicket Takers’. Three of the top five wicket takers and 2 of the top run scorers are from the Super Kings. Also both of M.Vijay and R.Ashwin top their respective charts. To notice that both have been brought up in Chennai brings a sense of pride and happiness that donned the pretty much the same streets I do.

One highlight of the final for me would be when Vijay went past Davy Jacobs’ tally of runs. Davy Jacobs ran to Vijay during the overs break to congratulate him on beating his tally *RESPECT*. That is the showcase of Sportsmanship of the highest order and hair raising moment for every true cricket fan. I wish Davy Jacobs a great career ahead. People like him are gems when you see no balls being bowled to stop batsmen from scoring centuries.

Yellows seems to dominate the cricket world like anything. Not long ago the Australians were marching rampant. Chennai Super kings have fallen into that bracket with 1 runners up, 1 semifinal, 1 IPL title and 1 champions of Champions title. For me CSK carries Chennai’s no nonsense approach to its cricket. Perhaps one of the least controversial, devoid any fights and a very cohesive and consistent unit. If any team carrying those qualities wins, it certainly makes me happy. The fact that is is CSK just makes it special. The sad part is that, yesterday was the last time they will play as an unit together, thanks to IPL’s decision of including  2 more teams a fresh auction. For me they will be remembered as The Invincibles, everything they touched turned golden yellow. Period!

On the UDRS:

The debate has been raging for a while among cricket officials and players alike. And it concerns UDRS which expands as Umpire Decision Review system, one of ICC's initiatives 'intended' to assist the on-field umpires on the one hand and more importantly ensure a level of fairness and consistency in the way decisions are handed out on the other. While the system has thus far been used only on a purely experimental basis with the agreement of the team captains in question like in the series earlier this year between England and South Africa, the future of the system remains clouded not just by controversy it has set off but also by the principles on which it is founded. Let me elaborate.

One of the greatest things about sport is the all-round human element associated with it which leads to unpredictability and therefore excitement. The very fact that live sporting contests attract more crowds than films and more attention than video game counterparts in XBox versions goes a long way towards consolidating live sport as one of THE favoured forms of entertainment for spectators worldwide. The very advent of something like a referral system suggests that those who are involved with the game - the officials, the players and in some sense the fans - are missing a crucial point. For all the adrenaline rush, colours and sounds, excitements and thrills and the money involved, a sport is still a sport and should remain one in the view of all those associated with it.

The necessity then for something like a referral system surfaces when every sports person's minutest fortune is scrutinised beyond justification (and compare) courtesy our incessantly bellowing friends at the media who themselves find it very convenient to watch six or seven replays - sometimes from several thousand angles - from the air-conditioned press or commentary boxes. Naturally, when some of these decisions turn out to be erroneous stones are pelt at poor umpires despite the charitable rhetoric, "The umpires get only one look!" The defenders of technology having awaited their turn patiently would assert that it is because they are in possession of "several angles" that they wish for them to assist the umpires and players and making the game fairer and better at large. However, the question begs to be asked: is the referral system capable of achieving at least some of the lofty ends it aims to achieve?

For starters, the system in its present form is a bit like a beta version of a software and its problems were fairly evident in the contests between South Africa and England. With a fixed number of reviews allowed for each team, ICC's aim is noble in that it aims to keep the human factor largely intact with technological advice sought by the players only whenever critical. But the indiscretion with which the teams used the same and the displeasure that followed when the teams still did not get the decision they 'thought' was justified showed that the URDS only compounded problems and did not mitigate complications on the field; not to mention the amount of time that is lost when most of these reviews are done. It seems prima facie to me therefore that the UDRS is rather an urgently sought arrangement which is a product of some obfuscated thinking. And the fact that it is "neither here nor there" as of now and places players and umpires on tenterhooks speaks against it.

Even if the referral system does not contribute anything to the game, it should not as an initiative stunt the game in anyway. But based on what we saw on-field in South Africa as well as opinions we have had from umpires, captains and some reputed past cricketers there is a fairly obvious possibility that the system may do just that. For starters, by "subjecting" a human decision to a review two signals are being sent neither of which is right in my opinion (and one cannot think of the chair umpire's call being revoked in tennis or the match referees red or yellow card contested in soccer): an umpire's confidence is less likely to be trusted and as a consequence more umpires may be led to being 'naysayers' since teams have a 'second appeal' anyway. The referral system proposed is surely not an outright insult to human judgment in sport but at least a strong enough threat for the same which is inadmissible. In a sense it brings back dissent against human decisions through the back door.

I say this because the 'human element' is what makes the game a great leveller. While I am at loggerheads with a lot of what the former Australian skipper Ian Chappell says, I find myself concurring totally when he opines that over a cricketer's career the good and bad decisions even out: at the end of the day as most objective minds will tell you, the columns have to tally and tally they do in cricket. To not allow that to happen naturally is a shame and is against one of the rudimentary premises - if not principles - on which the once Gentleman's Game is run. And where a player has been hard done by, more often than not it has little, if nothing, to do purely with wrong umpiring decisions.

Lastly, marginal LBW and caught-behind decisions are the ones most likely to come under the scanner should the UDRS be adopted. But as things stand, the ICC core panel already comprises great umpires who get most of their decisions spot-on even without assistance. And these are names like Billy Bowden, Daryl Harper and Simon Taufel who are held in pretty high esteem by players round the world. While soaring media attention - read -'pressure'- in the game might be one of the factors instrumental in the hiked umpiring standards, to bring the media in the form of technology even more into human umpiring would, in my opinion, be an overkill. For all we know, we might be left beholding a Frankenstein rather than a facility. And that is not a baby anyone would like to hold. Let's hope the investigation headed by the West Indian legend Clive Lloyd and his team returns with good findings and sensible proposals.

PS: For a more pragmatic, if more progressive, view on the UDRS read Roebuck here on The Hindu dated March 27, 2010.