Deep Backward Point

And So It Begins

I left India in 2001, the year of the Kolkata Test. The Australian team from that match has one player left in the team– Ricky Ponting.

India have five– Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan.

That is remarkable.

∞

Later this year, it will have been ten years since the Natwest Trophy Finals.

England has no players left from that eleven.

India have six left in their ODI setup, and seven overall.

That is remarkable.

∞

By the end of of 2012, a lot of this will change: VVS and Dravid will be gone, and so might Tendulkar. On the international scene, Ponting and Boucher may be gone. Perhaps Kallis, Sangakkara, Jayawardene not far behind?

So far, the Indian team has had an unbelievably strong connection with the team I grew up watching. Tendulkar made his debut under Srikkanth, and played with Shastri, Vengsarkar and Kapil Dev. Dravid made his debut under Azhar, and against Atherton. Elsewhere, Ponting made his debut under Mark Taylor, in a team that included Healy, Boon and McDermott.

So far, we have been only one degree of separation away from the past, from my childhood. After 2011, we will be two degrees of separation away.

∞

Goodbye, Dravid.

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March 7, 2012

Fifteen Man Squad for One-off T20

Fifteen.

Four of them will sit out the match.

And since the team is almost identical to the Asia Cup team, each of those four will have only recently returned from Bangladesh. And will have perhaps three days plus jet lag to get in the groove for the IPL.

It was ridiculous to take eleven players to South Africa for this match. It’s a tragedy to take fifteen.

∞

Fair warning, BCCI: you can screw with other boards, with your sponsors, with franchises or with money all you want and I’ll shrug my shoulders.

You screw with the players or you screw with the fans, and it’s war.

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March 6, 2012

Ben Affleck on the Abominable One-Off India-South Africa T20 Match

A while ago, I quoted a passage from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to make a tortured analogy about T20 and Test cricket. Here’s what Ben Affleck (playing himself) says to Matt Damon:

Ben Affleck: You’re like a child. What’ve I been telling you? You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the payback picture because your friend says you owe him.

Back then, I said T20 is the safe picture– the one you do for the money. Test cricket was the art picture– the one you do for love of the game.

And this crazy, detestable one-off match between India and South Africa?

That’s the payback one you gotta do because your friend says you owe him.

Previously on DeepBackwardPoint:

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Link | March 5, 2012

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

India will travel all the way to South Africa for a single T20 match on the 30th of March. Nagraj Gollapudi writes:

The Twenty20 takes place three days after South Africa finish their tour of New Zealand with three back-to-back Tests. It is also a week after the end of the Asia Cup, and five days before the start of the IPL in Chennai.

In a recent episode of the podcast CouchTalk, Gideon Haigh suggested that this match was a you-scratch-my-back-i’ll-scratch-yours gesture.

And they’re calling it the Mandela Cup. If I was Mandela, I’d start some uncivil disobedience right about now.

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February 29, 2012

Mr. Vice-Captain

When our teams lose, it changes who we are. It changes our self-image. Our teams are a part of our identity.

Instead of being the guy who roots for a fighting, winning team, I have become, as an India fan, a guy who roots for the team that has rarely put up a fight.

And it changes my self-image.

Sure, we shouldn’t be so shallow. We shouldn’t wear our hearts on our sleeves. We should have a thicker skin and not let the fates of young men we will never meet affect us so deeply.

We should.

But then again, there are moments like this. When Virat Kohli single-handedly rips a match apart and stitches it together again to his own design.

Moments when we again, perhaps briefly, become the guys who root for a fighting, winning team.

We may be hopeless romantics, begging for abuse. But on Monday, in Hobart, Virat Kohli made us feel better about ourselves.

∞

Which reminds me of an article I wrote 11 months ago. About how Tendulkar pulled an ObiWan Kenobi in the World Cup Finals:

[When Tendulkar got out] even though he didn’t intend it, Tendulkar gave the rest of the team a reason to win it. They had said that they would do it for Tendulkar. Now they had to prove it. Tendulkar wasn’t going to do it for them.

By not holding their hand across the victory line, Tendulkar effectively ushered in the next generation of Indian cricket.

And that’s what was reiterated on Monday.

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February 25, 2012

Yeh Sarkaar Nahi Chalegi

In an old Hindi film, I believe Ashirwad from 1968, the venerable actor Ashok Kumar is trying to entertain kids in a playground. Somebody suspects that he is trying to kidnap a kid, and there’s a big ruckus.

The camera shifts to the edge of the field, where a man on a bicycle stops to watch the hullaballoo.

He asks someone, “What’s going on?” The reply, “Some man was trying to kidnap a young girl.”

To which the bicyclewallah replies, “Yeh sarkaar nahi chalegi!”

Again, in English, “This government is unacceptable!”

∞

While this little sideshow may seem familiar to people from all around the world, it is particularly familiar in India and Pakistan. The countries birthed through Satyagraha, civil disobedience, are perpetually railing against the man.

Even when the man is not personally responsible for their problems.

∞

One side-effect of perpetually railing against the man is that many Indian writers are constantly in this mode. The evils of BCCI are lurking behind every corner. I’m yet to hear a good, solid, researched article on what parts of the Indian system were responsible for the three successful years under Dhoni/Kirsten, but I’ve seen thousands that explain every defeat.

∞

Take Misbah-ul-Haq, the latest victim of the yeh sarkaar nahi chalegi syndrome. Poor guy just led Pakistan through one of their most successful years in history, their most successful Test series in memory, but a few lost ODIs later he’s the man.

Relax. Misbah is, quite literally, playing the long game. And lest you forget, the past 20 years have been a tumultuous time for Pakistan captains.

In the past, I have written about how Miandad was a microcosm for Pakistan cricket. Everything good and bad about Miandad, represents my impression of the Pakistan team. Which is why when they’re not playing India, I’m rooting for Pakistan.

But imagine a future where Misbah was that microcosm. Where everything good and bad about Misbah, was what is good and bad about Pakistan. Slow, measured progress with bursts of brilliance, with calculated risks. Medium-term goals. Stability. Imagine that.

Pakistan has had 15 ODI captains since Imran (to contrast, India have had 7), and most of their fates have not been pretty.

Pakistan, this could be your Pax Romana. Your long stretch of Roman Peace after rough times.

And you didn’t even have to kill Caesar to get here. Just two Butts.

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February 21, 2012

Can You Drop Sachin and Live to Tell the Tale?

Nirmal Shekar writes for The Hindu:

Sachin has done enough to deserve the right to choose his own time of departure.

While I don’t think there’s enough evidence to drop Sachin yet, the time may be soon. But this line of thought from Nirmal Shekar (and shared by many) is patently ridiculous.

I foresee new rules for the selectors. Select the players. Then replace them only when a player chooses his time of departure.

If this was how our selectors worked, one Kris Srikkanth may still be in the playing eleven.

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February 17, 2012

No, Mr. Bhogle. Indians Are Not Culturally Suited to the Shorter Form.

A curious paragraph from Harsha Bhogle where his hypothesis is that India does better at the shorter format because they are culturally aligned:

One-day captaincy is much more about instinct and short-term rewards, which we in India are naturally adept at extracting. We see opportunities quickly, we rush in, we are satisfied. A space opens up in a crowded local train and we edge in there, a new counter opens at a bus station and we are first in the new queue; our eyes are forever darting around looking for an opening because if we miss it we may not get another. As a wonderfully instinctive person who has his wits around him, Dhoni revels in these conditions. A five-day game is more like booking your ticket early and reserving a seat rather than charging around looking for one.

The paragraph is curiouser because Dhoni is, in fact, a former Indian Railways ticket collector.

I could write a similar paragraph about how India would obviously do better at Test cricket because they are used to waiting in long lines for their LPG cylinders. Patience has been bred in to them at a young age, so obviously they were number one in Test cricket.

But I don’t have a deadline and a word limit looming.

∞

Another line from Bhogle in the same article:

India are not too bad, as we saw even in the Tests in England and Australia, over short bursts. Maintaining that quality over longer periods is a different skill, and like peace in the modern world, it is a bit scarce in India at the moment.

Less egregious. Mostly just a writer conjuring up a catchy simile. But it’s mostly untrue. The modern era is among the most peaceful, even if it’s people are more nervous about random acts of violence than any previous generation. A graph from the Wall Street Journal (also click through for a graph on homicide rates over the centuries):

Also, India have actually been quite good in away Test matches as recently as one year ago. So wrong on both counts, Mr. Bhogle: it’s a peaceful world where India have recently played good, patient Test cricket.

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Link | February 16, 2012

Blackmail

From Miss ESPNCricinfo Staff:

The Pune Warriors will remain in the IPL and its parent company Sahara will continue its sponsorship of the Indian team [..] The major concession Pune seem to have won is the restoration of its auction purse of $1.6 million and the licence to buy players who were not sold at the auction and also foreign players who were not part of the auction.

That’s blackmail. In a perfect world, the BCCI would have called their bluff and looked for another sponsor.

Also, in a perfect world the Pune owner would not have had to negotiate with the Chennai owner on the fate of their franchise.

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Link | February 15, 2012

Anti-Spectator

Reinforcing my earlier point about modern changes to cricket, Andy Bull writes a great piece on the influence of DRS on the great game:

During Pakistan’s series victory over England it felt as though there was hardly a single facet of Test match cricket that had not been changed, one way or another, by the DRS; batting technique, bowling technique, the balance between bat and ball, the decision-making processes of the umpires and the experience of the spectators in the ground, all had been altered.

This isn’t to say that the impact has necessarily been negative. From that list I would argue that the only aspect of the game that is unequivocally the poorer for the DRS is the spectator experience.

Ultimately, what else matters? Read the rest of this entry »

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