IPL

i've changed my view about t20 cricket a few times now, initially unimpressed, then sceptical, then somewhat interested but not really satisfied, then suddenly captivated by india's world cup triumph only to be let down immensely by the mcg debacle, then disgusted with the money that was being thrown at average, let alone good players (seriously, $700,000 for albie morkel and david hussey??????), then even more disgusted at the number of foreign players who were signed up and essentially there for a free ride (not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars) at the expense of local players starved of opportunity, but finally won over by the cricket. thats what it comes down to, watching a cricket match. it is the unfortunate truth that i will watch almost any cricket match at any time of the day. but the ipl has produced really high quality cricket, much higher than i thought would be produced by a bunch of freeloading mercenaries. in fact, it turns out that those freeloading mercenaries have their international reputations to play for, as well as bragging rights. the indian players, it goes without saying, have their spots in the team to play for.

so what to make of the ipl?? peter roebuck has written a very good assessment of the tournament so far in this article:

In short, cricket ought not to be shy of providing brief entertainment to the population at large. In some opinions the IPL has laid it on a bit thick, but then, traditionalists are not forced to attend. Suggestions that the game will be permanently damaged by these exuberances are also unduly pessimistic. The trouble with traditionalists is that they present themselves as protectors of the game's values but are actually doomed romantics. They lament the present state of affairs yet resist innovation. Casting themselves as heavyweight, they reject the slap-happy, mistaking it for the slapdash. But it is a mistake to overestimate the past. It was not such a fine place. Nor is it possible to pin cricket into a book, like a dead butterfly.....

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The IPL's other great legacy will be the way it enhances the fellowship of man. Most previous attempts to bring together players from all nations have been unsatisfactory and fleeting. This is different. Now players from different countries, some of them supposedly bitter rivals, some of them with axes to grind, must work together in common cause, discussing tactics, forming partnerships, sharing rooms, socialising and so forth.


gideon haigh, another respected cricket journalist, takes a somewhat different view, and raises far more meaningful questions:

From the combination of 20 overs a side, flat pitches, white balls, and 70m boundaries, however, emerges what sort of cricketer? In fact, you begin wondering which great past players would have found in Twenty20 a welcoming home. Kapil Dev, for sure. Maybe Sunil Gavaskar, when not in one of his obdurate moods. But can you see BS Chandrashekhar, Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna? Given the choice, would you select Gundappa Viswanath and Sanjay Manjrekar, or Sandeep Patil and Chandrakant Pandit?

The argument is advanced that this need not concern us: we are assured that Twenty20 will be only one of cricket's variants. There will still be Test cricket, first-class cricket, 50-over matches. Yet with the animal spirits of the market liberated, how realistic is this? Already players are falling over themselves to make IPL hay, egged on by managers taking a fair clip themselves. The likelihood is that the objective of the majority of cricketers worldwide will become not to play dowdy old domestic cricket that leads on to hoary old national honours, the longer forms of the game that prepare the most finished practitioners. The economically rational behaviour will be to adapt their methods to maximise their IPL employment opportunities. Consider for a moment just who is closer to the role model of the moment: is it Rahul Dravid, the "Wall" with his 10,000 Test runs, or Yuvraj Singh, who once hit six sixes in an over? Who will a rising young cricketer earn more by emulating? If maximising individual income is what matters - and if any cricketer feels otherwise, he is keeping such a heresy to himself - then Yuvraj might well be the cookie-cutter cricketer of the next decade. Twenty20 has rightly been called a batsman's game, but it is a very particular kind of batsman: the type whose game is built on eye and strength. If a new Dravid were to begin emerging now, I suspect he would face a career as a second-class cricket citizen.

haigh also talks about how the bcci bigwigs, lalit modi and sharad pawar, have manipulated the expectations of the public, in order to fulfil their economic goals, and hijack the surging wave of enthusiasm in cricket for commercial purpose:

Profit maximisation is the name of the game - and that goes for administrators, franchisees, players, managers, broadcasters and sponsors alike. The possible negative consequences for other countries or other forms of the game are of no account compared to the commercial, and doubtless also political, ambitions of the likes of Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar

but the most important question posed by haigh is this:

What might cricket look like after 20 years of Twenty20-centricity? There will likely been a few more MS Dhonis; probably a great many more Uthappas. But can you imagine another Sachin Tendulkar, with the discipline to budget for innings by the day, with his defence as monumental as his strokes are magnificent? And what price a new Anil Kumble - brave, patient, probing, untiring - in a world measuring out bowling in four-over spells?

i especially enjoyed the veiled insult aimed at robin uthappa. i cant help but think that every team should only have one uthappa, it at all. during the entire vb series in australia, i felt that suresh raina and manoj tiwary, two of the most promising batsman in india after rohit sharma, were deprived of vital opportunities to play in australia whilst uthappa wasted chance after chance. unfortunately, the ipl auction provided positive reinforcement for uthappa's methods. he was one of the most sought after indian batsman at the auction, ultimately going for $800,000, as much as ponting, hussey and mcgrath put together.

but back to the main point, what will cricket look like after twenty years of t20? more than the decline in batting, i am more worried about bowling. agarkar, gony, amarnath and joginder sharma are some of the most successful bowlers of the ipl so far. is this the future of medium pace bowling?? no disrespect to any of those four players, but they're not exactly test match quality. in fact, they're not really of any quality. they're not even particularly successful in ranji trophy, the standards of which are already well below sheffield shield and the county championship. where are the successful ranji bowlers?? tyagi and sangwan nowhere to be seen, vinay kumar and bhatia not bowling out their 4 overs. presumably, they bowl too much line and length, or try too hard to swing the ball to be of much use in t20. the quality of bowling has already deteriorated alarmingly during my relatively short lifetime, and that was before t20. now, with the ipl probably looking to expand, one wonders exactly what the top bowlers of the world will look like in 20 years time. will kumble be the last great indian spinner? will vettori be the last quality spinner the world will see??

ok so this is all a bit pessimistic right?? what about england and australia, the traditional bastions of test cricket. no way will they short change cricket like the indians are doing. right??

"The England players are desperate to play in the IPL. Next year they will all put their hands up to come and play. Everyone has watched the IPL in England and what an amazing tournament it is. I have watched all the games. The IPL is big time news in the England newspapers." Dimitri Mascarenhas

"I haven't heard any England players use the fact that the IPL is a massive global event, and the rest of the world's best players are involved, to justify their interest in playing in it, but rather the fact that there are pots of cash to be made.

When news broke of the Allen Stanford £10m match, Pietersen could barely contain himself, salivating at the prospect of pocketing "a mill" for one match." John Stern, Cricinfo journalist

"Hopefully it will be a massive success, and I think it's going to be, because you have so much money being pumped into it, and you have the best players in the world, so there's no reason why it won't be. This could be the way cricket goes - everyone wants to see a result in three hours." Kevin Pietersen

well, its quite clear where the players stand on this. as the only major cricketing nation to left out of the ipl, england are going to find it very difficult to stop their players from participating in next year's ipl. already, mascarenhas has made a deal with his county to play in 5 ipl matches. next year, it will be every england who is offered a contract.

this is where allan stanford comes in. he's an ultra-rich american zillionaire, who, whilst busily evading taxes by basing his company in antigua, became interested in cricket. he wants to cash in on cricket too. he actually said that cricket has the potential to become the most popular spectator sport in the world- i'm very doubtful about this claim, but i think he's being genuine when he says that he wants to set up a rival t20 league in england together with the ecb. of course, unless the ecb guarantees stanford's expected return on his investment, he wont spend a single dollar on the league:

There are plenty of hurdles to overcome before Stanford's wishes can be granted, however, not least the likely opposition from the first-class counties who might fear being marginalised in such a deal. "The ECB are conservative," Stanford told The Times. ""They realise they're at a crossroads. They either let the Indians do it or they step up and get a game plan.

"The ECB, for my estimation, need to be the driver," said Stanford. "The organisation here is better, the management is better, the structure is better. It's inevitable that the ECB will create a Twenty20 league, it's inevitable that it will involve the private sector and it's inevitable that the game will evolve."

as you can see he is quite clearly manipuating the ecb into setting up a partnership with him. first he insults them by saying they would never dare go the way of the bcci, then he gently praises them by saying that they're actually much better than the bcci and it is them that should be driving the t20 revolution, not the indians. i dont quite understand why the english need stanford. there are plenty of sponsors willing to throw money at t20 cricket. all they need to do is announce their intentions and corporations will line up to hitch onto the bandwagon. anyway, there is a great deal of bitterness in english cricket circles about the ipl. it is felt that as t20 was their invention, and they did the most to propogate it in its infancy, it is they that should be taking the game forward. countries like india actually opposed the spread of t20 and participated in the world cup only reluctantly. but since then, the bcci have moved with incredible speed and the ipl has taken off before the ecb could bat an eyelid. so a combination of sour grapes and stanford's reassurances that the ecb is "better" than the bcci is bound to ensure that we will see a rival t20 league in england.

hmmm, i've rambled and ranted rather a lot, and i've now forgotten what point i was trying to make. anyway, i'll finish today with a piece of incredible irony. misbah-ul-haq, the man more responsible than any other for the ipl, is yet to feature in a single game. after all, if it wasnt for his mistimed paddle sweep, then india would not have won the world cup, and t20 would not have suddenly taken off.....