Viv Richards was not only about attack, he could defend resolutely as well © Getty Images

As I watch Marlon Samuels and Shivnarine Chanderpaul bravely battle at Lord's on this Sunday morning, I am reminded yet again of an often overlooked fact: that the great West Indian teams of the 1980s, while always associated with dashing, hard-hitting batsmanship, were eminently capable of obdurate, defensive batting as well.

West Indies won a lot of Test matches in the 1980s (and later as well) not just because their fast bowlers blew away opposing sides (and contrary to the mythology perpetuated in Fire in Babylon, with more than just bouncers), but because their batsmen were often able to suppress an attacking instinct and put their heads down for the sake of the team. The image of the 1980s West Indies as all batting pyrotechnics, all the time, is one of the most persistent and enduring misconceptions of that great team. It is the converse of the suggestion that the West Indies fast bowling merely intimidated and battered the opposition into submission.

As but one example: During the 1984 Old Trafford Test, West Indies were 70 for 4 when Jeff Dujon joined Gordon Greenidge to put on 197 runs; Dujon batted at a strike rate of 44 to score 101 in six hours; Greenidge ended up with a 223 that took ten hours to complete. The West Indies won by an innings and 64 runs.

Consider for instance that Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes were easily capable of riding out opening attacks from opposing sides, not by trying to belt the cover off the ball in the first ten overs of the innings, but by picking and choosing which deliveries to play. Both of these great openers were classical opening batsmen with rigorous defensive techniques, ones that enabled them to produce their stellar batting record over an extended period. Larry Gomes could be as sticky a customer as Chanderpaul, and Clive Lloyd, while capable of playing a furious match-winning innings in the 1975 World Cup final, was, in his later incarnation, a solid provider of cement to the West Indian middle order, eschewing the flamboyance most often associated with him.

Continue reading "Champion teams know how and when to defend"

Cricket fans not from the subcontinent come to realize - in the course of their cricket education - that cricket is most certainly not the summer game in the Indian subcontinent. It is the winter game. The modern extension of the cricket calendar has meant, of course, that more cricket is played at more times outside the traditional season than ever before but in years gone by cricket remained confined to the cooler parts of the year. The reasons for that should be crystal clear to anyone who has suffered through an Indian summer.

But the blistering heat of the Indian summer, and in particular that of the tandoori oven named New Delhi, never brought a complete halt to the playing of the game by youngsters. We just had to be a little more resourceful in finding appropriate timeslots and in evading the restrictions placed on us by parents concerned about possible heatstroke.

One perfect opportunity to play cricket, especially during the summer vacation, was early in the mornings. Delhi summers sent the temperatures soaring into the high 30s by 8AM, so the virtues of early rising, even if steadfastly ignored when its consequence meant successful school-bus catching, were rapidly internalised when it came to cricket-ball catching. Barely had one’s eyes greeted the morn, that the race was on to get to the local park to stake out a pitch before competing teams showed up. The morning games were brought to a close by several factors: the sun, parents calling their wards back into the safety of their homes, back to alternative vacation day plans.

Continue reading "Braving the Indian summer"

Another Super Test? But with no nations, please. © Getty Images

Yesterday, like many other sports fans, I tuned in to watch Barcelona take on Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League. (Thanks to my work schedule, I watched the game on replay, studiously avoiding reading the scores; this meant staying off my Twitter feed!) As I watched the game, I was reminded yet again of, how, despite being an unabashed fan of nation-based Test cricket, I wouldn’t mind seeing games of five-day cricket between two teams whose selections were not limited by national boundaries.

World XI squads are not just a parlor game exercise, of course. Many of them have actually taken the field: in World Series Cricket, the 1971-72 Australia versus World XI encounters, the 1987 MCC versus World XI game at Lord’s, and of course the ICC-organized Super Series Test in 2005/2006. (This last ‘Test’ continues to rankle statisticians by its official status.) The 1971-72 series produced some great individual performances – most notably the 254 by Garfield Sobers that Don Bradman reckoned among the best he had ever seen, and an incredible 8-29 by Dennis Lillee; World Series Cricket also produced some very high-quality cricket, though it is not clear how much of this was produced by the World XI as opposed to the ‘national’ teams playing. The ICC Super Series Test, unfortunately, was universally derided as a dud.

What seems clear from these experiments is that World XIs brought together for one-off, ‘exhibition’ encounters tend not to do so well (with some notable exceptions of course). But a multinational outfit given some time to gell could start developing those intangible qualities that ensure the success of a group of individuals. And thus far, the pattern in world cricket has been to pit Nation versus World XI as opposed to Multinational Outfit #1 versus Multinational Outfit #2. Perhaps a series of these encounters could produce some high-quality five-day cricket that would pit the world’s best players against each other in an extended examination of their skills.

Continue reading "An idea whose time may come?"

Ricky Ponting catches Gautam Gambhir at slip off Peter Siddle © Getty Images

Many cricket fans are fond of saying that the most dramatic cricket dismissal is one involving a cartwheeling stump, sent flying by a fast bowler. The pristine perfection of the carefully arranged stumps and bails, suddenly, violently disrupted by the irresistible force of the pace man, the stump sent flying dramatically - and now in the modern era, thanks to stump microphones, accompanied by the actual sound of the famous ‘death-rattle’ - is dramatic indeed.

I would like, however, to submit another candidate for Most Dramatic Dismissal: a sharp catch taken at slip in the opening overs of an innings, when the bowling captain has set an aggressive field for the new ball. Here again, there is a disruption of symmetry: the bowler runs in, the batsman edges, and the ball flies off, only to have its precise geometrical trajectory interrupted by the swooping slip fieldsman. The batsman’s head snaps back, as he turns to look at his downfall even as the carefully arranged arc of the slips is radically set in disarray.

And this disturbance is precisely what is most pleasing about this sight: the sharp, dramatic change from the staged display, almost portrait-like, of the fast bowler running in, the slips, sometimes staggered, sometimes not, forming a cordon, the wicketkeeper crouching, the batsman at guard, and then in the space of a second, the ball flies sharply to the slips. There is a rapid transition from equilibrium to disruption. (The celebrations that follow have their particular choreographed beauty at times; sometimes the slip fielder goes down in a heap as the rest of his teammates run to the bowler; sometimes the catcher exultantly throws the ball high.)

Continue reading "The beauty of a catch at slip"

Part of cricket's central charms is the seemingly endless opportunity to second-guess and blame captains with the benefit of hindsight © Getty Images

Like any good fan, I dish out plenty of advice to captains. Indeed, part of the game’s central charms is the seemingly endless opportunity to second-guess and blame captains the world over with the benefit of hindsight.

Some modesty and perspective in these matters, of course, can be induced by having actually served as captain in a game of cricket. I’ve captained a side in a game twice: the first time was back in my college days, when I captained (ahem) Mathematics against Chemistry. We lost. The second, was when I guest-captained my Sydney Northern Suburbs team, the Centrals, in a league game. We lost. Clearly, there is a pattern in there somewhere. I’ve written on the Sydney game before, so we won’t get into that depressing business again. But I want to provide some details of that epic Abstract Symbol Manipulators versus Test-tube Tinkerers encounter to point out a classical failing of captains: the failure to have a genuine Plan B.

As we prepared for our encounter against Chemistry (by that, I mean ‘waited’), I thought about how I would go about taking apart Chemistry’s batting order when I was in the field. I had a simple plan: I would turn loose our opening bowlers on them and all would be well. We did, in fact, have a pretty decent pair of opening bowlers: two rather awkward, quickish, left-arm bowlers. As far as I knew, Chemistry was chock-a-block full of right-handers, and that seemed like a good sign for us. So, I had it all figured out – cry havoc, and let loose the two lefties. Once the breach in Chemistry’s defences had been made, the rest of my forces would pour through, laying waste to the middle-order, and rapidly mowing down the tail. Pure genius, really.

Continue reading "The trials of captaincy: a rookie learns the hard way"

I have now written, on this blog, two posts on “curiously significant numbers.” The first, on statistical landmarks; the second, on significant dates in cricket history.

Here is another very significant number: 796.358. (Many fans should immediately recognize its cricketing significance; if you can’t, think a bit before you run to Google it.) When it comes to my relationship with cricket, I wonder if any other number has had as much significance as this one, in terms of the anchoring it provided to cricket’s history; that number ensured I had formed a well-entrenched set of memories, images and romantic associations with the game before they were exposed to the blow-torch of mass media coverage.

According to the Dewey Decimal system this is the library classification code for cricket. And for that part of my life before I moved to the US, it was the set of numbers that worked as a set of navigational co-ordinates in any library I visited. When I moved to the US, I was disoriented in many ways. One of the most significant ones was switching to the Library of Congress classification system for libraries. Suddenly I was lost; the contours of that land of shelves became mysterious. And of course, even when I figured out the LOC system, there weren’t any cricket books to be found.

Continue reading "The significance of 796.358"

"I told myself that I had to bat at least 30 overs in a Test. If I didn’t do that, I had failed." © AFP

In January 2011, I travelled to Bangalore to meet Rahul Dravid and interview him for the book I was then writing. I intended to write on the changing face of modern cricket, on its response to the introduction of the franchise into a nation-based game, on the challenges Test cricket faced, and on the effects of media and technology on the game. When I thought of which Indian cricketers I would most like to talk to, Dravid’s name suggested itself as an obvious choice.

Shortly after I received word that I should go ahead and contact Rahul, I called and spoke briefly with him on the phone. He was unfailingly courteous and helpful, providing detailed directions to his house, even solicitously inquiring whether I knew my way about Bangalore (I didn’t, but assured him that I would be just fine).

I arrived at his residence on time, was shown in, and soon our conversation started. Dravid was dressed casually and conducted himself with a polite, relaxed informality that put me instantly at ease, and prompted me to ask all the questions I wanted to. Mrs. Dravid joined us for a few minutes, brought us tea, asked me a few questions about my background, and then left to take care of their boys.

As I talked to Dravid, a slight sense of unreality pervaded the proceedings. This man simply did not have the airs of a sporting superstar, someone who was rich and famous, and hobnobbed with other cricketing superstars (though he did sometimes casually refer to them by first name). I could have been talking to someone that was a keen fan of cricket, rather than a Test great and a former India captain. At times, I had to keep reminding myself that this was Rahul Dravid. Of course, the quality, sharpness, and sometimes bluntness of his observations on cricket, the level of cricketing knowledge on display, and the insights that only someone on the inside of the game could have, reminded me that I was talking to a person located at a very particular focal point of international cricket.

Continue reading "Meeting Rahul Dravid: The soul of a champion"

'In my case, in order for dates like 1932 to become entrenched in my mind, my attitude toward Indian cricketing history had to change' © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

On Tuesday, I attended a talk in the Political Science department at Brooklyn College. The topic was the relationship between state and federal courts in the domain of immigration regulation. A central landmark in this relationship was the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act (CEA), which allowed the US to suspend Chinese immigration; the law was finally repealed by the Magnuson Act in 1943. The year in which the CEA was passed was 1882.

As the speaker put a Powerpoint slide up with this information on it, I experienced a reaction similar to that reported in my post on curiously significant numbers; once again, I was in the presence of a curiously significant cricketing number, this time a year.

Landmarks in cricket’s history stand out no matter where we run into them. This act of recognition of mine was bound to be instinctive. And sometimes we recognise years run together as cricket seasons; many cricket fans cannot look at 1960-61 without thinking of the Tied Test.

Continue reading "Curiously significant dates: Making history more inclusive"

Unlike in most other sports, cricket's new franchise-based leagues still play second fiddle to the nation-based game © Associated Press

A few days ago, I sent the final manuscript for my book on the changing face of modern cricket to the publishers. As I wrote the acknowledgements page, I thought about how many cricketing conversations in the past few years have helped shape my understanding of the game’s recent dynamics. Among those conversations lurks an important subset: because I live in the US, many of them have been with Americans. This might seem strange: aren’t Americans folks who are supposedly ignorant about cricket?

But those same Americans are very familiar with other sports, and more to the point, they are very familiar with sports played in professional leagues, organized by franchises. (The more cosmopolitan among them don’t restrict their interest to the Big Three of basketball, football and baseball; they also pay keen attention to Europe’s moneyed soccer leagues.) The historically-inclined among them are also knowledgeable about the changing role of players as professionals and of the evolution of the NBA, the MLB and the NFL through the twentieth century, from a cluster of competing leagues into consolidated mega-leagues, run by owners’ councils, dealing with players organized into unions.

And as a significant part of my book is about the possible evolution of cricket from its exclusively nation-based structure to one that accommodates franchises as well, it was only natural that I would find these conversations useful in thinking about the many, varied, dimensions and ramifications of that change.

Continue reading "Talking cricket with Americans: Teaching and learning"

Any schoolchild loves the opportunity to show up a grown-up, and cricket can be an effective medium for that © Getty Images

A few days ago, while digging through a collection of letters I had written to my mother during my boarding school years, I chanced upon one dated March 8, 1981. In it, I wrote:

Today was a cricket match between the staff and the students. The students won in an exciting finish by just two wickets with five minutes left. The staff scored 163 all out. The students looked in a bad state with the score at 110-7 with just 20 minutes left. Then one boy came in scored 15 runs in four balls and really inspired us. Then we just hammered our way out.

As far as match reports go, I’d have to give this one a D. Why is the reporter specifying time left when there must have been an overs-limit in effect? Who scored 15 runs in four balls? What does “we just hammered our way out” mean? How? Where? Why is the first sentence so awkwardly phrased? Besides, the reporter makes it sound as if he was playing in the match. Was he?

I can answer some of those questions, but not all. I do not know why I was obsessed with time rather than overs. My guess is that I still thought, in those days, in terms of temporal limits when it came to cricket; I was a child of Test cricket, and while I had lived through the 1979 World Cup disaster, the limited-overs and 90-overs-a-day sensibility hadn’t really kicked in.

Continue reading "Out of the classroom and onto the pitch"

The internet should be welcomed, not criticised, for all the possibilities it presents to expand cricket's fan base © Getty Images

Dear Mr. Giles Clarke,

Well done. With your statement that Internet piracy is the “biggest danger to cricket" you have pulled off a rather wonderful trifecta: you join the ranks of those politicians and industrialists that persist in misunderstanding and fear-mongering about the Internet; you divert attention from far bigger dangers to cricket, including its relentless commercialisation, in which you have paid a notable part; and lastly, you show that when it comes to myopia, and sheer bloody-minded head-in-the-sandedness, there is nothing quite on Planet Earth, it seems, like a cricket administrator.

The curse of ‘intellectual property’ discourse already threatens to strangle creativity and innovation in an era, when, thanks to the technical affordances made possible by the ‘Net, a chance is at hand to reconfigure the political economy of the world of art and cultural production. Those that are economically entrenched in this sphere, like the music, motion picture and software industries, will of course, fight these changes tooth and nail. But do we have to fall for their propagandistic nonsense? Only if our paypacket depends on subscribing to outmoded, monopoly-preserving doctrines.

A smarter option would be to figure out how cricket could prosper and flourish by utilising, to its advantage, the possibilities made visible by the brave new world of the ‘Net and its associated methods of digital production and distribution. Let fans put up cricket videos of catches and favourite players on YouTube; don’t send them cease-and-desist letters from overpaid corporate lawyers; ask for television-rights holders to make available highlights packages on streaming video; work to make sure television rights deals don’t include onerous territory restrictions (I cannot watch the Pakistan-England Tests because the telecast, controlled by a monopolistic provider in the US, is only available in Canada.)

Continue reading "An open letter to Giles Clarke"

India have often eased off after taking a lead in a series © AFP

India’s recent run of seven away Test defeats, despite sometimes involving spells of competitive play (and arguably, at the MCG, a real chance to win), have been marked by a lack of competitiveness: four by an innings, one by over 300 runs, another by almost 200 runs, one by over 100 runs. Out of those seven Tests only two have gone the distance, while the game in Perth ended in two-and-a-half days.

The analysis of India’s defeats has been copious and plentiful. One aspect of this analysis has centred on the seeming lack of fight, of aggression and resolve: India’s Test team rose to the No. 1 ranking because it had shown the ability to fight back from adversity; what happened to those reserves that enable champion teams to claw their way out of the bear-trap of a grim sporting circumstance?

I have five reasons to offer: The Oval 2007, Bangalore 2007-08, Mohali 2008-09, Wellington 2008-09 and Dominica 2011.

In each of those games India had a chance to drive home a decisive advantage to increase the margin of victory in a series. In each case, Indian - it did not matter who the captain was, for in these games they were led by Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and MS Dhoni - declined to pick up the gauntlet. In each case, they missed a chance to cultivate a quality that is as valuable as the ability to fight back from adversity: to stay on top of an opponent who is down, to manoeuvre yourself into a winning position through aggressive play.

Continue reading "India never cultivated aggression, even when they were No. 1"

Indian fans will be enraged by the capitulation in Australia. But for how long will they be allowed to wallow? © Getty Images

Before the Perth Test began, I had been tossing around ideas for a post on how India could console themselves with the fact that a 2-2 result in the Test series against Australia would feel just as good as a win; India would be besides themselves for having drawn the series, and Australia would be distraught at having let a 2-0 advantage slip away. Even if the chance to win an away series in Australia was gone, there shouldn’t be any lack of motivation for India.

That was a few days ago. This morning, as I sit in my apartment listening to a chilly East Coast wind rattle the windows of my apartment, I shiver, and not just because the occasional gust has made it through some mysteriously located aperture. My overly-optimistic piece of blogging tomfoolery remains stillborn, and just as well. I would have looked like a fool, and the comments space would have been consumed by the scorn and ridicule of those treated to more abject cricket in the latest installment of India’s horrible run overseas. I could call it Annus Horribilis, but summoning up fancy Latin phrases doesn’t seem to do justice to this carnage. What is needed is simple outrage; the time for fancy analysis of how cricket should be restructured at the grassroots, how the next generation of young batsmen should be nurtured, and so on, will present itself later (to us fans; I’m not sure whether the BCCI will pay attention).

I have to be honest though. Defeats as comprehensive as the ones India have suffered on their tours of England and Australia seem to provoke in me not so much outrage as wearied acceptance. The hints of the current disaster were always visible to the nervous Indian fan, always needing reassurance about the ability of the team to perform consistently and winningly overseas. On these tours of England and Australia, a collective set of long-held fears simply came true. There is a sense of relief perhaps. This was the worst that could happen. The bottom of the trough has been reached. It couldn’t get any worse. (For those who think losing at home would make it worse, think again. Some fans are old enough to remember losing Tests at home, others multiple Tests or entire series.)

Continue reading "Crowded calendar will give Indian fans relief"

'The conclusion of the SCG Test convinces me that I would have done best to stay on vacation' © Getty Images

Following a cricket game while travelling is always guaranteed to induce in me the frisson of the explorer: where can I find the precious resource of the newspaper, the fellow fan with the radio or television, and now, the internet café, or the cellular network hotspot so that I may check in, or call for help?

Last year, while travelling through Kerala during the South Africa-India Boxing Day Test in Durban, checking on scores had been easy. Despite the mysterious absence of radio commentary, a television set was never very far away (once we had stopped driving and touring, that is). Most hotels had Ten Sports on their room televisions, and I even managed to catch an extended bit of live viewing in a restaurant just outside the Periyar Wildlife Reserve. But I did not know the result till much later, when, while waiting for our return flight to Delhi from Kochi Airport, I picked up a copy of a newspaper that had India’s win sprawled over its front pages.

This year, feeling the strain of trying to follow a Test match to be slightly oppressive on a vacation, I resolved to not check on scores till the game was over. Would I be able to resist? We’d soon find out. The first day of the Australia-India Boxing Day Test was not a problem. The game began late in the evening on Christmas Day; I was ensconced deep in the middle of the Puerto Rican rainforest, and cricket felt very far away. The next day was similarly easy: I travelled to a small Caribbean island and, surrounded by beaches, sand and cool ocean breezes, forgot about the cricket again.

Continue reading "Testing the traveller"

File photo: The pitch we batted on was a dust-bowl and the opposition bowlers were a rather threatening, if skinny, bunch of lads © AFP

In my post on magical numbers a few weeks ago, I forgot to note one number of especial personal importance: 38*, the highest score I have ever made in any form of cricket that involved an actual, hard, potentially bone-breaking cricket ball. I’ve scored centuries in air-cricket (a fascinating species of the game that I will detail in a later post. Hint: think air-guitars), double-centuries in book-cricket and, of course, triple-centuries in rapid-eye-movement-sleep-cricket.

But when it came to encounters staged outdoors, involving human beings, willow and leather, 38 is all I have to show folks. I’ve never had the pleasure of raising my bat to acknowledge the applause of my admiring team-mates from the sidelines, or even been mobbed by ecstatic spectators running onto the ground with garlands of marigolds, or perhaps a glass of sweet, cold, refreshing lassi.

For all of that, my 38 still gives me great pleasure. I scored it during a four-innings game in park cricket, which is a bit of a rarity in itself. And to make matters especially sweet, I scored it in the third innings of the game during the course of a partnership with a lad who scored 51, and helped set a target that proved a little too difficult for our opponents. The pitch we batted on was a dust-bowl (I’m well aware that such descriptions are entirely redundant when describing any cricket played in India, but I might as well leave it in there in case posterity decides to send some recognition my way), and the opposition bowlers were a rather threatening, if skinny, bunch of lads from a school grade above ours.

Continue reading "The Most Pleasant of Memories: My Highest Score "

For some weekend cricketers, fielding is their only contribution © ICC

I’m against specialist fielders. I’m not opposed to the idea of cricketers doing stellar duty for their captains in fielding positions that require particular catching or fielding skills (like, say, first slip, forward short-leg, or extra-cover) but rather, against the misuse of a certain species of recreational cricketer by his supposed ‘team-mates.’

The phenomena I am about to describe should be familiar to many of us that have played recreational cricket. In a team of eleven cricketers that play cricket on weekends, it emerges that one, sometimes even two, team members, bat lower down the order, are not given any bowling, and often, as a final garnishing of insult, are inevitably sent to field at third-man, deep fine-leg, or deep backward-point.

These brave souls, who love the game, have sacrificed their weekend time to make up the eleven required to play the game on the weekend, spend their time underused and underappreciated, perhaps being consigned scoring duties while waiting their turn to bat at Nos. 9 or 10.

How does this situation come about? Recreational teams often feature strong, selfish, personalities (perhaps frustrated high-school or college cricketers who did not make it any further) who like to bat higher up the order, demand bowling spells, and like to field in the slips. Sometimes they form a clique with the captain, and merely require a few more bodies to make up the eleven. The ‘team’ such as it is, is merely them, and them alone. The rest just make up the numbers, and are treated accordingly.

Continue reading "Against specialist fielders: Give everyone a chance"

As someone that has studied philosophy, I’m used to dealing with cosmic questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of the good life? When can we say we know something?

But I must confess I have often found some rather more mundane questions more puzzling. For instance, how does one become a Formula One driver? Is there a minor league for racing? Do budding Formula One drivers get picked up by talent scouts as they roar down highways picking up speeding tickets?

Continue reading "The Path to The Top: Many A Slip 'Twixt Cup and the Lip"

Scenes like this one deprive the fans of cricketing action © Associated Press

On November 21, as Australia and South Africa moved ever closer to the thrilling finale of the second Test of their two-Test series, considerable discussion centered on whether the umpires in charge of the game would provide the ultimate buzz-kill for all concerned by consulting those dreaded killjoys, the light meters, and march off the ground with say, two runs to score or one wicket to get.

That possibility was not raised frivolously: batsmen and fielders cannot appeal any more to umpires for relief; the objective light meter dispenses with the problematic, time-wasting subjectivity of the human cricketers and places decision-making squarely in the hands of the umpire. Too bad if this gain in technocratic efficiency results in the loss of cricketing action.

But what precisely are the light meters protecting the cricketers (and us) from? From conditions where the light is either “too poor to play” or is “dangerous”? There are problems with both answers. Light meters do not have a mark that says “At this reading, it is too dangerous to play cricket because batsmen will not connect with the ball or fielders will not be able to visually sight the ball for collection”. Rather, they tell us whether light has improved or worsened; the umpire is still in the business of making a judgment on whether the light is good enough to play in or if it’s too dangerous.

Apparently, all that has changed is that the umpire can back up his subjective assessment by pointing to the display of the light meter as his justification.

Continue reading "Faux Objectivity: The Murky Business of Light Meters"

The crowd at Eden Gardens added to the intensity of the famous match in 2001 © Getty Images

There is, or at least seems to be, a fairly vigorous debate taking place in the world of cricket about whether Test cricket is threatened, thriving, surviving, dead or perhaps existing in some alternate time-dimension. In this post, I do not want to enter into that discussion. Rather, my intention here is simpler: to note a melancholic cricketing spectacle, that of Eden Gardens in Kolkata, which during a Test between India and West Indies resembles nothing as much as a ground for a Ranji Trophy opening-round game between Assam and Tripura.

How time has flown. In 1998, when Australia toured India, I spent considerable time on the Internet Relay Channel, trying to convince denizens of that virtual space that an attendance world record could be set at Calcutta, as it was known then, during that series; Sachin had just blasted a masterful 155 at Chennai, Warne would be looking for revenge, India was 1-0 up in the series; the stage was set for the Calcutta crowds to show up in droves. Well, we didn’t get a world record, but the stadium was packed, and we were treated to the kind of spectacle that only Eden Gardens seemed capable of.

A few years later, when Australia toured India again, and the Kolkata Test took place, the stands were full again. It is hard to imagine that the drama of the Test would not have been affected adversely had the stands been as empty as they have been in the current Test. Part of the pleasure in watching the highlights of that game is the sense of the cauldron that engulfs the players, the sounds and sights that form the backdrop for the players’ heroics.

Continue reading "Empty Eden: The saddest sight in cricket"

Sachin Tendulkar went past 15,000 Test runs against West Indies ©Associated Press

It is perhaps only appropriate that to follow-up my last post on Curiously Significant Numbers, I should take note of two new staggering numbers that have entered the test pantheon: 15,000 and 500. I admit to finding both of these numbers slightly disorienting because of the cricketing feats they are associated with: the former with Test runs and the latter with Test wicketkeeping catches. Both appear unlikely to be ever broken, and I suspect, in future years will take on an aura similar to Jack Hobbs’ first-class aggregate runs or Wilfred Rhodes’ aggregate wickets records.

Which brings me to what I consider the most interesting feature of these records: they are associated with international Test cricket, not domestic cricket. Some of the most staggering records of aggregate accomplishments of yesteryears had huge contributions from domestic cricket performances. Most of those will never be broken. Check out the list of aggregate records for first-class wickets. I find it extremely implausible that anyone from the present era will get remotely close.

What the modern era is ensuring that most cricketers will play little domestic cricket once they have graduated into international cricket. A busy schedule dedicated to keeping three formats ticking over ensures that a cricketer moves on from domestic cricket with only an occasional backward glance. Most of the cricket he will play from that point on will be international cricket. Domestic cricket produces these cricketers and from then on is only able to draw upon their talent and skill occasionally.

Continue reading "On 15,000 and 500: Tendulkar and Boucher can rest easy"