Blues Brothers
Psst ... Chappell's got a secret
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
Infuriating at the best of times, the cricket media has gone completely bananas in recent days with a series of non-stories. First, there was this controversy over whether the BCCI had broken its rules in making Narendra Hirwani a selector. Apparently, the rulebook said the selector should be a former player, retired 10 years. It seems Hirwani was playing cricket after that date. It’s a stupid rule and its breach shouldn’t really bother anyone. Yet, the cricket press went on and on as if it were the biggest infraction since Bodyline.
Second, the “betrayal” of and “secrets” being carried by Greg Chappell became news. The former Indian coach was now adviser to the Australian team and would allegedly “reveal weaknesses”. I’m no Chappell fan but to suggest he is guilty of some sort of deceit or treachery in this case is baloney.
Full postGanguly's gangplank
Having said that, we’re about to enter a long and interesting Test match season – and it would be appropriate and fitting for Ganguly to walk out after a gripping innings in an international match, at the peak of his authority, having taken his own
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
I’ve been avoiding getting into this silly “Should Saurav Ganguly retire?” debate. Part of the reason is, of course, that I’m a big fan of his pluck and derring-do, of him as a batsman and more so of him as perhaps India’s finest captain.
Admittedly the Big Four – Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – didn’t have a good series in Sri Lanka. The batting cost India victory and Ganguly’s form was the poorest. As such, I wasn’t surprised when he was dropped for the Irani Trophy game.
Having said that, we’re about to enter a long and interesting Test match season – and it would be appropriate and fitting for Ganguly to walk out after a gripping innings in an international match, at the peak of his authority, having taken his own decision. Yet, time is running out for that aspiration. He says he has another two years in him, I’m not too sure. A few matches and perhaps part or even all of the coming season is plausible. Two years? Too long. India can’t wait
Full postAn opportunity to bury a dead horse
The Champions' Trophy is an unwanted extra on the international cricket stage, irrespective of whether it is played in Pakistan or India, Australia or England
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
Sometimes crisis provides opportunity. While one can be fully sympathetic towards Pakistani cricket fans, it is important to see the postponement of the Champions' Trophy in a wider perspective. This is a useless, pointless tournament that nobody really wants – not players, not sponsors, not television viewers. The Champions' Trophy is an unwanted extra on the international cricket stage, irrespective of whether it is played in Pakistan or India, Australia or England.
With the Champions' Trophy gone, I suspect the Twenty20 Champions' League or some such IPL-inspired blockbuster will rush in to take its place. It will mean better business for the men who run global cricket and probably keep the players – who wouldn't mind extra money – happy too. Perhaps it will also allow the international calendar to be spread out this winter. With some juggling of dates, the England tour of India could now see three Test matches rather than two. This will gladden purists.
Full postKevin on top
The refusal to surrender, the arresting arrogance, the almost imperious self-belief – it reminded me of Douglas Jardine
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
Having appointed Kevin Pietersen as captain of England, Geoff Miller, chairman of selectors at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), talked of seeking a leader who brought “fresh enthusiasm and ideas” and who could lead the team in all three formats: Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s.
As a huge Pietersen fan, I must confess to being deliriously happy. Not since Ian Botham has the most talented and exciting cricketer in the English team been appointed captain.
It was said of the Australians that they selected the XI best cricketers and then simply chose the best of the best as captain. The English did things differently – which is why Mike Brearley had a long, memorable spell as captain and even Keith Fletcher was at the helm for a tour of India, one which he probably shouldn’t have made even as a batsman.
Full postThe Serendip sensibility
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
For an Indian cricket fan, the first Test match of the series in Sri Lanka was a humbling experience. The Indian cricket community and media not being given to patience, inevitably the attack will begin – on the captain, the poor spin bowling and the ageing middle order.
Frankly, that is an issue I don’t want to touch upon for the simple reason that one Test match is too little time in which to decide that entire careers are over and wholesale changes are needed. If the rest of the series proceeds like this, then perhaps there may be long-term issues to address. Even so, that is meat for another post, another time.
Full postBatting from memory
The welter of emotions that June 25, 1983, triggers within me – or, indeed, a few million others of my generation, give or take some years – is too personal and too complex to adequately convey to someone much younger or from another country or
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
This past Sunday, my niece, all of 17 and a week away from her first day in college, came over. I took her for lunch to a neighbourhood restaurant and as we ordered I found her watching the television set behind my back. A news channel was on, and a feature on the Prudential Cup of 1983 was being telecast.
“What’re you watching so quizzically?” I asked. “It’s Kapil Dev,” she said, “I wonder what he’s doing on television.” “It’s the 25th anniversary of the World Cup victory. It’s probably a silver jubilee special.” “Twenty fifth?” she rolled her eyes, “who cares ...”
I stared back, smiled what I thought was a wry smile and tucked into my chicken tikka masala. It was not that I had nothing too say; it was that I had too much. The welter of emotions that June 25, 1983, triggers within me – or, indeed, a few million others of my generation, give or take some years – is too personal and too complex to adequately convey to someone much younger or from another country or culture. At lunch on Sunday, my niece was another country.
Full postPlay, or else ...
While the whole world is threatened by terrorism, Jaipur and London were one-off incidents
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
It seems we’re set for another round of that old and decidedly bogus phenomenon – cricket’s so-called racial divide. Australia and England face the prospect of top players refusing to go to Pakistan for the Champions’ Trophy. The country is violent and turbulent, they argue, and the tournament is being played on the anniversary of 9/11 – though I doubt that final factor makes the cricketers any less or more vulnerable.
The ICC should have seen this coming but has been deliberately and cussedly ostrich-like. A few weeks ago, I met a senior cricket official from a south Asian country and asked him if he foresaw problems ahead. After all, nothing had changed between the cancellation of the Australian tour of Pakistan in April and now. Pakistan was unlikely to experience a change in threat perceptions by the late summer. Would not the same logic and the same fear factor that drove away Andrew Symonds and Cricket Australia still hold true?
My question was waved aside with an “It’s all okay.” Now that the problem is beginning to emerge and be heard, the ICC is still insisting that Pakistan is perfectly safe and that the upcoming Asia Cup is an adequate dress rehearsal. Should the Australians and English think otherwise, be certain that somebody will conjure up the familiar “Asians versus Old Empire” argument and sundry Indian and Pakistani busybodies will go around making smug statements about how the West hates cricket’s new power equations.
Full postThe write stuff
People who had never read Neville Cardus were weeping in his memory
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
The magazine MW commissioned me to write a piece on whether T20 lent itself to good cricket writing. My response, which appeared in MW's June issue, is reproduced below. A cricket writer friend who read it says it's guaranteed to make me enemies. I wonder why ...
People who had never read Neville Cardus were weeping in his memory. Those who wouldn’t spend an afternoon watching an exacting and gripping run crawl in, say, a New Zealand versus England Test, were shedding tears for the “traditions of the great game”. Critical reactions to the Indian Premier League came wrapped in exasperating hypocrisy.
It is important to understand how we play, describe, consume and celebrate cricket today in comparison with, to pick a random noun, the age when Victor Trumper was justifiably hailed as an artiste even if his Test average – a meaningless bauble that – was only 38. These changes are not unique to T20; they have been true for ODIs (F50, if you like) and even modern Test cricket.
Full postThis month, that miracle
On June 25, 1983, India won the Prudential Cup
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
On June 25, 1983, India won the Prudential Cup. The run-up to the silver jubilee has been marked by silly controversies and spurious theories. This (June 1) morning in The Pioneer, I looked back at simply the cricket
Before the Delhi Daredevils, there were Kapil’s Devils. For cricket fans of a certain generation, June 25, 1983, remains, quite without question, the date of their lives. It was the day India won the Prudential Cup and a bunch of nine journeymen and two all-time greats (one of them, Sunil Gavaskar, a trifle out of form) pulled off the biggest miracle in Indian sport.
Full postThe summer game
I’ve spent most of the past week in Hubli, a small city in northern Karnataka that has been, in a strange way, an IPL eye-opener for me
Ashok Malik
25-Feb-2013
I’ve spent most of the past week in Hubli, a small city in northern Karnataka that has been, in a strange way, an IPL eye-opener for me. Every evening, as the work machine shut down, the Indian Premier League was about the only entertainment available or accessible to the strangers in town. As such, I spent the week watching T20 games almost uninterrupted.
As I soon discovered, the rest of Hubli wasn’t doing very much different. IPL had captured the imagination. As a friend pointed out, nothing else was selling. IPL and Set Max had crowded out advertising from other channels and soap operas. Few big Hindi/Indian films were being released in the IPL period, because no film-maker was certain he or she could match the frenzy of abbreviated cricket. Thanks to IPL, lean season corporate advertising – summer is usually a dull time to roll out heavy-duty promotional campaigns – had been rendered an oxymoron.
Not all of this was predicted. A number of well-meaning cricket fans from England and Australia and even within India were genuinely surprised at projections of IPL’s success, wondering if there was enough money to back the idea. In sum, what IPL may have done is created a new, complementary cricket market for the summer months. It will not necessarily take away from the traditional cricket season that runs from October/November to March.
It is best to see T20 and traditional cricket as two separate sports or, perhaps, separate enterprises. In the United States, basketball, American football, baseball, golf and a few other sports are all sustainable. The Indian economy isn’t as big as the American one but it’s grown large enough to support more than one sport.
Full postMost Read
Writers
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