Samir Chopra
Indian Foreign Service
When India play at home, they provide entertainment, razzle-dazzle, and a display of sporting skills
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
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My gut reaction to India's losing the two T20s against New Zealand was disappointment. Not because a couple T20 internationals had been lost. In the larger scheme of things, these still rank third behind Tests and ODIs. But because, these days, every time India loses a match overseas, I instinctively sense a lost opportunity to give the "boys overseas" - the large, vocal, Indian diaspora--something to cheer about. It's yet another burden for the Indian team to bear but it is one they should be familiar with.
When the Indian team first played in the West Indies in 1953, they provided plenty of joy for the Indo-Caribbean spectators that came out in throngs to see them play (the best description of this reaction can be found in Mihir Bose's A History of Indian Cricket. And when India won the World Cup in 1983, an Indian expat living in London on a visit to India, said to an uncle of mine, "World Cup jeetne ke baad hum mahinon tak chati nikaal ke chalte te London mein". [For months after India won the World Cup, we walked around with our chests stuck out in London]. Like it or not, when the Indian team plays overseas, they do duty of a sort very different from that when they play at home.
When they play at home, they provide entertainment, razzle-dazzle, and a display of sporting skills. When they play overseas, they provide ammunition for bragging rights, comeback lines and a cushion of respect (which might help, for instance, in making sure you get picked up early in a pickup game).
Full postSlumdog Millionaire and Cricket
However, Slumdog has done well with regards to cricket in another regard
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
This is the day after the Oscars so it's only natural that I would write about Slumdog Millionaire. My central critique of the movie has already been made, much more eloquently than I ever could, by Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph. I have, however, as a fan of cricket and the Indian fan, another complaint about the movie, which centers on roughly the same complaint that Kesavan made: the movie does not make the suspension of disbelief easy.
For a crucial question in the movie, the one which catapults Jamal into the realm of the big bucks involves a question about cricket. Right off the bat (pun intended), this is a mistake. Why would a question about cricket, and cricket statistics at that, be placed in such a crucial moneyed category of the quiz? Especially when that quiz is taking place in India, home to obsessive statisticians and numerologists, trained for years by the brutal alphabet soup of school exams like the ICSE, CBSE, NTSE, ISC, IIT-JEE, AFMC, and all of the rest, to be the world's best crammers and memorizers?
But that's not the worst part. The true indicator that the film-makers thought so poorly of Indian fans and their cricketing knowledge is that the question asked is (no, not how many centuries Don Bradman made - that's printed on each Indian child's janampatri), wait for it, "Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket?" I was watching this movie at a large suburban movieplex, and I'm afraid my loud guffaws and chortles at this point might have made me a bit unpopular. It certainly earned me a dig in the ribs from my wife.
Oh, sure, I'll acknowledge the film-makers were clever enough to make this question one that Jamal struggles with. See, they seem to be saying, this is one question that every Indian would know, and that precisely is the question that our Slumdog seems to be ignorant about. Doesn't this show his disconnection from the mainstream? Yes, but what the heck is it doing as the 10-lakh rupee question? In the pantheon of cricket statistics questions, this one is not even a minor deity. Rather than the police torturing Jamal, they should have hauled the show's question-devisers off to the brig for a well-deserved thrashing.
Full postWhither The Great Cricket Documentary
Most cricket documentaries tend to be poorly put together highlight clips, interspersed with a few interviews with the dramatis personae and a couple of journalists
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
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While cricket has produced some of the finest sporting literature there is, it has not been served well in the domain of the documentary. Sure, telling a compelling a story about a sporting event that runs for fivedays can be difficult (and this is compounded when dealing with Test series or entire careers). But even accounting for that, the lack of the definitive cricket commentary is still mysterious. After all, skilled film-makers find a way to bring dramatic stories to life on the screen even when dealing with long, complex events like wars or political crises.
Most cricket documentaries tend to be poorly put together highlight clips, interspersed with a few interviews with the dramatis personae and a couple of journalists. Cricket documentaries are stuck in the "Lets-get-this-DVD-out-for-Christmas-shopping" mode. Once in a while, the sheer quality of the cricket action on display makes one remember one of those productions. "Botham's Ashes", the DVD of Australia's conquest of the West Indies in 1995, or the hour-long summation of the 2005 Ashes come to mind.
Or sometimes the weight of including enough historical footage is impressive in its own right. The DVD titled "A History of Cricket" (presented by David Gower, and put out by Marks and Spencer) was a fair stab in this regard, but it still left me cold at the end. I didn't think justice had been done to the rich history of the game (Of course, Ken Burns' Baseball series ran for 9 DVDs, and even then, not everyone was happy with the seemingly excessive time spent on the Red Sox and the Yankees).
Full postThe Sabina Park cauldron
I think I genuinely felt scared
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
One of the oft-repeated lines in the aftermath of the English defeat in Kingston has been (no, not the business about how it's all the IPL's fault, and no, not the KP-Flintoff Mutual Dislike Society) a mention of the crowd at Sabina Park. To a man, correspondents reporting on the fourth day's play noted the electric atmosphere, the hooping and hollering, the dancing, the egging on, or quite literally, the willing, of the players to bigger and better things.
I knew exactly what the correspondents were talking about and it wasn't just because I had watched the 51 Debacle live on my 19-inch flat screen monitor at home with the speakers turned up (well, the one good one). It was because I had once sat in the middle of a Sabina Park crowd that had gotten pumped up similarly. On that occasion, another West Indian quick had triggered a collapse in an opponent's batting line-up. The collapse was not so spectacular, and the opponents recovered, but the experience was enough to let me know what an opposition side could feel like when confronted with that famous combination: a hyped-up fast bowler and an excited West Indian crowd.
Full postRadio gaga
It was during this session that I discovered that despite all the distortion from the radio set, ones comprehension of the spoken word improved over time, almost as if the audio-processing component of one's brain was carrying out its own corrections
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
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Reading the recap of the 1979-80 Australian season was, at the risk of descending into cliches, a trip down memory lane. For that season was the first time that I tuned into radio commentary from Australia for a match not involving India (my uncles and I had spent many hours glued to the radio during the 1977-78 season when India went down 2-3).
Whether it was the impressionability of youth or the magic of radio commentary, that season stands out quite clearly in my mind (and I have not seen, or at least I don't think I have, a single second of video footage of that summer). On a purely cricketing level, I was excited by the return of the Packer cricketers to the fold. I had been shattered by the schism in world cricket: it had taken all the worlds best players to the WSC and threatened a great deal of confusion in my mind between official and unofficial cricket.
But all was well. The Chappells and the Lillees and the Marshes were back in my then favorite team, the Australians. The West Indies were back as well, and to top it all off, the English had obligingly agreed to play the part of the Prissy Poms by refusing to contest the Ashes. And the icing on the cake was that Kim Hughes and David Hookes, who I worshipped, were going to play in the full-strength side. More than anything else I wanted to see how my two new heroes would do.
Full postWorrying about Indian batting
Whither this anxiety then
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
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We are in a similar period now, following the Test wins at home over Australia and England. Sure, no one is going overboard in their claims (leaving aside some suggestions that the Indian bowling attack was the most varied or the most incisive or whatever, in the cricketing world). But the feel-good vibe is present, with the twin Test series (and the 5-0 ODI thrashing of England) putting a convenient distance between the team and its recent past. But the anxiety that underwrites this bluster has, for me, been most intriguingly revealed in the discussion over whether Dravid should remain in the Indian team, especially for the forthcoming tour of New Zealand.
For the central claim of the pro-Dravid camp in this regard is that Dravid is needed in Kiwiland, on its spongy, seaming, pitches. That without him, the Indian middle-order will be at the mercy of those dreaded seamers, cutters, swingers that are the hallmark of the New Zealand attack.
On the face of it, there is something very odd about this claim. The Indian cricketing world is currently glowing in the glory of its new opening pair (confidently proclaimed by some to be the best in the world); we have rediscovered the glories of Tendulkar and Laxman; and only one batting retirement, that of Ganguly, has taken place. The Indian team has not replaced its entire middle order and the New Zealand team is judged by most folks to thoroughly deserve its position in the Test cricket rankings table. Given the bluster about India and the brick-batting of New Zealand, it would be plausible to claim that India should do just fine and win comfortably (we do have a very effective pace attack, after all).
Full postSehwag's debut
That he survived was not such a mystery
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
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Somewhere out there in bittorrent land is the video of Sehwag's debut innings against South Africa in the 2001 test series. I watched that innings, live on a large screen television, at the Crown Hotel on Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 3rd November 2001. This past weekend, just because I felt like reliving one of my favorite cricketing memories, I decided to view it again.
I didn't regret that decision and have played the 22-minute long video again and again reminding myself this was someone playing his first Test innings. As far as debut tons go, it is hard to imagine another innings which so definitively sounded an advance warning to the rest of the world that a bright new talent was on the world's stage.
Earlier that day I'd played cricket with my Northern Sydney team, the Centrals, and had enjoyed a good, hard day in the sun. We won our match and shortly afterwards, a friend and I were dropped back in the City center before beginning the walk back home. I knew the Test started in the late afternoon, so we decided to stop off at the Crown for a couple of beers (the atmosphere was all skank, but they had several large televisions). When I checked the score, I was taken aback. India had already slumped to 68-4, and a young debutant was batting at #6, heading out to face the music, to join Sachin Tendulkar in the middle. The partnership that followed was worth 220 runs, and it took all of 46 overs. South Africa did not know what hit them. But fans like us were equally gobsmacked.
Full postAnyone can coach
I questioned the value of the national cricket coach
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
Sometime ago on Different Strokes, I questioned the value of the national cricket coach. I accused them of being redundant in international context. Now, to make my point, here comes Mickey Arthur, with his ten tips for succeeding in the subcontinent.
"Deal with pressure", "adjust to the game's pace", "make the first innings count", all sound like prize contenders for, as I like to call them, Outstanding Missives from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious.
"Stay leg-side of the ball" sounds interestingly different but it's also interestingly useless, in that it is so over-theorised that I have a hard time believing any cricketer would take it seriously. But bully for Mickey's wards if they did so. So let us give him this one.
Then there is "plan against spin". Imagine that, going to India, and you need to be told to "plan against spin". Brilliant, innit?
Full postThe show must not go on
It's a great thing to talk about getting back to day-to-day life
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
The day after the Mumbai bombings, an Australian friend of mine who had read my piece on Australia not touring Pakistan (which provoked many flames despite my pointing out that terrorist violence in India hardly received any international attention), wrote to me and said, "See, Chop? All it took was a few dead Englishmen and Americans. The Mumbai attacks are all over the news". There is a huge dollop of cynicism in that email, one that I partially share, as I've not failed to notice that fact myself.
But cynicism is not what I intend to traffic in today. I'd simply like to offer some skepticism about the constant refrain that cricket can act as a healing balm. For the fact of the matter is that cricket can be a good and a bad distraction. And right now, cricket seems like a bad distraction.
India has been attacked, and I'd rather the country, its people, its leaders, its intellectuals get down to the business of figuring out how it is that every year, due to planned acts of murderous violence, hundreds of Indian citizens die, of all religions and socio-economic orders, and yet, nothing concrete seems to happen on either the security, planning, or domestic and foreign policy fronts. It's a great thing to talk about getting back to day-to-day life. But getting back to normality can be overrated, especially if that return involves a dangerous forgetting of the fact that a sovereign nation is seemingly helpless to protect the lives of its innocent citizens.
If the absence of cricket forces a remembering of why the cricket is not on the television, then so be it. Let's watch images of the burning Taj instead, or perhaps some more shots of the dead, their limbs grotesquely askew, at the Mumbai railway station, and ask ourselves, what can we do to make sure this does not happen again? What will it take?
Full postMore Technology. Fewer Draws
Sure, it's taken away some of the pleasure of watching an umpire's finger go up, shortly after the stumps are sent flying by a direct hit, but that's a small price to pay for knowing that the decision came out correctly
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
Many theories have been put forward to explain the recent (say 1990s onward) increase in the number of Test matches that have not ended in a draw. The usual suspects are better fielding, the dominance of Australia, faster scoring, better catching, more aggressive batting habits inherited from one-day cricket, and so on.
I'd like to think that a small contribution has been made by technology, more specifically, the use of side-on cameras to help decide line decisions like stumpings and run-outs. I do not have precise dates or numbers at hand, but I would be very surprised to find out the number of these dismissals has not increased since the introduction of television replays and third umpires. Any statheads out there that are willing to do the hard work and put some empirical meat on the bare bones of my wild speculation?
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