Rahul Dravid on the Indian Cricket Fan…

Rahul Dravid commented on the Indian fan in his recent press conference. Sachin Tendulkar also mentioned recently that he didnt think the booing and general behaviour of the fans in Mumbai was “not so bad”.. (i read that as “not unexpected”).

What Dravid and Tendulkar have effectively said is… that theres nothing else you can expect from fair weather fans…. (not worthy of being called supporters).

When the intellectual level of the average fan seems to be to support an argument which says “they get praised when they win, so they deserve abuse when they fail”, should Dhoni and co. expect anything else?

Like the Racehorse that ran fast enough to win……

India’s ODI efforts this season have resembled just that – a Racehorse who always runs just fast enough to win. Infact, with a little bit of imagination, the same could be said about India’s Test match successes. On no occasion this year, have India completely outclassed the opposition.

In almost every game, they have found themselves with their hands full, and someone, somewhere has turned up the got India across the line. They started the season in questionable ODI form, and indeed with larger questions about ODI team composition – with Tendulkar restricted by injury and no real ODI batting force apart from Dravid. In the first game, we saw Tendulkar make a hundred, and Pathan hammer the Sri Lankans, batting at number 3. Later in the series we saw Dhoni make 183 to help India achieved something that nobody had achieved against SL in over 5 years – beat them chasing 250+ when Murali was playing. The number of run chases India have successfully completed with the last 70-80 runs coming with them 5 or 6 wickets down is fast reaching astonishing proportions.

In the ODI game, Suresh Raina has become the latest addition to a long list of young Indian players turning in pivotal performances. The youth policy is obviously working – especially in the ODI’s. Think about this.. put yourself in May 2005 for the moment. If someone told you then, that MS Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Suresh Raina, Munaf Patel, Gautam Gambhir, S Sreesanth, RP Singh, Ramesh Powar would put in match winning performances for India in ODI’s, you might have been forgiven for questioning the sanity of the proposer.

There is one catch however. Like the racehorse, whos reputation was that he always ran just fast enough to win, the true potential of this side remains a mystery. Is it a case of India being on a roll and playing beyond themselves to string up an impressive run of victories? The relative sameness of the conditions in these games doesn’t help matters. Yes, India have won primarily with their fast bowling, and now have shown that they can adapt and win with spin when required, but all these results have come in India, on smallish grounds, on very fast outfields. The quality of the opposition, apart from South Africa and to some extent Pakistan, has not been the best in the world. A Sri Lankan side short on batting form and an English side with a moderate ODI record suggest that the combined 8-1 record which India have built against them (it might so easily have been 5-4 or something closer, thats how close the games have been), raises more questions than it presents answers. ODI cricket on bigger grounds, especially in the Southern Hemisphere can be a completely different ball game.

Unlike Australia, who have had genuinely world class ability in every department of the ODI game, and have destroyed pretty much every opposition they have come across over the last 7 years or so (we’ll ignore J0′burg for the moment), Indias results this season have been built more on resourcefulness than on superiority.

Does a Seabiscuit lie in waiting for India?

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Freedom of Opinion

Arvind Lavakare write in his column on Rediff.com, that booing Tendulkar was probably the right thing to do – “only those handful of spectators booing Tendulkar had the honesty to tell him what he needed to be told”. So far so good. But consider the other aspects on this attitude – abusive chants towards visiting players, and general bad behaviour in the media. Im amazed by the kind of judgement people make unhesitantly. Opinion is indeed free (as in tshirts not as in liberty).

Suddenly, lack of form is being attributed to

1. He doesnt really want it that badly anymore.
2. Hes old and isnt as good as he was when he was 23.
3. Hes never really performed when it mattered, and hes hanging on to his place only because of the money involved.

Theres plenty of such excuses which seem to be flying around. In a way, i can see that it is a function of the sheer public interest in the man, which gives rise to all manner of opinions about him.

However, he happens to be a cricketer, and whatever he does falls within the ambit of that sport. So anyone who chooses to ignore the cricket side of things should take care to see that he is not uncivil in his commentary.

The final argument made repeatedly (shockingly enough on internet portals and on email, presumably from “educated” people), is that since all these players make so much money, it is “allright” that they are abused when they fail. Nobody deserves abuse for failure. Abuse is usually reserved in the event of criminally motivated actions. If it is the perception of the general public that defeat in a cricket match is criminal, then id say its better that we stop playing this game.

I do not disagree with the right of spectators to boo a cricketer like Tendulkar – they can and ought to express their opinion. But there is a difference between a sincere expression of opinion, motivated purely by disappointment, and an expression of opinion motivated by an unhealthy attitude towards another mans fame.

Criticisms of cricket and cricketers lack that priceless characteristic – humour. If you do come across any article on the current English series by an Indian writer, which is able to smile about the cricket that was played, please email me. Theres nothing funny about enviously eyeing another mans wealth, income or success and questioning his motivation. How much a cricketer earns is none of anyone else business.

And here, i come back to my original argument about watching the cricket. In my opinion, the contract of the cricketer with the cricket fan is that he provides him with cricket – not that he provides him with “entertainment” (a word that applies to everything from stage shows, to hindi films, to everything else).

However, in an age of news entertainment, and current affairs programs which are designed to entertain rather than inform, and dubious concepts such as “infotainment”, cricketers will unfortunately have to live with a dwindling number amongst people who are interested in watching their art, and will have to make do with a world which is obsessed by their success and failure. Nobody unfortunately is willing to laugh at themselves. And that is where they misunderstand freedom to be on the tshirt kind and not of the liberty kind.

In supposedly free society, cricket fans praise as a mob and abuse as a mob. Who would want to be a cricketer!

Heres a priceless bit of humor – A fictional interview of Ted Dexter in 1993 (England losing the Ashes)

Get a life people….. who do you think can help Sachin Tendulkar’s batting form? Sachin Tendulkar or You?

India bat better overseas than they do in Home Tests.

Through out the 1990’s, India were almost unbeatable at home, and suffered overseas. The assumption was that the batting failed overseas, while it did very well in India. Statistically though, the situation was just the opposite. The batting did very well – home as well as away. The bowling however failed away, while at home Anil Kumble ensured that India bowled out the opposition cheaply.

Now, with the BCCI decision of preperation of pitches for home games, the disparity between Indias home and away performances with the bat has disappeared. The table below a comparison of the Home and Away batting performances of all 8 Test teams (except Zim and Bangladesh), over their last Test cycle (Latest Home and Away series for each team against every other team….. so over 14 series for each team).

The results show that India bat equally well home and away, however they have the weakest bowling attack away from home, if you discount the West Indies, while at home, their bowling has been in decline. The batting does quite well home as well as away. For most other side, there is a huge difference between their home and away batting performances.

Sundeep’s comment on my previous post is therefore mistaken. The batting has not suffered on tracks anywhere in the world. The bowling has. In any case, i do not see his point correlating the attitude of cricket fans with the performance of the side. I see no connection between the two. Fans have an obligation to behave decently at all times. This should not even be a point of debate if we assume that we live in civilised society. Im astounded by the number of people who suggest that cricketers “deserve” the abuse they get because they don’t win.

In any case, Sundeep’s perception is grounded in fallacy which is disproven by the stats above. And let me say again, it is not a crime to not have great fast bowlers in a cricket team. Of course every captain would want them, but this debate is assuming ridiculous proportions.

I am more convinced than ever that true cricket fans in India form a miniscule minority amongst the multitude of voyeuristic entertainment seekers who abound. Is it any surprise then that a nationally syndicated newspaper like the Indian Express publishes deluded rubbish in the name of a match report?

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A question of Attitude……

These lines are admittedly a bit of a rant, but this is something that i have had issue with for a long time. Recently we have seen and read about (in my case read about and heard from my friends on the cricket forum), about Indian fans – booing Tendulkar, chanting uncomplimentary/disgusting things about the visiting Englishmen (which some commentators in their infinite wisdom passed of as actions of “affectionate, knowledgable fans”!!), chants of “bring back Sourav”, and generally an obsession with using cricket and the cricketing context as an outlet for individual and collective frustration.

Which begs the question… are Indian’s who watch cricket actually cricket fans? How many people are actually interested in cricket, and how many are interested in the victory? How many are interested in the entertainment (in Marathi we have a phrase “chaltya gadit chadhne”, which means roughly translated means piling on)? Can all these people together be actually held to be devotees of cricket?

A comment on one of my recent blog posts about Ricky Ponting went “Deserves the record more than Sachin does. Wonder how many centuries he has against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh”! I wonder if this comment would have been made had Tendulkar been amongst the runs in his recent Tests.

It is common for cricket fans to be critical of defeat, but in India, and amongst Indian fans, any defeat, or any general lack of success seems to be construed as almost criminal!

I leave that comment which ive quoted for the reader to judge. Some may see it as appropriate, some may not see it fit to read into. Others may see it as a simple statistical question. I see that comment as symptomatic of the Indian attitude to sport and cricket in particular.

How can you say that youre interested in cricket, and then not care about the cricketing “whys”? How can you not wonder about why Andrew Flintoff has been so difficult to score off over the last 2 years? How can you not wonder about Ponting and the other Australians Ashes efforts as compared with their efforts against Australia? How can you ignore batting performances against SA in the last 2 years? Every single event in cricket raises so many delightful questions – and even if youre not particularly taken by great players, and are watching a local cricket matches, there is so much to observe, so much to enjoy. That all this is being missed is a tregedy.

How can a view of cricket not be nuanced? I can only conclude that it is not therefore a view of cricket, but is an unhealthy obsession with success, which is fearful of failure. Ram Guha has called the modern Indian cricket fan an “overpaid, overworked, overhyped, hypernationalistic yuppie”, in his brilliant history of Indian cricket (Corner of a foreign field – An Indian History of an English sport).

Try as i might to ignore this, this aspect of cricket in India keeps coming back to me – the attitude of the fan. I would even venture to say that real interest in cricket is restricted to a very small minority. May be it is actually a question of the larger idea of having an “interest” – but that is another story…..

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Harbhajan’s Match as India win from Memory…

Harbhajan Singh made 37 with the bat and then returned to take 5/31 with the ball to take India to a 39 run victory in the Delhi ODI against England. It was a spinners day all around in world cricket, as Shane Warne spun Australia to a 112 run series clinching victory in the Durban Test. In addition to this, Ian Blackwell produced the third most economical bowling analysis against India by a spinner, taking 1/24 in his 10 overs at Delhi. Only Tauseef Ahmed and MohammadRafique have done better than him.

I cant help get the feeling that India won this game from memory more than anything else. They under-achieved with the bat, and won only because England, for the first time on this Indian tour, missed Marcus Trescothick. This was an English line-up without almost any of their first choice batsmen, and Kevin Pietersen, inspite of his reputation is still in his first year in Test cricket. The Indian tour has seen his Test average drop below 40, and the development of his ODI average remains to be seen.

India have won a lot of ODI’s this year – this was their 13th victory in 17, and give themselves a great chance of achieving a historic milestone – i will reveal what it is if it happens, there has been a sameness to the conditions that has papered over a few cracks in the side – especially in the batting. Sehwag is in danger of going the Ganguly way – one sees the same problems in his game that proved to be Sourav Ganguly’s undoing – a dislike for fitness and an inability to survive the short ball. His fielding may soon become a liability in the ODI game, and hes not getting any younger. 4 ODI fifties in his last 34 games is a troublesome statistic.

Unless England show the ability to compete with India in 300 run games in the subcontinent, Indian performances against this English side should not be used as too much of an indicator of things to come. India have had the better of England in ODI’s recently (they have won 6 of the last 9 now), and England recently have shown a distinct inability to chase totals in the subcontinent.

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Ricky Ponting Scales new heights..

Ricky Ponting has now played 102 Test matches and made 30 Test centuries. His last 8 Test innings against SA have now brought him 5 centuries, apart from which he made 2 in the same Test against the West Indies this season. A study of Ponting in comparison with other great batsmen around the 100 Test match period in their respective careers is revealing. Ponting has the best average amongst these players, and only Tendulkar had a better century and fifty frequency at 101-102 Test matches. The batsmen listed below completed their Test careers with a batting average of atleast 45 and played more than 100 Test matches.

The table has been sorted in terms of centuries per innings. Ponting becomes only the 4th player to have a runs/innings average exceeding 50 after a hundred tests.

Ponting is 32 years old right now and has the potential to break all the records that Lara and Tendulkar were being tipped to write upto now. Out of the 32 cricketers with more than a hundred test matches, 24 are batsmen, 2 are all rounders and the rest are bowlers. Ponting could easily play for another 4 years, which would mean another 40 Tests atleast.

For Ricky Ponting the sky is the limit.

Injuries, Form……. long term strategy, short term arrangements

The Indian selectors have, since the appointment of Rahul Dravid as captain, the selectors and team management have shown a clear preference to youth and new players. Venugopal Rao, Suresh Raina, Piyush Chawla, RP Singh, VRV Singh, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth have all been blooded in the last 7-8 months. 4 fast bowlers, 2 batsmen and a spinner. Thats a telling number of new additions. Laxman, Ganguly find themselves out of a place in the Test team, whil Gambhir has lost his opening slot to Wasim Jaffer. Yuvraj Singh has been made a first choice Test batsman.

However, injuries to Tendulkar, Sehwag may cause the selectors to revert back to Ganguly for the time being. I expect it to happen, barring India getting 3-0 ahead after the first 3 ODI’s

Test Match Ratings Update

I just updated my Test match ratings, and can present a 2 year summary now. A graph of the performance of the 8 teams is as follows:

I want to present this in contrast to the official ICC Ratings, which in my view follow a completely unrealistic and overly simplified method of working things out. The method followed in my Ratings is described here. I will post a detailed series wise update one of these days, but don’t think it will be possible before the end of May.

The chart above has been made from Ratings calculated as shown in the table below:

Of Illusions, set backs and the virtue of preperation…

In the final analysis, magnificient fast bowling from Hoggard and Flintoff won the day for England on the 5th day at Mumbai. India fought hard in this test match, inspite of the captains faux pas (possibly hedging, possibly just a misjudgement) at the toss, and three and a half specialist batsmen in the squad. It was a bit like tying your own hands together.

Hoggard and Flintoff bowled nothing down the legside on the whole of the 5th day. Anderson bowled one ball which Tendulkar was good enough to hit for four thru midwicket, but apart from that, there was nothing to hit. Flintoff was truly magnificient – fast, hostile, bowling a superb attacking line and length with unerring accuracy. He beat the bat almost every over, and nothing signified Englands preperation better than the fact that Rahul Dravid (probably the most professional of the Indian cricketers), fell in the first over after lunch to the English captain. There were no looseners, no wide ones to get into rythm. Flintoff was on the ball from the word go.

Shaun Udal showed the 5th day Mumbai wicket up for what it was – a spiteful turner, where a professional off spinner, who could bowl basic off spin on a good attacking length consistently, and impart a reasonable amount of turn on the ball, would be difficult to hit, and ultimately not easy to play. Indias batsmen were forced to play in Englands hands by being very defensive, because that is all they were able to do. On the day, they had no answers.

For England, it was a classic victory in the subcontinent. Andrew Flintoff has emerged as the newest addition to the all time great list – a superb addition to the line of great all rounders who strode so eloquently in world cricket throughout the 1980’s.

In a sense it is a good thing that India didnt win, for that would have put India at an unrealistic number 2 position in ICC world rankings, inspite of the fact that they have now one only 5 series out of 16 in their last test cycle (home and away against each of the other sides, not counting bangladesh). England have won 9.

India dont even have a settled pace attack, and if they still find themselves within sniffing distance of the number 2 position in world cricket, then somethings obviously wrong – either with time honoured cricketing wisdom which suggests that to win, you need pace bowling, or with the ICC rankings. My guess is that it is the latter.

One would not want to be critical of the Indian effort in this series. They have been downright quixotic in their decisions in this series, and yet, 1-1 against the number 2 Test team in the world confirms their strength at home. Flintoff the captain, and Shah and Cook the debutants, ensured that England would not miss Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick during this series.

All in all – England 2006 showed that they were different from England 2002 in only 1 respect – they have now acquired the winning habit, and their effort in Pakistan earlier in the season can be written off as a temporary blip caused by post Ashes euphoria.

Well played Andrew Flintoff. Well played England!