BCCI's power and cricket's health!

Although there might have been inklings earlier, the Mike Denness incident in 2001-02 demonstrated the Board of Control for Cricket in India's augmenting control in international cricket . The match referee, Mike Denness, who was officiating the India-South Africa series in South Africa imposed match bans on prominent players including Harbhajan Singh and the then Indian skipper captain Sourav Ganguly. Controversy turned into outrage as Tendulkar was in the lengthy blacklist, too, having been accused of ball-tampering. BCCI wanted another match referee for the final test of the series at Centurion but ICC stood by Denness. The United Cricket Board was caught in a fix but decided to support the BCCI (headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya at the time!) and so Denness was forced to stand down in the final test. The Indians did not fare all that well and given the besetting storm the lukewarm performance was only to be expected and ICC declared the test unofficial. Some said - and I agree - that the match referee's punitiveness went overboard. "isms" were traded as always, "racism" figuring prominently: in some sense, it was brutal irony that all this was happening in South Africa, which had been admitted to international cricket only ten years ago following a couple of decades of exile due to the Apartheid policy. 

Six years later, another conflict arose - again in the Southern Hemisphere, this time the locale being Australia. On the third day of the New Year test at Sydney (2008), the Bhajji-Symonds "monkeygate" erupted and the series would never be the same again. After the Sydney test, the sour moods turned downright rancid: Steve Bucknor, with a history of umpiring errors against India, had committed  howlers which everyone believed had turned the test in favour of the Australians. But Bucknor was not the vortex of Indian malediction. Michael Clarke who had hit the ball clear as daylight to slip earlier in the match had not walked but went onto claim a dicey catch of Ganguly who was batting like a dream in the second innings as India tried to save the test on the last day. "Integrity" came into the equation when the umpire asked Ponting who raised his finger as if to say Clarke had taken it cleanly. A few overs later, Ponting claimed a catch of Dhoni - which seemed like a "bump ball" - and though it was given "not out", India could not bat out Clarke's left-arm spin and went 2-0 down in the series. Anil Kumble said, "Only one team played in the spirit of the game" , a reportedly spontaneous reproduction of a line right out of the Bodyline closet. Ponting's headstrong churlishness at the press conference did nothing remotely to mitigate the rift but only exacerbated it. Peter Roebuck called into question Australia's  win-at-all-costs mindset, referring to the Sydney win as their ugliest performance and calling for Punter to be replaced as captain. In the meanwhile, Tendulkar was called onto testify at the Harbhajan hearing (after the latter had been handed a three-match ban which the BCCI appealed against)- and all hell broke loose. Cancellation of the tour was on everyone's lips and so was the status of BCCI beneath the veil. A series with India, member boards of the ICC know, brings a lot of money and goodwill. It is safe not to defy the BCCI. The series continued, more mutedly: India famously won at Perth - Adam Gilchrist's reflections on how the Aussies felt during the Perth test, as well as leading to it,  makes for an insightful, and arguably balanced, read for Gilchrist is a fair man - and the teams drew at Adelaide. While what happened at Sydney should not have and it infuriates me to this day - make no mistake about it - BCCI's "now-we-will, now-we-won't" tactics were clearly those of a domineering giant manoeuvring an ally using strength, subtlety and innuendo, analogous to the moral high ground U. S of A takes in issues of global importance. 

Around the same time, Zee and a group of former cricketers, among them Tony Greig, Kapil Dev and Dean Jones, were at the receiving end of BCCI's wrath as Indian cricket's governing body not only declared ICL  "unconstitutional" but also reportedly "influenced" (perhaps more than just that if Lalit Modi's recent comments are to be believed) other boards which also players contracted with the ICL. With the emergence of IPL - a child of BCCI's status, Modi's brains and the business world's glitz and money - the ICL was all but in the grave. Soon, it was buried. People who speak today of how IPL has given "opportunities" to youngsters must remember that it was ICL which was created with the intention and that IPL built itself on the debris, or at least the marginalisation, of ICL. 

More recently, BCCI's ludicrous wrangling with the ICC over the use of UDRS has once again shown who is the boss. Although it was reported after the meetings in Hong Kong that a compromise has been reached, I am not clear what the compromise is: if using it piecemeal like in the present series between India and England - only for catches not for LBW's - is that compromise, it is befuddling. While Ian Chappell  expressed disappointment, and rightly so, after the meetings at Hong Kong at how ICC panders to the requests of the BCCI and how its directive to de-politicise the game is solid in principle but absurd anyway - Chappell must have been thinking of BCCI, PCB and Sri Lanka cricket - Harsha Bhogle has indicated that BCCI's hesitancy over the DRS is not totally ill-founded. While Harsha is right - and so is Chappell - what cannot be dismissed is the fact that BCCI's power is seemingly doing more harm to the running of the game than good. Arm-twisting - read "threats of cancelling tours" (there are always ways to address issues diplomatically!) -, muffling voices - BCCI's treatment of Lalit Modi when everybody knows that BCCI's own house is far from clean - monopolising viable markets - read the IPL - and stalling important decisions - read "the DRS deadlock" - are definitely not healthy offshoots of the power BCCI wields.    

It does not seem to be just the BCCI but also Indian cricket in general these days that is triggering controversies: a side-note will clarify that statement. After the first test at Sabina Park between India and West Indies last month, the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni made an interesting remark about (allegedly Daryl Harper's) umpiring in the test saying that he'd have been in the hotel long ago had the right decisions been made. Dhoni has not been the fake professional type, so that remark can be dismissed as an amusement. In the second test at Barbados,  Dhoni had allegedly walked to Harper and said, "We have had problems (including, evidently, Harper's third official warning to debutant Praveen Kumar for running on the pitch at Sabina park, which meant Kumar could not bowl for one half of West Indies' first innings) with you before, Daryl..." a remark which could once again be interpreted anyway and one which Harper took offence for. Harper did not stand in the final test of the series at Roseau, which would have been his final test anyway as a test umpire, and has since indicated that Dhoni should have been punished even for his original remarks which Harper had considered inappropriate. While I don't agree with Harper on the call for punishment, I think anything that threatens an umpire's presence should be firmly dealt with to set the right precedent. Dhoni should have, at the very least, been reprimanded. Moreover, I think Harper was well within his rights to warn Kumar - debut test or 150th, rules are rules. Just because Indian cricketers, or Asians and West Indians to be more general, have borne the brunt of sanctions in the past while Englishmen and Australians have got away by far, it does not mean the former have the right to seek to redress the balance in offhanded ways. One may say: what's wrong with Indian cricketers giving it back? No problems - except that umpires, who in some sense "balance" the vagaries of the game, should not be the targets of ripostes. Call me old-fashioned but that is against the very premise on which the gentleman's game is founded.

  

The second has to do with the suspension of the Sri Lankan T20 league this year, the reason being BCCI's objection to allow its players to participate on the grounds that a private party, not Sri Lanka cricket, contracts players in that competition. If the grounds of objections are true - to be honest, they seem murky - I would have no issues but even if they are not I would not be surprised given BCCI's "handling" of the ICL, DRS etc.

Finally, the mutilation of the Future Tours Programme provides a compelling instant of BCCI's lobbying powers at ICC meetings. While many have welcomed the fact that India does not need to tour countries like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh (for a while) as good for both parties involved, Ian Chappell (in the same article linked above) is right in believing that the parameter, then, should apply to all good test-playing nations. The compromise with the BCCI seems to have, however, been struck to achieve balance elsewhere - on DRS and other issues. But what do you expect when ruthless business-minded gentlemen like N. Srinivasan - who owns an IPL franchise, is the President of the TNCA (does Srini, as he is fondly called, have partial amnesia towards the phrase/clause conflict of interest, or is he for all practical purposes immune to it?) and sits with Duncan Fletcher in the latter's first press conference as India coach to ensure that the BCCI's sacrosanct stances are towed at all costs - head the BCCI and politics-steeped persons like Sharad Pawar sit at the top of the ICC? However, Mr. Sambit Bal, editor cricinfo, finds it convenient to oppose John Howard's candidacy for ICC vice-Presidency on ethical and moral grounds. I don't agree with Gideon Haigh's one-sided Asia-bashing on the subject either and while Mr. Bal has a point is it just Howard supporters who got "the wrong end of the stick?" Is Sharad Pawar an inspiring ICC leader, is N. Srinivasan a great cricket administrator (even if he may be a good cricket administrator with a mind par excellence) and is Kris Srikkanth's son an emerging talent because Kris is Chief Selector at the moment? (poor young man, how 'split' must he be feeling?) Come on Mr. Bal, let us have some moderation, for a change, without its being coloured by contrived, or worse, compelled, loyalties .

For many young - those in their teens and twenties - fans of my generation seeing the Australians defeat team after team in the noughties created both a sense of ennui and anger. It is human impulse to want to see the Goliath slayed. India consistently played David and South Africa and England followed suit although by the time the Australians were comprehensively conquerred at home their powers had waned a good deal. I am sure non-West Indians who saw the marauding teams from the Caribean between the 1970s and mid-nineties felt the same way about their teams getting beaten, too. If monopoly on the field is an affair that cannot be tolerated, then monopoly off it needs to be immediately eradicated because it has far-reaching implications for the good of the game wherever it is played. BCCI's unbridled powers in cricket, which on the evidence of the last ten years are self-serving, manipulating and coffer-filling (most of the time), are far from good for the global game. If someone says it is, then I can probably try defending PCB's "decisions" and Ijaz Butt with a perfect forward defence.      

Haider's Disappearance - a Wake-up Call for World Cricket?

I would not want to be a cricket fan in these turbulent times. More specifically, I wouldn’t want to be a Pakistan cricket fan, for every time a small ray of light seems to be afoot something happens that sets it back by cricket’s equivalent of light-years. We thought that the comedy of errors involving the bans, re-bans, lifting of the bans and re-lifting of the bans was the worst that could happen to cricket in a country that has been more or less ravaged by political turmoil ever since I was old enough to have an indelible memory.

Then came the winless tour to Australia where one can safely say – even without attempting to be deliberately rude – that the Pakistan cricket team threw away the Sydney test after being utterly dominant for the better part. Kamran Akmal’s wicket-keeping – which led no less a man than Wasim Akram to ask Akmal about his goal-keeping – was particularly picked on but apart from Salman Butt who made a hundred in the series nobody deserved to speak a word. As if the team performance was not demoralising enough, coach Aaqib Javed’s comments rubbed salt into the wounds but can probably be in hindsight appreciated as a foreboding to the eruption over spot-fixing that followed quickly like night follows day.

If the (had-to-be-easy-but-became-difficult-yet-well-deserved) win against Australia on neutral territory at Headingley (Leeds, England) seemed like just the facelift Pakistan cricket required, the spot-fixing controversy that ensued during the test series versus England made short work of any points of inspiration to be garnered from there. In between Shahid Afridi decided, once again, and one hopes once and for all (given the PCB's seemingly sacrosanct right to call people from retirements if not their graves!), that the longer version was not up his alley. What was most devastating about the match-fixing chaos was two of Pakistan’s most promising cricketers, heralded by everyone who saw them as the country’s future – Mohammads, Asif and Amir, the latter all of nineteen summers – along with their captain Salman Butt were implicated by the News of the World. All through the tempestuous waters, the PCB chairman Ijaz Butt far from trying to appear even remotely like a responsible captain of the ship has (forgive me the profanity) emerged the butt of jokes from cricket-haters and Pakistan cricket detractors alike courtesy his general lack of commonsense  and control over his tongue in especial. To think that the latter almost led the one friend Pakistan cricket has had in ECB (and its chief Charles Clarke, who also (the last time I heard) leads the ICC Review Committee in charge of reviewing the possibility cricket resumption in Pakistan) to turn hostile speaks volumes about the precariousness and daftness surrounding Pakistan cricket and Butt’s administration (strictly in that order of priority) today.

Yet somewhere along the line a non-partisan cricket lover, a pure-minded Pakistan cricket fan or a young cricketer who has worked his life to break into the national squad would have felt hopeful. After all clouds brought in by human avarice and vulnerability will clear as they do not have any finality about them; nor do human predilections. But Zulqarnain Haider’s disappearance from the the Pakistan cricket team in Dubai last week and reappearance in London earlier this week has almost put paid to that innocent feeling of hope. Unless of course what is happening in Pakistan cricket is the enactment of a page-turning novel about the underworld, cricket, Pakistan and match-fixing; or contemporary Pakistan cricket is just an attempt to take reality television to a different plane; or Zulqarnain Haider is a mor(t)ally disturbed dreamer or fidgety attention-seeker with the recent melodrama being in extremely poor taste especially considering the condition Pakistan cricket is already in. The first two possibilities are just jokes and the last seems far from true given that Haider since the fighting 88 in his first test – half of the match fee from which he dedicated to Imran Khan’s cancer hospital – has struck everyone as a gritty and committed young man with his heart in the right place.

The writing is on the wall and not merely on some crappy walls in boardrooms in the buildings where the PCB sits but across the world where administrators holding a stake in the game’s welfare meet to discuss cricket’s biggest challenges. If Haider’s revelation about the death threats against him and his family is any true, it then puts the ICC, (a body corporate which most people tend to think is a sitting duck anyway in front of perversely powerful cricket boards like the BCCI,) which has had a hot-and-cold relationship with the PCB (or perhaps it should be said that the PCB has had an iffy relationship with the ICC!) in a peculiar and not very enviable position. Spot-fixing, match fixing or fixing an entire series is one thing; it might make the larger unenlightened audience look at the sport as cheap and as another source of easy money and those who have played the game with utmost integrity look at themselves as geese. But if playing the game involves keeping one eye around for strange people at strange places all the time, ones who may go to any extent to not leave you and your family in peace, it is a challenge of a different magnitude and one the game has not hitherto thankfully come face to face with. Most importantly, problem of life and death based on the ‘supposedly’ fleeting fortunes on the cricket field should not be brushed aside Haider’s problem or Pakistan cricket’s problem. It is at once the problem of the entire cricket-playing fraternity and therefore the ICC.

Over the next few weeks, or more likely months, the merits of Haider’s first press conference after the Dubai disappearance will assume extraordinary significance. For the sake of cricket, and that of an impressive young man with a young family, one hopes that the people in high places see this conundrum through to its logical conclusion. Haider’s own life in this period albeit he has thus far, expectedly, played safe in not implicating any fellow cricketer in Pakistan, is going to be lived on the tenterhooks of questioning and the internal battle to choose between being loyal to (Pakistan) cricket and reveal whatever he knows – so nobody else goes through such torment – or consider his and his family’s safety as the end alls (or balance both). One thing is for sure: you would not want to be in Haider’s shoes at the moment. I also agree with Kamran Abbasi when he says that what Haider  needs at the moment is understanding. Over time, the important task of trying to get at the truth can be pursued for whatever it is worth.

In the larger context, I sometimes wonder if the events we are witnessing today with a sense of pallor are the product of too much professionalisation of sport, which should before and after everything remain a source of entertainment to those who play and those who watch it. Spectators swarm in numbers to watch a Sehwag, a Muralidharan, a Shane Warne or a Brian Lara even though each of these modern greats has had human vulnerabilities or sporting flaws because these are entertainers who play the game only in the spirit of sport, no more, no less. But the goings-on in Pakistan cricket, the maddening love for high-scoring thrillers and therefore flat pitches – which is fed by and feeds into T20 cricket – the devaluation of 50+ averages and the unremitting foray of businessmen into cricket positions with the unabashed view to get pole position for their businesses have left a sour taste in my mouth. Perhaps, the madness is inevitable; perhaps grandstanding is the new mantra for success; perhaps illegit money, so long as you don’t get caught as writer Sujatha might say, isn’t different from legally earned money; perhaps the pandemonium in the game today is an extension of the general pandemonium surrounding our lives which is a product of our time. Be that as it may, it is a shame that one of Pakistan’s brightest stars in the recent troubled times is coerced to stay away due to dangerous circumstances. To be sure, the game will overcome those who try to devalue and sell it through the backdoor. But then, even if Haider returns to it, it may never feel the same again for life is, and has to be, admittedly larger than this game many of us love.

Click here for cricinfo's coverage of the controversy as it has unfolded thus far.

The SSC saga and a malediction for bowlers!

So, the test match at the Sinhalese Sports Club is finally over. Save Rahul Dravid and V.V.S Laxman who would be cursing themselves for having missed an opportunity to escalate their averages and century counts, all the other batsmen enjoyed themselves, combining for close to 1500 runs for the loss of just seventeen wickets which is less than two bowled-out innings. And if Randiv never returns to play test cricket again, I will not blame him, although being a Sri Lankan I am sure he would be strong enough to treat the pitch at SSC as an aberration probably prepared by someone who carries psychological scars from his past inflicted by bowlers. And as the test series moves to P Sara Oval which is also located in Colombo, one wonders if the contest will get any better. Well, at this stage, it looks like even the concrete front yard of my house will be better for bowlers than SSC.

A number of things were wrong about the test match just concluded at Colombo, not the least of them being a surface that did not offer anything more than slow turn which barring Dravid everyone, including Mithun and Ishant Sharma, had time to tackle. Yet to blame SSC singly for hosting such drab test matches is to be purblind and willfully ignorant of grounds like that around the world. The Motera at Ahmedabad comes to mind and so does the Antigua Recreation Ground in the West Indies; the most recently played tests at both these venues produced results not far more or less insipid than the mind-numbing draw we witnessed at SSC. With the lone exception of Karachi, pitches in Pakistan too are flat, but at least they offer expected if not extravagant turn on the fourth and fifth days of a game. The Oval in London and the Adelaide Oval have also been batting havens for years but these pitches at least have true bounce given that they are in England and Australia and with occasional help from the weather bowlers at least have (half) a chance. In India, Sri Lanka and the West Indies when the summer is at its peak and batsmen are in full flow, there is absolutely no respite for bowlers let alone relief. It is precisely in these inhumane contexts that an extra layer of grass or a slightly less hard pitch may give the toiling bowlers a window of opportunity. 

As it is, test cricket is losing ground to its youngest sibling in the game, the T20s, and a number of detractors of the games longest version, including my shrewd co-author friend here, think that test cricket’s status as the game’s foremost format is but an artifact of unimpeded history and little else. If test matches like the second one between Sri Lanka and India become the norm – not that contest-less run fests are just exceptions, which is a cause for concern – then the game’s governing body can kiss goodbye to the format sooner than they may anticipate and focus full time on marketing the game played under floodlights, with glitzy jerseys and with a lot of éclat even if with comparatively less demands on substance. This is not to say that I despise the game’s newest format or that it is corrupting the game or even that it is superficial. If the game needs to spread globally, for instance, T20s are the only option. Even as an ardent fan of test cricket I am sensible enough to admit and understand that the game’s coffers and traditional values are situated in different places. So each format has its own raison d’ etre and is required for the meaningfulness of the game overall. But what I regret is the rapid dwindling of crowds in test match cricket as evidenced during the test at SSC. 

I had written earlier as well that if ICC is really, not just academically and rhetorically, interested in salvaging test cricket as a format, let alone as the most preferred one (a status which I believe it has already lost!), pitches are an area that the governing body should bring under its broad aegis. I am not too sure if there already is a pitch-related ICC committee, and if there is I do not see what it is doing. There is a touch of irony too in that when it comes to high-scoring games which end in predictable one-hour-before-close, not last ball, draws, we protest vociferously but the sonority fades soon enough. But when one ball rears up awkwardly like it did at Ferozshah Kotla, everyone goes gaga about it and fifty experts speak about how dangerous it is for batsmen to have such pitches! I am not encouraging pitches like those prepared at Kotla for the one-day game against Sri Lanka and India that was later abandoned. Sir Viv Richards Stadium in Antigua and Sabaina Park in Jamaica have also hoisted test matches over the years that have had to be called off barely an hour into the game because the pitches were underprepared. But the point is if some pitches are considered unsuitable for playing because they are a threat to batsmen’s physical well-being, then the pitches we have at the Antigua Recreation Ground, Sinhalese Sports Club, Ahmedabad and Faislabad should be considered unsuitable too because they are a threat to bowling itself. To relegate the latter form of unsuitability as an epiphenomenon just because it is less tangible than the possibility of physical injury betrays a want of commonsense and equanimity from those who are supposed to safeguard the interests of the game, which lay among other things in there being a contest between bat and ball.

While the sub-continent continues to host matches which are played in conditions that remain hell for bowlers, Pakistan’s last test match against Australia at Headingley and the ongoing one against England at Trent Bridge show how keeping the bowlers in the game interested is the only – commonsensical – way to ensure results in test cricket which in turn may bring more crowds to watch it. Indeed, one cannot expect groundsmen in India, Sri Lanka, West Indies or Pakistan to get the same sort of wherewithal that pitch curators in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or England get; the opposite case is true too. It is needless to say that weather conditions play a part and these are beyond human control. But the fact remains we can still prepare pitches that give something for the bowlers. The Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore is a great example. Nobody even presumes that it is like Perth or Gabba; it does not need to be. But the wicket always has something in it for the quick men, at least first thing in the morning, is beautiful to bat on once you get your eye in and offers appreciable but not threatening turn during the last day and half. 

At the end of the day, it is balance between bat and ball that one asks for, not a historical reversal where batsmen get repeatedly shot out for less than 250 nine times out of ten. I prefer low-scoring thrillers to high-scoring ones any day, but that is not the point. Getting a five-for or a hundred and fifty in tests, both should entail some effort in the game’s toughest format. If five-fors happen once in ten games but double-hundreds come around every fourth innings, there is something fundamentally wrong about the equation. This is precisely what has been happening for years, at least in countries known to produce flat pitches, and unless corrected soon, the plague may come to haunt the very heritage of test cricket in these parts of the world.

The farce that is one-day cricket!

A few weeks ago Geoffrey Boycott was as straight-batted as ever in claiming that nobody, save Asians perhaps, is interested in the Asia Cup. But seeing the crowd, or the abundant lack of it, at Dambulla for the One-day International between India and Bangladesh today, one wonders even if the contingent of Asian fans is interested. Perceptively, the point that the hosts were not playing could be invoked as a case in point but the general state of one-day cricket is one which needs serious reassessment if it needs to survive as an independent format. But before I go on further, looking at insipid pitches, the abject batsman-friendliness  of the affair and the inconsequential nature of a lot of games, even tournaments (like the recent one in Zimbabwe; and I do not say this because India lost!), I would say I would be happy with Tests and T20s as the only formats of the game. More of that though for later.

Before we look at the slump of the one-day game, we need to comprehend the simple fact that nations like England and New Zealand have never been highly keen on the once shortest format of the game. While countries like Australia and South Africa have stood at the middle of the divide, playing a good deal of test and one-day cricket, it is the teams from sub-continent which used to, and continue to play, a surfeit of one-day games whose numbers are often inflated by the number of bi-pronged series played in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan (till the Lahore blasts) and even Bangladesh. And all too often absurd scheduling in the name or pretext of giving all cricketing venues their share of matches resulted in series which had two tests and five to seven one-dayers. Cricket-crazy crowds used to throng to many of these games given that some venues especially in a mammoth country like India get matches only once in a couple of seasons despite the jam-packed nature of the calendar. Frankly, much as fans are stakeholders (in an emotional sense and as ticket-buyers), scheduling of cricket must be sensitive to the views of those who play it rather than the watching public or the coffers of a cricket board.

What has happened now though is with the advent of T20 Cricket the balance has tilted, rightly or wrongly but in one-fell-swoop seemingly, towards the three-hour format from the one-day one. While I have not watched any one-day series held in India in recent memory, I am pretty sure that reception for these games, especially if they constitute just academic purpose – after one team has already won the series midway through it – is likely to dwindle slowly but surely even in a place like India. Around the world, like in Sri Lanka currently and in Zimbabwe in the series recently which very few knew was happening, the warning bells for the format popularised in Australia, by Benson and Hedges and later coloured clothes are already tolling.

To blame the rise of T20 alone for one-day cricket’s starting to recede in popular imagination is to miss the point. While twenty-20 has taken world cricket by storm over the last four seasons, the seeds for the descent of one-day cricket, I believe, were sown a while ago in the decade. The advent of T20 has if anything only exaggerated the impact given that the crowds now have an option – every series now has at least a couple of T20 games over a weekend – to choose where they formerly did not. Let us review just a little bit to make the point clear.

One of the reasons for the decline in popularity could be the senseless scheduling of one-day cricket matches. If bi-pronged series in the subcontinents led to a cloying, almost choking, overdose, then ICC did not help the cause one little bit by bringing in tourneys like the Champions Trophy. Until the 1996 World Cup, if memory serves me right, there was only one international tournament where all recognised one-day teams came together to match talent, namely the World Cup. After 1998 all that has changed. We now have a Champions Trophy every two years, a World Cup every four years – have the T20 World Cup splice this ‘impressive’ array of international tournaments showcasing ICC’s organisational ability, you have about an international one-day tournament every year. Take that for a committed sporting body trying to promote the game throughout the year every year! And if by accident a year has no such tournaments, there are enough tri-angular, quadrangular and pentagular tournaments, whether or not they form part of ICC’s FTP (Future Tours Programme, which I believe nobody, save the ICC, ever talks about!), to make up for the ‘seeming’ void. Let us not even get started about the Indian Premiere League! While veterans like Dravid and Tendulkar have said that travelling so much is part of the modern game, I am sure given a choice most cricketers worth their salt will call for a serious (read "sensitised and sensible") reassessment of such inept scheduling of limited over games which have, among other things, the harmful potential of cutting short wonderful careers on account of injury and/or jadedness. Shane Bond’s premature retirement may be a case in point. Breet Lee's bowing out from test cricket could also be added to the list. Had it been an earlier age both these fast men could have, and would have, gone for at least three to four more seasons. 

The slow but inevitable loss of ground that one-day cricket is suffering could be imputed, as mentioned earlier in passing, also to the one-sidedness of the game, stacked heavily in favour of the batting team. As an example let us look at the scores displayed on newspapers: in the last four years 400-plus totals have not only been set, which in itself torments a bowler with his sense of relativised mortality vis-à-vis batsmen, but have been matched – once, and almost matched another time. There was a time when high-scoring thrillers used to be fun because they were the exception rather than the norm; teams chasing over 300-needed to bat out of their skins to win games but now no score is ever a challenging one. While augmenting run rates -  in chases as well as first innings – could be traced to the T20 mentality which enables batsmen to believe that anything at all is gettable, the very mentality is prodigally bolstered by atrociously batsman-friendly, or bowler-killing, conditions, specifically pitches (which again are seldom left to the discretion of the curator alone!) , reducing even class bowlers to a containing job. Anyone who believes that this is the way forward for the game has got to be joking and/or a batsman, a batsman’s parent or an aspiring batsman. If this trend continues, not only will one-day cricket suffer adversely but we will soon see genuine bowlers playing only test cricket, which is unfortunate. I may be a little too radical in stating my clairvoyance but I do not see why it should not happen given the way the game is headed.

Preposterous, almost asphyxiating, scheduling, inconsequential matches, the batsman-centric nature of the game and abysmal cricket pitches coupled with the rise of T20 are only some of the main factors that have contributed to one-day cricket’s slowly going out of sync as a format  but these are critical factors the ICC needs to look into if it needs to – if it thinks it needs to – rescue the format from dying a natural death.  As ever, change cannot, or is not likely to, be proposed on the international scene but efforts are being made in domestic competitions. For instance, Tendulkar suggested some time ago that one-day matches could be broken into four innings – two apiece for each team – and at least the ECB has listened. I read somewhere recently that even the Australian Cricket Board is thinking in the direction. These are surely positives; the ideas may or may not work but it is in the interest of one-day cricket and cricket in general that novel ideas, especially when they come from people who have great standing in the contemporary game, are tested before they are discarded if they do not work. Ricky Ponting too has aired his views on one-day games whose results do not have any value. There must be a way to work around the drudgery and the impasse, and if there is not, new ones should be found and quickly.

 With the one-day World Cup in the subcontinent scheduled for 2011, the ICC will be busy supervising allotted venues, reviewing security, assessing finances and be busy with a thousand other things but a roadmap of what comes, or needs to come, after that for the format has to be put in place or at least thought about. Haroon Lorgat, the President of the ICC, is a nice professional man from South Africa who has given the the Council a stable stewardship at the top but his optimism that the one-day game is still on safe waters seems rather misplaced and contrary to present-day empirical fact. If the optimism needs to translate into daylight, the ICC should not think twice about proposing some serious revamping plans for the one-day game which include, if nothing else, broad guidelines on everything from playing conditions to Power Play issues to the number of individual series a board can accommodate outside of the ICC charter. The ICC can set the trend itself by slashing the so-called mini world cup (a.k.a the Champions Trophy) and think about just one global tournament apiece for T20 and One-day cricket which is still too much but at least gives the impression of things heading in some direction. After all FIFA does not hold a World Cup every third New Moon and an example can be taken from that!

Whether ICC has the strength to take a stand even if it means defying authoritarian and notorious boards like the BCCI only time will tell. But if the game’s international governing body wants to save the one-day game, which as I said at the start is frankly not worth saving, I am not too sure if it even has the choice of dallying let alone not deciding. I do not know how many know; there used to be a tournament called Australiasia cup and it is close to a couple of decades since it went out of the calendar. Tourneys like the Asia Cup and such inexplicably mind-numbing one-day series need to follow suit in order to uproot the weeds to leave the soil for one-day cricket’s sane and justified continuity.

Having said all that the next ICC-Prez Elect is a certain Mumbai politician, more caricature than character - even if not a patch on Laloo - by name Sharad Pawar? What's the game coming to? Apocalypse? I hope not!