Kridaya Cricket Blog

If you have not been living in a cave for the last month, you would have known by now that the IPL has been shifted to South Africa. Here are the new venues:

• Newlands, Cape Town
• St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth
• Kingsmead, Durban
• SuperSport Park, Centurion
• Buffalo Park, East London
• New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg
• De Beers Diamond Oval, Kimberley
• OUTsurance Oval, Bloemfontein

Here is a Google Map of the venues. Kimberley is to the left of Bloemfontein and Centurion is just north of Johannesburg.

As you can see from the picture below (South Africa superimposed on India), South Africa is a smaller country than India. So the travelling for the players will be reduced significantly.

(Image created from Google Maps)

Most news organizations and bloggers have picked up on John Buchanan’s concept of multiple captains. Here are a few samples:

Sharda Ugra of India Today wonders about the chain of command:

Before Buchanan’s idea is taken on board, what must first be decided is who is held accountable when things go wrong? One captain? All captains? The coach? Or the poor guy who can’t point a finger fast enough?

Dileep Premachandran of Cricinfo suggests that captaincy in cricket is entirely different from captaincy in other sports:

Arthur spoke of the players getting mixed signals, and that’s the biggest problem with this Politburo model of captaincy. Who has the final say? Even in this era of coaches, the one consistent line has been that the captain has the final word once the team crossed the rope on to the field of play. Does a coach sitting on the sidelines really have a better feel for what’s going on in the middle? And if there are four or five “leaders” on the field, who makes the crunch calls? Instead of relying on one man’s instinct, do you put it to a vote?

On the other hand, Tony Becca of The Jamaica Gleaner thinks that maybe the idea could be successful:

Changes, some changes, probably most changes, are usually good. Who can tell, maybe years from now multiple captains will be the order of the day, and if and when that happens, Buchanan may be remembered as a visionary.

CricketFuzz finds it hilarious:

Right now this sounds like some marriage band that has 6 lead singers each taking turns singing their favourite songs in the manner of their influences be it hard rock, pop or avant-garde. Well you don’t really call that a professional band with a distinct character but one that is rather paid to only perform on a ’show me the money’ basis. And that’s exactly how they are treating this and this team owner obliges with them, after all, the balance sheet column is the only reason he got into this in the first place.

jrod at Cricket with Balls takes some schadenfreude at Ganguly’s embarrassment:

Any system where Brad Hodge is involved and involves rotation seems doomed to fail in my mind. [...] But for the Kolkata Knightriders I back the deicision. [...] Not because I think it will work, but because it pisses of The Giant Alien Lizard Ganguly who loses his special little title, and because it is being reported that people are burning John Buchanan effigies.

Geetha Krishnan at Cow Corner goes into Buchanan’s mind:

John (visibly excited): I can make Sourav the mascot captain. So he can wear those funny costumes (or may be take his shirt off) and cheer the team. That way I can get rid of him from the eleven. I can get Ponting to do some field placements. Now that should make the game more competitive and push our bowlers hard. Chris Gayle deciding the batting order should pose some problems for the fielding side – he will take so much time with his decisions on the batting order that it will affect the over-rate. Brendon McCullum can do some pitch reading, Brad Hodge can be the captain of the reserves… the possibilities are endless.

Finally, The Best Cricketer looks at the problems with implementation of this strategy:

Let us suppose Buchanan implements his concept and are in the semis; semi finals they play under Sourav and they win then in finals they play under Gayle and they lose. Now does this mean that they would have had a better chance if they would have played finals under Sourav? Is just Gayle to be held accountable? Who decides? Let us look at another scenario, first 4 matches they play under Sourav and they win, next three they play under Gayle and win; 8th match again under Sourav and they lose – now can’t Sourav claim that part of the reason for the loss was because the command line got shaken or his captains instincts subdued due to Gayle captaining previous 3 matches?

South Africa beat Australia once again to claim the T20 series against the Australians at home. Cricinfo reporter Alex Brown exhibits a profound short memory by proclaiming, “The South Africans continue to dominate the limited-overs formats.” Apparently, he forgot that the Aussies had routed the South Africans by the same margin back in Australia.

Even accounting for that, this was by no means a comprehensive victory for South Africa. In the first match, chasing 167, they were 83/5 needing 84 runs off 47 balls before Morkel and Boucher took them to victory with just 4 balls to spare. If it weren’t for a 21-run over conceded by Hopes, Australia may have won that match.

As for today, the South Africans posted an average score of 156 courtesy some wild hits by van der Merwe which somehow landed over the boundary. Roelof van der Merwe made his debut in the match, but still found the audacity to say, “It’s how you drive, but how you arrive.”

Let us not read too much into these matches. The nature of the Twenty20 game reduces the enormous disparities between the skill level of teams. In 20 overs, a sudden wicket or a big over fundamentally changes the complexion of the game. That is how Zimbabwe beat Australia in Twenty20, something that they cannot even dream of doing in Test matches.

Whatever South Africa or Australia do today, you can bet that it will have nothing to do with their future results, just as how Australia’s previous series victory could not prevent South Africa’s sweep of this matchup. The ODI format is a different issue altogether. If South Africa wins that, they will have a better claim on being the No. 1 team. It remains to be seen if they will squander their Australian victory like they did with the Test series.

When India was asked to follow on in the second test against New Zealand, I thought Virender Sehwag would set up and intriguing final two days of the match. We all remember how Sehwag pummeled 83 runs off just 68 balls, giving India a great start in their chase of a daunting 387 against England in Chennai last December.

I was expecting him to play a controlled innings this time.  Instead Sehwag, the skipper of the India side in Dhoni’s absence,  fell cheaply once again, playing an ugly shot.  Sehwag went for a big swing over midwicket on a bent knee and missed. The ball floated on the off stump line and hit Sehwag’s back leg.

Since Sehwag took himself out during an important juncture of the game, he has positioned himself to be criticized by many people for his shot selection. I know his fans will say that that is how he plays, refusing to let any bowler settle. But as a captain, he has to be more careful.

It is very frustating to see a player of Sehwag’s caliber attempting such atrocious shots without concern for the match situation. Luckily, because of the efforts of Gambir, Dravid and Tendulkar, India managed to escape on the fourth day, but they may still have to pay for it on the last day. As far as I am concerned, Sehwag missed an opportunity to prove his mettle.

[Photo Credit: NASA]

One more form of cricket that is played in schools is “Hand Cricket“. I played Hand Cricket during the years from my 6th grade till my 10th grade. Hand Cricket is a lot of fun and is very popular in schools in India. There is no need to carry the cricket bat, instead we use the hand as a bat. The rules are friendly to batsmen aiming to score more runs.The game is usually played on any play area. As Krishna bloggged earlier in “Reminiscences of Childhood Cricket“, different forms of street cricket allows you to create your own rules in any conditions and hand cricket is no exception.

Below are some of the rules we followed during our school days.

• Only rubber ball or soft tennis ball is allowed.
• Only spin and slow bowling is allowed.
• Balls should be bowled with a minimum of one pitch, i.e., no full tosses are allowed.
• Balls should be pitched at least 4-5 feet before the “handsman”.
• The ball is usually played only on the leg side; no off side shots are allowed.
• There are six to eight members per team.
• Generally it is 5 overs game, but varies depending on the time availability.
• Some runs are granted automatically based on hits and there are different rules for 4’s and 6’s.

Typically my school days always began with hand cricket. We always played hand cricket during the Lunch interval and also during the evening interval. We were crazy about playing during the free periods. The once a week ‘PT/games’ periods were also awaited occasions.

When I remember my past cherished memories, Hand Cricket will always have a place.

[Photo licensed from Jay Khemani]

Mahesh left a comment on the last blog post suggesting that it would be good to have separate captains for the batting and bowling innings, and also perhaps have separate squads for each innings itself. I am not so sure about the first idea, but the second is intriguing. Let us explore both.

The idea of having different captains for the two innings would be good if there was actually much to do while the team is batting. As far as I can see, the main job of the captain during the batting innings is to decide who bats next and recommend a target, if batting first. Most of the thinking is actually done by the batsmen on the pitch. So I am not sure whether there is much value for a special batting captain. It is easily something that a fielding captain could easily handle with experience.

The different squads for each innings can be a great idea because, as Mahesh said, it pits the best batsmen against the best bowlers and fielders. Right now, a third of the batting lineup is made up of the tail who don’t contribute very much to the score. The bowling usually has 4-5 bowlers and, if they are not in form, the batsmen have it easy. Also, the fielding team has to hide some people who cannot run or throw fast.

So we could have a match where during the batting innings, there are 11 specialist batsmen, “specialist” including some pinch hitters too. During the bowling innings, 10 of the best fielders take the field and the bowler bowls. When the bowler finishes bowling, he will go back to the bench and be replaced by the next bowler. So always there is one bowler and 10 good fielders on the ground. This is similar to pitching in baseball.

This suggestion raises the question of how many players will be part of the fielding team if bowlers just come out to bowl. We are talking about potentially 32 players (11 for batting, 11 for bowling and 10 for fielding). Theoretically possible, but practically (especially with money involved) impractical. I suppose a team of 16 players could fit the bill (11 good batsmen, 6 bowlers + 5 batsmen fielders). So 5 players both bat and field and 6 players both bowl and field. We can think of other combinations too that can be feasible from a logistics and financial standpoint.

I think the value of 11 specialist batsmen may be less in T20 and increases as we go to ODI’s and Tests. Since there are only 20 overs in a T20 match, most of the time, the bottom batsmen never get to bat. If they are batting for some reason, it means that the other batsmen are failing terribly because the bowling is top-notch or the pitch conditions are poor for batting. Hence they cannot be expected to contribute much. In ODI’s and Tests, the lower batsmen have more opportunities to affect the game.

The ICC had tried an experiment sometime back where the teams had “tactical substitutes”, where they could select a batsmen or bowler. This was poorly implemented because the substitute had to be named before the toss was made, and this gave a huge advantage to the team that won the toss because they could decide whether to bat first or bowl first depending on who they had selected as a substitute. After much uproar, the rule was cancelled.

This was a mistake. They should fix the toss advantage issue and perhaps allowed more substitutes. As we mentioned before, if teams could choose from 16 players and they can switch players in and out during the match at any time, provided the 10-wicket rule and bowling over restrictions are maintained, that could work.

I suppose the biggest issue from the governing body’s standpoint would be how to make sense of cricket scorecards. Suddenly, you have statistics from 16 players instead of 11. How do you keep track of which substitute played as a fielder and therefore mark the match count for him. Cricket has to learn from other sports like soccer which have had a longer history of using substitutes.

It seems that the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team is innovating in an area which has a lot of downside potential. The coach, John Buchanan, apparently believes that instead of one captain, the team will have multiple captains (maybe four or five) and they will probably take turns during the tournament. Without seeing the idea in operation, it is not right to pass judgment on it. But at first shot, it seems like a very risky proposition.

First of all, without a single captain, the responsibility for the team performance entirely falls on Buchanan’s shoulders. Since there are multiple captains, no single captain can claim credit for the team’s overall success, but they could be blamed for individual defeats. The reward-versus-ratio does not work well. Since the captains are there for individual matches, no one will take the onus between matches to talk to team members and help them out. Buchanan has to do all that. But the problem is that Buchanan cannot make the essential on-the-spot decisions on the field while the team is playing. He can only provide guidance during the breaks and that is not enough.

To some extent, this looks like hubris from Buchanan, as he wants to control the team in all aspects and gain credit for any success. He cites how Ric Charlesworth ran the Australian women’s hockey team, but hockey and cricket are two different sports. Hockey is a free-flowing, continuous game that is more dependent on the skill of the individual players and teamwork. Cricket, in constrant, is a stop-start game that requires many decisions throughout the match that can only be made by someone on the field. I don’t know what Buchanan has in mind: maybe a radio headset that will feed instructions to the on-field captain?

Also, let’s see how this would work in practice. If there are 5 captains designated, how will they be used? If a team wins the match, would that captain continue or would he be removed? If the same captain is kept on and the team keeps winning matches, what then? Or would he discarded after a few wins? How would the person react? If the captain is removed after a match (win or loss), there is a risk that the person will feel rejected and not give his full support to the next captain in upcoming matches. The ego element in this person would want the new captain to fail, so that everyone “knows” that the previous captain was a better leader.

An alternative is to appoint the captain for matches in advance. But this means that each captain knows that whether the team wins or loses, he won’t be the captain for the next match, and so he may not be as careful with decision-making. There is little incentive for better performance. The team knows this too, so they may be more lax in the field. This undermines the captain’s authority in the field.

There is a lot of room for miscommunication. For instance, in one match, the captain may communicate certain tactics to the bowlers and fielders based on the match situation. In the next match, the new captain may be frustrated by the actions of the team members, because he was not aware of what was communicated to them before. There is also the danger that the different players (who are designated captains) all start giving suggestions during the same match.

The reason that Buchanan gives for not having Ganguly (who is not happy with this decision) as the sole captain is pure BS. We have 5-day Test matches and 50-over ODI matches where the captain has to bat and bowl, and still make decisions. This is not tennis where you have non-playing captains. The mark of a good captain is that they can both do their task and lead the team. If Buchanan is worried about someone not able to do both, he should find a better captain. Ganguly has been able to perform both jobs successfully in the past, so I fail to understand where the concern comes from. In fact, a non-performing captain is more likely to get little respect from the rest of the team.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. Buchanan has been successful with Australia and perhaps he knows something we don’t. I don’t have much hopes for this venture, which I think is terribly misguided. There are many other areas where new strategies and tactics could be used. But maybe Buchanan will prove us all wrong.

The New York Times had an article and video about five college teams fighting it out for an experimental tournament in Florida, the first American College Cricket spring break championship. The Montgomery College cricket team won the tournament, beating out Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, the University of South Florida and the University of Miami. It was interesting reading about the financial aspect of getting down to Florida.

At the Boston University Cricket Club, expenses for the trip became the subject of six- and seven-hour meetings. After much deliberation, and financial help from the university, the roughly dozen members agreed that the opportunity to play for a long weekend was worth $400 each.

“Putting up that kind of money, especially when most of us have none, was a big decision for us,” Das said. “But it was significant because who else is doing anything for cricket in this country?”

The above image is of the members of the famous Philadelphia Cricket Club that toured England in 1897. This is the oldest cricket club in the United States. The history of cricket in the United States is worth reading. Although cricket was initially popular, it was upstaged by the growing popularity of baseball. It was not until recently because of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent and the West Indies that cricket is seeing greater popularity. Cricinfo has a detailed history of US cricket concluding with the ignomonious suspension of the US Cricket Association for being dysfunctional.

So the Indians join the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis in stopping cricket matches out of security fears. Can Sri Lanka be far behind? The terrorists have truly won in this battle and all the sub-continent governments have succumbed to fear instead of sending a message that violent tactics will not be tolerated. I cannot imagine this scenario happening in any Western nation.

Needless to say, the cricket fans in India can do nothing about this and have to get their daily dose of IPL cricket through the telly tube. I suppose the matches would be played at the same Indian Standard Time previously scheduled, which means that matches would start earlier in the day in England or South Africa. The 4pm IST matches would be played in broad daylight, and only the 2nd part of the 8 pm IST matches would be under lights.

It is difficult to imagine fans filling the stadiums and cheering on a “home” team passionately. The IPL consists of teams named after a city or state, and they had “home” and “away” matches. As last year’s IPL progressed, the home support for the teams only increased as most fans started associating themselves with their home teams. We cannot envision English or South African cricket fans cheering on Deccan Chargers or Delhi Daredevils the same way.

The pitches and weather may also play a different part. At this current moment, it looks like South Africa is the favorite for hosting the tournament. It will get increasingly cold in April and May as South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere. South Africa already has experience hosting a T20 tournament – the biggest one of them all – the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup.

The upcoming Indian general election is cited as the reason for this move, but in the light of events, we can easily discount that. Much more to the point is that the IPL could be a big target for terrorists and any successful attack could harm the ruling government in its effort to win the election. No IPL in India, no risk. The political risk outweighs any reward for politicians who would, in a better situation, would like to be seen with the popular teams and players.

Hopefully, this is a one-time change and the IPL will return to India next year. We also hope that this is not part of a greater trend that sends international cricket outside of India. That would be truly catastrophic for cricket.

The England team won the 2009 Women’s Cricket World Cup by beating New Zealand in the final by four wickets. It was a relatively easy victory as the Kiwis were bowled out for 166 earlier, but there were a few minor hiccups on the way as England slumped from 74 for no loss to 6/149. But the target was too low for England to be under any real pressure as they won with around 4 overs to spare.

This was an excellent performance from the England team, as they lost only one match on their way to winning the tournament, and that too an inconsequential match against Australia in the Super Six. This has taken them one closer to the 5 Cups won by the Australians. But with only 3 so far, they have some ways to go before they can overtake the Aussies.

If this had been the men’s team, there would have been much more being made of this victory. Unfortunately, the women’s game does not get as much press. I think one way to improve the visibility would be to have the Women’s World Cup at the same time as the men’s tournament. This may perhaps not be feasible initially for ODI matches because of television conflicts, but it could be done for T20. Maybe have the women’s game during the daytime and the men’s game in the evening, both played on the same ground.

It is interesting to see the Pakistan’s women’s team playing in this tournament. Because of cricket’s dress code, it is less objectionable from an Islamic standpoint. We earlier blogged about the men’s team from Afghanistan. Wonder if they will ever have a women’s team.

From the history annals, we have the England women’s cricket team in 1934-35.