Stars, Stripes and Stumps

The second decade of the XXI Century has begun with quite a few teams staking claims to the upcoming World Cup. It had also begun with the US team fighting to be able to someday stake claims to an upcoming World Cup. Massiah & Co. were in Hong Kong fighting the fights that could have confirmed a permanent place for them in the ICC’s World Cricket League Division 3 and in US cricketing lore. Two years and a jump up to WCL Div 4 from the wastelands of cricket is still a commendable effort.

None of what the US team did to get to Div 4 was visible to their followers back home. We were only dependent on written reports and live, typed updates on the internet provided from the grounds in Canada, Nepal, Italy and Hong Kong. It was an ironic throwback to what now seems like an ancient way of following live sporting events, especially because one of the most modernised countries of the world was participating in it.

What takes this irony to siderotic levels is the fact that I am currently in India, not yet a truly modernised society by my yardstick, and yet following cricket in what seems like a glimpse into the future of following live sporting events. The first sight of two advertising signs popping up, one in front of the slip fielders and another where leg slip would have been for Morne Morkel, made me jump off the couch while watching a Test match between India and South Africa. The fact that some of us old friends had gathered to drift back to old times couldn’t hide this jarring image even from our deficient attention spans. None of us had heard of the brand that was being advertised; needless to say the product it belonged to.

Before I came to the US, I didn't realize how much of a role outfields play in shaping cricket technique. When we were in school, coaches taught us the basics that equipped us to deal with all sorts of conditions. Roll your wrists when hitting a short ball, to keep it down; words to remember on a bouncy track. Get to the pitch of the ball to drive; words to live by, especially against a swing bowler.

But there was nothing prescribed for the specific case where the grass is three or more inches tall in the outfield, a condition that we face every day here in the US; certainly a lot more than we face bouncy tracks or top-class swing bowling. Whatever the characteristics of the pitch or the opposition, most club cricket venues in the US have one thing in common: the grass in the outfield is too long.

This has had a butterfly effect on our techniques. The only way to score quickly is to hit the ball in the air. Half a dozen of Sachin Tendulkar's boundaries during his 51st Test century in Cape Town were just firm pushes down the ground. On my home turf, those shots would not even have earned me a single. I've actually been run out a couple of times having beaten the bowler with a firm push, only for the ball to lodge in the thick grass near the umpire, allowing the bowler to run back from his follow through, pick it up, and knock over the stumps.

There’s really no such thing as a full-time job in US cricket. Even though USACA is in line to receive millions of dollars from its share in the newly formed Cricket Holdings America, it will probably take at least another year or longer before players and coaches can get paid to represent USA on the field of cricket on a full-time basis. However, that does not mean that a full-time commitment is not required from players, coaches, administrators, fans … and at least one journalist.

In an effort to get out of the New York/New Jersey area ahead of the mother of all blizzards which dropped nearly 30 inches in my hometown, I had to sacrifice Christmas Day with my family, rebooking my flight that was due to leave the following evening for Los Angeles so I could make it to the USACA Junior Nationals. The tournament eventually wound up being cancelled after the New York team was stranded at home in the snow and players and family members from the South East team were injured in a car accident driving home from the airport when their connecting flight from Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia was cancelled. After the tournament was officially called off, I stayed in Los Angeles to cover trial matches between the players and teams who did make it to Woodley Park.

After returning from Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, I finished 2010 having spent 101 days on the road covering various events on the USA cricket calendar. I can’t complain as I’m getting a golden opportunity to see the world while getting paid to watch cricket matches at the same time, something that most people wouldn’t mind trading places with me to do.

The end of the year is nigh! That time of the year when wishes are made with childlike abandon of reason and realism. Everything smells of hope and feels worthy of a resolution. Most cultures celebrate something during this period, if not the period itself. Cricket does too. These days most of the top 10 international sides can be caught plying their skills on some Test ground or the other, making it that much more difficult for the avid cricket follower in the US to stay awake during meetings at work.

Wishing is all well. But what when that wish comes true? And what if the fulfillment of the wish leads to more wishes? It could all get pretty wishy-washy from there on.

I wish I’d lived in the warmer states of Florida, Texas or California for the simple reason that I might still be umpiring right now had that been the case. For all its whiteness this time of the year, New York doesn’t really make you jump up in the morning anticipating a nice day out in the middle.

Last week while on vacation in the United Kingdom, I took a train ride to London for the purpose of seeing the “Swinging Away” exhibit that is wrapping up at the MCC Museum at Lord’s. The display features artefacts from both baseball and cricket and analyses the history of each game.

There are pictures of Babe Ruth padding up in cricket gear to have a hit in the nets, displays of mannequins dressed up in wicketkeeper’s and catcher’s gear side-by-side, as well as buried treasures from the history of both games, such as the oldest cricket bat in existence and the bat used by Ruth to hit his final home run.

However, there was one thing in particular that caught my attention more than anything else being showcased on the second floor of the museum. It was located just a few steps away from a layout of American cricket legend, John Barton King, in a section devoted to the Gentlemen of Philadelphia.

It's probably not as eye-catching as Australia's Ashes comeback at Perth, Kallis' first double-hundred, or Tendulkar's 50th Test century, but these have been a news-filled few days for USA cricket.

First, there was the announcement of a historic commercial deal between the USA Cricket Association (USACA), New Zealand Cricket (NZC), and Cricket Holdings America LLC. A definite positive for the game here, but how exactly the grassroots will be impacted is not yet apparent. When compared to most other associate nations, the game is far more popular here in North America because of the large number of expatriates. USA and Canada are two of the top immigrant destinations in the world. The sheer size of these nations though, as I've written earlier, makes the logistics of cricket organization much harder than in smaller nations, and the need for money in cricket in these parts is thus a lot more dire. The game has long been in this peculiar bind with relatively high public interest (as compared to other associate nations), but no funding or commercial interest. Cricket Canada has recognized this situation and secured sponsorship for its activities, before the USA. The commercial deal inked this week is a first step towards solving the interest-funding disparity, specifically in the USA. There is still much work to be done though, in terms of actually securing the investments, putting them to good use, and ultimately yielding results on the investments. The administrators will have their hands full working out how to prioritize between marketing the game, drawing youth, improving representative squads to build a quality USA cricket brand, and improving regional infrastructure across the country. To be sure, each of these goals is important, and they are related, but vested interests in each of these domains will soon want their share first. The chickens will claim they come first, the eggs likewise.

The other news this week was the announcement of the inaugural edition of Radiant Info USA cricket awards. I feel privileged to have played with and/or against all the men's awards winners, especially my west coast colleagues and friends Aditya Thyagarajan (Best Batsman and Cricketer of the Year) and Saqib Saleem (Junior Cricketer of the Year). Every awardee was most deserving of the recognition, no real surprises. The sponsors of the awards deserve a lot of credit for both taking the initiative to institute the awards, as well as meticulously combing the records to find the right awardees. For the record, Kevin Darlington won Best Bowler, Sushil Nadkarni won Comeback Player of the Year, Mohammed Ghous won the Upcoming Player category, Lennox Cush was both Best Twenty20 Player of the Year as well as the winner of the Best Individual Performance award, and Indomatie Goordial-John was the Women's Cricketer of the Year.

Perhaps one of the more peculiar things I’ve experienced in two years of covering the domestic cricket scene in America is the number of encounters I’ve had with former Test players from West Indies. For an Associate level country like USA, it’s somewhat remarkable that several former Test players now spend their time living and working here, while playing what has to be an extremely humbling version of cricket on the weekends.

Some of these players still manage to find a way to dig deep and bust their gut to give it everything they have. For the others, it looks like the life has been sucked out of them, now that the training grounds, well-maintained pitches, adoring fans and bountiful talent they used to be surrounded with have disappeared.

Neil McGarrell, who played four Tests for West Indies and captained Guyana before moving to New Jersey, captained the Atlantic Region to a hard-fought second-place finish at November’s USA Cricket Association Senior Nationals in Florida. At the age of 38, he now has a very strong chance of being selected to play for USA for the first time at next month’s ICC World Cricket League division three tournament in Hong Kong. He was the leading run-scorer in the tournament, tallying 147 runs in three innings without being dismissed, while also taking 6 wickets for 44 runs in 20.3 overs of left-arm orthodox spin.

At the other end of the spectrum in the same event in Florida was Adam Sanford, who played 11 Tests for the West Indies. The 35-year-old played two matches for the New York Region on the weekend, taking 1 for 93 in 17 overs of fast-medium before he was left out of the line-up for New York’s last match. On that final day, when his team was in the field against McGarrell’s Atlantic side, Sanford passed the time by sitting under a sapling tree with a cooler full of Coronas by his side, sipping from a bottle at his leisure while chewing on some nuts.

An opinion commonly heard is that the Twenty20 version of cricket is likely to appeal most to the American masses. So administrators here should raise its profile, and market the Twenty20s more in America. The Twenty20 format is considered cricket's ticket to capture American attention, and also the game's ticket to becoming an Olympic event.

I am not so sure of this theory. I realise growing the popularity of the game is important, but not at the cost of altering the structure of the game. Using Twenty20s to proselytize cricket only means more Twenty20s added to the calendar, at the expense of other formats. I am also not comfortable partitioning the game and selling different parts to different audiences. By pushing only Twenty20s at the USA, an American fan might think India isn't doing so well in cricket having lost three of their last five Twenty20s (won 2 against Zimbabwe). Whereas in reality, as the No. 1 test and No. 2 ODI side, India is doing decently enough overall. The excitement of a traditional Test series like the Ashes or a top-of-the-table India-South Africa contest would be lost on a Twenty20-only audience.

The now ousted CEO of the USA Cricket Association, Don Lockerbie, firmly believed - contrary to this majority opinion - that even Test cricket can be popular in America, not just the shorter forms. He didn't buy the argument that Tests simply take too long. People say it's hard to get anyone to watch a single game played for five days, which might not even end decisively in either contestant's favour. In reality though, even the keenest fans of Test cricket don't watch every minute of every day. They watch while they can, watch highlights, keep tabs on the score, and watch live when the game gets really intriguing. Lockerbie said that this is exactly how people in America watch a golf tournament, so they might do it for cricket too.