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.

Michael Billington reviews Tom Cartwright – The Flame Still Burns by Stephen Chalke

Michael Billington12-May-2007Tom Cartwright – The Flame Still Burns by Stephen Chalke, £16, Fairfield Books, 224pp

Stephen Chalke has a rare feeling for cricket’s post-war history; and he has here written a lovely, ungushing book about a man whom Dennis Silk calls “one of the great unsung heroes of English cricket.” What comes across is not just the heroic nature of Tom Cartwright’s cricketing achievements but the essential modesty, decency and shrewdness of the man himself. In the end it’s not just a book about cricket but also about the English character.Cartwright came from a Coventry working-class family that was solid Labour: something that explains his own later refusal to kow-tow to patriarchal county chairmen. But, as it charts the young Tom’s rise through the local youth cricket to make his Warwickshire debut at the age of 17, the book turns into a touching testament to the camaraderie of old-style county cricket and the continuity of the game’s wisdom.It is also a celebration of the way cricket knowledge is handed down through the generations. “Pass it on,” says the hero of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys speaking of love of literature; and Chalke suggests the same applies to cricket.The Warwickshire coach, Tiger Smith, who had played alongside Jack Hobbs and kept wicket to Frank Foster and Sydney Barnes, passed on sage advice to Tom Cartwright: that 90% of batting errors stem from the grip, stance and back-lift, that the secret of bowling is to aim with your head. And, playing and coaching for Somerset in the 1970s, Cartwright transmitted Tiger’s tenets to a young Ian Botham.Obviously the book describes in detail Cartwight’s own extraordinary transition from fluently promising batsman to medium-pacer of nagging, metronomic, Glenn McGrath-like accuracy who could send down 1,000 overs a season. But Chalke also suggests that Cartwright’s physical toughness was matched by spiritual obduracy. He left Warwickshire not long after its chairman prefaced a pay-discussion by saying, “I’m not going to tolerate any car workers’ attitudes here tonight.” At Somerset he had a similar encounter with the chairman, in a toilet at Weston, who told him to play when unfit.The book ends with his thoughts on the modern game, many of which had me silently cheering: for instance, “sledging is infantile playground behaviour isn’t it?” and “the England team is like an elite club within a country.”But there is nothing rancorous or mean-spirited about a man who embodied everything that is best in English professional cricket. Tom Cartwright deserved a fine book and he got it.

We’ve observed him from afar, sat through cliché-riddled press conferences and become infuriated at his brooding demeanour. Will the real Duncan Fletcher please stand up?

Will Luke18-Nov-2007


We’ve observed him from afar, sat through cliché-riddled press conferences and become infuriated at his brooding demeanour. Would the real Duncan Fletcher please stand up?At last, in his autobiography, , he has – and how. The week preceding the book’s publication caused an understandable media furore, with revelations of Andrew Flintoff’s drinking and of the back-room decisions Fletcher was forced to make. Equally predictably, though less understandably, Fletcher was made a scapegoat for revealing these brilliantly juicy insights.Anyone who has read the anodyne (and often premature) autobiographies of sporting figures which litter the shelves won’t mind one little bit. may be slightly ill timed – no cautious forward press, here – but dull it is not.Fletcher is a man who places great emphasis on trust and loyalty, and it comes as no surprise that Steve James, his former comrade at Glamorgan and friend of many years, helped write it. Broken up into 13 chapters, the book spans his life from childhood right up to the World Cup, when he resigned.He begins with a fascinating background to his happy childhood in Zimbabwe, growing up on a farm with a protective (and revealingly, loyal) family. His five siblings – four boys and Ann – were, we are told, far more talented at sport than the young Duncan. This rivalry instilled his determination and sharpened his mental focus on his one sport, cricket.It’s the later chapters, involving his time with Glamorgan, and then as England coach, that contain the most salacious insights. His difficulties with David Graveney; his surprise when offered the England coaching job; his spat with Henry Blofeld (surprising), and the “mutual dislike” of Geoffrey Boycott (less surprising). And, of course, the Flintoff saga in Chapter 13 which is rather dramatically entitled “The Winter from Hell”.But something jars. The book lives up to its title – we are certainly given an insight into a previously mysterious man – but it has an underlying seam of bitterness and resentment which, for someone who has achieved so much, is a disappointment and a little sad. Chapters are sprinkled with insistences that the reader “must understand”; that the media twisted his words and cheated the truth; that he is right and everyone else is wrong. If he never cared about the media during his tenure, why bother now?But this is Fletcher, after all. Dogged, determined and stubborn as a mule. Forthright views are no less than we expect. He and James should be lauded for producing a book that remains interesting from cover to cover while never dodging sensitive issues from the past.

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

	Australia’s target wouldn’t have been higher via the D/L method had Sreesanth not been run out on the final ball of India’s innings © Getty Images

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

Mr Reliable: Gambhir has made 1090 runs in ODIs at 47.39 over the last year © AFP

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.

Gambhir’s ascent Gambhir has been the second-highest run-getter in ODIs in 2008: his 649 runs have only been bettered by Salman Butt. He topped the run-scoring charts for most part of the Indian Premier League, but was pipped by Shaun Marsh into second place. He hit the most fours – 68, but cleared the boundary only eight times. Gambhir scored 440 runs in the CB Series in Australia, outdoing the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Matthew Hayden. He led from the front in Delhi’s successful 2007-08 Ranji Trophy campaign, scoring 730 runs at an average of 91.25. All four of Gambhir’s hundreds for Delhi came in the second innings of a match, with two of them steering the team to victory in the semi-final and final. With 227 runs, Gambhir was India’s top run-scorer at the World Twenty20 in South Africa.

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.

The mid-pitch slanging match with Shahid Afridi last year; Gambhir is trying hard ‘not to get carried away’ these days © AFP

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.

	“I have more responsibility now, 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”

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.”

Cricinfo looks at the best buys, and those players who surely didn’t do enough to justify their price tags

Mathew Varghese04-Jun-2008
Shane Watson may have cost only US$125,000 for the Rajasthan Royals, but he was surely worth a million dollars © Getty Images
More than three months ago, the Indian Premier League had created a storm with the amounts that players fetched at the first auction in February. What it also did was add a new yardstick to measure and compare player performance. Runs scored, averages, wickets taken, strike-rates etc were used to gauge player performance, but now the IPL franchises will be weighing those alongside the sums, in some cases astronomical, paid to the players. Cricinfo reviews how players fared in the 45-day tournament gone by.Top performers
Mahendra Singh Dhoni was auctioned for US$1,500,000, while Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya and Yuvraj Singh earned over $1 million, but Shaun Marsh, a $30,000 signing, was the tournament’s leading run-getter with 616 runs at a sizeable average of 68.44. Marsh took around $48 for every run he scored, while Dhoni’s whopping price means his dollars per run scored works out to nearly 3623, more than 75 times that of Marsh’s.

Top run-getters in the IPL (more than 400 runs)

Player Runs Average Strike-rate Price (in US$) $ per run

Shaun Marsh 616 68.44 139.68 30,00048.70 Gautam Gambhir 534 41.07 140.89 725,0001357.68 Sanath Jayasuriya 514 42.83 166.34 975,0001896.89 Shane Watson 472 47.20 151.76 125,000264.83 Graeme Smith 441 49.00 121.82 475,0001077.10 Adam Gilchrist 436 33.53 137.10 700,0001605.50 Yusuf Pathan 435 31.07 179.01 475,0001091.95 Suresh Raina 421 38.27 142.71 650,0001543.94 Mahendra Singh Dhoni 414 41.40 133.54 1,500,0003623.19 Virender Sehwag 406 33.83 184.54 833,7502053.57 Rohit Sharma 404 36.72 147.98 750,0001856.43 Shane Watson, whom Rajasthan Royals purchased for just $125,000, slots in at No. 4 in both the batting and bowling charts, and he rightfully won the Player of the Tournament award. Sohail Tanvir was another of Rajasthan’s stars in the IPL, and his 22 wickets at 12.09 left him heads and shoulders above the rest of the bowlers. In total, Rajasthan spent only $225,000 on both Tanvir and Watson. The two picked up 39 wickets between them, not forgetting Watson’s immense contribution with the bat and in the field. Tanvir took back $4545.45 for every wicket he took, while the corresponding number was over $50,000 for the likes of Irfan Pathan and RP Singh.

Top wicket-takers in the IPL (15 or more wickets)

Player Wickets Average Economy-rate Price (in US$) $ per wicket

Sohail Tanvir 22 12.09 6.46 100,0004545.45 </tr Shane Warne 19 21.26 7.76 450,00023684.21 Sreesanth 19 23.26 8.63 625,00032894.74 Shane Watson 17 22.52 7.07 125,0007352.94 Piyush Chawla 17 22.88 8.30 400,00023529.41 Albie Morkel 17 23.47 8.31 675,00039705.88 Manpreet Gony 17 26.05 7.38 50,000*2941.18 Yo Mahesh 16 23.12 8.77 50,000*3125.00 Farveez Maharoof 15 16.60 6.91 225,00015000.00 Irfan Pathan 15 23.33 6.60 925,00061666.67 RP Singh 15 29.46 8.61 875,00058333.33 Icons and leaders
The IPL had demarcated ‘icon’ players for five cities; coincidentally, all five – Tendulkar [Mumbai Indians], Rahul Dravid [Bangalore Royal Challengers], Sourav Ganguly [Kolkata Knight Riders], Yuvraj Singh [Kings XI Punjab], Virender Sehwag [Delhi Daredevils] – happened to be batsmen. Icons received 15% more than the next-highest player in their franchise, but it was Sehwag, the lowest earner among them – he was the only one with a salary below $1m – who topped the run-scoring charts. Tendulkar’s injury meant he missed half his side’s matches, while Dravid and Ganguly were the leading run-scorers for the Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders – the latter made some vital contributions with the ball as well.

Icon players

Player Runs Average Strike-rate Cost (in US$) $ per run

Sachin Tendulkar 188 31.33 106.21 1,121,2505964.10 </tr Sourav Ganguly 349 29.08 113.68 1,092,5003130.37 Yuvraj Singh 299 23.00 162.50 1,063,7503557.69 Rahul Dravid 371 28.53 124.49 1,035,0002789.76 Virender Sehwag 406 33.83 184.54 833,7502053.57
Shahid Afridi and Misbah-ul-Haq couldn’t repeat their World Twenty20 heroics in the IPL © AFP
All the five icons were also captains of their teams. The remaining three sides were led by Shane Warne [Rajasthan], Dhoni [Chennai Super Kings], and VVS Laxman [Deccan Chargers]. Harbhajan Singh and Shaun Pollock led Mumbai in the absence of Tendulkar. Laxman suffered an injury midway through the tournament, and Adam Gilchrist, the leading run-scorer among keepers, took up charge of Deccan, who finished at the bottom. Although iconless Deccan failed miserably, the other two teams without ‘icons’ made it the final, and Rajasthan, who prevailed in a pulsating final, were the only team whose first-choice captain was an overseas player.How the other heavyweights fared
Andrew Symonds, the player who went for the second-highest price after Dhoni, was available for just four matches, and though he scored a blistering century against Rajasthan, his poor bowling cost Deccan the match. Ishant Sharma fetched a whopping $950,000 at the auction – the most for a bowler – as his performance Down Under was still fresh in memory, but he was completely lacklustre in the IPL, in which he took just seven wickets. That works out to a humongous $135,714.28 per wicket.Jacques Kallis had been dropped from South Africa’s side for the World Twenty20 last year, and his performances for Bangalore were hardly inspiring. Despite that he played most of the matches, probably because it would have hurt the pockets to rest a $900,000 signing. Mumbai lost Harbhajan, its $850,000 purchase to a slap, while Kolkata, who won Chris Gayle for $800,000, had to frustratingly watch as he warmed the bench with an injury before heading back to the West Indies.Another $800,000 signing, Robin Uthappa, was largely unimpressive for Mumbai, and at times sloppy in the field, while Deccan’s Herschelle Gibbs and Shahid Afridi were far from their best. Brendon McCullum and Kumar Sangakkara both justified their $700,000 price tags- McCullum’s 158 to kickstart the IPL left one and all marvelling. Rajasthan, the least-expensive franchise, and the team which spent well below $4m [$5m was the upper limit for all teams], also found its costliest player, Mohammad Kaif at $675,000, scoring just 176 runs at 16 – perhaps they extracted his worth by playing him for all 16 games, utilising his handy presence in the field. Delhi’s top three – Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Shikhar Dhawan – were prolific but their middle-order signings – Manoj Tiwary, Dinesh Karthik and Shoaib Malik – failed to fire consistently.

Other players priced $500,000 and above

Player Price Runs Average Strike-rate Wickets Average Economy-rate

Andrew Symonds 1,350,000 161 80.50 153.33 0 – 14.78 Ishant Sharma950,000 11 11.00 100.00 7 47.00 7.80 Jacques Kallis900,000 199 18.09 108.74 1 82.00 8.94 Brett Lee900,000 17 17.00 130.76 4 28.00 7.00 Harbhajan Singh850,000 30 15.00 176.47 5 16.40 8.20 Chris Gayle800,000 – – – – – – Robin Uthappa800,000 320 35.55 114.69 – – – Brendon McCullum700,000 188 62.66 204.34 – – – Kumar Sangakkara700,000 320 35.55 161.61 – – – Jacob Oram675,000 18 18.00 150.00 3 49.66 9.31 Manoj Tiwary675,000 104 26.00 122.35 – – – Shahid Afridi675,000 81 10.12 176.08 9 25.00 7.50 Mohammad Kaif675,000 176 16.00 102.92 – – – Mohammad Asif650,000 3 1.50 50.00 8 37.00 9.25 Daniel Vettori625,000 – – -2 27.00 6.75 David Hussey625,000 319 29.00 123.162 65.00 10.00 Muttiah Muralitharan600,000 0 0.00 0.0011 36.72 6.96 Herschelle Gibbs575,000 167 18.55 109.15- – – Shaun Pollock550,000 147 18.37 132.4311 27.36 6.54 Dinesh Karthik525,000 145 24.16 135.51- – – Anil Kumble500,000 13 6.50 76.477 43.42 7.93 Cameron White500,000 114 16.28 111.760 – 24.00 Shoaib Malik500,000 52 13.00 110.632 42.50 10.00 Aussie rules
While the IPL brought to the fore some of India’s domestic players such as Yusuf Pathan, Manpreet Gony, Amit Mishra and Shikhar Dhawan, Australian players too flourished in the IPL. Seasoned pros such as Warne, Glenn McGrath, Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Michael Hussey were top-draw, Watson and Marsh excelled, and James Hopes, David Hussey, Simon Katich, Dominic Thornely and Luke Pomersbach did no harm to their prospects for next season.However, there were also a few NPAs (non-performing Australians), top of the list being Ricky Ponting, who managed just 39 at 9.75, while Kolkata team-mate Brad Hodge didn’t make an impression either. Cameron White and Luke Ronchi came to the IPL with a reputation for hard-hitting batting, but both had a humbling experience in India.

Australian players at the IPL

Player Price Runs Average Strike-rate Wickets Average Economy-rate

Andrew Symonds 1,350,000 161 80.50 153.33 0 – 14.78 Brett Lee900,000 17 17.00 130.76 4 28.00 7.00 Adam Gilchrist700,000 436 33.53 137.10— David Hussey625,000 319 29.00 123.162 65.00 10.00 Cameron White500,000 114 16.28 111.760 – 24.00 Shane Warne 450,0007014.00118.64 19 21.26 7.76 Ricky Ponting 400,000399.7573.58 – – – Matthew Hayden 375,00018963.00144.27 – – – Michael Hussey 350,00016884.00168.00 – – – Glenn McGrath 350,00044.0080.00 12 29.75 6.61 James Hopes 300,00022120.09149.32 7 39.42 9.85 Simon Katich 200,0009696.00139.13 – – – Shane Watson 125,000472 47.20 151.76 17 22.52 7.07 Ashley Noffke 80,0009 9.00 90.00 1 40.00 10.00 Luke Pomersbach 50,000152 152.00 153.53 – – – Brett Geeves 50,000- – – 1 91.00 11.37 Shaun Marsh30,000 616 68.44 139.68 – – – Dominic Thornely25,000 39 19.50 73.58 3 13.33 5.71 Luke Ronchi^ 34 8.50 106.25 – – – Darren Lehmann^ 18 9.00 100.00 – – – Brad Hodge^ 12 4.00 70.58 – – – Best World Twenty20 players at the IPL
Last year Cricinfo had chosen a World Twenty20 XI, comprising the best players from the event in South Africa. Of the ten who played in the IPL, some like Gambhir and Hayden continued their good form in the shortest format, but Afridi, Player of the Tournament in South Africa, had an IPL to forget. Misbah-ul-Haq had used the World Twenty20 to force his way back into the Pakistan Test and ODI sides as well, but he didn’t do too well in his stint with Bangalore. RP was a shadow of the menace he was on the seaming tracks in South Africa, and Yuvraj too was unable to find his sublime hitting form.

Best players at the World Twenty20 in the IPL

Player Price Runs Average Strike-rate Wickets Average Economy-rate

Matthew Hayden 375,00018963.00144.27 – – – Gautam Gambhir725,000 534 41.07 140.89 — Yuvraj Singh 1,063,750 299 23.00 162.50 3 27.669.22 Shoaib Malik500,000 52 13.00 110.632 42.50 10.00 Misbah-ul-Haq150,000 117 16.71 144.44- – – Mahendra Singh Dhoni1,500,000414 41.40 133.54- – – Shahid Afridi675,000 81 10.12 176.08 9 25.00 7.50 Daniel Vettori625,000 – – -2 27.00 6.75 Umar Gul150,00039 13.00205.261215.338.17 RP Singh 875,000 27 29.46 8.61156.75112.50 Young stars not shining bright
Players from India’s Under-19 World Cup-winning side also were auctioned for prices ranging from $30,000-50,000. However, not many got a fair chance in the IPL. Of the lot, Ravindra Jadeja, who was bought by Rajasthan, played the most games – 14, while Virat Kohli, who had led the side, featured in 13 of Bangalore’s 14. Left-arm fast bowler Pradeep Sangwan played seven for Delhi, but it was Bangalore’s wicketkeeper-batsman Shreevats Goswami who won the prize for the best U-19 player, albeit he figured in just four games.

Rashid Latif’s cricket academy, which has been close to a decade in the making, is an epitome of Karachi’s unique cricket ethos

Osman Samiuddin11-Feb-2009

Rashid Latif: perhaps the only person to run a cricket academy who believes he shouldn’t be coaching youngsters at all © Rashid Latif
To the right, as you enter the Rashid Latif Cricket Academy (RLCA), are well-constructed practice pitches – cement, matting and turf. Fifteen, maybe 20, years ago, so go the tales, this very patch was a killing playground, a piece of land notorious for “encounters” between police and young political activists. The ground, for football and hockey, was owned by the city government, but disused and grassless. In the now-demolished old dressing rooms, prostitution shared space with illegal car-parts trade.The area within which the academy sits – Federal B Area – was originally designed for those entrusted with the running of Pakistan, in the days when Karachi was the capital. The country is not run from here anymore, but the roads are wide, the houses old, and here a neighbourhood is still a neighbourhood, not a random collection of houses. It is one of Karachi’s many beating hearts.As is Rashid Latif. More than an academy, his RLCA is a way. It is the way of Rashid Latif, the way of Karachi cricket, a city where is bred a peculiar cricketer. This cricketer is largely self-taught, self-sufficient and rough-edged; when times are tough he fights hard, but he can just as readily regress to a victimised martyr. Disputes are never far, neither is politicking, but loyalty is cherished. The most successful are like gangsters: many people sustain themselves off them; they have flaws, but believe truly what they are doing is for good, in a Robin Hood kind of way. Usually the good outweighs the bad, but not by much.Though the academy has been operational since 2000, the official inauguration was only last week, a Karachi shindig through and through. Most of the city’s cricket grandees were there; Hanif Mohammad, Sallu (Salahuddin Ahmed), Tauseef Ahmed, Mohammad Sami, Azeem Hafeez, Asim Kamal, Saeed Anwar and Moin Khan. Younis Khan – an RLCA alumni and acolyte – who has rooted himself in Karachi, was also there, as was Mohammad Yousuf. The chief inaugurator was Karachi’s man of the moment, Mustafa Kamal, the wildly popular city mayor.It was a warm occasion, egalitarian in spirit. ICL bans meant nothing, as Younis chatted and laughed with Yousuf, Sami mingled with one and all. Ex-players joked with current, and all the while Salahuddin’s poetry flowed. Moin, competitor, rival and contemporary of Latif, had done his bit by donating an expensive bowling machine to the academy. No more suitable an inauguration, in short, for such labour. “Nobody is big or small here, they are all the same… We are about broader things, a way of sitting, standing, a way of being” Rashid Latif It has been almost exactly nine years in the making. The idea initially, says Latif, was to just have a place where he – and others – could practice in the off season. In his early years, the struggle was to find a ground with facilities he could go to for practice and to keep fit. The problem was that there wasn’t such a place. So he got a group of 20-odd first-class cricketers together at the UBL ground and began a regular session of sorts. The location would often change but practice wouldn’t.Latif is of a restless mind, so one thought led, naturally, to another. “We just called it an academy, even though at the start it wasn’t one. I used to practice, others did also, and whatever I understood, or knew, I used to tell them. There was nothing proper about it. Then I got into coaching and learnt many things that, had I known before, I might’ve been a better player. After that I decided that this needed to be more solid, more worthwhile, and something that could carry on after I was gone.”There was more behind it, something resembling blue-collar, populist rhetoric. Private cricket academies in Pakistan are mostly commercial entities. Like private schools they represent both a way of making money and a failure of public institutions. A few, like the RLCA, are run on nothing but unrequited love, like boxing gyms in ghettos. “My kids study in a private school but I am against it,” Latif says. “Education is being sold and it shouldn’t be. Inflation is high and if you look around, mostly players come from lower-middle-class families. They can’t afford to play. So I thought something should be there that is free.”It took four years before a home was found, in which time mass open trials were held and somehow a tour to England was organised. The Karachi City Cricket Association (KCCA) pointed him to this 7.5 acre ground, next to which they have their own ground. In October 2004 he got a 10-year lease from the city government. “We tried really hard to get a ground at a couple of locations. Until then we used to divide time at whichever ground. Once we got this land, then people knew we were pretty serious.”Over four years and more than Rs 50 million (his own and that of a few other investors) later there are 15 practice pitches alongside the main ground. There is that bowling machine, a comprehensive multimedia set-up, and new dressing rooms, without prostitutes. Soon there will be a gym and a biomechanics lab and then a hostel of 12-14 rooms. The plan is for cricketers to come from around Asia, stay here and use the facilities. Flavour of the season Afghanistan are due soon to do just that – in future, hopefully they can also stay here. Plans are afoot to try and revive the city’s moribund club cricket scene, using the ground as a fulcrum.

If you build it, they will come: Latif’s academy arose out of the lack of places to practise in © Rashid Latif
Four days a week, kids from four age groups (U-13 through U-19) come for coaching, plucked from open trials and recommendations. Senior cricketers come in to iron out kinks whenever time permits. What they pick up here is nothing if not unique, for Latif’s take on coaching is, well, a take. Obviously it isn’t bookish; instead it is simply drawn from what he always knew, what he has learnt, what he has seen, those he has worked with. Daryl Foster and Richard Pybus are in it, as well as Latif’s annual bash with Lashings. “That helps my coaching a lot. I get to meet the world’s best players and develop my own methods from that. I take in ideas from Australia, England, New Zealand and West Indies, and you don’t see those things or that approach here.”Not for him is coaching in the nets, and he prefers batsmen to practice without a ball. “It is the start, working on their movements, working backwards in a way, until you finally come to enacting that with a ball in nets.” He doesn’t believe he should be coaching youngsters at all, which, logically and alarmingly, defeats the point of his own academy. “I am 40 and I look at things from that angle. We should get a kid two years older ready and get him to work on the 15-year-olds. Kids teach kids quicker. If I teach U-15s something, I have to tell them 10 times and sometimes they are still not picking up. So it’s better if guys closer to their age do it.”The RLCA will not, Latif insists, produce national cricketers; that isn’t the purpose of an academy. It may be true, but you don’t expect to hear it from the head of a privately owned academy. But it will provide a way – a way not just about high elbows and good wrist positions. Asim Kamal, Khalid Latif, Khurram Manzoor, Younis Khan, Fawad Alam, Danish Kaneria, Sohail Khan: these men represent an ethos.”Nobody is big or small here, they are all the same; but if a player from here goes and does something bad, then the academy gets a bad name. Cricketers have watered grounds, built it from nothing to what it is and run it. We are about broader things, a way of sitting, standing, a way of being.”On balance, it isn’t a bad way to be.

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.

Flintoff did for British cricket what Botham did, invigorating and replenishing. He brought fresh hope for the game’s future

Rob Steen14-Aug-2009As far as I know, the only professional sportsman to inspire a cartoon series was Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees catcher and stupendously daft ha’pworth who was inventively recast as Yogi Bear. That Andrew Flintoff owes his nickname, Freddie, to another animated icon, Fred Flintstone, a Stone Age Homer Simpson, a fellow so flawed but well meaning that you always root for him, is just one of the innumerable reasons for my affection.Yogi (the baseballer) may not have been smarter than the average bear – “Ninety per cent of this game is half mental,” was one of his more accurate proclamations – but he did have a way with profundities. “You can’t win all the time,” he once reasoned. “There are guys out there who are better than you.” To watch Flintoff is to suspect that, much as he disagrees with the latter assertion, it wouldn’t upset him terribly to be proved wrong. Among peers (if not in his 2003-06 pomp), Jacques Kallis, Shakib-al-Hasan and Daniel Vettori may be his superior as multi-string pluckers, but none gladdens so many unbiased hearts, nor opens so many blinkered ones.The danger with confessionals such as this is that they confirm how little we change. Despite having enjoyed nearly 10 decades on Planet Earth, EW Swanton, to take one depressing example, never relinquished a single pang of his boyhood passion for Frank Woolley. So protective was EW that he once strode into the dressing room at Canterbury and urged Steve Marsh, captain of his beloved Kent, to declare: Matty Walker, an amiable journeyman, was poised to break Woolley’s hallowed ground record. To his undying credit, Marsh resisted the entreaties, leaving Walker to overturn EW’s sepia-toned view of the way things should be.Trouble is, I’m partial to change. Just as one’s favourite book, musician, comedian or jam may alter with the acquisition of experience, wisdom and taste, so one’s sporting predilections evolve. Especially when writing about sport becomes your livelihood, instilling a different, or at least more rounded, perspective.I’ve worn out seven champions, each choice reflecting needs and times: Tom Graveney (cricketer as artist), Basil D’Oliveira (cricketer as political symbol), Phil Edmonds (rebel stylist), David Gower (latter-day Graveney; standard-bearer for sport as good-mannered entertainment), Phil Tufnell (Edmonds squared) and Mohammad Azharuddin (Gower cubed). After Azhar’s plummet from grace I found investing emotion in a sportsman impossible. Flirting with unseen ancients – George Headley, Frank Worrell – proved as satisfying as kissing a ghost. Then, in the summer of 2004, Flintoff came of age and I fell hook, line and sinker.As a rule journalists glean as much glee from being proved wrong as they once derived from Prohibition, but I couldn’t be more delighted that Flintoff has made me munch my words. After an infuriatingly sloppy knock for Lancashire in 2002, I suggested his prospects of fruitful maturation were being stymied by a reluctance to engage his brain. I could claim I was being intentionally provocative, trying to stir him out of his stupor, but that would be a fairly massive fib.Inevitably, all his subsequent all-round derring-doings have stirred endless comparisons with one IT Botham, another unreconstructed schoolboy and bon viveur, another stranger to fear, lost causes and self-analysis, another sportsman whose reputation rests on one prolonged streak of magical omnipotence followed by years of pain, self-delusion and sub-par-dom. After the 2005 Ashes, at 27, Flintoff, by then on song and on fire for more than two years, was still on the rise, capable of anything, maybe everything; at the same age most of Botham’s finest hours were memories.Injury, though, soon whipped the carpet from beneath that galloping run-up, leaving only fleeting flashes of the Flashman of yore, of which the most fondly remembered will surely be that 10-over match-winning spell on the final day of this year’s Lord’s Ashes Test, sealing as it did England’s first Ashes victory there since Hitler was taking the new ball for the Germans. All eyes were on him that Monday morning, every emotion riding on him: only he could banish all those ghosts and fears. How he thrived on the responsibility, the demands, the expectations. After snaring his fifth victim, his first such haul in a Test at HQ, he knelt down and closed his eyes, savouring a moment he thought might never arrive. Victory was still one wicket away but still a nation rejoiced.

When Freddie takes guard, even now, even in his cricketing dotage, everybody wants a front-row pew. He still symbolises possibility, still radiates joy

When push comes to shove, Botham’s Test figures, with bat and ball, are considerably more striking and enduring, while Flintoff levels the score in ODIs. But this is not an homage to digits and decimal points.As with Botham, the obvious allure is that muscular, breezy innocence: can it truly be easy to turn work into play? In other respects, they’re galaxies apart. Botham’s success was rooted in that anti-authoritarian, how-dare–question- snarl and Thatcherite sneer, fertilised by the indomitability of the born show-off. Flintoff is less carefree and more sophisticated than he looks, but that’s not saying much. Those massive shoulders appear chip-free, the grin so disarming you want to, well, cuddle him.In most mouths, sledging is the most dubious form of wit, but Flintoff defies objections. Shortly after Tino Best came in to bat at Lord’s in 2004 came some smirking advice from the hulking blond in the slips: “Mind the windows, Tino.” Next ball, the belligerent Bajan was stumped, charging. The ensuing roar of laughter stemmed less from schadenfreude than sheer disbelief that an opponent should have swallowed the bait so readily.In the same Test, Flintoff was clopping up the pavilion steps after a cheap dismissal when an MCC member swatted him with a rolled-up newspaper. Had it been Botham, who spent the rest of his career bridling after the same toffee-nosed gallery sent him to Coventry following a 1981 pair against Australia, the assailant would probably have suffered a volley of abuse or a crisp half-nelson. And deservedly so. Flintoff turned around briefly but rapidly concluded that identifying the culprit would be too lengthy and undignified a process.Flintoff pushed my buttons partly because he seemed to have married the privilege of youth to the duties of manhood (the “Fredalo” incident put firmly paid to that delusion), but mostly because he embodied tomorrow, possibility, hope. In the middle of this decade he did for British cricket what Botham did a quarter of a century ago, beer in hand, capacious of heart, invigorating and replenishing. It is assuredly no coincidence that Channel 4 enjoyed its largest live audiences for four years during the Edgbaston Test of 2004, an auspicious prelude to 2005 and all that. Fearful of jinxing him, Tim Rice used to crouch behind the settee whenever David Gower came in; when Freddie takes guard, even now, even in his cricketing dotage, everybody wants a front-row pew. He still symbolises possibility, still radiates joy.Forget the disappointments. Forget the excesses and the underachievements. At a time when the game, in Britain and beyond, was striving to court and spark a fresh generation, when we fortysomethings could hear only the hissing of long gone summer lawns and had begun to despair that our children would ever be remotely as turned on by flannelled tomfoolery as we were, along plodded Freddie to banish all scepticism. Yabba-dabba-do.

Dwayne Bravo says the board’s unprofessionalism, its inability to improve the quality of first-class cricket, and the lack of facilities are holding West Indies back

Interview by Nazma Muller19-Jul-2009Dwayne Bravo wants more professionalism from the West Indies board•Getty ImagesHow do you feel about what’s happening between you guys and the West Indies Cricket Board?Well, to be honest, I feel bad about it. It’s not something that I like to see happening. It is hurting me a lot. Growing up, my passion was to play for West Indies, to have a long, successful career. Ever since I started, back in 2004, there were problems with both parties – WICB and WIPA – and it just can’t seem to come to an end and now it’s getting worse. It’s starting to affect players emotionally and more so the fans.And that is the worst part of it. Whenever I walk the streets I hear people complaining. Cricket means a lot to West Indian people – it is the only unifying sport that we have in the region and I think it’s time both parties get together and actually solve the problem. I don’t know how long it can go on for. I feel really bad that we are striking and not being able to represent the West Indies but I think we’re doing something that pertains to our rights and I think we should all stand up for our rights and hope for the best.When you first started with the team, what was the reception from the board? How did you feel coming in as a new member of the team?It wasn’t really what I expected. I expected, you know, a bit more. I’m not saying they did anything wrong. But, you know, as a child growing up, your dream is to play for West Indies and that’s all you want to do.And actually, when you finally get there, you say to yourself, “This is it? This is all? It can’t be like this.” It’s sad but like I said, I meet it like that. It reach a stage where I don’t know what to say about the state of West Indies cricket.You’ve talked to players from other cricketing nations, do they have this problem with their boards?All boards and players’ associations have problems but I don’t think it’s as bad as WICB and WIPA. Other boards, to me, respect their players a bit more and have a better relationship with their players. Speaking to other players and sharing information, sometimes they laugh at us to see the situation that we’re in and how they [the WICB] treat us as professional players.You know, they [WICB] keep harping that we are well paid, the third or fourth highest paid in the world. But we’re living in a modernised world now where the salary we get compared to others is chalk and cheese. But we are happy, we are not complaining about our salaries. We just find that as professional players, things should be dealt with in a professional way and our board is not professional enough.What happened with your injury claims? Did you ever get compensation for the eight months you were recovering?

They [WICB] just do things badly. They send guys on tour two days before a series and stuff like your uniform arriving late … My club, Queen’s Park Cricket Club, is more organised than West Indies.

It’s in process now. While I was injured for the eight months, it was nothing like that. They got my surgery done for me. They paid for the flights and that was it. From the time I got back home my whole rehab programme was on my own, everything.So wait, what happened to the team physiotherapist?Well, they were on tours and I had to do my rehab here in Trinidad.And you had to pay for that?Well yeah. [My therapist] doesn’t trust the WICB anymore to bill them. I think they had incidents in the past and so no one really trusts to bill them again. I had to take it out of my pocket, which I don’t really mind because I do extended sessions.I even hire two other therapists to do extra work with me because I want to get back into the game. It’s not about the money that I’m losing. I just want to make sure I can play cricket again and play comfortably. I already wait eight months. I want to manage myself properly and go back into it at the right time.Why isn’t the West Indies team performing?It all boils down to the fact that our team has been chopping and changing – that’s one of the reasons. Our first-class cricket is nowhere near the standard that it should be compared to other teams in the world and we have to compete among the best. The facilities we have in the region are not up to standard for international players.So there are a lot of reasons why the team hasn’t been successful. Obviously a normal fan wouldn’t see that side of it – they’ll only see the performance on the field. Our preparation for the youth players come right up to the A team players is not good and therefore there’s a big gap between under-19 cricket and A team cricket to Test cricket. There’s a big, big gap and players come in to the West Indies team not really prepared for international cricket and they have to go all the way back and start over.I don’t mean to be critical or to bash anyone but we reach a stage in life now where we travel the world and seen how things are set up in different countries and you ask yourself, ‘Why? Why not back home by us?’ One of the reasons why Trinidad and Tobago have been so successful in domestic cricket is because we have the best structure in the region. And if it is they can see we are reaping the rewards, why not try and do it in all the other islands? One academy, one indoor facility in every island would not hurt. Hire coaches to come in. I mean, West Indies produce some of the best players in the world – ever. Everywhere we go in the world you hear about the three Ws, Malcolm Marshall, Viv Richards, Michael Holding.Just to draw a reference to the Stanford Super Series: He hired all the legends to come in and work with the players. Most of us there were West Indian players but it was the first time most of us had the opportunity to speak one on one with some of those legends. A lot of us gained a lot. And you see how the result was? It was a one-sided game. [The West Indians whipped the England team soundly.] So I’m not saying they can turn around West Indies cricket immediately. There’s process and I think we should make use of those legends.We have a very young team, they keep chopping and changing. The guys not getting a good, long enough run so when they come in, they try to play for themselves, to cement their spot for the next series …It affects their confidence. Obviously, and guys can’t play their natural game.How did you feel seeing West Indies lose to Bangladesh?”Cricket means a lot to West Indian people, and I think it’s time both parties [WICB and WIPA] get together and actually solve the problem”•AFPNot good at all, to be honest. I was following the game. I was actually in West Mall when I saw the last wicket and there were people standing around me and my reaction was like, it was like I was on the field when I saw Tino Best play that shot. I fling my hands – I just couldn’t believe the shot that he played at that time, knowing the situation in the game. Which I expected from him because I’ve seen him do it on different occasions.I wasn’t really surprised but I thought being out of the game so long and he gets an opportunity again now, he might have learnt something or be a smarter cricketer, but it shows that he hasn’t done much, hasn’t learnt much.But it all boils down to the fact that when he wasn’t around for the last three or four years, what system we have in place? Did they use anyone to work with him? Because he’s a talented cricketer. He’s a cricketer that if you work with him, he could be one of the best fast bowlers in the world because he can bowl at 90 miles an hour consistently. He’s a great fielder and he also has good batting ability. But that’s a player you need to work with mentally. They have done nothing to help him.And it’s not only him – there are a few names I could call off the top of my head. They come on the scene, show a lot of promise, get an injury or get dropped, no one has done anything to help them recover from their injury or get back in the game. Jermaine Lawson is another player. No one knows where he is at this point in time and that’s sad to see.Would you seriously give up your million-dollar contract with the IPL to play for West Indies? And your new contract with Victoria in Australia?It’s not about the money and people don’t really understand that. Yes, it’s a good opportunity to make another set of income and it’s nice. And it’s a lot of money. But if we weren’t playing for West Indies we wouldn’t be identified by those teams.We wouldn’t have made a name for ourselves so we understand that and know that we have to make sure that we are always available to play for West Indies.Does the WICB or WIPA train or prepare you to deal with the press and criticism?He shakes his head adamantly.Nothing? So basically you are left to cope with negative publicity on your own?Well, yeah, basically you’re left to do a lot for yourself. They keep saying you’re a professional unit but do we get treated like a professional team? I don’t think so. A lot of the players feel the same way.Okay, let’s look at some of WIPA’s grievances: payment for medical treatment on tour, pensions, now this thing about airline tickets – if you are in Trinidad, the WICB doesn’t pay for your ticket to get to where you’re playing?It depends. If let’s say I get a call-up to play for West Indies, I get to the airport, the ticket is there. There are times when you go to the airport and your ticket is not there. Then we call [Dinanath] Ramnarine [CEO of WIPA] and he will buy a ticket. Sometimes you come back from tour – every time we travel we land in Barbados to get a connecting flight. The players go to the desk, no tickets there. You call Ramnarine. That’s what I’m talking about, the unprofessionalism.It sounds like they just need a good PA (personal assistant).They just do things badly. They send guys on tour two days before a series and stuff like your uniform arriving late. No one can actually believe how – the West Indies is the biggest, you can’t go bigger than that in the region. But my club, Queen’s Park Cricket Club, is more organised than West Indies.