Death by scheduling

Dear readers

Please accept my apologies for not having written anything for a while. It's just that I am struggling to keep up with writing regularly because of the grueling schedule this year. I'm glad that I didn't plan to write my book this season: I wouldn’t have been able to complete it.

We've been getting the rough end of the bargain so far. There have been 12 days of first-class cricket so far, and we have fielded for at least some part of 11 of those days. The number of overs that we've spent on the field varies from 15 to 90 per day. Since we've been fielding first [we put Punjab in at the Roshanara, and lost the toss against Hyderabad and Mumbai], we've fielded for 632.2 overs so far - an average of close to 60 overs every fielding day. That means the bowlers have had an exceptionally heavy workload.

We could have lived with it had there been more between the games than the two days we are getting this season. I was always of the opinion that we needed more time between matches, and thus an extended first-class season. Besides giving the players adequate time to recover there are a couple more reasons for my thinking that way. Firstly if someone is having a rough time with his skills, he has the time to go back to some other form of cricket, regain his touch, and make a comeback in the same season. On the other hand, if someone hits a purple patch for a few weeks, just for a few weeks in a year, he would smash all the records, which might not be the true reflection of his talent. Secondly, if someone gets injured, a season that finishes in a few weeks would certainly rule him out for that year. So, even a minor injury might take out a year from his career.

Whether it's the loss of form or picking up an injury - and it can happen to anyone - the player has no way of making a comeback in the same season. Isn't it a little too harsh? Especially when I used to feel that the four-day break we used to have earlier wasn't enough. The schedule this season has just gone from bad to worse. Just consider that we have to fit in our travelling throughout the country in these two or three days.

Getting back to the point I was trying to make in the beginning: we've spent too much time on the field. All the teams are in the same boat, and once they realise that there isn't a realistic chance of forcing a result, they drop anchor and bat out the rest of the game. And some of the decisions, of not trying to make a match of it, are influenced by the physical state of their own bowlers. Unfortunately we have been at the receiving end twice, but even we would have done the same had we been in their shoes. So far, while bowling the second time, which has been the third innings of the match, I have employed my part-time bowlers, and hence the opposition batsmen have had a blast. I'm not trying to take anything away from their first-class centuries, but the fact remains that some of them are easy pickings.

In the past I would have tried to prevent people from scoring easy centuries, but that is the last thing on my mind this season. My primary concern is to ensure that I have 11 fit players for the next game. One could argue that every team should have some bench strength, but that doesn't mean one should be unreasonable on the best people you have at that point. When I see the fatigue on their faces, it's simply not possible to tell them to bowl their hearts out in a dead game. I spoke to a friend of mine who's playing for some other team, and he shared my views. They had the opposition on the mat, but then the bowlers ran out of steam. He said, “I wanted to tell them to go that extra yard, but reconciled with the fact that these fellow cricketers are also human and can only do so much.”

It is getting to the stage of total exhaustion, and every single player that I've spoken to shares my view. No wonder we've already had a fair number of triple- and double-centuries scored in the season, and we have only just finished the third round. If that's the way things are going to be for the rest of the season, the bowlers have all my sympathy.

Cheers