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Deb K Das wonders whether the long-awaited constitutional reforms will really lead to a reform of US cricket, or end up as another road to nowhere …

Deb K Das25-Sep-2006The long-awaited draft Constitution of the USA Cricket Association (USACA), under preparation for the past six months under cloak-and-dagger secrecy, is finally available on the USACA website for all to see. It remains to be seen whether it will be approved by USACA’s member clubs – and if it is, whether it will really lead to a reform of US cricket, or end up as another road to nowhere.Critics have already weighed in on the document’s inconsistencies, some of which range from the absurd to the trivial. The big change is the addition of a National Election Committee, which is to have authority over the election of the BOD, regional directors, and the top three executive officers. Such an independent authority was an express requirement of the ICC, and appears to have been met by the draft.Then there are inconsistencies, contradictions and “just plain foolishness” according to one vocal critic. For example, member clubs can be expelled for not meeting their “financial obligations” to the USACA, yet no club can resign without fullfilling these financial obligations! Again, Lifetime memberships can be revoked bya two-thirds vote … how do you revoke a lifetime membership?
Lifetime and Honorary members are also required to be at all annual meetings, even though they have no vote and could be living halfway around the world. The point of this requirement is lost on the reader, and its relevance is also questionable.Also, there are no clearly established guidelines on how the National Election Committee is to be selected, how future vacancies will be filled, and how conflicts of interest are to be avoided. Presumably, the ICC would have to approve, and its Americas office would be responsible to see that its requirements are met. But this is hardly a comforting thought, given ICC’s track record on such matters.What is especially crucial, however, is what the draft constitution does not say. Here is one of its most glaring omissions. When the Constitution Review Committee was first formed, a group of US cricketers made a formal proposal to John Wainwright, then chairman of the Committee, to include certain items in the new constitution as by-laws. These items were as follows: (1) Set goals requiring every member league to increase the percentage of American-born cricketers without any cultural background in cricket by five percent each year, to comprise 25% in five years; (2) Member leagues failing to meet these quotas were to be denied the right to vote, to participate in regional or national teams, or enjoy any privileges of USACA membership; (3) Similar quotes were to be applied to junior cricket, with the same penalties; (4) All money received from ICC was to be set aside either for programs and services directed towards American-born citizens, or on ICC requirements for maintaining Associate Membership. In particular, no ICC funds were to be spent on any other activities than those specified herein.The point of all these proposals was that if US cricket was to become part of the American sports landscape, mainstream America had to be somehow incorporated into its development plans. Without such carrot-and-stick rewards and penalties, it was highly unlikely that this would ever happen. Indeed, Gary Hopkins, who had performed a similar feat of legerdemain with the US Major Soccer League, was hired by ICC to oversee Project USA with just such a goal in mind. When Project USA was shut down by ICC, a promising line of development was left stillborn, and with it went the hopes of most US cricketers for a promising future.The question now is, whether the USACA and its Constitution Review Committee will re-adopt these proposals as part of its by-laws, and again set US cricket on the promising path that was abandoned three years ago. A great deal is riding on the answer.

Australia’s target was increased by just one run not because of India’s late collapse, but because they were already six down when the rain came down

S Rajesh03-Feb-2008

The Duckworth/Lewis system has been around for a while now, but there is still plenty of confusion about how the method works. When Australia’s target was increased by just one run, many blamed it on the fact that India lost three wickets in the last over and were bowled out. Had they been only seven down, went the analysis, Australia’s target would have been much higher.As it turns out, this was just another instance of tailenders being blamed for the incompetence of top-order batsmen. What spoilt India’s chances of making the D/L rule count in their favour wasn’t the fall of wickets at the end, but the fact that they had already lost so many at the time of the interruption.The D/L system is based on resources available to a team, and in an ODI, both overs and wickets in hand count as resources. A team exhausts all its resources when it runs out of overs wickets.During an interruption, the loss of overs translates into loss of resources for the team, the compensation for which is the extra runs added to the opposition’s target. An example makes this easier to understand: let’s say India had been 190 for 2 after 38, at which stage rain reduced the contest to 40 overs. The batsmen, who had been pacing their innings for 50 overs, suddenly have just two overs in hand, which is patently unfair to them, and offers the opposition a huge advantage. The increase in the target score is then obviously justified.However, the potential to utilise the lost overs depends on wickets in hand. At the Gabba, the Indians were already six down at the time of the interruption, which left them with little resources to capitalise on in the five overs which were lost during their innings.For instance, if India had been 128 for 2, instead of 128 for 6, after 36, and had eventually been bowled out for 194, Australia’s target would have been 211. If India had been 128 for 4 at the interruption and then gone on to score 194, Australia’s target would have been 205. To think of this intuitively, a team which is denied five overs when they’ve lost only two wickets has a much greater chance of making those overs count, than a team which is denied five overs when they’ve already lost eight wickets. The fact that India were bowled out counts for nothing, since their resources would anyway have been exhausted if they had used up all their overs with wickets in hand.As it turned out, none of this mattered as the rains returned to have the final say later in the evening.

He used to be temperamental and mercurial, now he’s assured and reliable. And he has been India’s most dependable ODI batsman over the last year

Nagraj Gollapudi17-Jun-2008

Who was India’s top scorer in the World Twenty20 final, playing an innings that set up their win? Who topped the batting charts in the CB Series, which India won convincingly in Australia earlier this year? A hint: he was second on the list of run-getters in the Indian Premier League.If you don’t remember, that’s not much of a surprise: Gautam Gambhir has never been much of a household name. People are more likely to recall the pulsating final over bowled by Joginder Sharma in the World Twenty final in Durban than Gambhir’s 75. They’re more likely to remember Sachin Tendulkar’s two gems in the CB Series finals than Gambhir’s two centuries which played a pivotal role in taking India that far. Or Virender Sehwag’s blitzkrieg 41-ball 94 in the IPL over Gambhir’s 534 runs at an average of 41, which were instrumental in getting Delhi to the knockouts.Gambhir has struck gold in just about every tournament he has played over the last year. In between wearing the orange cap as the leading run-scorer for a better part of the IPL, and helping India notch up crucial victories on the world stage, Gambhir led his state, Delhi, to their first Ranji Trophy title in over a dozen years. Over the last year he has the best average among Indian ODI players, ahead of Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh.Gambhir is assured enough that he now belongs at the highest level. “I have more responsibility now,” he says, “which is good because every player wants that – where the team expects you to win games for them. That responsibility has changed me as a player and also as a human being.”Where earlier he was known for his fragile temperament, these days Gambhir is more relaxed. He is still seen as being generally aloof and not easily approachable, and known for being uncommunicative – which is at times misread as arrogance – but that’s not something that bothers him much. “I’m emotional and very patriotic,” he says. “I’m proud to be an Indian and when I wear the cap and the jersey I have a lot of responsibility. Sometimes I’m very temperamental. But I’m very instinctive as well. Once I take a decision, I back myself till the end even it backfires at times.Taking the rough with the rough
Gambhir’s first stumbling block came when his career had barely got going. He was ignored by the selectors for the 1999 junior World Cup, though he happened to be one of the leading run-scorers in Indian Under-19 cricket at the time. Mohammad Kaif led India to victory in the tournament. “I never understood what happened,” Gambhir says, his tone indicating that it is something he has never been able to get over.

Vivek Chaddha, a neighbour and friend of 20 years remembers how disappointed Gambhir was. “When he did not get picked in the Under-19 side, that was the first time he realised one requires something more than making just runs,” Chaddha says.Gambhir was furious, and his rage found expression in his batting. He announced himself with a double-century in a day against the visiting Zimbabweans. At the end of his fourth domestic season he finished eighth among the leading run-scorers for the year; the following year he climbed to No. 3.Gambhir was a regular in India A teams before he played his first ODI in 2003, followed by his Test debut a year later, against Australia in the eventful three-day Mumbai match of 2004. He then had a brief run in the side, during which he made his first Test hundred, against Bangladesh, and turned in half-decent performances in the three Tests against Pakistan. He then sat out 12 ODIs before coming back into the side, starting brightly with a Test 98 against Zimbabwe and an ODI hundred against Sri Lanka before a lean spell took hold.The lowest ebb was not being picked for the 2007 World Cup. The day before the third one-dayer against West Indies in Chennai, the selectors told Gambhir he would need to prove himself if he had to make the World Cup squad. He was up against Robin Uthappa for a spot in the team. Uthappa opened with Gambhir, scored 70 to his partner’s duck, and made the cut.”That was the lowest point in my career,” Gambhir says. For over a month he went into hibernation, not touching his bat and staying away from people, including friends.Making the adjustment
Hitting rock bottom allowed Gambhir to raise a stronger platform, though. Sanjay Bharadwaj, who has been his coach since 1991, had seen him walk out of the woods under similar circumstances following the Test series against Sri Lanka in 2005, where he made just 54 runs in the three matches. “He never blames anyone for not getting picked. That’s why he has come back each time,” Bharadwaj said.VB Chandrasekhar, a former national selector and opening batsman said, “We always knew he was a very good player who had made tons of runs on the domestic circuit, but he was getting out frequently getting his front foot across, and international fast bowlers found it easy to expose that fault.” Last year Chandrasekhar, who also does commentary during the domestic season, found Gambhir had made a noticeable change. “He has made a very conscious effort to get his front foot out of the way.”How did it come about? Bharadwaj had got Gambhir to bat wearing a golf ball suspended from a necktie around his neck. “His centre of gravity was falling to the other side, so we decided he had to play straighter. One way of doing so was to keep the golf ball close to his chest while he played forward.” To make Gambhir play the ball in line, three lines linking both sets of stumps were drawn so he could visualise the line of the delivery better. As a result he began to be more confident about leaving many deliveries outside off alone. Before the 2007 series in the UK, Gambhir had been caught behind seven times in 21 ODIs. In the next 27 games he got out that way only three times.Playing the role
Even back when he played cricket with the neighbourhood lads in the Western Delhi suburb of Rajendranagar where he lived, one thing was clear: losing was never on his agenda. “Even now, when we play PlayStation, he will go to the extent of cheating but hate to admit defeat,” Chaddha laughs.

Dislike of losing apart, Gambhir has been a rhythm player, one who needs a lot of self-belief. Last summer on the UK tour he won the Man-of-the-Match award for his 85 not out against Scotland, then blew cold with three runs in the first ODI against England. Rahul Dravid, India’s captain at the time, spoke of how talented batsmen like Gambhir needed to become more responsible. Gambhir was given a role, to anchor the innings, and in the fifth and sixth games of the series he made 51 and 47.Early this year, in Australia, after Gambhir had made a fluent 39 in India’s first game against the world champions in the CB Series, Sachin Tendulkar spoke to him about how he needed to convert his starts and how important it was for him to try and play 40 overs. Gambhir made two centuries in that series – testament to the motivation those words provided. In the second game he walked in in the 15th over and remained undefeated on 102. Then, towards the end of the league phase of the tournament he scored a scintillating 113, taking the charge to Australia after having virtually opened the innings (Tendulkar was out in the first over) before falling in the 40th over. India lost that game but Gambhir described his innings as “a dream”.In his one-day career so far Gambhir has been not out six times, all of those coming in the last year, starting with the tour of the UK.Gambhir credits his current captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, with having been instrumental in helping him get to where he has. “The kind of support MS has shown in me and the kind of confidence he has given has helped me grow as a player.”It was more about security of my place in the side,” Gambhir says. “When I went to the Twenty20 World Cup last year, I was confident I was going to play the entire tournament, even if there were bound to be a couple failures. I told myself I’m going to be there and I’m going to be playing. That is one thing that has really helped me, and it has really changed my cricket and my confidence.”That in turn has helped him become more stable emotionally as well. “When I go to the field, I have my role which I try to do to the best of my ability, so I control my emotions and try not to get carried away. That is where I have matured as a cricketer. The team comes first and if the team demands something out of me, I do my best to control my emotions.”Winter of content
Though he was not picked for the Australia Test series – the selectors weren’t sure about whether he had recovered fully from a shoulder injury he had sustained during the ODIs against Australia in October – Gambhir didn’t let that get to him. He moved his focus to Delhi’s Ranji Trophy campaign. Though he hadn’t played many games in the season till then, he took over the leadership role left vacant by Virender Sehwag, who had had to leave on national duty.

Gambhir went on to make four hundreds in five games, including one each in the semi-final and final. Vijay Dahiya, Delhi’s coach, spoke glowingly of his “willingness, his eagerness, his determination to do well”. Dahiya also pointed out the apparent pride with which Gambhir led Delhi – unusual in an international player. “When he led Delhi, it was all about the state and not about the country. Every move of his was directed towards being there in the moment. His focus was all here and now.”In the final, in Mumbai, Delhi quelled the challenge of Uttar Pradesh. Gambhir made a duck in the first innings. Delhi fell behind on first innings and in the second he needed to decide whether to risk his broken thumb. He did, and made a courageous hundred, leading his side to their first Ranji Trophy win in 16 years. “We’d seen lots of lows and a few years ago we were on the verge of relegation and so we wanted to win to prove we had the talent,” he says.Ed Smith in his wonderful diary of the 2003 season, wrote, “perhaps failure, not success, sends us in unusual directions”. He could well have been talking about Gambhir, who after a few years of absorbing the hard knocks seems finally to have worked out his route to success.Gambhir’s hands are on the wheel and eyes on the road. Now he’s looking forward to the ride. “I’ve started believing a lot in myself. I started believing in my game that I’ve got the game to be a successful player at the international level,” he says. “I’m much more relaxed off the field compared to the feeling of insecurity earlier. The last thing helps a lot.”

Another South Africa loss in a big game, but this one won’t haunt a generation like Edgbaston in 1999

Dileep Premachandran at Trent Bridge18-Jun-2009It won’t haunt a generation like Edgbaston in 1999. There won’t be the same pain that accompanied going out of a home World Cup in 2003. There wasn’t the embarrassment of St Lucia in 2007 when Glenn McGrath and friends had the game sewn up inside half an hour. But yet again, South Africa fell short in a game that mattered. It would be unfair if the C word was trotted out this time though, because it was Pakistani brilliance rather than South African faint-heartedness that decided this game.What can you do when Shahid Afridi suddenly remembers how to bat, when he abruptly flails Johan Botha thrice over cover in the same over? What can you do when he produces a magic delivery to Herschelle Gibbs? What could Graeme Smith and his team have done about Umar Gul, the prince of death bowling who bowls his yorkers as unerringly as Waqar Younis once did? Younis Khan spoke afterwards of the team’s inconsistency and of how it mirrored the unstable situation back home, but when it came to the crunch, Pakistani technicolour easily overshadowed South African sepia.Smith insisted afterwards that there were aspects of the performance to be happy with. He was right. South Africa responded superbly after Afridi’s onslaught on Botha, and the bowling at the death from Wayne Parnell and Dale Steyn was just outstanding. But unlike the earlier games, the fielding was far from faultless, and there was a timidity about the batting that always made you fancy Pakistan from the moment Afridi got the topspinner past Gibbs.Gibbs and AB de Villiers apart, South Africa don’t really have batsmen with the inventiveness to play their way out of a tourniquet, especially against spin. Mark Boucher might have been a worthwhile option in an Afridi-like role, but South Africa stuck instead to the orthodox and came up short. Players like Afridi and Yusuf Pathan will fail as often as they come up trumps, but they bring a sort of manic unpredictability to their teams that South Africa patently lack.Australia had it with Andrew Symonds, and West Indies do with Chris Gayle, and it should come as no surprise that those outfits have brushed South Africa aside in global events in the recent past. There’s little doubt now that South Africa possess the best all-round side in all forms of the game, but until they can win the matches that matter, they will never be respected or feared like Lloyd’s West Indians or Ponting’s Australians.In the most unpredictable format of the game, you could argue that the law of averages caught up with them, after seven T20 wins in a row. But the greatest operate outside of such restrictions. Australia have won 29 World Cup matches in a row since 1999, and the West Indies didn’t taste defeat in the competition until 1983. As good as Smith’s team is, it isn’t yet the real deal. You suspect that realisation will hurt even more than this defeat.

India have been compelled to abandon their preferred formula and reinforce their bowling at the cost of their batting. It is a risk, but one worth taking

Sambit Bal in Centurion27-Sep-2009This tournament doesn’t have a pause and that’s the beauty of it. Only five days have passed, and it feels dizzy, and I mean that in the positive sense. The pitches have been interesting; after South Africa’s unexpected loss and England’s unexpected win, both matches involving Sri Lanka, there are no clear favourites any more.And the West Indians, so derided before the tournament, have hardly been pushovers. Incredibly, with a little luck, they could have even been heading their group. And, even more incredibly, there remains a possibility – if only theoretical – of them making it through to the semi-finals still. For that this needs to happen: India must thrash Australia tomorrow, Pakistan must then beat Australia and top the group; and West Indies must beat India by a huge margin in the final group match.But for any of this to happen of course, India have to turn up tomorrow. They came to the tournament as the number one team in the rankings – though that’s not always synonymous with the best team – and, after only one game, they are one game away from elimination. It’s a fate that has befallen them in two out three previous ICC events, yet they have a frighteningly simple task ahead of them: keep winning.Their rivals are the defending champions. A lot has changed since Australia won the Champions Trophy in 2006, and then the World Cup in 2007, but they will bring to this match an 8-1 winning record since the start of this season, and a desire to set a couple of things straight against a team with which they have shared an interesting and piquant recent history. It was Dhoni’s team that precipitated Australia’s one-day slide by blanking them out of the tri-series final in 2008.But those were different times. Australia were slipping from their lofty perch and India, perky, young, energetic and confident, were on the upswing. Ishant Sharma was sensational, RP Singh was swinging it, and Praveen Kumar was the surprising bowling hero. And of course Sachin Tendulkar was batting like a champion.He still is. But it was the pace bowlers who won India the series then, and today they present Dhoni his biggest worry. Dhoni is a remarkably candid man. Yesterday, he minced no words in admitting that his bowlers had let the team down, today, he went a step further by conceding that they were low on confidence. Consquently, India have been compelled to abandon their preferred formula and reinforce their bowling at the cost of their batting. It is a risk, but one worth taking. In fact, they are one match late.It is easy to understand why Dhoni has been wary of going down that path. None of his quick men can bat, and No. 8 is a spot too high for Harbhajan. Australia recovered from 171 for 7 to 275 through Mitchell Johnson and Brett Lee yesterday. Once Rahul Dravid was seventh out against Pakistan, India added ten. Admittedly, the quality of bowling and match situations were different but with Amit Mishra, who is certain to come in tomorrow, the tail will be lengthened. Yet Mishra, a legspinner in the classical mould and was a surprising success in the IPL, could hold the key.As a one-day side, Australia are just about in the same place as India were in 2008. Ricky Ponting is batting majestically; Lee has recovered his zest and fitness, Johnson has grown as a bowler, and in Callum Ferguson, they have found a batsman with poise and skill and in Tim Paine, a young wicketkeeper batsman of unpredictable, and to the Indians, unknown quantity.But if this side has a known weakness, it is against spin. The familiar theme in most of their one-day defeats this year has been a mid-innings struggle against spin. From Johan Botha to Shahid Afridi to Graeme Swann, they have all prospered against the Australian middle order. Expectedly Michael Clarke, who is unlikely to play tomorrow, has been their most prolific batsman against the spinners, but his runs have come at 4.11 per over; James Hopes and Brad Haddin, their two big strikers have scored at less than 4.00 and no batsman managed more than 5.00. Theoretically, Mishra and Harbhajan Singh, if he can find his mojo, could keep them under 80 runs off their 20 overs. Dhoni will miss the handy fillers from Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag, but expect Suresh Raina to wheel away a few.But of course, stats, history and theories are often of little use. If anything, this tournament has made rubbish of conventional wisdom almost every day. Common sense suggests Australia should win. India go in to the match low on talent and confidence, and the knowledge that they can not afford to blink. What they need to find is some inspiration and a couple of saviours.

After their magical 2008, South Africa were brought rudely back down to earth last year

Telford Vice10-Jan-2010South Africa must think they spent 2009 stepping through a series of looking glasses, each more distorting than the last.Now the smoke has cleared and the mirror reflects a sharp-edged image in which almost nothing is as it was barely a year ago. Back then, Graeme Smith’s men were surely giddy with the wonder of becoming the first South African team to take a Test series off the Australians. In Australia, no less. That was followed by a one-day series in which the lightweight leadership of Johan Botha and a team bereft of their Henry V – the injured Smith – kept going once more into the breach and returning with the spoils of victory.As the ICC’s top-ranked team in both the Test and one-day formats, could anything go wrong for South Africa? It could. It did. Played six, won one was the sorry saga of their year in Tests. Their sole success was achieved in a dead rubber against Australia, and they were beaten four times.The one-day picture was not quite as bleak in terms of wins and losses: 11 of the former, seven of the latter. Among them were three victories that were enough to earn the honours in the home one-day series against Australia.But, for the umpteenth time, South Africa were proven to be paper tigers in ICC events. In the Champions Trophy, England denied them a place in the semi-finals. In the World Twenty20, they couldn’t meet the semi-final challenge posed by Pakistan, the eventual champions.The year ended with a “snotklap” administered by England in the Boxing Day Test in Durban. “Snot” is exactly that. “Klap” is the Afrikaans word for slap. A snotklap is a slap delivered with enough venom to send the victim’s snot flying. In the worldview of the stereotypically big, hairy, broad-shouldered South African male, a snotklap is close to the ultimate insult. And yet we don’t know if the bottom has been reached. In a game as beguilingly economical with the truth as cricket so often is about those it favours and curses, the distance between zenith and nadir is sometimes less than half the width of a bat, or bigger than the arc between midwicket and cover.Take the case of Smith. Not long ago he was Oh Captain, My Captain to millions around the world for his failed attempt to stave off a Test defeat, broken thumb and all. Now, for the first time since the early days of his unheralded appointment as captain in 2003, murmurs have arisen over his suitability for the job. He faced his questioners – at least their media representatives – with broad strokes of honesty similar to those he brings to the batting crease.”I constantly reassess my position, even when things are going well.” Smith told a press conference in the aftermath of the Durban debacle. “I’m relaxed and I’m very proud of being able to do the job for a long time and of the success we’ve had.”I’m not feeling any extra pressure at the moment, but the pressure never goes away because the expectation of the nation is always there. You’ve just got to focus on what you enjoy and what you’re good at, and that’s playing the game of cricket.”I’ve had two England captains walk away in my time, but I feel very comfortable with the captaincy at the moment – this still feels very much like my team.”It is too easy to scoff at men like Smith, who admirably but foolishly expect the world to be as upfront with them as they are with us. We’d like to think he could do with a nourishing dose of cynicism, a wake-up call from the realm of cold, hard reality. But the true reality is that Smith has become who and what he is precisely because he believes the world is a wonderful place. When he and his habitually upbeat ilk find enough nastiness out there to change their opinion – and there is, sadly, every chance that will happen – that day will be dark indeed.Alas, Makhaya Ntini could teach Smith a few things about a world that is not so wonderful. At 32, the stalwart fast bowler is considered past it, his bolt shot, his career a bright but steadily receding light. Yes, the end is in sight for him. As if to rub it in, his replacement is not Wayne Parnell, nor Lonwabo Tsotsobe: genuine prospects in whom Ntini can no doubt see shades of his younger self. Instead, South Africa have turned to one Friedel de Wet. Who?There can be no arguing with de Wet’s debut. He was an emergency replacement when Dale Steyn’s dodgy hamstring flared up before play on the first day of the Test series against England. His chief attribute was that he was available, not that he was any great threat to Test batsmen. Five wickets and a gritty 20 was de Wet’s contribution to the draw in Centurion. Thanks for coming.Parnell is one of the few potential stars in South Africa’s fast-bowling cupboard•Associated PressBlow us down if de Wet wasn’t an unforced selection for the third Test, at Ntini’s expense. De Wet is, by all accounts, a nice kid. But he isn’t a Test match bowler.Actually, he’s hardly a kid – he’ll be 30 in June. Ntini is just three years older, but that’s where the similarities end. At the time of writing, de Wet had taken 193 wickets in 46 first-class matches. Ntini has 624 wickets from his 181 matches. Spot the difference.New kid on the block
Parnell didn’t take long to show the hunger required of an international fast bowler in the one-day format. Now he needs to be given the opportunity to do so on the Test stage.Fading star
With his lion’s heart, his warrior’s mind and his superhero’s body, Ntini is surely every captain’s dream fast bowler. Thing is, some people out there think the dream is over.High point
Beating the Aussies in one-day series home and away took some of the edge off the abject depression of losing the Test rubber to them so convincingly. But it still hurt like hell.Low point
The brutal realisation by anyone with a drop of South African blood coursing through their veins that Australia are still their big brothers.What 2010 holds
In a word, change. South Africa are in dire need of new bowling blood of a quality comparable to that which Ntini has been pumping through their veins since 1998. Ashwell Prince must to be moved back to the middle order. JP Duminy? A couple of fine innings don’t make a career, son.

Fourteen years into his career, VVS Laxman is finally set to play his first Test in Hyderabad

As told to Nagraj Gollapudi11-Nov-2010As kids we all grow up with dreams such as scoring a century or destroying the opposition with the ball. An essential part of these dreams is the venue.My first experience of playing in an international ground was at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. It was an Under-16 match but it was a phenomenal experience. To play in a ground which you see only on television, where Test matches are held, was plain exciting.But nothing beats playing in the place where you grew up. You might ask, what is so special about playing at home? For me it is the familiarity.Having said that, after having played at all the venues in India for more than a decade, many of them multiple times, the feeling is relative. Still, playing in a place where I was born and brought up, playing in front of my well-wishers, my mentor, my family, friends – to play in front of these people who encouraged me and were instrumental in me becoming what I am today is a very special feeling. I hadn’t experienced that feeling all these years and so I was a little hurt, but now I can’t complain.The first time I watched a big match live in Hyderabad was in 1981, between South Zone and Keith Fletcher’s England, Fateh Maidan (Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium), which was just a five-minute walk from my house. I sat with my brother and the family of my neighbour, who was a member of the Fateh Maidan Club, in the stands. A few years later I watched an India-Pakistan one-dayer from the corporate box because my grandfather was the chairman of Andhra Pradesh Sports Council. Those were the two big matches I watched live before I made my international debut.I was always a regular at Ranji and domestic matches, right from my Under-13 and Under-15 days. I remember, one time Bombay came to Hyderabad for a Ranji Trophy match played at the Gymkhana grounds. It was the first time I saw Sachin Tendulkar in person. He was the talk of the country, having made his international debut so young. We kids were practising in the adjacent nets and I managed to take a peek at him and other stars like Dilip Vengsarkar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Ravi Shastri, Mohammad Azharuddin and Arshad Ayub. They were players you normally only saw in newspaper pictures or on TV, and suddenly to see them in person was exciting. That excitement has always stayed inside me. It used to give me a thrill to be in the Fateh Maidan. Going there and soaking in the atmosphere contributed to my dreams of playing for the country one day.Baba Krishan Mohan, my uncle and mentor, has always been an avid fan of cricket. He used to watch a lot of cricket and had seen West Indies and Tony Greig’s England play in Hyderabad when he was a youngster. There were a lot of cricket pictures in his house and he had a lot of stories to narrate while I was growing up. He evoked a hunger in me and helped me achieve my goals.For a visitor Hyderabad and Secunderabad might be twin cities, two different places. But there were no differences in the cricket in both cities. Like Mumbai has Shivaji Park, for us it is the Parade grounds, on which there are multiple matches happening simultaneously. During my days there were 14 wickets and it was chaos all around.For me, the two most important grounds in addition to the Parade one were the Gymkhana ground and the St John’s Academy. I was groomed here and realised my talent here, and it was here that I became the cricketer I am today.The Uppal Stadium is new even to me, a local, but I’m more than eager to perform here. It is a brilliant stadium, and having played around the globe I have no doubt it is one of the best. Shiv [Shivlal Yadav] has done a lot to set up this world-class venue, which has all the amenities. During the IPL games here, overseas players asked why the stadium was not a Test venue yet.This match will be a test for both the venue and myself. I hope the crowds will come in in big numbers to watch. On the personal front, I have some unfinished business. Last time I played an international match in Hyderabad, it was against the same opponent, New Zealand. It was November 15. I had walked in to bat towards the end of the innings after Sachin and [Virender] Sehwag had scored a big opening partnership. I got out in single digits. But I have got a double-century at Uppal [224 against Rajasthan in the 2008-09 season] and I hope I can bring the same form to this Test. After the exciting draw in Ahmedabad it is an important Test match in the context of the series. If I can contribute in a win, it would be really special.

While the rest of the cricket world waits to see if the game will catch on in the United States, one club out of inner-city Los Angeles comes to Australia and reminds us why we love our funny old sport so much

Adam Wakefield05-Mar-2011It’s been a summer of strange in the south of Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state. Victoria is normally prone to dry summers, where temperatures march relentlessly into the mid-40s Celsius, but this year rain and wet weather have loitered about since winter.In similar fashion, the cricket match at the Melbourne University Oval was unlike any other that had been hosted by the Australian Cricket Society. The Oval, boasting a field that could easily have been mistaken for a long-lost relative of the MCG’s magnificent carpet, was graced by a cricket team that, as cricket teams go, was a compliment to the ground hosting them.The Compton Cricket Club, also known as the Homies & the POPz, is an XI that can lay claim to being one of the most unique in cricket. If playing the game in Los Angeles seems like a fanciful idea at the best of times, the Compton CC will change the way you view the gentlemen’s game in America forever. They have received letters from the likes of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams (after they reportedly made a “decisive contribution” to the Good Friday Peace talks through the exchange of a cricket bat and hurling stick), and have been hosted by Prince Edward at Windsor Castle. They were the first club from North America to tour Australia, and are the first touring side from there to consist of players born and bred in the United States. Not bad for a club with no home ground, and players who were teetering on the edge of social irresponsibility across the urban veld that is Compton, Los Angeles.It all began when Katy Haber, British expat and Hollywood producer, asked activist and soon to be co-conspirator Ted Hayes an innocuous question in 1995. They had met previously in 1993, when Haber was doing a workshop on the homeless for the Creative Coalition NGO, and even though they had then worked together in close quarters for two years, the question Haber was asking Hayes was one he never heard before: “Ted, will you play cricket on Saturday?”The Beverly Hills Cricket Club (BHCC) was a man short for their match against the Hollywood Cricket Club, and had called Haber, who was the secretary of the BAFTA LA cricket team, to see if there was anyone available willing to play. When Haber couldn’t find anyone, she turned to Hayes, who asked, “What’s cricket?” She replied, “Well, it’s an English game and it’s very much like baseball, but instead of running around in circles you run up and down.” After much persuasion, Hayes found himself opening the batting.At the time, Hayes happened to boast a head of proud dreadlocks, which led his new team-mates to assume Haber had brought them a West Indian ringer. When Hayes dropped his bat and ran towards point (or first base) upon hitting the first ball he received, the penny dropped. But while the start of Hayes’ cricketing career was curious, he was immediately hooked.Sixteen years later the Compton Cricket Club, founded by Haber and Hayes, has toured England four times, and they brought their own brand of cricket to Australia this year. So what is it about the game that appeals to the American heart?”I like the tactical ploys. You can set fields in a certain manner and actually shut down a great batsman with a good bowler and field set. You just don’t get that in a lot of sports,” says Theo Hayes, Compton’s captain for the tour and Ted’s eldest son. A founding member, he has captained the side on and off since 2001, since Compton rotate the captaincy to give everyone an opportunity to lead. Theo takes the reins on tour since he has the most experience.

“Just play straight. Continue playing straight. Continue defending. And once the loose balls start coming the innings will open up. It’s just like life. You got to keep on living and keep on struggling”Theo Hayes, Compton’s captain in Australia, on the club’s philosophy

What really attracted the Hayeses – Ted’s younger son Isaac is also a member of the side – was, in Ted’s words in an interview to the BBC, “the etiquette of cricket”. “It civilises people and teaches us gentlemanliness. It teaches us how to compete, to win, but in a gentlemanly, respectful manner.”Theo elaborated: “It’s giving someone options. You have a lot of children that are sitting around, waiting for their turn to die or go to prison or get pregnant… there is a lot of idleness. So we went to Compton’s elementary middle schools, telling people about cricket.” He, Ted and Haber did seminars about how the game works and who they were as activists. “We had about 50 kids sign up, with 25 really sticking. We just started playing cricket with them and gave them the opportunity to do something different and to experience something other than sitting around waiting for a bad day.”What the pioneers at Compton CC found was that the majority of kids who came to those first practices were those who “didn’t quite make the baseball team, kids that didn’t fit in socially, kids that were looking for anything other than the gang. We had other guys that actually were in gangs but weren’t enthralled so deeply into the mindset to a point where they couldn’t get out.”To play cricket for Compton is to seek a life beyond the street. It is to seek a life of respect, a life of rising above anti-social behaviour. “Just play straight,” Theo summed it up. “Continue defending. And once the loose balls start coming the innings will open up. And it’s just like life. You got to keep on living and keep on struggling through what we’re struggling through. Just keep on communicating, keep on networking, keep on having a good attitude, and sure enough, things will start to play out in your favour. But we have to be patient and that is why we say we’re playing cricket on the field and off the field, not out.”Theo and Ted’s words aren’t hollow rhetoric. If you sat in the stands watching Compton’s match at the University Oval against the Australian Cricket Society (whose wicketkeeper Chris Toat once raised A$30,000 for a children’s cancer charity by shearing 835 sheep in 56 hours), you did not hear one word that had the tiniest sniff of a sledge. When Compton picked up wickets, they patted the departing batsman on the back and the new batsman onto the field – a sporting act that is often forgotten at club level. When the batsman hit a fine stroke, the Compton bowler complimented him. If a team-mate made an error in the field, there wasn’t any shouting or hands on hips. There was only encouragement and then the next ball.An important aspect of Compton’s approach to the game has to do with music, specifically rap. Compton itself gained notoriety after NWA’s debut 1988 album, , popularised gangster rap, and has since had an influence on the evolution of West Coast hip hop. Compton CC’s most well known song is “Bullets”, with the group Cloth lending a hand in the video. On tour they have been performing “Bullets” and other songs in places such as the Newington College, one of the most prestigious boys schools in New South Wales, and the town of Harrow, the cricketing home of Johnny Mullagh, described on the occasion of his death in 1891 as “the [WG] Grace of aboriginal cricketers”.Theo sees rap as “the engine to our vehicle. It is what keeps everything going. You can sit around and talk about cricket and tell kids all day, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that. Be good,’ and they’ll remember it for a minute, but the bottomline is that they have to go back to their realities. That reality is what they hear on the radio. That reality is what they see on TV. It’s time for the world to step up and say, ‘Hey, music doesn’t have to be so vain, it doesn’t have to be so vulgar and everything doesn’t have to be about glorifying or idealising romance. Let’s be a little creative.”‘The American flag was proudly represented Down Under•Adam WakefieldTheo cites the likes of John Lennon, the Beatles, INXS and Jim Morrison as artists who looked deeply inwards towards their own thought process. “Gangsters like to rap about being gangsters, pimps rap about being pimps, hustlers rap about being hustlers. We’re cricketers… and we rap about playing cricket.”Their performance in Harrow, where they also played a match against the Johnny Mullagh XI, wasn’t so much a coincidence as it was a satisfaction of fate’s desires. In 2001, when Compton were touring England, a chance encounter led to Homies & the POPz meeting the Aboriginal All Stars and Torres Strait Islanders cricket team – a newly established representative side containing Aboriginal cricketers from across New South Wales and Victoria – who were also touring England at the time. The Aboriginal team’s original opponents for their fixture at the birth place of cricket, Hambledon, had to abandon the game. Luck would have it that the Homies & the POPz were in Hambledon at the same time. Upon hearing of their plight, Compton filled the void and took on the Australians.It didn’t work out too well for the Americans as Barry Firebrace, the opposition captain, a young 16-year-old at the time, made Compton chase leather all day, scoring 127. The Aboriginals went on to win the match, with the Homies & the POPz commemorating the event by burning their own “Ashes” and vowing to win them back one day. Ten years later Compton didn’t win the Ashes back but they made many a friend along the way, with their music complementing their sportsmanship on the field. Firebrace is now employed as a cricket development officer, and both parties hope to cooperate on cricket development on either side of the Pacific in the future. Firebrace graced the Homies & the POPz by playing for them against the Australian Cricket Society.Theo and the rest of the team hope that the increased exposure they have received due to the Australian tour will have a positive effect in the future. “My ultimate goal is to travel the world to cricket countries, promoting and celebrating cricket, raising money, so when I go back to the United States, we have a ton of resources, a ton of information, a ton of coaching, whatever we need to go back and say ‘Hey look, this is what’s happening all across the world. You guys want to be a part of this?'”The game needs more teams like Compton to remind us that we are on that field to have fun and challenge ourselves. International matches might be the milk and honey of the game, but the Compton Cricket Club represents cricket’s heart and soul. As Theo says, “How great a world would it be when everybody is playing cricket?”comptoncricketclub.org cricketouttacompton.com.au

It was set to be a drab final day in Cardiff, but Andrew Strauss’s team created their own atmosphere to conjure a remarkable victory

Andrew Miller in Cardiff30-May-2011You know you’ve witnessed an extraordinary sporting achievement when even the protagonists admit they’ve been shocked by the turn of events. When Andrew Strauss drew back his hotel curtains this morning to be greeted by that familiarly bleak shadow of drizzle that has been Cardiff’s daily wake-up call this week, not even he could have predicted the epic denouement that played out on Monday afternoon.Despite the offer of free entry, barely 300 punters turned up to watch the closing stages of the match, as Cardiff’s sporting faithful were plunged into despair both by the weather and by Swansea’s promotion to football’s Premier League, a feat that was achieved just as Sri Lanka’s collapse started to gather pace. Nevertheless, for Strauss and his men, context was irrelevant, as they geed themselves up for their own private grandstand finish, and quite literally caught their opponents cold on a day that, in Glamorgan’s pre-drainage days, would unquestionably have been a wash-out.”This will go down as one of the most extraordinary cricket matches any of us have ever played,” said Strauss afterwards. “This morning I was saying it has been one of the drabbest cricket matches I’ve ever played, and suddenly it’s changed around so quickly, and that’s a great credit to the guys this afternoon. We were very keen to press for a victory but we thought it was a long shot to achieve it, but right from ball one the two seamers set the tone and were backed up well in the field. Once we got the pressure on we managed to sniff out the victory pretty well.”England’s resolve in the field was remarkable, given the apparently futile match situation as well as the absence of James Anderson, who succumbed to a side strain on the second day of the game and will play no part in Friday’s second Test at Lord’s. In a performance reminiscent of their second innings in Adelaide, when Stuart Broad had been the attack’s absentee, the rest of the bowlers closed ranks superbly and allowed no let-up in intensity. Each of the team’s last five victories have now come by an innings, and Sri Lanka’s total of 82 is the fifth time in ten Tests that their opponents have been rolled for double-figures.”I was impressed by our intensity because it would have been easy to go through the motions,” said Strauss. “It’s a tricky time to bat, for 50-odd overs with nothing much to gain, and if you can get early wickets, then pressure starts to play a pretty big part. I was very impressed by our ruthlessness in Australia and this was a good example for me. The full pressure of Test match cricket comes to bear quite quickly. You need guys to stand up and get past that, and thankfully we were good enough to prevent any of their batsmen doing that.”The crucial incisions were made by Chris Tremlett, a bowler of whom it will never again be said lacks the heart to play at the highest level. From his five-wicket haul in his comeback innings in Perth, via his Ashes-clinching contributions at Melbourne and Sydney, and now through to his brutal burst of 4 for 40 in ten overs, he has forged a reputation as towering as his physique. None of Sri Lanka’s batsmen fancied his offerings one little bit, as the openers were extracted in the space of his first eight deliveries, before Mahela Jayawardene received a peach of an off-stump lifter that demanded a stride forward but burst off the edge to slip nonetheless. At 33 for 3 with more than 30 overs of daylight still in prospect, the game was England’s to grasp there and then.In Strauss’s opinion, however, it was the scalp of Kumar Sangakkara that truly confirmed the destiny of the match. Graeme Swann had always envisaged a role in the Sri Lankan second innings, partly to atone for his anonymous effort on this ground in the 2009 Ashes, and partly because the wicket kept getting slower and lower as the game wore on. Even he, however, might have considered a burst of 4 for 1 in ten balls to be excessive. Rangana Herath’s wild swing across the line was brainless, but by that stage Sangakkara had been beaten by a deliciously flighted tweaker that slipped off the edge to slip, and from that moment on, Sri Lanka were geared for surrender.”It’s very difficult to explain,” said Tillakaratne Dilshan, Sri Lanka’s bewildered captain. “I can’t believe we got out in just 25 overs with such a good batting line-up like we have. We lost the match because we batted really badly today. It will be difficult to forget this Test match but we have to stick together as a team, do whatever we can outside of cricket to get together, and forget about everything.”Strauss, for his part, believed that the momentum for England’s victory had been generated by the decision to bat on in the afternoon session and allow Ian Bell to pick off the two runs he needed to record his 13th Test hundred. The landmark ate up 20 minutes of the day’s play, for the addition of five runs to the total, but the difference it made to the general mood within the dressing room proved critical on a day when, at one stage, there were no more than 39 people sat on the city side of the ground.

The crucial incisions were made by Chris Tremlett, a bowler of whom it will never again be said lacks the heart to play at the highest level. From his five-wicket haul in his comeback innings in Perth, via his Ashes-clinching contributions at Melbourne and Sydney, and now through to his brutal burst of 4 for 40 in ten overs, he has forged a reputation as towering as his physique.

“That was one of the big challenges for us, to create our own feeling of intensity,” said Strauss. “It was obviously a small crowd – and they got into it and all credit for doing so – but you can’t blame people for staying away given what the weather was doing this morning. But those sort of things are always a test for you as a side. It’s about how desperately you want to win. We really wanted it today, and we got what we deserved.”The thought did cross our mind whether we should declare and have extra few overs at Sri Lanka, but I think [batting on] was the right thing to do,” Strauss added. “Bell thoroughly deserved a hundred by the way he played yesterday, and it allowed us to go onto the field with a real good buzz, and sprightly feel, whereas if he hadn’t been allowed to do it things would have been more melancholy.”There was, of course, a memorable precedent for declaring on 98 not out, at Sydney in 1994-95, when Mike Atherton famously denied Graeme Hick his first – and only – century against Australia. Atherton subsequently conceded that had been the wrong decision, as England’s previously sparky performance gave way to a double-century stand between Mark Taylor and Michael Slater, and a draw where a victory might once have been.Players often play down the value of personal milestones, but on days such as these, when only a performance of absolute commitment could have turned the tables, Strauss’s call was utterly vindicated. Would Bell have been so sharp under the helmet to Thisara Perera had he been privately brooding about the one that got away?Had England failed to close out a game in which more than a day-and-a-half had been lost to the weather, there would have been few recriminations, especially after the potency of their batting. However, in the first Test since the scaling of their personal Everest in Australia back in January, it was a mighty impressive return to the base camp of their ambitions. “We’ll be very buoyant heading to Lord’s,” admitted Strauss. “But it’s all back to square one now.”

The track at the MA Chidambaram Stadium has been subject to Chennai’s torrid March heat, but it needs to produce a fair contest on Sunday if India are to find their mojo and West Indies bounce back

Sharda Ugra in Chennai18-Mar-2011There’s a shamiana spread out at the centre of the MA Chidambaram Stadium; if they had to stick a few floral decorations around it and bung in a chandelier or two, it could actually serve as the entrance to a wedding. In reality, the canopy is spread out over the pitch on which India and West Indies will play their World Cup game on Sunday. Celebrations could well be muted. The canopy is meant to protect the Chidambaram stadium pitch from a hard, merciless March sun, give it air to breathe and keep itself together, because the track is beginning to resemble an aged diva throwing a fit.The first-innings totals in the last six matches played on the ground – including two World Cup warm-up games – have been 103, 152, 360, 69, 171 and 243. The canopy arrived just after the 171 game, England v South Africa, when the top soil of the wicket began coming loose and Andrew Strauss’ showstoppers defended the modest total with their lives. On Thursday night, England had to defend again to stay in the World Cup and they held on to 243 by the thinnest of their breaths against West Indies.As much as the wicket holds up, the constant getting more and more prominent is the advantage of winning the toss. Bar flies at the Madras Cricket Club have now calculated that winning the toss – and batting first – is like adding 75 to the total, even before a ball has been bowled. The problem may well be that ODIs haven’t been played in Chennai during the month of March for the last 15 years. The last one was the 1996 World Cup quarter-final, between two teams who will be glued to Sunday’s game, Australia and New Zealand.Since November, Chepauk has actually been quarantined. Tamil Nadu only played their first two Ranji Trophy home games there before shifting to other grounds in Chennai, meaning even domestic cricket was not played on the ground. So, the officials, curators and the Chennai public will want the track to be on its best behaviour.On Sunday, for India to find their mojo and West Indies to give themselves a chance to hang on in the Cup, prayers around the toss must be abandoned. For all its trials, the Chepauk track must be made immaterial.Between the two teams, India have the best of all options, other than fielding of course. The team turned up at Chepauk on Friday for the first time in the lead-up to the match. There was an energetic game of football and the first two batsmen in the nets were Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina, and the first bowler wheeling his arm over was local offspinner R Ashwin.While Ashwin’s inclusion in the XI is as good as a foregone conclusion and far removed from Piyush Chawla’s absence from the nets on Friday, there is every chance that Suresh Raina may make his way into the squad as well. The reasons are several: the confidence of his batting in Indian conditions, his ability to quickly churn out a few part-time overs and the speed and energy of his legs. Yusuf Pathan may well look like the easiest candidate to be replaced, but Raina’s inclusion in place of Pathan will not be a case of like replacing like. The left-hander may be a purely attacking middle-order batsman, but a power hitter he is not.The choice of India’s XI will be a dilemma because, on Sunday, they would like to field the squad that can move ahead in the tournament. Any switches, other than due to injury, between their last group game and their first quarter-final is flirting with hazard. The Indians may live in a silent bubble, but the rumblings about their Nagpur performance are being felt. Bowlers, who always consider themselves the footsoldiers, grumble that once again they are copping the flak for India’s flashy cavalry of batsmen. It may not make sense for Pathan and Ashish Nehra to be made the easy scapegoats for the middle-order batting failure in Nagpur, but the maths of Indian cricket sometimes works in mysterious ways.A media storm rose on Thursday evening about a meeting between captain MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, the BCCI secretary N Srinivasan, chairman of selectors Krish Srikkanth, coach Gary Kirsten and bowling coach Eric Simons. It was a pre-planned meeting centred around giving Simons at the very least an interim role as India coach, following Kirsten’s departure after the Cup, until a permanent solution to the vacancy is found. Questions about the Nagpur defeat, it is learnt, only logically followed, but as always in Indian cricket, as Sourav Ganguly so aptly used to describe it, “two plus two became twenty two.”In the run-up to the World Cup, the BCCI has done its best to detach the team from its adoring media, so a marriage of something between rumour, gossip and fact was only to be expected. The worthies in charge of the team’s time management have done splendid impersonations of dodgems cars trying to avoid India’s persistent press pack, aka all of us.On Tuesday, a bus load of journalists along with security personnel, net bowlers, ground staff, tea and biscuit suppliers turned up at the IIT Ground for what was supposed to be India’s first practice after Nagpur. The area had been sanitised by security and sniffed out by dogs. What none of them knew was that everyone in the Indian squad had opted out of optional practice and the management too had opted out of informing their local hosts.There were a couple of days of changes in schedule, one last optional session and on Thursday, relations between team management and media seemed to approaching harmony. On Friday, the only vacillation concerned a change of schedule by an hour, a 45-minute late arrival and a media conference that was announced and then eventually never was.
Maybe on Sunday, India will put it all together and finally arrive at this World Cup – on the field and just in time.