Men in White
An unnatural victory
India didn't drop any catches, they got Pietersen out twice in two balls, and won despite Tendulkar and Ganguly getting poor decisions
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
My brother sms-ed me a message from Virginia within seconds of India winning the Trent Bridge Test. It read: it doesn't get any better than this! And really, it doesn't. To watch an Indian middle order methodically, pragmatically grind out a big total against an English seam attack doing what it does best in helpful conditions and then to sit back and savour an Indian pace bowler mow down a decent batting line-up with orthodox swing bowling of the sort that Vaughan and company have been raised on … is very satisfying.
To not drop bouquets of catches, to get Kevin Pietersen out twice in two balls, to have two Indian openers make a small English total look smaller, to be treated to the sight of the appalling Matthew Prior losing his middle stump to a ball from Rudra Pratap Singh that swung round a corner, to puzzle over Zaheer Khan shaking his bat at Pietersen, to read the next day's papers with dawning comprehension, and then to realise with awed delight that England's professionally trained trash-talkers had been reduced to jelly beans, jelly beans, made me wonder if someone had scripted this thing.
The facts are unnatural:
Full postAll’s well that ends in rain
Mukul Kesavan would like to claim some credit for India's draw at Lord's
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
A happy end is a priceless gift. We saved the Test match. Don’t let the English press tell you it was the weather. Mahendra Singh Dhoni saved us. In the final overs of the match, with no hope of making the winning score and every chance that the English bowlers would take India’s last wicket, Dhoni raged against fate by going for Michael Vaughan’s bowling and pulling him viciously to the deep-midwicket fielder many times in a row for a single which he then refused to take.
Moved by his heroics, the gods commanded the clouds to foregather and weep. In case you’re the nervous sort of desi fan and haven’t asked what happened after they went in for bad light for fear of finding out, I can confirm that we saved the match, Dhoni and me. Yes, I had to take a hand. There was a bad moment when Monty Panesar appealed for a leg before decision against Sreesanth and Steve Bucknor, who has form when it comes to pushing us off the edge, got all twitchy. He would have grimaced and nodded and raised his finger but taking advantage of how slowly he gets to the point I whipped out my wand and yelled “Stupefy!” That stopped him. Nobody noticed that he was unconscious for a bit because a) he was standing up and b) he isn’t too animated to start with.
Like I said, a happy end makes a difference to the whole story and all the characters in it. At the end of the first day’s play when England were two hundred and plenty for four, I wanted to sack the pace ‘attack’. When you need Sourav Ganguly to take the first wicket and Anil Kumble to take the second (after giving away more than two hundred runs), three specialist seamers begin to seem extravagant. RP Singh was high on my list of least favoured bowlers. I found his run-up and follow-through deliberate to the point of absurdity: why, I wondered, did he bowl fast if he was worried that some body part was about to fall off? And when Dinesh Karthik put down Andrew Strauss, he was lucky I had forgotten the Cruciatus curse or he’d still be writhing at point.
Full postThe sixth batsman
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
The big selection question on this tour of England will be whether to play five batsmen or six. Despite Rahul Dravid's frequently expressed desire to play five bowlers, given his bowling resources on this tour and the need to have runs on the board, he'll go with six batsmen. Karthik, Dravid and Tendulkar are certainties. On the evidence of the Bangladesh tour, Ganguly has his place in the team nailed down and the chances are that Wasim Jaffer will keep his place as a specialist opener.
The sixth spot, in recent times, has been a toss-up between VVS Laxman and Yuvraj Singh. I hope Laxman's 95 against Sussex wins him the nod, though given his luck with selectors there's no telling. Dravid played Yuvraj ahead of Laxman in the second and third Tests the last time we played England, at home. This time round, given Dravid's early endorsement, Laxman's prospects look better.
Full postFebruary-April, 1971: Sardesai's spring
So he hit big centuries at the right times, broke records, played the critical part in winning an away series against the West Indies, hit a crucial fifty and forty in a low scoring match to help seal another Test rubber and basked forever more in
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
The death of Dilip Sardesai reminds us how thin and star-struck Indian cricket writing is. A dense archive of cricket writing will have its share of heroic biography but it will also document collective achievement and failure and, in doing so, will describe (and commemorate) the times when good players, who weren't stars, rose above themselves to help turn a contest. These turning points in Indian cricket's history often hinged on the performances of players whose career statistics weren't stellar, but whose talent and will flared briefly but fiercely enough to win us landmark victories.
Dilip Sardesai hit five centuries in his Test career. Luckily for Indian cricket three of these came in one series at the fag end of his Test career, when Wadekar's men toured the West Indies in 1971. He hit a double century and two centuries: the double century set the tone for the series by forcing the West Indies to follow on in the first Test and then his century in the second Test at Port of Spain, Trinidad, helped India win the match and the series. Sardesai had a series aggregate of 642, an Indian record, breaking Vijay Manjrekar's earlier mark of 586 runs. It was a golden year for him because he went on to play an important supporting role in the victory at the Oval where Chandrasekhar bowled India to another unprecedented 1-0 away series win against England.
So he hit big centuries at the right times, broke records, played the critical part in winning an away series against the West Indies, hit a crucial fifty and forty in a low scoring match to help seal another Test rubber and basked forever more in the love of a grateful, win-starved nation. Wrong. One year later Sardesai had played his last Test and retired to the obscure limbo that was the fate of all but the most successful Indian cricketers before television.
Full postA calendar of coaches
'Manager' seems the right title for Borde's likely duties: reminiscing with old men in MCC ties, visiting the Indian High Commission, telling his lads that they were lucky they weren't up against Truman, Tyson, Statham and Loader, being benevolent
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
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If this thing becomes epidemic, Steve McClaren could feel pressured to declare his disinterest. I've heard reports that the search committee considered Tony Roche because he was available (Federer had fired him); there were even whispers that Gavaskar wanted Prakash Padukone all along.
There's another, less feverish way of looking at what has happened. There is an Indian method underlying the BCCI's choices which has escaped the deracinated sensibilities of the English language press. The search for the truth as everyone with an Indian passport ought to know, happens by elimination. It doesn't matter who says neti, neti ('not this', 'not this') —it could be the Board (this is what happened with Whatmore, his very name was an invitation to look further) or the candidate (Ford, Emburey)--so long as it is said a respectable number of times. With every rejection the possibility of stumbling upon the true coach increases. Far from Gavaskar or the members of the search committee being hostile to a foreign coach, they deliberately didn't offer it to an Indian for fear of aborting this process of negation. An Indian would have said yes.
This is what happened. Cornered by the unthinking scorn of ignorant journalists, the Board was forced to offer the job to Chandu Borde who said yes without knowing what he was saying yes to. When the news broke and journalists quizzed him about the details of the offer, he said he'd know when the official letter arrived.
Full postIndia's next coach: continued
More and more the BCCI comes across as a rich repertory company with a particular talent for farce.
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
Graham Ford has declined the job in a civil, low-key, discreet way: all the qualities that made him such an attractive prospect as coach. There's no reason to doubt his stated reason for staying with Kent: the well-being of his family. But rumour has it that Ford was appalled by the Indian Board officials and the state of cricket training in India—which isn't hard to believe. And not being given a free hand in selecting his support staff was, apparently, another turn-off.
So we have a preparatory camp about to begin and no coach. Sunil Gavaskar appeared on television on Monday, 11 June, and observed that after Ford's withdrawal, the BCCI was "back to square one." Actually, it's worse than square one. At square one Dav Whatmore was a real possibility: now, thanks to the search committee's whims, he's ruled out as a likely candidate. This leaves the Board with a free choice between that hot coaching property, John Emburey, and the usual Indian suspects.
Unless we go to England with what we have in place. In his television appearance, Gavaskar said that he didn't know whether the BCCI would reconvene a meeting of the search committee or carry on with an 'interim' arrangement in place. Would that be Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Singh and Gundappa Viswanath as our bowling, fielding and batting coaches respectively? Perhaps we didn''t give the selection committee enough credit. Perhaps it knew what it wanted all along.
Full postWhy Emburey?
One reason his name is so perplexing is that he's an English spinner of a certain sort
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
Emburey?
It isn't just that he was coaching a minor counties side not so long ago. Nor that he was fired by Northants. Or that Middlesex, the team he subsequently coached, was relegated. These details don't make up a great resumé, obviously, but they aren't the only reasons why Emburey is such an unlikely coach for India. One reason his name is so perplexing is that he's an English spinner of a certain sort. John Emburey was once what Ashley Giles is now: a containing, life-denying spinner who could bat a bit. To consider an English spinner of this genre as one of two candidates for the job of India coach, is like shortlisting Madan Lal for the job of coaching the West Indies. West Indian fans would be entitled to look reproachfully at Holding and Bishop and Roberts and ask: why him?
Full postThe Indians are coming
I don't think Sharad Pawar is a good candidate for the presidency of the ICC
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
Andrew Miller's piece on this website, 'Worse to Follow' about the late Percy Sonn, the president of the ICC who died a few days ago, makes you long for some golden mean between being mealy-mouthed about the dead and being malicious about them. We are told about Sonn's ineptness, the distrust he inspired and the greed-driven system he presided over. In between robust editorial comment, the piece has a couple of Sonn's colleagues say nice things about him in extenuation. It isn't till halfway through the article that you realise that Percy Sonn, so recently dead, is a narrative device, a way of warning cricket's fans that worse is to follow, that 'worse' being the possibility of the BCCI chief, Sharad Pawar, succeeding Sonn.
Why would this be bad? "With Pawar installed at the head of the ICC, the way would be cleared for the takeover of the ICC that has long been threatened by the frustrated Indians, who represent 70% of the game's income and whose early exit from the World Cup conveniently distanced them from most - if not all - of the tournament's myriad failings." This is a remarkable sentence: the first half is unexamined prejudice and the second half is incoherent.
Full postNowhere to Go
Talking about the awfulness of cricket arenas in India, Bishen Bedi has a lovely story about lavatory facilities at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi's only Test stadium.
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
Talking about the awfulness of cricket arenas in India, Bishen Bedi has a lovely story about lavatory facilities at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi's only Test stadium.
'I was captain and I was sick of outsiders using the players' loo. So I sat a couple of policemen in front of the lavatory door with instructions that only players were to be allowed in. We were batting, so I settled down to nap. Suddenly I woke to stomping sounds: the dressing room was crowded with soldiers in uniform. "What?" I asked. "Sir," said one of them, "permission to use the bathroom…the President..." It wasn't the President of the BCCI he was talking about, it was Mr Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad, the President of the Republic. He needed to go, but this was Feroz Shah Kotla: there was nowhere to go to!'
This is a democratic story: whether you're slumming it on the concrete terraces or sitting in the pavilion, the Feroz Shah Kotla treats you with equal contempt.
Full postThe good news
I can see it now: portable pitches (held together with glue), third-country venues, empty stadiums, and cross-eyed players wondering if it's Tuesday and Tangiers or Wednesday and consequently Riyadh?
Mukul Kesavan
25-Feb-2013
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There's more: the Hindustan Times reports that the Zee deal with the BCCI is dead and the first casualty is the lunatic 'home' series of ODIs that India was going to play with South Africa in Ireland. Ireland! Apparently the BCCI's idea of home means a series where the BCCI's chosen telecast partner gets to keep the ad revenues. This is Lalit Modi's definition of a home away from home.
It's all part of the BCCI's plan to replace spectators with television cameras. I can see it now: portable pitches (held together with glue), third-country venues, empty stadiums, and cross-eyed players wondering if it's Tuesday and Tangiers or Wednesday and consequently Riyadh?
But unfortunately for this excellent scheme Doordarshan kept taking its mandatory pound of flesh or share of feed and Zee couldn't bear it any more, specially after losing boatloads of money telecasting the epic India-West Indies-Australia tri-series staged in that well known nursery of cricket, Kuala Lumpur. Anyone remember who won or what happened? Thought not. But here's the good part: HT claims that Zee lost fifty crores! Isn't that wonderful? It couldn't have happened to a nicer company: people who hope to make their money by getting Dravid and Co. to play Mickey Mouse matches in Malaysia, deserve all the grief they get.
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