Cricket is delicious

Here's a news report that suggests Cambodians are lapping it up: "They’re considered a plague in most parts of the world, but for a province in Cambodia, the millions of crickets that swarm the plains every year are a cause for celebration. In rural Kompong Thom, crickets are a delicacy, served up deep-fried, crunchy and seasoned. Some Cambodians believe eating crickets regularly improves health and longevity and the region is the country’s leading cricket producer as its watery soil helps the insects flourish. "They taste very good and I like to eat them everyday," said Gnoun Vanny who regularly buys the bugs for family dinner. Crickets, like most insects, are rich in protein and some research suggests they help lower cholesterol."

Whatmore's parting shot?

Bangladesh ticked Whatmore off during the World Cup for expressing an interest in coaching India. There were also reports of Bangla displeasure over his consultations with BCCI officials during the current tour. So perhaps Whatmore got his own back by persuading Bangladesh to inexplicably put India in on the easiest of pitches. But India did not quite do enough with that magnanimity: 326 at a rate of 3.67 per over is below par against a weak opposition on a flat wicket where the team lost not a single wicket during the day. It was understandable Jaffer and Karthick started cautiously, but to carry that on till tea was too much. And, at the end, Tendulkar was over-cautious, getting just 9 off 31 balls. But then, who knows when he will get another chance to score a century!

Sachin and Dravid to open

Wasim Jaffer, like Gautam Gambhir, keeps coming back into the team, flops, goes back to domestic cricket, scores tons of runs, and the cycle repeats. When are we going to take a decision on whether he has it in him to be an international level Test match opener? According to me, he does not have the technique to play the new ball against international attacks. He is unable to leave the rising, outgoing ball. And he gets bowled or LBW too often because he plays too loose away from his body. Even a bit of deviation finds him out. And he's not a Sehwag who can compensate for these technical flaws with brilliant unorthodoxy. He's great on flat wickets, against weak bowlers. Let's leave him there.
We have no option is the usual counter to this. I think until we spot a player on the domestic circuit with the potential to be an international opener, it's better to convert middle order bats into openers than to keep rotating players whose shortcomings have been exposed time and again. Okay, we converted Sehwag, and now look what's happened, you will say. Even though Sehwag notched up an amazing Test match average of over 50, I've always felt he should have stayed in the middle order. He's a devastating stroke-player, especially against spinners. We've possibly ruined a great career by making him an opener. New ball bowlers now know exactly what to bowl at him, he keeps getting out in a few set ways, and you can see what it's done to his confidence.
Okay, so what's the option? Of all the players who have turned out for India in the past few years, there remain only two who have the technique to be Test match openers - Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar. They know how to leave the rising ball. That's the key. You will point out that Sachin's already been struggling in Test matches for the past couple of years (except against Bangladesh). But that's the point. How much worse can it get for him? And who knows, it might just give him a fresh lease of life in Test cricket, just like the opening transformed his one-day career.
Apart from having the necessary defensive technique, and all his experience as a one-day opener, Sachin would get maximum value for his strengths of timing and placement as an opener when the field is attacking. And we know it helps his game when he gets going, instead of being bogged down in the middle order as he tends to do these days. I wish he had retired in time, but if he must continue, maybe the Test match opener's slot is what he should eye. Not going to happen, but worth thinking about.
Imagine with Dravid and Sachin opening, the options it would open up to pack our middle order with strokemakers and also to try out newcomers.

A pause, to look back

“Lock, whose arms always seem to be on puppet strings so quickly do they shoot upwards to register success, misfortune, a snick - or, sometimes, seemingly, even the time of day - turned himself backwards on his heels so far that with his arms at full stretch he represented nothing more than an agitated and exultant symbol of interrogation.” That was Jack Fingleton's description of English spinner Lock's appeal for LBW against Australian Neil Harvey at the Oval in 1953. That was another era of Test cricket, and cricket writing.

What good is a coach, anyway?

"When was the last time you saw an Indian cricket captain in action and went 'Wow, this guy is GOOD'. And, if that is the case, and if our players shut themselves down to any new thoughts, then irrespective of how good the coach is, it's a fool's errand," wrote Homer in response to my piece No coach is no solution. It got me thinking. And I do remember going 'Wow' when Pataudi led India to a victory over the West Indies at Eden Gardens, persisting with Chandrashekhar on the last day despite a string a longhops threatening an early end to the game, and the emotional Bong crowd booing the Nawab for keeping their favourite son Prasanna on third man duty. But such moments have been few and far between. Ganguly had some, although he was tactically poor in the field. I think he resurrected Dravid's one-day career by insisting that he keep wickets in the 2003 World Cup. It made Dravid relax by securing his place in the side, which had been under a cloud until then. It also allowed the top order to play freely, knowing there were many bats to follow, even if the seventh man did not himself contribute much. Azhar had his moments too, the way he handled the spinners, and the flexibility and fluidity with which he moved the field in and out in one-day games, depending on the approach of the batsmen. Dravid, to me, is the most uninspiring captain we've had, but he had his moment too - sensing that the inexperienced Murali Karthik, who had run through the Aussie second innings in the fourth Test in Mumbai in the 2005-06 series, was too tight to finish off the job, and bringing Harbhajan on instead to take the last two wickets with only a few runs to spare. So, I think a good coach, adequately empowered, can perhaps get these moments a little more concentrated. Who knows, we might yet see a Dave Whatmore swing his shirt over his head!

If it's Whatmore, what next?

I ended my last piece on Whatmore - What more do we want? - with the hope, somewhat in vain, that if he is selected, he should then be sufficiently empowered. Let's expand on that.
The Indian cricket board is taking its time to find a replacement for Greg Chappell. It can mean either of two things: that the board had no contingency plan in the event of a flop show at the World Cup, even though a flop was only to be expected given the earlier flops in Malaysia, South Africa and the Champions Trophy; or, to be more charitable, that it wants to pick the right man for the job. Now, if Whatmore is picked, what next?
In business or sports, leadership is the most important thing. So the first issue to be resolved is whether the administrators, selectors and players will rally around Whatmore as the national cricket team's leader. Or will he be expected to play a mere supporting role? I think in today's cricket, it's better for the coach to take the leadership position. Strategy, tactics, SWOT analyses, work ethic, talent scouting, psycho support, media management, team building, infrastructure, support staff - there's a lot on the plate, and it's best for the captain to focus only on the operations part of it: mainly, to think on his feet during the game and lead from the front by putting his own game in order.
The second pre-requisite for Whatmore to have any chance of being effective is a long tenure, say till the next World Cup. This would insulate him a little from the vagaries of cricket board politics. Look at the number of years that John Buchanan served Australia - Eight. It helps the players too by bringing some continuity in processes, assessments and strategies. Of course, there needs to be an exit clause in case things go badly wrong, but which cannot ordinarily be invoked.

This time it makes sense

It's deja vu. India is again undecided about the number of bowlers it wants to pick for the first Test against Bangladesh. "We do have the option of playing five bowlers in these conditions considering the weather, the wicket and what we are trying to achieve in this game," said Dravid. The last time India went in with five bowlers, it allowed England to square a home series in Mumbai. The decision to go in with five bowlers usually betrays indecisiveness, arising when a need is felt for three spinners, coupled with a reluctance to go in with just one pace bowler. But, in the current instance, there's enough cause: its' quite crazy playing Test cricket in the sub-continent in May. You do need five bowlers, and five batsmen and a wicket-keeper should be good enough to post a winning total against Bangladesh.

Learn from the Aussies, mate

"I had to look at the calendar, I thought it was April 1," said Jason Gillespie on being informed he had been offered a new contract to play for Australia. The 33-eyar-old fast bowler has lately been creating havoc in county cricket after being out with injury and loss of form. It just goes to show that for the best team in the world, it's form and fitness that count, not age and seniority. The most important thing is to get the best players out there, give rest to players when they need it, keep out injured players, and generally manage the team in a transparent and fair way. New players should only take the place of unfit or out-of-form players. Arbitrarily giving new players a game or two against weak opposition like Bangladesh has been done in the past too, and has done nothing to build our bench strength. That's simply not the way to go about it. Team building means to identify new players with potential, induct them into the team when opportunities come, and then give them enough time to prove themselves before reassessing their worth - not suddenly running around like headless chicken looking for new players, as India and Pakistan are doing after their World Cup debacles. Cricket Australia was the first to announce a new set of players after the World Cup. These are not spring chicken that Australia thinks will serve them in the next World Cup. They are the best set of players currently available to help Australia keep winning. As for the future, the domestic circuit has been made strong enough to ensure quality in the supply line. The 25 players chosen know they will play for Australia for at least a year, which gives them confidence and security to concentrate on their game. Conversely, players in the wings know that they will have another crack next year at getting a Cricket Australia contract if any of the contracted players don't shape up during the year, because the administration can be ruthless in dropping players regardless of seniority. In India, we've taken a step backward by abolishing the contract system which means players will be chosen on a series to series basis, which is unsettling. It shows the indecisiveness of the selection and administration. It means we're not in a position to say these are the 25 players who can play for India for a year from now, and these are the guys who are out and can go back to domestic cricket for a year to try to improve or regain form. It also means more power to the administrators and selectors, as everyone hangs on to every sattement they make for clues to who's in or out. More discussion on this in an earlier post - A punishment for success.

What more do we want?

With Western Australia signing up Tom Moody, and John Buchanan having already thumbed his nose at India, that leaves Dav Whatmore as the last one standing for the job of India coach. Well, almost, because the board can surprise us by appointing somebody like Mohinder Amarnath, Sunil Gavaskar's favourite, despite his lack of any significant international coaching success. Sandeep Patil, who took Kenya to the semi-finals of the 2003 World Cup, would be a more credible choice, but I think an Indian coach would have the added burden of having his decisions seen through the prism of parochialism. I've always felt Whatmore's the best candidate, and who knows what might have been if he had taken over from John Wright. Now it's a much more difficult task to rebuild this team, but Whatmore can draw on all his experience in the sub-continent, first the fantastic one of helping Sri Lanka get the World Cup, and now the equally remarkable one of forcing the big teams to take Bangladesh seriously. The two experiences were different: in Sri Lanka, his job was to build on the proven talents of Arjuna Ranatunga, Aravinda De Silva and Muthiah Muralitharan to create a world beating outfit; in Bangladesh, it was the challenge of a start-up operation which began with basic processes which led gradually to a self-belief that they could compete, and win, at this level. Most of all, what sets Whatmore apart from other foreign coaches is that he seems to work well with spinners, and that's a strength that I feel we should again learn how to capitalise on. Of course, at the end of the day, any coach can only be effective to the extent he is empowered.

The punishment for success

It's interesting that two of the most dangerous batsmen in the World Cup were both openers and left-handers who made comebacks. Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya is 37 and last year he had retired from the game after a long run of poor form. Similar was the return of Mathew Hayden at 33 after being dropped from the Australian team. Sound familiar? Sourav Ganguly, a left-hander and an opener, came back into the Indian team against all odds after Chappell and More forced him out, and with some justification because his game had gone to pieces. But, like Jayasuriya and Hayden, he used the break from international cricket to work on his fitness and iron out the flaws in his batting that had become the targets of bowlers. But that's where the similarity ends. Ganguly finds himself out of the Indian ODI side in spite of averaging over 60 in his last ten innings, being the man of the series against Sri Lanka before the World Cup, and doing better than most of the other Indian batsmen at the World Cup. Of course, 'resting' him for three ODIs against Bangladesh isn't a big deal, but it sends out the wrong signal - that performance and fitness, hard work and determination don't count for much in Indian cricket. Ad hocism rules. Why would Ganguly need a rest after cooling his heels for a year and a half? Give younger players a chance by all means, but let them take the place of jaded or non-performing players. In any case, Ganguly's replacement Gautam Gambhir has had several opportunities to prove himself and by now it should have been apparent that he does not have what it takes to make the cut. There are some players who make tons of runs in the domestic circuit on easy tracks against weak bowling but whose faults get exposed at the international level. Gambhir seems to be of that ilk and his failure in the first ODI against Bangladesh was a familiar sight. He might get a few in the next two matches but would prove nothing. It is Bangladesh, after all, even if we have made them look like Australia.

Game's over, for smaller players

This might seem like whining after the Aussie win. So I must preface this piece by acknowledging that the Aussies have a great system in place for cricketing excellence and that's why they succeed. My argument is that the gap between the Aussies and the rest will only widen if the trend towards flattening and hardening of pitches around the world continues. I wrote about this on page 16 of DNA Sunday. The article is reproduced here...

Big Is Successful
In a Super 8 game at the World Cup, Australia's big, burly opener Mathew Hayden strode down the track to off-spinner Marlon Samuels. The West Indian saw him coming and floated the ball a little wider and shorter. Hayden, off-balance, lunged at the ball anyway and hit it one-handed over long off for six.
Is that wielding the willow or does it hark back to primitive man swinging a club? Is cricket regressing to a stone age where physical attributes hold more value than subtlety and dexterity?

Homogenised Wickets
To watch Hayden advance towards bowlers and swat the ball cross-batted, makes you wonder: Would he have got away with that against Anil Kumble on the Ferozeshah Kotla track where he got 10 Pakistani wickets in an innings? And to see Glen McGrath bang the ball in and mouth expletives, gets you thinking: When have we seen McGrath rejoicing on a Chennai wicket?
It’s the age of the tall, strong, aggressive cricketer, all right, but that’s at least partly because blinkered cricket administrators around the world are rolling out flat, hard, bouncy pitches, in the misguided belief that you need a standard surface that produces lots of fours and sixes in one-day matches, and goes the five days of a Test match without cracking up. In the process, the game gets skewed in favour of a certain type of cricketer: bowlers who can get bounce, and batsmen who can handle bounce.

Next Generation
Of course, you would point to Sri Lanka’s Muthiah Muralitharan and Lasith Malinga, but their success has come out of freak actions which are difficult to replicate. Australia too has players like Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting, who rely more on technique and timing than strength and height. But, it’s a dying breed, as Ponting himself admitted, when asked if Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and himself were the last of the Little Masters: "The next generation will be power batsmen. I really think that is the way the game is going. It will be the same with the bowlers. All the wickets around the world are pretty flat now and you need big, tall bowlers who are going to get extra bounce."
Even if that statement was calculated to add to the ‘aura of invincibility’ around his team, it also raises the question if the game is becoming one-dimensional through a loss of diversity. How boring would this World Cup have been, for instance, if not for Sri Lanka? Malinga’s slinging action and Murali’s back-of-the-hand off-spin added a whiff of spice to an otherwise bland main course. But these innovations coming out of the sub-continent’s tennis ball cricket culture are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Disappearing Arts
Where are the classic swing bowlers like Kapil Dev and Ian Botham, or finger spinners like Bishen Singh Bedi and Erapalli Prasanna? From wicket-taking bowlers, Saqlain Mushtaq and Harbhajan Singh were reduced to playing a containing role, then banished. Chaminda Vaas is one of the last surviving swing bowlers but it’s only the odd occasion now when he finds the right conditions to be effective.
Bangladesh’s easy victory over one of the top teams, South Africa, on the slow turner in Guyana, followed immediately by a rout at the hands of the weakest team, Ireland, on the bouncy track in Barbados shows just how much of a difference the pitches make. Bangladesh’s strength lay in its left-arm spinners, who got some purchase from the spongy surface in Guyana, and Ireland’s in its tall pace bowlers, who got bounce from the hard surface in Barbados.
Guyana was an anomaly. The top five bowlers in the World Cup were McGrath and Tait, who are tall and strong, Murali and Hogg, who are uncommon wrist-spinners, and Malinga whom one can only describe as a sling bowler. No classic finger spinner or swing bowler in that lot, and that’s no surprise either as the wickets are becoming increasingly homogenised. Brian Lara caught all the flak for the Windies’ poor show, but Andy Roberts, the former great West Indian fast bowler, had a hand in it too by relaying the pitches before the World Cup, mixing in clay and grass to make them harder, faster and bouncier, which are not West Indian strengths these days.

Different Pitches
Time was when we had three broad categories of pitches: the flat, hard tracks in Australia, South Africa and the West Indies, which favoured bowlers who are tall and strong, and batsmen adept at pulling and cutting the rising ball; the green, moist conditions in England and New Zealand, where bowlers needed to exploit swing and seam, and batsmen required the technique of playing late and close to the body to negotiate those; and, finally, the rough, uneven wickets in the sub-continent, where both bowlers and batsmen had to be supple in wrist and nimble of foot – Oriental attributes ideally suited for spin.
As recently as in 2005, Australia lost the Ashes in England to the seam and swing of Harmison and Hoggard. Even in India before that, the Aussies won the series only because they were saved by rain in Chennai, and cricket board politics produced a green top in Nagpur to embarrass Sourav Ganguly.
For many years, teams from outside the sub-continent despaired at the thought of playing in India, where their fast bowlers would find no grass or bounce, and their batsmen would be left groping against a trio of crafty spinners. Then a pitch committee suddenly laid out fast tracks in Mumbai and Bangalore to help India learn to win abroad. All it did was to let a bemused South African team roll us over in back-to-back Test matches, our first defeat at home in more than a decade.

The Good, The Bad…
The notion that India must produce pitches suitable for fast bowlers in order for our players to do well overseas has always struck me as odd. Has anybody ever advised the Australians or South Africans to change their home wickets into slow turners in order to get used to sub-continental conditions or to nurture finger spinners in their countries?
Why are flat, hard pitches which favour taller bowlers and batsmen described as “good wickets”, and abrasive, dusty surfaces which favour smaller, quicker-footed and wristier players dubbed “bad wickets”? Good for whom, and bad for whom? Why not prepare pitches that are unapologetically spin-friendly? Isn’t it just as thrilling to see a spin trio at work as it is to marvel at a pace battery?

And The Astroturf
To have the whole world playing one brand of cricket is a stultifying prospect. This is what astroturf did to hockey, remember?
Traditional hockey played on a rough, uneven surface suited the wristier Indians and Pakistanis who were more adept at trapping and dribbling with a hooked stick than the Europeans. Legend has it that Dhyan Chand’s stick was suspected to contain a magnet, so closely did he control the ball. Astroturf negated those magical skills. With the ball now hugging the surface as if on a billiards table, trapping became a matter of laying the stem of the stick flat on the ground. Hard-hitting penalty corners gained ascendancy over field goals.
Can you imagine what it would do to tennis to dig up the grass at Wimbledon and lay out an artificial surface in its place? Right now you can expect Roger Federer to get more value for his shots on grass and thus get the better of Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon. Nadal would return the compliment on clay where he can leverage his athletic prowess to chase down anything Federer can throw at him and return it with twice the power. Obviously, if you were to make all the courts grass or clay or astroturf, one type of player will dominate everywhere.
That’s what is happening in cricket with “good wickets” being prepared or even imported and “dropped in” on more and more grounds. The result is a dying out of skills such as Boycott’s defensive technique on a seaming track in Headingley, or a nonchalant Azharuddin flick to square leg off a Murali fizzer. Now it’s mostly slam, bam, see you later, mate.

A couple of predictions for the final

Here's a prediction before the start of the big final: Sri Lanka will lose if it bats first. If Australia bats first, it's anybody's game. Most of the games at the World Cup between the major teams have gone to the side chasing. That's because the opening bowlers have a distinct advantage due to the 9:30 am start and losing two or three early wickets has been the norm. South Africa lost 5, which shows Graeme Smith was wrong to choose to bat after winning the toss.
Second prediction: If Sri Lanka replaces Fernando with Maharoof, that would be a mistake. Maharoof will go for plenty and may cost Sri Lanka the match. Fernando was expensive in the semi-final, but that's because umpire Rudi Koertzen upset him with two warnings for running on to the danger area of the pitch. Fernando could get Ponting with the kind of fast incoming ball that castled Tendulkar.

Lefties more vulnerable to Malinga

Wow... Wow... Wow... Commentator Michael Holding's ball by ball exclamation after each Lasith Malinga delivery summed up his mesmerising opening spell in the semi-final against the Kiwis. Now I'm waiting for the final 'wow' when Malinga traps Hayden and Gilchrist LBW if the Aussies get through to the finals, or Graeme Smith if it is the Proteas instead.
He made the ball curve in to Fleming's pads from outside off-stump, which is very difficult to do right arm over the wicket, and extremely difficult to face at 145 kmph for a left-hander. Malinga is able to do that because the ball is over middle-stump at the point of delivery, creating a different angle from what batsmen are used to from conventional right-arm over-the-wicket bowlers.
For a right hander, Malinga poses a different problem. Ross Taylor, who came in after the fall of Fleming's wicket, also looked all at sea, but had to get a nick to get out. He just kept playing and missing outside offstump instead. As for the Malinga ball pitching on the stumps and straightening, that's easier for a right-handed batsman to get behind, whereas the left-hander tends to play across the line to be trapped LBW. So the key to the finals may well lie in what Malinga does to the left-handers who dominate the top of the Aussie line-up.

Cricket's equivalent of self goal

Michael Vaughan and Duncan Fletcher have done to England what Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell did to India. The Bridgetown, Barbados pitch is one of the liveliest in the Caribbean, England bowled Bangladesh out for 143 here, and yet Vaughan chose to bat after winning the toss. England got bowled out for 154. Dravid and Chappell had similarly opted to bat first against Bangladesh on a pitch where the Sri Lankans had in a previous match struggled in the early overs even against the lowly Bermudans. Both England and India thus knocked themselves out of the World Cup.

It's the netas, stupid

"To my mind, it's the netas in BCCI who are the actual culprits. They have no understanding of the game. Hence, the present plight," wrote a reader named Roma in response to my article in DNA... Chappell or Sachin: Who's the bigger problem?.
Restrict players' advertisements, get younger players, appoint Indian coaches: these knee-jerk reactions after the World Cup debacle prove Roma's point about the politicians and officials running Indian cricket.
Even a half successful Indian team makes the board's coffers overflow, such is the marketing potential of the game in the country. So it is not as though the board is lacking in motivation to put together a team that can win. The problem is it has no clue how to do this, nor will it delegate power to somebody who can.
Reforming the administration of cricket in India is a long and complicated process, and not doable beyond a point unless the government too thinks it's a worthwhile pursuit given its potential to lift the mood of people and project a winning image of the country. But even within the current setup, a lot can be achieved simply by making the jobs of chief selector, coach and captain dependent on an acceptable level of performance within a reasonable timeframe.
Chappell and Dravid, for instance, failed not just at the World Cup but for a long time before that. The drubbing in the Windies and then Malaysia, the failure to pass muster at the Champions' Trophy even in home conditions, and the whitewash in South Africa was ample evidence that the team had gone into a decline. It was bad enough no corrective steps were taken before the World Cup, but to continue with Dravid as captain now is to be like the proverbial ostrich with its head stuck in the sand.
Chappell probably had to go, from the board's point of view, because he was becoming too much of a bother. But in his place is a milky way, a bunch of asteroids. Ravi Shastri as manager, Venkatesh Prasad as bowling coach and Robin Singh as fielding coach have no track record in the international arena for these jobs. Why can't the richest cricket board in the world simply appoint a proven coach to take charge of the national team and try to turn it around?
That's what happens in football, basketball and baseball. The richest clubs pay astronomical sums to hire the best coaches in the belief that leadership counts most of all.
In cricket, traditionally, the leadership has come from the captain. Imran Khan goaded Pakistan into a World Cup winning unit, Mike Brearley was virtually a non-playing England captain but created a match-winning all-round weapon called Ian Botham, and Pataudi taught India how to win, at least at home, by conjuring up the idea of a spin trio.
But that's changed. Today the successful teams have proven coaches backing up the captain to leverage all those tricky factors: toss, playing eleven, batting order, rotation of bowlers, field positions, timing of power plays, plans for each opposition bowler and batsman, and perhaps even the sledging if the ICC will not stamp it out. And that covers only what is manifested on the field. There are more fundamental matters such as work ethic, mental attitude and team spirit. Does a coach, for instance, back up a player who throws away his wicket in the team's cause?
Then there is the vital aspect of grooming young players, which Chappell and Dravid failed to do. The only new batsman for India in this World Cup after 2003 was Robin Uthappa and he was a last-minute inclusion. Compare that with the Aussies who have groomed Michael Clarke and Michael Hussey into top performers since the last World Cup. Or take the Ganguly era which saw the emergence of Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif.
The chairman of selectors Dilip Vengsarkar says the country lacks talent. Wrong. What's lacking is leadership. Otherwise you wouldn't have a board responding to the World Cup debacle simply by taking money out of the players' pockets (and indirectly lining its own), without holding the selector and captain accountable, and leaving a vacuum in place of the foreign coach. The only sense one can make of all this is that the board would rather keep a firmer hand on the reins instead of appointing a proven coach of international standing. But do they realise they're killing the goose that lays the golden egg?

No coach is no solution

It's strange that the BCCI appoints bowling and fielding coaches when it's the batting that primarily let India down at the World Cup. More than that, what India needs is a thinking coach, as I've explained in this article on page 16 of DNA Sunday, which is reproduced here...

Tom Moody was up on his feet in the pavilion, cellphone to his ear, gesticulating. Down below, a member of the Sri Lankan support staff ran round the boundary to a spot near one of the outfielders. The flurry of activity at the end of the penultimate over of the Sri Lanka-England match signalled a critical moment not just in the match but the tournament itself, because whichever team pulled off a victory in the next over would in all likelihood make it through to the semi-finals of World Cup 2007.
England, needing 12 runs for victory, had its hopes pinned on young Ravi Bopara, who had rescued the team from a precarious 133 for 6. The Lankan wise heads went into a huddle: who should bowl that last over? Shouldn’t it be their most experienced bowler Chaminda Vaas?
The ball went to Dilhara Fernando, who was not even in the playing eleven for the Lankans at the start of the Cup. Somebody made the call, correctly, that his extra pace was a better bet and that he had it in him to hold his nerve.
The last ball in the over was straight, fast, and short of a length, not the usual yorker Bopara was expecting. He missed, was bowled, and England fell two runs short.
With such experienced hands as Sanath Jayasuriya, Muthiah Muralitharan, captain Mahela Jayewardene and Vaas on the field, did the Lankans need that input from Moody?

Insights are the key
Often a key insight can only come from a detached, intelligent view away from the heat of the action, and that is one of the myriad ways in which a modern cricket coach can be the most important member of the team.
Consider the fact that it’s only the coach and captain who are really motivated to put the interests of the team above those of individual stars, because their jobs primarily depend on the team’s performance, or at least they should.
So unless the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) finds a replacement for Greg Chappell who not only has solid credentials as a coach but is also then empowered to direct the show, it’s the superstars who will call the shots, despite the conflict of interest when team decisions impact players and their endorsements.

Taming the variables
Cricket coaching today is not just about batting and bowling tips or fielding drills. More than in any other physical sport, success in cricket depends on strategy and tactic as much as performance. That is because of the number of variables at play: the weather, the pitch, the condition of the ball, field placements, different kinds of bowling and batting, the strengths and weaknesses of each player, and, finally, the mind games.
Bob Woolmer, who pioneered the use of computer-aided video analysis to deconstruct the opposition, was the first to recognise how much more a coach could bring to the table. He probably picked it up from the New York Yankees, the fabled American baseball team, who even employed a former IBM scientist to use data-mining software to generate intelligence on the best ways to deal with batters and pitchers.

Decisions from the gut
Today, the most successful coaches in cricket are people like Dav Whatmore and John Buchanan, who were not legends as players, but will put in the donkey’s work that goes into supporting a team with dossiers of information. Of course, data can only take you thus far and no further. As Jack Welch advises in his book on winning: “There’s never adequate data. Make decisions with your gut.”
Whether by gut or data, India got a lot of decisions wrong at the World Cup: batting first against Bangladesh, pushing Sachin Tendulkar down the order, replacing Anil Kumble with Harbhajan Singh for the Lanka match, not taking Ramesh Powar to the Cup…
Sri Lanka, by contrast, got a lot of decisions right: opting for new talent such as Upul Tharanga and Chamara Silva in place of former captain Marvan Atapattu, and yet not being blinded by the preference for youth to deny the claims of an ageing Jayasuriya.

Keeping the powder dry
And it wasn’t the choice of Fernando to bowl the last over that won Sri Lanka that vital match against England. It came earlier, when they held back the third set of five powerplay overs, with field restrictions, which most teams try to use up as quickly as possible. They waited till the 30th over to bring the field in, and Muralitharan tossed the roughened old ball up to England’s main striker Kevin Pietersen, who could not resist trying to hoik it into the wide open spaces over midwicket. It was the doosra and Muralitharan pouched the leading edge with glee.
That’s the joy of cricket: the thought that goes into it. And the Indian cricket board, being the richest, can employ the best coaching mind, going by his track record as a coach, not a player. But is the board capable of picking the right leader and empowering him?

Chappell or Sachin: Who's the bigger problem?

[This is from my article at the DNA website.]

To reduce a team, which was once considered the Aussies' only serious challenger, to the state it is in today, takes a multitude of factors, and Greg Chappell may have been one of them. But to blame it all on Chappell now would be to again brush everything under the carpet, and miss the opportunity provided by the World Cup debacle which has forced a hard, critical look at fundamental problems, including that hitherto sacrosanct one of Sachin Tendulkar's impact on this team.
Take for example the matter of Tendulkar's fitness, which has been one of the great pre-occupations of Indian cricket, to the extent of making everything else secondary. In 2004-05, when the Australians arrived in India to conquer their "last frontier", almost the entire cricket establishment was caught up with the rehabilitation of Tendulkar, who was recovering from his 'tennis elbow', instead of focussing on helping the team to tackle the Aussies. Tendulkar was even picked for the first Test in Bangalore, although there was no chance of him playing. Then it transpired Tendulkar needed to be with the team so that the physio could work on him. Instead of carrying an injured Tendulkar around, the selectors could have given a leg up to players like Badani, Sriram and Ramesh who were scoring runs by the ton in domestic cricket at the time.
Tendulkar himself once acknowledged the untapped potential of one of these players after a Challenger Trophy final when he refused to accept the sycophantic award of 'man of the match' and handed it over instead to the one he felt deserved it more - Sriram. But such magnanimous gestures do not amount to much if opportunities to groom young players are lost because positions in the team are not vacated by senior players even when they are injured. And while India fussed with Tendulkar's elbow in the 2004-05 series, the Australians under Buchanan were plotting how to turn the tables on the Indians. They came up with the match-winning tactic of getting Michael Kasprowicz to bowl off-cutters which turned into fast off-breaks on the rough pitch in Bangalore, thus getting the Indians' own conditions to work against them. This was a team not pre-occupied with McGrath or Warne; they built their strategy around Kasprowicz who was the man for these conditions.
So the real challenge for the Indian board is not replacing the coach. That's a relatively small matter compared to that of putting the needs of the team above that of individual stars. That cannot happen in a culture where a Tendulkar can walk in and out of the team after an injury break without having to prove his form and fitness in domestic competition. What moral right can anybody then have to insist on current form rather than past stats as the criterion for selection of other players? Besides, nothing can be more of a demotivator for young players than to see a senior player getting special treatment.
Tendulkar put forward to the media the way he was always joking around with the younger players as a testimonial to the bonhomie between seniors and juniors. Surely, it would take concrete action more than funny words to build up team spirit. What is the responsibility that a player of Tendulkar's stature has shouldered, apart from batting? Even on the ground, until recently, he used to hang around in the outfield, instead of taking up the more vital close-in catching positions where he would also have been in the thick of the planning and action. Only now he has come into the slips because it suits him -- he has a dodgy shoulder.
When the team loses, the ones taking the rap are the coach and captain, a position that Tendulkar gave up. And yet, he now takes up the cudgels for the senior players against the coach, like a godfather!
So the bigger problem for Indian cricket is to figure out what to do with a superstar like Sachin Tendulkar whose rich endorsements make it infinitely worth his while to continue to give his "heart and soul" to Indian cricket, regardless of whether that translates into victories for Team India. Tendulkar may be only 34 but he started young at 16 and 18 years of international cricket have taken their toll. He has struggled with one injury after another which have clearly affected his performance and even altered his approach to the game which is now more workmanlike than dominating. What he probably needs is a long break to be able to work on his game in domestic cricket, like Ganguly or Jayasuriya or Hayden or Lara before him. But will he have the courage to do that at this stage of his career? Or will the board have the courage and vision to take that decision for him?

Pivotal game of the Super 8

Australia and New Zealand with three wins each and Ireland to come have practically booked their semi-final berths. South Africa, with two wins, is the best placed among the other teams to qualify, because its only loss has been to the Aussies. Sri Lanka too has two wins and a loss, but it still has the front-runners, Australia and New Zealand, to play. England, strangely, has had only that solitary game against Ireland in the Super Eights so far, besides its loss to the Kiwis in the group stage. I would say therefore that England is almost on par with Sri Lanka to qualify, which makes today's match between the two a virtual knock-out. The only other interesting match so far in the Super Eights has been the one in which South Africa was cruising to victory against Sri Lanka until that four-wicket burst by Malinga nearly turned things around.
Mahela Jayewardene is looking forward to an easier track after the difficult starts the team has had in Port-of-Spain and Guyana. I'm not so sure. It's true Australia scored 322 batting first on this ground against the Windies, but that was built on one towering century by Hayden. The Windies got bowled out for 177 against the Kiwis on the same ground. I think Sri Lanka might struggle if it bats first. Even against India it was only the ineffectual bowling in the middle overs by Harbhajan and co. that let Lanka off the hook. Jayasuriya did get a wonderful century against the Windies, but I think the English bowling is better.
Of course, if England bats first, all bets are off. Sri Lanka will be better placed, not because of its pace bowling, but by virtue of not having to face the English bowlers in the early morning conditions. It's funny to read how England's batsmen are preparing for Malinga with sidearm throws from practice bowlers... England prepare for Malinga. It will be funnier still if Muralitharan turns out to be the wrecker-in-chief again.

Pawar's dilemma: To find a leader

As long as the Indian team won about half its one-day matches, which it had done until recently, the board could let things drift even if the performance was below par given the available resources. But an inept coach and weak captain have brought things to such a pass that inaction is not an option with the ad revenue at stake.
Replacing Greg Chappell is the easy part. Dav Whatmore, John Buchanan, Tom Moody or Sandeep Patil -- each one of them has had more success as a coach than Chappell. Of course the board would prefer somebody more pliant, but that can hardly be expected to lift the team out of the morass it finds itself in. Sunil Gavaskar has been plumping for Mohinder Amarnath but that would be another mistake: this time, it should be somebody with coaching, not cricketing, laurels. [Read Blame the board for picking Chappell]
Finding a replacement for Rahul Dravid is trickier because the best qualified for the job is obviously Sourav Ganguly. BCCI chief Pawar would have liked to go with his Maharashtra star Sachin Tendulkar, overlooking his previous failures as captain, except that his form and fitness have brought his own future into question. Kumble has announced his retirement from the one-day game, and none of the younger experienced players can be assured of places in the side. Yuvraj Singh's name has come up, but he only looked good against Bermuda.
Apart from Dravid, Ganguly's the only one who can hold his own in the current team. He has shown amazing mental toughness and self-belief to keep working at his game and fitness to be able to force his way back into the team after a long gap. These are also the traits that made him India's most successful captain. Reinstating him is more likely to rejuvenate Indian cricket than continuing with Dravid or giving Sachin a second chance.

Ian Chappell upsets the applecart

In a TV show titled 'Match ka Mujrim' a couple of years back I was surprised to see Sachin Tendulkar featured as the villain of the piece based on viewer feedback. It was the start of a diminishing of idolatry. This went a significant step further last week when the disfiguring of Indian cricketers' posters did not spare Sachin, that too in his own Mumbai suburb of Bandra. And now one opinion poll after another brings the refrain 'Sachin should retire' in chorus with Ian Chappell who suggests that Tendulkar these days plays more for stats than to win games for his team... Look into that mirror, Sachin.
For Ian, the turning point was the slow, painstaking double century in the final, drawn Test at Sydney in 2004. For me, it took a little longer, until the first Test at Mohali during Pakistan's tour. India got a big first innings lead, and Tendulkar came out to bat in the second innings just after lunch on the third day. He started cautiously and you could sense he was getting set for a hundred on an easy track. But as the day wore on, I lost interest in whether the 'great man' got his century or not. What was more important was that it was the first time I was seeing him play an obviously selfish game.
Everyone knows the Mohali pitch slows down with each passing day and it gets harder and harder to take wickets. So India had to capitalise on its huge lead by scoring quickly in the second innings. Instead, in four hours of batting that afternoon, India went at 2 runs per over with Sachin at the crease, and it was perhaps fitting that he fell in the closing moments of play nowhere near his hundred. Ultimately, India ran out of time on the fifth day as Pakistan escaped with a draw in a match that India had all but sewn up on the third day itself.
After that I would notice from time to time how Sachin would appear to put his self-interest above that of his team in one-day matches too, where he chose the sheet anchor's role even when there was no need for it. Some of these games India lost in spite of high scores from Sachin, a syndrome that had afflicted Rahul Dravid in the middle of his one-day career until he was dropped from the team.
I'm no longer surprised therefore by the TV vox pops and opinion polls that show little sympathy for the fallen idol. The only incongruity is the steadfast defence of Tendulkar by former Indian cricketers, but that has more to do with the intricate web of advertisers, officials, players, and commentators that characterises Indian cricket.