Beyond the Blues

Hi guys,

The Baroda-UP match in Ghaziabad had a sizeable crowd at the ground. The same scenes were repeated during our game against UP in Lucknow. While it’s great for the local public to get the opportunity to see their stars from close quarters without spending money, the players also feel good to finally have an audience. After all, cricket is played for a couple of core reasons and one of them is to entertain people.

Personally, I prefer having all the first-class matches at Test centers because that’s where players will eventually be playing international cricket once they graduate from the domestic level. But we have seen that, at Test centers, regardless of the players involved in the match, people don’t turn up. Perhaps it’s because they get ample opportunities to see international stars on a regular basis in both international and IPL games and hence they don’t feel the need to watch them again in the non-glamorous domestic matches. But for the people in smaller towns, it seems like a God-sent opportunity and that is made clear through their actions.

They come in big numbers and create enough noise throughout the day to make their presence felt. I remember one such game in Rohtak. There were at least 5000 people in the ground and the buzz around the stadium was unbelievable.

Dear readers,

In the course of the current domestic season, the BCCI has decided to play cop to “illegal bowling actions”. Last year the board had begun a campaign through which six cameras around the ground monitored the standard of umpiring and the conduct of the game. Logically the same data was also used to take a closer look at bowling actions of bowlers with suspect actions. Towards the end of last season, the BCCI had issued a list of over 40 such bowlers. Apparently all were summoned to Bangalore by the National Cricket Academy for corrective measures.

Hello folks

I wasn’t too far off from the reality when I wrote that the presence of players like VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid has a mesmerising effect on the players, especially the youngsters. In our recently concluded match against Karnataka, Dravid scored 78 on a difficult pitch. He, as usual, made batting look easy, which left most of us awestruck.

The ball was darting around, and everyone was getting beaten at least a couple of times every over. But here was Dravid, always taking a long stride forward to the balls that were pitched up, and then either playing with the sweetest spot of the bat or allowing it go to the keeper. One of us would ask the keeper if the ball had stopped moving, but the answer would always be that Dravid is just making it look like that.

Dear readers,

Let me make it clear at the outset that I’m neither authorised nor qualified to figure whether Services were justified in refusing to play their Ranji Trophy game against Jammu & Kashmir, in Srinagar. Or whether the BCCI was right in disqualifying the team. I’m writing this just to share the plight of my fellow cricketers.

A player spends a lot of time preparing for the first-class season. It is, therefore, both demoralising and frustrating to be told that his toil during the off- and pre-season has been in vain. And that he must wait a year to make a mark at the national level. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this ban has done. Not only does it mean that players like Yashpal Singh won’t get a chance to score runs in the Ranji Trophy this year, it has also put an end to the team’s hopes of making it to the knockouts (which means promotion to the Super League), and any player's chance of being picked for North Zone. In these times, a year’s gap pushes you back at least a few seasons because of the intense competition. You are expected to start afresh next season, by which time a lot of players would have cemented their place in different sides.

The Ranji Trophy is also a platform to impress IPL teams, and this ban would now take even that opportunity away from the players. What makes it worse is that not only will players from the Services be deprived of an opportunity to play, but also that every other team in their group in the Plate League will play one match less in the league stage. One match, for teams who don’t qualify for the knockouts, makes up 20% of their first-class season, so players from these teams must perform exceptionally well over four games to be picked for zonal sides.

Hi guys

The first round of the Ranji Trophy features a lot of big names. Rahul Dravid will turn up for Karnataka against the Mohammad Kaif-led Uttar Pradesh, Zaheer Khan for Mumbai and VVS Laxman for Hyderabad among others. The mere presence of these names makes these matches very important.

Players in their respective teams get a first-hand account of what it takes to be an international cricketer. Dravid, for instance, is invariably the first man to get into the team bus, Laxman is ever so calm before going in to bat, Zaheer and Ashish Nehra spend countless hours working on their core muscles even while their team bats, and so on and so forth.

Hello friends,

Imagine this - There are two nets and about 15 batsmen queuing up for a few throw downs. Quite chaotic, you might think. Before you start racking your brains let me tell you that it wasn’t some kind of competition or a coaching session. It was the scene at the nets every morning of our T20 tournament. There were four state teams playing in the two morning matches at two adjacent grounds but at the same venue. All teams shared the facilities right from the dining area to the lavatories. Only the dressing rooms were not shared as makeshift dressing rooms (a covered seating area) were erected for two teams at the adjacent ground. The scenes at the nets were quite interesting both on the eve of the match and every morning.

Firstly, batsmen were not allowed to use spikes while batting for the fear of ruining the surface. Well, would they tell the same batsmen not to wear spikes during the match? Then, since there were only two nets to accommodate players from four teams, none of the batsmen would get more than a few balls for throw downs. Is it the ideal preparation for a match?

Yet, a set up like this definitely helped in building up the camaraderie between players from different states. Sharing the same net for throw downs meant that a bowler from Punjab was bowling to a player from Delhi and Haryana along with bowling to a batsman from his own side.

Hello friends

The season for Delhi, like most other states, kicks off with the domestic T20 tournament starting Tuesday. I, along with my peers, am expecting the IPL teams to keep a close eye on the tournament. Good performances here might translate into a contract with a franchise and a chance to play in the coveted IPL. Ideally one would expect the batsmen to be hitting big shots and innovating in the nets, and the bowlers to bowl a lot of yorkers and slower ones. But a visit to our practice session would prove you wrong. We’re practising in white clothes and with the red ball. Most batsmen are playing proper cricket, leaving balls outside off stump and trying to hit along the ground as much as possible. The bowlers are also doing what it takes to succeed in the longer version of the game, bowling longer spells, practising to maintain a teasing line just outside off stump.

“Are we missing something?” you might wonder.

Dear Readers,

As promised here are the answers to some of the questions you'd asked.

Posted by: Chintan Shah on February 24, 2009 11:00 AM

Hi Aakash, I’m a big fan of your articles on Cricinfo. I was trying to find your book in local bookstores but could not get it. Maybe I didn’t try enough, but I would surely buy it soon. My Question to you is about our domestic cricket scheduling. County cricket has four tournaments just like we do, they also have a two-tier approach, plus they have Twenty20 tournaments too which we do not – in our domestic circuit - thanks to the IPL. Why can’t we have a schedule just like them? The counties play four day-games in a week and play a one-day match over the weekend, that way both the Ranji Trophy and Ranji one-dayers can be held together. Similarly, the Duleep Trophy needs more matches, it simply cannot be a knockout tournament.

Dear readers,

Walking out to defend a modest total against Bengal in the quarter-final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, I told my players that we needed to give it all we had, to ensure that we get another opportunity to walk on to the cricket field as a team. A loss in that match would’ve meant the end of the road for Delhi. We had an early start to the season because we had to play a couple of extra pre-season games as a reward for winning the Ranji Trophy last season. So our sojourn together was quite a long one, where we saw more lows than highs, especially when compared to the previous season.

When you know that it’s all going to end, albeit only for a few more months when the drama would begin once again, you want to hold onto it for as long as possible. It might sound a little clichéd and inspired from the movie Chak De, but our last 47 overs on the field (the match was reduced to 47 overs a side) reminded me of that ‘Yeh 70 minute’ speech that Shah Rukh Khan gives his players before the finals.

Of course, the cricket was not going to stop with this game and most of us were going to represent the North Zone and play in the IPL, but it’s never the same. It's the fact that we were not playing for Delhi that would be missed most. Sadly, we faltered and the sand that we were desperate to hold within our fists slipped away right in front of our eyes, and we felt helpless.

Dear readers,

This post is not about domestic cricket or perhaps, not even about cricket, but about the prevailing circumstances in the game and our society in general. Today, this piece appeared in the Hindustan Times and I felt the need to share it with the people who follow my blog here. So here goes....