The Surfer

IPL is a work in progress, and cricket officials are clearly using it to test the limits to which they can consolidate their turf as a state within a state. Last year they invoked the calendar as a pretext for conceit. Now they are wrecking a civility that’s survived even through the darkest days of Indo-Pak relations. Whatever be the state of play in relations between the two governments, cricket has been a sphere to assert a normative standard of people-to-people interaction. In fact, governments have drunk deep from this carefully harvested reservoir of goodwill. Modi and his cohorts, by their arrogant disregard for the consequences for their actions, have depleted that reservoir.

West Indies, ambushed in Brisbane, belied their eighth place in the Reliance Mobile Test rankings by taking Tests right up to their hosts in Adelaide and Perth. Australia then disposed of a poorly led Pakistan team rivalling Shane MacGowan in their propensity for self-destruction, although only after trailing by 206 runs on first innings in Sydney.

For Big Bash read Big Cash: a place in the final translates to a place in the supranational Champions League this year and a share in its stupendous revenues. Not surprisingly, state associations hitherto dependent on distributions from Cricket Australia are agitating to enlarge the Bash at the expense of the Sheffield Shield.

So it was the presumption that they might become "unavailable" led to this decision. And since the team owners are pumping in the money, they have every right to put it where the investment returns. If they choose not to risk it, that's fine too. All we ask is that instead of skirting the issue and hiding behind shallow words, they let us know. What's that line about honesty being the best policy??!

Australia's position has been well nigh indefensible. Unable to produce a serious candidate of its own, Cricket Australia ought to have gracefully withdrawn. Its reluctance to back Jack Clark, its own chairman, told the tale.

"It’s a huge, huge, huge thing. I can't emphasize it enough or put enough adjectives or superlatives because outside of the U.S., all the major countries play cricket. It's a culture thing. The growth of the game in this country, the media interest it could spark, and the sponsorship it could bring. It would create an image for the U.S. without the average person in the U.S. even knowing.”

When asked before the Johannesburg Test last week what were the secrets to his early success as captain, Strauss talked of removing what he thought previously to be a “top heavy” style of leadership. Strauss’s England, we are led to believe, is a happy commune, where the most junior man’s thoughts carry equal weight to the captain’s and where the leader’s actions are not to be divorced from the rest.

It is a moment when the older ethos of cricket, based on the domestic and international calendars, is contrasted with the go-getting flamboyance of the IPL franchisees, all too often a moment when the future reveals itself. On Tuesday, when a bunch of cricketers including the 11 Pakistanis went under the hammer, that possible future revealed itself to be heartless.

Richardson knows the system is a work in progress, with a deal of fine-tuning to be done. So here are some suggestions he might consider. First, the idea that there should be a time limit of, say, 15 seconds is not new but it needs reinforcing. In the series just gone, reviews generally took too long and the game stagnated. Secondly, every dismissal, even such as that in which Dale Steyn sent Jonathan Trott's off-stump cartwheeling, in Cape Town, should be checked. This takes seconds, would occur at most only 40 times out of a possible 2,700 and could be communicated almost immediately by a signal into an earpiece. That Kevin Pietersen, for example, was out in the first Test to a no-ball is a nonsense when set alongside the rigmarole over everything else.

The brazen jump out drive of Trumper and the nuanced leg glance of Ranji are justifiably venerated. But the ‘upper cut’ of Tendulkar, the slash over point for six of Sehwag, Pietersen’s switch hit, Ponting’s pull-drive off the front foot, Lara’s Nataraj-like pose in pulling off the back-foot, and the overhead scoop of Dilshan are no less enthralling even if they don’t fit the copybook.

True, covered wickets and improved bats have made it more burdensome for bowlers, but the game has hardly suffered for they have coped superbly. Some of the most skilful and highest wicket-takers in the history of the game — Murali, Warne, Kumble, McGrath, Akram, Younis, to name a few — have been products of this era. Though more nuanced and less overtly expressive than batsmanship, bowling skills have evolved to a remarkable degree too.