Sportman-spirit… the gentleman’s sport has completely lost it

Yesterday, during the 3rd ODI in the tri-series being played amongst India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, an ugly incident happened on the last ball of the match. The scores were level, and India, chasing, needed just one more run to win the match. Virender Sehwag, the man on strike was on 99 and needed just one more to reach his century. Suraj Randiv, a new-comer in the Sri Lankan side, bowled a huge no-ball, that even his best defenders would find hard to explain as accidental. Sehwag lofted the ball for a six, but because the no-ball had been bowled, and by virtue of the same, India had already won the match, the six weren’t counted in Sehwag’s runs, and he was stranded on 99.

Both Sehwag and the Sri Lankan captain, Kumar Sangakkara played down the incident in the post-match conference, but immediately thereafter, both expressed their real view – Sehwag openly claiming that it was a deliberate no-ball to not allow him to reach his century, and recalled a similar incident when last year Sachin Tendulkar was similarly denied the chance to reach his 100 when during the Cuttack ODI, Lasith Malinga bowled a huge wide on the leg side, which went for 4 byes, and India won the match, leaving Sachin stranded on 96. And Sangakkara demonstrated by his actions thereafter that even he wasn’t convinced enough that the no-ball wasn’t so indeliberate.

The question arises, why do such incidents happen? Are cricketers so unsporting? School-boys are likely to resort to such tricks to gain an emotional high, but national cricketers? Well, the real reason we may never know – but I can only say that this is the killer instinct of the sportsperson that comes to the fore in an ugly manner – win at all costs or lose but deny moral victory. Without a doubt, such incidents are in very poor taste. I am sure no IPL team (specially Delhi Daredevils) will want to touch Randiv for the next season – so, while sportsman-spirit and the game of cricket has definitely lost due to this incident, the ultimate loser could well be Randiv himself, and befittingly so, if you ask me. In fact, Sangakkara publicly rebuked him in front of the dressing room immediately after the post-match conference. So, clearly, even his captain believes that Randiv did not show the right mettle on the field.

However, such incidents are not new to cricket, or to any other sport. Sportsmen, howsoever big they might be, have a cheating streak in them. We saw the Hand of God of Maradona in 1986, and very recently (this year itself) Henry’s hand goal in football. In fact, soccer players are actually the greatest actors on the field, the way they feign injuries to try and get a yellow or red card awarded to the opposition and increase their chances of victory. But they are not alone in this world of cheats. Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter who created a world record of 9.79 seconds in winning the 100 meters race in the 1988 Olympics, was found to be on steroids, and his Olympic Gold medal was taken away and his records erased. Cricket has its own moments of infamy, and I’d like to recall some of them just so that we do not feel this is the first time such things have happened, of that they happen to us Indians only.

Let’s go back three decades to that day in 1981, and an Australian cricketer named Trevor Chappell. Australia and New Zealand were playing the final of the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup. New Zealand needed to score six runs to tie the match from the final ball. Not wanting to chance this, Greg Chappell (yes, our very own not-so-famous national team coach, Guru Greg), Australia’s captain and Trevor’s brother, asked Trevor to roll the ball along the ground to batsman Brian McKechnie so that he could no way hit it for a six. A visibly agitated McKechnie could do little but block the ball, and Australia won the game. Although it was not illegal to bowl underarm at the time, it was widely accepted to be contrary to the spirit of the game. It was described as “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket” by the then New Zealand Prime Minister. Such was the outcry at the incident that, immediately thereafter, the cricketing rules were changed to make underarm bowling illegal.

While on Australians, we all know how, despite being a world champion side, they are sore losers. I am sure every Indian will recall that boxing day match of 2008 against India, when Andrew Symonds refused to walk on 3 occasions despite being clearly out, just because the umpires (Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson) did not give him out, just so that Australia reached a world record of 16 continuous test victories. I have nothing against Symonds (in fact I adore him as a competitive cricketer), and he was well within the rules of the game to not walk if not given out by the umpire, but talking of sporting spirit… well that one lost out.

Incidentally, that match is momentously filled with incidents of blatant cheating by Aussies, ably assisted by the umpires. Adam Gilchrist claimed a catch off Dravid that nobody in the world (and in the least possible way, Gilchrist, who I think normally had a very good head & heart – contrary to team tactics, he always walked when out) would have claimed; very clearly the ball touched thin air only and the bat was always far away from contact. Ponting and Slater refused to walk despite being clearly out. In the very same match, Ricky Ponting became a self appointed ‘third umpire’ in giving Sourav Ganguly out!

But, before you start imaging that Indians are always wronged, let me point out that in that test, even Ponting got it on the wrong side. Mark Benson was the first to get into the act of such bloopers, when he ruled Ponting not out when the Aussie skipper got an edge to a Sourav Ganguly delivery drifting down leg. Ponting stood his ground and went on to make 55. The next day, visibly under pressure after the replays gave away what the umpires were up to, Benson decided two wrongs will make a right and ruled Ponting out lbw to Harbhajan despite a thick inside edge.

The other umpire in the test, Steve Bucknor, on the other hand, has a history of such fortuitous incidents going against India, and the list is so very long that I will refrain from putting it up here. I’ll mention only one incident which amply depicts Bucknor’s mindset and deeds against India, when Steve Bucknor’s huge blooper cost Sachin Tendulkar at Brisbane in the previous tour – when he was given leg before even as the ball thudded against his helmet!

England have had their own moments, when Nasser Husain, the then England captain asked his bowlers on an India tour in 2001 to continuously bowl a negative line to India to deny them a victory in Bangalore. Not illegal; but unethical nonetheless.

Pakistanis have had their own flirtations with ball-tampering (including Afridi chewing the ball) and have even forfeited a match when Australian umpire, Darrell Hair imposed a 5-run penalty on them for ball tampering which they refused to accept and decided not to walk back on the field. That notwithstanding, I need not remind anyone of Darrell Hair’s open bias against sub-continental teams; in fact, he did not give Pakistan a fair trial in the same match where he declared that they had tampered the ball and branded them cheats. Out of 26 Sky cameras installed at The Oval, none picked any tampering. The Pakistan captain, Inzamam, wasn’t asked to explain. He was not shown the original ball that was allegedly tampered with. They were just handed down the sentence.

Another incident involving umpiring bias and the Indians which stood out blaringly was the ban on three Indian players (including Virender Sehwag) by match-referee Mike Denness on a tour to South Africa in 2001 for ‘over-appealing’. In fact, Sehwag was fined 20% of his match fee in the same match for celebrating a dismissal before conferring with the umpire! Such behaviour is strange to interpret as umpires have no stake in the match outcome and the result, and they are there to ensure fairplay; but such incidents show that they can also be biased… after all, they are also human.

Former England captain, Marcus Trescothick claimed in his autobiography that England's players achieved their prodigious amount of reverse swing in their successful 2005 Ashes series against Australia by using saliva sweetened by eating mints – something that the rules do not allow. Even the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, has had one incident (I know I am fishing in troubled waters here), when he was accused of ball-tampering on the basis of TV evidence in South Africa. In the second test match between India and South Africa at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth in 2001, match referee Mike Denness (surprise, surprise… he features once more) suspended Sachin Tendulkar for one game in light of alleged ball tampering when television cameras picked up images that suggested Tendulkar may have been involved in scuffing the seam of the cricket ball.

So, there is no saint in the game of cricket, which sadly, is no more a gentleman’s sport.

© Shailesh Nigam, Varun Khanna (for respective articles)

Muralitharan...boldly goes where no man has gone before, and finally calls it a day.

I think it’s got something to do with the month of April. The two cricketers at the summit of all records were born in that month – Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and Mutthiah Muralitharan. Today I, much like the whole world, will focus on the latter – the person who had announced a week ago that he will retire from test cricket after the first test between India and Sri Lanka.

It does take courage to make such an announcement, with 8 wickets still to go towards a landmark that could forever be etched as ‘the unbreakable record’, and something the whole world wanted him to reach – 800 test wicket. But when you’re the world’s best bowler and still going great guns, I guess you’ve got enough confidence to take that decision even against purportedly the world’s best spin playing team.

Mutthiah Muralithan – 800 wickets, not a scalp less and not a scalp more. Need I say more. Period.

A cricketer who has had many mosts to his name – the most no. of test wickets, the most number of ODI wickets (from which he hasn’t yet announced his retirement, and he can only add to the tally of 515), the most no. of test wickets on a single ground (in fact, he holds the world record for the top 3 such instances – 166 at Sinhalese Sports Club Ground, Colombo; 117 at Asgiriya Stadium, Kandy; and 111 at Galle International Stadium, where he played his swansong test innings that concluded today.

Murali, also, is the first and only Tamilian to represent the Sri Lankan side, and in a country battling with radical Tamilians fighting for the cause of their own land (rightly or wrongly, I will not get into that) that is something to talk about. He has more than proved his match-winning abilities to his nation, and any side would’ve loved to have a champion like him playing for them.

It’s not just the good things that he’s achieved in cricket; he’s also been hounded by controversy the most. He is the ignominy of being the one bowler who has been called for chucking the most number of times, including by players of such reputation as Michael Holding, Adam Gilchrist, Martin Crowe, Dean Jones and Bishen Singh Bedi, who even likened him to a ‘javeline thrower’ and a ‘shot putter’. He was continually no-balled by Darrel Hair, the Australian umpire, in the Boxing Day test at Melbourne in 1995, which prompted a series of tests on him at Australia as well as Hong Kong, which finally cleared his action, and also prompted revision of rules about bending the arm while bowling.

Never one to give up in the face of adversity, Murali always came back stronger. His resoluteness is not just demonstrated in his achievements, but also in the fact that his captain could rely on him to bowl 45 overs in a day, without change, from a single end relentlessly without complaining and without giving even 1% less than what he was expected to give. It has often been said that he can spin a ball even on a glass surface, and I am sure he’s demonstrated his skills to the fullest to devastate many a batsman. 10 wickets in a match on 22 occasions out of the 133 matches that he’s played and 5 wickets in an innings on 67 occasions (including one in his very last match) from 230 innings show his class as a master beguiler, and a bowler most feared.

With his retirement, the spin era seems to have come to an end, but it is no mean feat that the world’s top 3 test bowlers are spinners, who’ve held onto their own and made the batsmen dance to their tunes – Mutthiah Muralitharan (800), Shane Warne (708) and Anil Kumble (619).

As I end this piece, I think no words are enough to pay a tribute to such a legend. All I’ll say is this – Well played Murali, and thanks for enthralling us for almost two decades.

© Shailesh Nigam, Varun Khanna (for respective articles)

The science and art of making a cricket bat

It's been a long time since I've written. Not for any reason but for the fact that there was nothing worthwhile to talk about.

Today, I came across a video link about the making of a cricket bat. Got interested and found some more links that explained the process in excellent detail. Thought this would be pretty nice info for all us cricket buffs. So, posting the same herewith.

There are 3 videos that, I am sure, will be of interest to everyone:

i. How the Gray-Nicolls bat is made

ii. Inside an Indian bat making factory

iii. Salix Super GLX bat making process

The Gray-Nicolls bat



The Indian bat factory



Salix Super bat



Just want to mention that these videos are taken from YouTube, and the copyright of these exist with the original owners, as credited on YouTube.

Enjoy!

© Shailesh Nigam, Varun Khanna (for respective articles)

Let’s re-build the IPL

Dhoni thinks the parties that come with the IPL are to blame. The other experts feel that the timing of the IPL was a massive blunder in the sense that it gave the Indian team no prep time for the World Cup. And Arnab Goswami, a host on one of the Indian news-channels kept reminding everyone yesterday that this was a national crisis of sorts. The last might be excused as a TRP generator, and the first as a lame excuse from a captain who suddenly found himself and his team in the middle of a World Cup.

None of the above rants is the reason for the note. However, this is a good chance to look at keeping the IPL alive, albeit on ‘my’ terms, for it is a pioneering effort in cricket.

A conversation with a friend a month ago threw up the fact that the IPL is the way it is, so that the battle of the remotes in Indian homes does not happen. Granted, but what exactly is it that makes the woman of the house, who is a peripheral cricket fan hopefully, to gracefully hand over the remote?

Mandira Bedi in designer sarees? Porn-ready hunks as anchors? Cheerleaders shaking their booties? Or shots of Preity Zinta waving a flag or Shah Rukh Khan looking intense while chewing gum? I grant the middle-Indian wife far more brains and taste. Does she see herself as a mindless bimbo who will watch a game she doesn’t really give an eff about, just because it’s glitzy and has a few of her favourite Bollywood personalities? I would think not.

On the other hand, if one builds on the fact that T20 as a format has enough cricketing excitement in it to lure the peripheral viewer, we could end up creating more knowledgeable fans out of such viewers.

Much as I hate giving Bernie Ecclestone any credit, Formula One combines glamour and sport intelligently. Yes, there are the so-called paddock babes. But once the engines start, it is just pure sport. What if the 2011 IPL was built in a similar manner?

We would start off with a pre-match show with sports presenters and genuine experts. Anjum Chopra is a genuine expert – she has played the game at the highest level and is good-looking in an intelligent sort of way. She reads the game well, and no, she wasn’t discovered by the IPL machine. It was the dowdy DD that first featured her as an expert.

Having cheerleaders shaking their best bits is like a promotion campaign for God. The game is a religion here, and this format is just right as far as driving Indians into a two-hour long frenzy. You don’t need stunts to fill stadiums here in the sub-continent. Just the promise of good cricket gets the queues forming up.

You want breaks between matches? Well, don’t waste it on a gum-chewing Khan, a Preity Zinta dimple and the like. There are enough fascinating, funny and interesting facts about the game to keep everyone watching.

Why do you think a woman will not want to know more about the game? It just could be possible that she doesn’t watch the game because no one’s taken the time off to point out the finer points to her. Okay, if you feel that she will be more comfortable getting her fundas from a woman, get a woman cricketer to host those portions.

There are ways and ways of making cricket more appealing. The way the IPL is headed isn’t one of them. If it continues this way, the bubble will burst. As surely as night follows day.

We are proud to announce that this is the 50th article on cricketcetera (our half century), and has been contributed by Nandu Narasimhan (catch him @ http://www.facebook.com/nandu.narasimhan)

© Shailesh Nigam, Varun Khanna (for respective articles)