What's in a name

Consider for a moment that someone has asked you to measure their chances of making it big in international cricket.

I am not talking about Twenty20, wham-bam-thank-you-Lalit fancy-dress cricket. I am talking about proper five-day or mildly improper 50-over ODI cricket. The kind that requires genuine talent and at least one set of white uniforms.

Now first of all you are going to look at these hopefuls' cricketing talent. Do they have all the textbook shots? Does their seam seem upright? Does their hook look smooth? Is their catching matching your expectations?

Alternately, are they from Haryana or Jharkhand, with a predominantly dairy-based diet?

Next you might look at their physique or maybe their temperament. Both are key to good cricketing careers. Inzamam and Sreesanth come to mind.

And then maybe you will look at political affiliations. How many times have we seen exciting cricketing talent die a dreadful death in the dingy dungeons of dreary domestic dabblings?

Only then, once they have displayed the skill, the smarts, the sanity and the connections, will you perhaps reassure them that they have what it takes.

However, some recent research proves that these things alone are pointless without one key ingredient.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking of the cricketer's name.

Let me explain. For the last two weeks I have been going through pages upon pages of ESPNcricinfo records and online statistics, hundreds of match reports and scorecards, and even hours upon hours of entirely unrelated online video. All in order to prove a hypothesis I have played with for years:

If not a unique first name, such as Fanie or Shikhar, you must at least have a spectacular surname. If that is also missing, then, as in the case of VVS Laxman and WPUJC etc. Vaas, you must be blessed with copious initials with which to garnish your otherwise unremarkable name.

Now on the face of it this seems like a preposterous idea. How can something as whimsical as names determine future cricketing prowess?

Cast your eyes on the bowling line-up that performed for Australia in the recent one-day international against the world's No. 1 Test cricket team, India: McKay, Starc, Hastings, Hopes, Hauritz and Smith.

McKay has a capital letter in the middle of his name. Crazy. Starc sounds like a well-muscled womanising character out of The Bold and the Beautiful, or a powerless regional association of countries. I know a few Hastings besides this one. One was a governer-general of India and the other was fictional detective Hercule Poirot's assistant. Hauritz sounds like someone with a throat infection simultaneously coughing, sneezing and suffocating while sitting in an old auto-rickshaw. Which immediately explodes.

Which leaves us with Smith. Now I know what you are thinking. Aha, Smith! Isn't Smith the Chang of the Caucasian world? But you forget that Smith's full name is SPD Smith, which stands for Steven Peter Devereux Smith.

(Yes, perhaps these Aussie bowlers have flattered to deceive of late. But with superb names like Devereux I am convinced that at least a Test series win over Bangladesh should be around the corner for the Australians.)

Closer home, just gaze over the names of the people who play for India (world No. 1 in the Test format). Shikhar Dhawan. Greatness assured.

Google for the name Virat and you will find many references to Virat Kohli and a few to a company that makes pressure cookers. There is no doubt in my mind that he will achieve greatness.

Saurabh Tiwary almost sounds like a pedestrian name. But note the clever use of the terminal "y" instead of the more common "i" in his surname. This is a stroke of genius. This boy will import many cars without paying import duties.

Examples like this abound in all of world cricket.

In England you have Sidebottom. (Give me two minutes to regain straight face. Okay, thanks.) And then there is that Darren Gough. For many years I used to pronounce it wrongly as Darren "Gowff". And then one day a friend who is a cricket expert informed me that Darren Gough had, in fact, retired. So then there was no need to correct my pronunciation.

All this is very interesting, no doubt. And I invite you to extend this study to more countries and older data.

However, there are two upsetting outcomes from my study. The first is that people with boring names like Anil Kumar, SP Balasubramaniam, John Smith or Kevin Pereira will find it almost impossible to make it big in international cricket. This also means that current players such as Murali Kartik, Praveen Kumar and Azhar Ali will have to perform remarkably to make a name for themselves. Much more so than, say, Salman Butt or Ijaz Butt or BJ Watling.

The other thing is this: if you are a young, budding cricketer called Tendulkar or Dravid or Vettori or Afridi, your chances of making it big are remarkably slim. Very rarely do you see surname repetition at the very top echelons of cricket. Which is also why, I believe, few sons or nephews or nieces of famous cricketers have followed suit.

(And even when this has happened, extreme names such as Cairns and Amarnath are involved. And in any case I am told that the Geneva Convention and ICC rules prevent any more Manjrekars from stepping onto a cricket pitch.)

So in conclusion I would like to request all budding cricketers and parents of budding cricketers to make the necessary changes to their names in order to have a fighting chance of cricketing greatness.

Sample:

Old name: Pradeep Singh

New name: Maharaja Pradeep WJU Lala Lance Singh Germon III

I hope this will help cricketers everywhere.