The Verdict: My Opinion!

I am not a lawyer and I do not understand what the suspension clauses of the sentences to Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif mean. I also do not understand the hue and cry from some quarters about how the punishment given to Butt is lenient and the one handed down to young Mohammad Amir is too harsh. In any case, the ICC tribunal headed by Michael Belof (QC) has, I am confident, gone through the case as carefully as possible and even made sure they have not jumped into conclusions taking time before passing the verdict. And I am fully in support of it.

The wheels of judiciary will, however, recommence in two directions. The players would most likely appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Switzerland) against the bans imposed by the ICC. Plus there is the complication of the case pending against the players by the British Crown in London. Subtracting the legalese, what this means is we have not seen the end of this sad spot-fixing drama nor have we seen the last of these three players in terms of the present case. Be that as it may, it is important to look into the implications of the judgments handed out in the case for the general health of cricket at large and ICC in especial.

From Ian Chappell to Giden Haigh to individual cricket boards to sometimes the average cricket fan, just about everyone concerned with the game has had a slingshot at the International Cricket Council, pooh-poohing it as an organisation that, to put it short, is good for nothing. On the one hand there is this prevailing impression, one which does have a grain of truth in it, that the ICC as the game’s official governing body is not making enough crucial decisions and not making them assertively enough, giving room for powerful and notorious member boards to exercise their own muscle power in the running of the game. The lack of a firm stand by the ICC on the (non-)use of UDRS is a case in point and has come under the hammer recently from cricket analysts, players and former players alike as the Indian team, backed by an unhealthily potent BCCI, continues to deny its use for reasons the world and its uncle cannot fathom.

Allowing teams to play local and international games arbitrarily outside of the FTP window, lack of monitoring over the increased number of one-sided pitches around the world, failing to clamp down more stringently on drug abuse in the game and mishandling of corruption are only some of the important issues the ICC has been found wanting in. That ICC’s top jobs have increasingly had a political slant to them with someone like Sharad Powar at the Presidency, and John Howard’s Vice-Presidency candidature splitting the cricket world right down the middle, have only contributed to exacerbating matters.

In this context, the ICC’s efforts in leading the charges of corruption against the three Pakistani cricketers to their logical conclusion were as necessary a few months back as they are commendable now. That the ICC has had at its helm a CEO like Haroon Lorgat, who is at once a discreet administrator but a forthright speaker, as the fixing controversies raised their ugly hood again after ten years is probably a blessing. Irrespective of whether the verdicts stay as they are or are modified after appeals or are completely overturned, the tribunal’s judgments against the discredited Pakistani trio could yet turn out to be a landmark in ICC history as an example of the governing body’s no-nonsense attitude against corruption.

Although I feel for Amir, and a lot of fans (including many Indians, surprisingly) who thought he was the next young Pakistani fast-bowling magician in the making, his surprise at being given a five year ban for bowling “just two no-balls” rings more rhetorically than sensibly to me; and in the process it also rings with that inalienable “convenient” tune of our times, the hesitancy to square up to one’s mistakes and accept them even at the brink of disaster.

The issue that is at stake is not whether an inconsequential illegal delivery was bowled or whether a match was deliberately lost; if that were all at stake then the amount of attention given to the case by the ICC and cricket fans, leave alone an ever-hyped and –hyping world media, would seem absurd. The issue is one of principle, of upholding fairness as one of the most important virtues of the game not in the least because it is belief in the game’s fairness and its tendency to even things out that makes heartbroken fans still come back after a depressing loss and route for their team. Violation of that fairness, even if only for something miniscule and even if for money that is not somebody else’s daily meal, is a violation of the spirit of the national flannels one plays in, of the unspoken trust that connects a sportsperson with other sportspersons and the world that worships him, and of sport’s greatness in general. Sport, as is often believed, does not test only human strengths; it also tests whether one can tide over one’s weaknesses and in that respect Butt and Asif are perhaps more to be blamed than the rookie Amir but none of them is above the game. It is also sad that three Pakistani cricketers, three of their better ones arguably, were caught red-handed at a time when Pakistani cricket was already in doldrums. But examples needed to be set and one hopes the judgments have sent out the right signals to the generation of young and upcoming cricketers.

In less than two weeks, the attention will shift inevitably from these and other issues to the 2011 Cricket World Cup, as the one-day game’s most coveted prize returns to the sub-continent after fourteen years. Even as one prays that it should not be the Australians lifting the cup for a staggering fourth time in a row, I will settle for a tournament where cricket alone will talk: if that is ensured, whoever wins it is a secondary issue. I would obviously love it if India goes on to win it but the tournament’s conduct is far more important than its eventual result.



Sub-continental Sunshine!

If you are a close enough watcher of the game of cricket, you will know that not only does every cricketing nation or group of nations have its own cricketing culture but also that such cultures have an influence on things as palpable as style. To see a Western Australian brought upon the livewire tracks of the WACA in Perth hook fearlessly; a South African anticipate the ball like Jonty Rhodes did in the nineties; a Sri Lankan right-hander have that almost rounded back lift and neat follow-through during the drives; a West Indian plonking the front-foot bravely to play a Richards-ian short-arm pull; or a Pakistani pace-man run in with momentum is the very sum and substance of inherited style. I would in fact go to the extent of asserting that it is precisely this variety which makes watching the game such an enthralling experience.

In this edition on style (and there may be more to come as we go on!), I would like to focus on a breed of sub-continent batsmen, particularly from India and Pakistan, who took cricketing artistry to the next level. And one thing common to the ilk of artistes to be discussed here irrespective of the country they played for, their cricketing upbringing, the times they played in, the genius they displayed and the number of runs they eventually scored is their wrist work. A century and a while ago the famed Ranjisnhji, who “invented” the leg glance, had opened the on-side as a possible area for scoring and caught the cricketing world’s imagination. The sub-continentals at least have taken the cue to their hearts and have not looked back.

It is often thought that among the the grandmasters on the on-side Azharuddin was among the ugulier what with his prodding rather than fluent style, his mowed rather than hit sixes and a tongue that constantly hanged out when he was in his elements. Yet few can question the sheer wizardry of the man when it came to the role the wrists played in his stroke-play. Hereabouts was a man who could almost turn anything to anywhere between long-leg to mid-wicket with effortless ease; and when he lost the tag of being a on-side bully, he showed us how even his straight drives and square-cuts were “rubbery” wrists over extension of the arms and sheer ingenious skill rather than brute strength.

Across the border two other Moslems, one I had both the privilege and exasperation of watching and another who I have just heard about, used their wrists to take touch-play and on-side play in particular to a different level. Responding respectively to the appellations of Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas, the Pakistani right-handers were both masters of footwork, good players of fast bowling, great players of spin and had legendary wrists. To see Miandad in especial play was to watch almost a sleeping batsman get to thirty or forty before you or even he knew it. The gentle glides and late dabs on the off-side, strokes executed with a late uncorking of wrists, are arguably his contribution to the one-day game and his spiritual understudy (arguably!) Mohammad Yousuf did him no harm by emulating the Pakistani master’s game to perfection in addition to playing those gorgeous extra-cover drives which were pure artistry (once again wrists rather than extension).

Fondly called “Vishy, Gundappa Vishwanath was another sub-continental stalwart whose stroke play, it is acclaimed, had a lot of wrist work about it. One of my life’s biggest cricketing regrets is not to have seen this little man from Karnataka play those gritty innings against Pakistan when the chips were down. It is indubitable that if he had played in an era that did not have a certain Sunil Manohar Gavaskar in it Vishy would have been considered a genius in his own right. Be that as it may, the gentleman’s contribution to sub-continental batting is every bit a class in itself.

With the modern game teetering on the fringes of its shortest format where brutal strength, flamboyance and cute innovations match wits with one another, there seems to be little scope to assess let alone appreciate and foster the subtle dexterity displayed by the greats of the yesteryear. It is not as if the ‘softer skills’ required of batsmen that be have been lost, but more often than not they do not come to the forefront. Thankfully though we still have in our midst stars who give us at least glimpses of the rich tradition of orthodoxy which would have been sheer magic to watch for spectators in the past.

Recent performances by guys like Mahela Jeywardena in the IPL or the world T20 is a case in point. The elbow starting forever at the skies, the bat following through on a full-arc following the momentum given by the wrists and the ball scorching the turf or sailing smoothly over the boundary boards still provide the sub-continental purist great joy for this is a brood that seems to be dwindling like Tigers in the Indian forests. And yet we should be privileged to have in our midst guys of the style and class of V.V.S Laxman, a man who could on-drive Shane Warne against the spin on a fourth day pitch at Eden Gardens en route to a majestic 281. And as far as masters of the wrist go, there are not many today who are better than the Hyderabadi stylist who when in full flight simultaneously brings to mind the fluent sights and the rustling sounds of an elegant river.