The Power of Three!

Two test series in the Southern Hemisphere ended within a space of half a day at the behest of time zones. And here I was in the Northern Hemisphere trying desperately to look for similarities between the two. I got only as far as the word “historical”, as India drew their first ever series in South Africa and England won their first Ashes (series) away from home in twenty-four years, and gave up:

One was as tightly contested a test series as they come and the score line 1-1 was, I am sure even by the standards of most neutrals, fair. The only grudge was that here was another three-test series between the titans which appeared like an extended trailer in lieu of the blockbusting movie it should be. The other series was anything but a tight contest and at the end of it both the teams would have wondered if Perth was an aberration, the final throwback to a recent era of Australian dominance, or just comic relief. Despite the dissimilarities, the two series together gave us an idea of the teams to watch out for over the next two winters at least, and, perhaps, at most. While Australia plummeted from one low to another nadir with  the same sort of drastic and dramatic regularity they displayed while scaling those incredible highs, we realised not only that a once great team was now barely competent but also that the days when a single team dominated world cricket are all but over.

Although the Sri Lankan cricketers may demur and justifiably, what with the team never getting the share of test cricket it deserves, I firmly believe that England, South Africa and India are the top teams going around now and will be for a while. I am obviously restricting my view to test cricket for every other form of the game, including the upcoming ODI world cup which is likely to be a pointless ritual of batting practice with scorecards that might rival Manhattan intended to test who gets to snooze first on the ground, seems to be a mundane overdose.

If you ask me which among the three teams is the best, I would say the following: India (and it does not take great shakes to say so because they are ranked number one and have not lost a test series for a while and because I am an Indian); South Africa (purely based on the unbelievable bowling strength they have and a solid, if slightly nervous, batting line up) and England (for being arguably the most consistent team in the circuit).

Hair-splitting apart, I think England has an edge (don’t look at me like that for saying it, but the days when “edge” would have definitively referred to an English middle-order man’s bat are behind us!) simply because there is variety in the bowling department, doggedness and flourish with the bat, a gritty wicket-keeper batsman in Matt Prior and a coach who knows a thing or two more than others about wading through difficult water. Their bench strength is fabulous as well and all the mentioned pluses came together at different points in the Ashes where England played as single-mindedly and clinically as I have seen any team play in recent memory. Admittedly, the English dominance appeared exaggerated because of Australia’s at times painful – for the fan – otherwise wan struggle in choosing between explosion and implosion on the pitch, and some inexplicable selection bloopers off it which made one wonder at times whether the board in charge was the ACB or PCB. Owing to Australia’s mediocrity, I believe that the edge England has over India and South Africa is slight. Thankfully for them England understand that winning the Ashes in Australia is just the sort of prelude, albeit historical, to better things and not an end-all.

Among South Africa and India, South Africa is likely to have less worries; any team with an evidently ever-in-form – sometimes pretending-to-be-out-of-practice – Jacques Kallis and Dale Steyn is not bound to have too many headaches. But even apart from these too big names, who once again drilled their presence over the Indian team in the recently concluded series, the South Africans will be in good cheer. Although Kallis and Tendulkar had a stupendous 2010, made even more memorable by their age and longevity, Hashim Amla was for me the batsman of 2010. He scored runs everywhere, against all attacks and at first-drop, a tricky and challenging position to bat and one owned by greats such as Bradman, Ponting, Sangakkara and others: his three hundreds in the two test series against India in India last year with the twin hundreds Eden Gardens may be mistaken for the stuff of a marathon man than a simple shy Moslem from Natal. Smith and Petersen have formed a decent partnership upstairs; AB De Viliers scored South Africa’s best test score recently and is by no means old; and Mark Boucher’s return to form with the bat ticks most boxes for the Proteas.

The Indians on the other hand have more forebodings than their stoical skipper would care to admit: for me, the greatest of them is the over-reliance on Zaheer Khan which was abundantly on evidence during his absence in the first test at Centurion where the Indians bowled without heart, inspiration, swing or bowling commonsense. While Khan’s record of injuries is itself a source of concern and frustration for him and those around him, the team clearly needs a second spearhead. Harbhajan’s 7-120 at Newlands is a relief but I hope it spurs him on to be the leader of the attack in home conditions and a potent ally to quick men abroad. But the concern is, as it has always been in India, in the fast bowling department: for all that was said about him, Sreesanth was brilliant in South Africa but all with due respect I do not see his head being made for leading an attack. Ishant Sharma was disappointing to say the least and although the young man has time I hope, for his sake and the country’s, that he does not become another case of an Indian quick in the “what-might-have-been” category than the “what-is”.

From the batting perspective, some major surgeries are required: old age is India’s biggest problem and because it is an all-or-nothing issue piecemeal solutions will not thankfully last. At 37 Tendulkar had his best year in the decade, and while it is cause for celebrating the Master all over again it is also cause for concern. Dhoni said that “comebacks” are the stuff of this team but great teams do not put themselves in a backs-to-the-wall scenario three times in four tests. Each of those times, and once with an injury, it was Laxman who had to bail India out. Having a single bogeyman for all occasions does not augur well in a team sport. Despite his 192 and his palpable attempts to fight it out in South Africa, Dravid would know he had an ordinary year and that his records in South Africa and Sri Lanka, like Ponting’s and Warne’s averages an India and Sampras’ record at the French Open, would remain a blot: if it is not time to go yet, at least it is time for him to drop down the order. It is too early to judge Pujara or Raina but their ascent is going to be difficult. The only settled thing about this team is the opening pair, with Murali Vijay waiting in the wings with strong intermittent performances as well. Despite that little consolation, India may be headed half-way to the sort of place the Australian batting place was in during the Ashes – and rest assured, it will not be a good place to be.

Apparently, India play tests in four more continents this year, including Europe, America and Australia. For this team, or at least its three elderly statesmen, this represents the best chance to win matches in a row in varied conditions and show that there is more to the No. 1 ranking than ICC’s method, which with reference to most things (apart from perhaps the UDRS), borders on madness. I do not know about South Africa and England’s schedules but one can be sure that they will be at India’s heels, chipping away.

Barring the four intolerable months that will be spent in the sub-continent in determining the best team in the world in 50 over cricket and then the best Indian-by-name-but-international-by-names team in IPL, under conditions that might make dry bread look more appetising than it ever was, the year promises fascinating cricket for the purists. And something tells me that India, South Africa and England will not remain as close this time next year. If they do, they will have played some unbelievable test cricket which will of course be brilliant for test cricket and for fans of test cricket like me who want it do far more than just survive as a residue of the game's glorious evolution.

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!