Trolling for cricket

a) Of the many articles written to commemorate Sachin Tendulkar's service to Indian cricket (20 years and counting, in case you did not know), I like this one by Rahul Bhattacharya the best. Admiring the man without being overly gushing, it stands out for the little gems that are thrown about here and there. Gems such as these:

Memory obscures telling details in the dizzying rise thereafter. Everybody remembers the 326 not out in the 664-run gig with Kambli. Few remember the 346 not out in the following game, the trophy final. Everyone knows the centuries on debut in the Ranji Trophy and Irani Trophy at 15 and 16. Few know that he got them in the face of a collapse in the first instance and virtually out of partners in the second. Everyone knows his nose was bloodied by Waqar Younis in that first Test series, upon which he waved away assistance. Few remember that he struck the next ball for four.

This was Tendulkar five years after he'd first handled a cricket ball.

b) Suresh Menon positively raves about Rahul Dravid here but does so in a manner that makes it a must-read for anyone who likes sports journalism. It is a qualitative and quantitative description of the highest order.

To be defined by what he has missed has sometimes been Dravid’s fate. When he made 180 in a Test match, he was upstaged by a man who made 281; that innings by VVS Laxman is rated as the best by an Indian batsman. When Dravid made his then highest one-day score of 145, Sourav Ganguly made 183 in the same innings; when he topped that by making 153 against New Zealand, Sachin Tendulkar made an unbeaten 186. Is Rahul Dravid the best supporting act in the history of the game or a great player born in the wrong decade?

He is the best supporting act in the history of the game (a world record 78 century partnerships in Tests) and a great player (over 10,000 runs in both forms of the game). It is tempting to conclude that he was born in the wrong decade, forcing him to play in the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar, but that hardly matters to the man who is in competition with no one but himself, and who was secure enough to say at one time, “Most people want me to get out quickly so they can watch Sachin bat.”

c) Virender Sehwag is the subject of a simple statistical study by CricInfo who provide a list of all the partnerships he has been involved in as a Test player. Not surprisingly, Rahul Dravid is his companion at the top, though it is a matter of time before his position is usurped.

(Just for kicks, here are Rahul Dravid's partnership stats for his career).

d) Sambit Bal, the Editor of CricInfo, is also a fine writer when he does put his thoughts to paper. Here, he reflects on a gripping Test encounter at Dunedin between Pakistan and New Zealand, reaffirming why the long form of the game is unparalleled for all the different types of scenarios it can throw up in just one match. He finishes with a thought I can empathize with:

The experience of watching cricket on TV in India has grown progressively worse. One of the joys of the Dunedin Test was the cleanness of the TV feed. You could watch the bowler start an over, and indeed end it; no creepy-crawlies invaded the screen while the game was on; and between overs you could watch the captain change the field. Also, somehow it felt like the commentators spoke only as much as they needed to. In India, enduring cricket on television has itself become a test of loyalty.
(...)
Test cricket needs an avenger. It needs men with vision and a sense of mission. It needs ownership and drive. Now, someone needs to convert Lalit Modi.

e) Reading this article sent shivers down my spine at the thought that it might be true. S Aga speculates that the third Test between India and Sri Lanka may have been the last time SRT, Dravid, and VVS Laxman batted together in a home Test match.

Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman have played 183 home Tests between them, scoring 13,665 runs and 37 centuries. They also have a combined age of 107 and, with few countries actually adhering to the Future Tours Programme, there might be no home Tests before the World Cup in 2011. Next year's series against South Africa will feature only ODIs and it's hard to see much enthusiasm on the part of the BCCI for a tour by New Zealand just three months before the first ball is bowled at the World Cup.

(Subsequently, there have been rumors that South Africa may play a couple of Tests so there may still be some time left for this triumvirate).

f) If the Indian Test team bats at an average of over 4 runs per over for an innings, an essential element is that it features a blitz by Virender Sehwag. When Sehwag is on song (and it happens too often in Tests to be a fluke) the overall picture of the game looks rosy from an Indian point of view. But if you dig deeper, his batting actually masks a big deficiency of the middle-order, namely the inability to grind the hapless bowlers into the dust. Here are a couple of articles on that theme. First, an older one by Rahul Bhattacharya that goes deeper into this than anyone before.

Since Australia are the benchmark - and in batting the Indians ought to be meeting them eye-to-eye - it is instructive to note that when Matthew Hayden makes a score (fifty or more, for the purpose of this exercise), those who follow him score marginally faster than they would do had he fallen cheaply (at a rate of 3.79 against 3.75, from September 2001 onwards). When Sehwag scores fifty or more, however, the rest of the Indian line-up make their runs discernibly slower (2.96 against 3.15, in matches where Sehwag has opened) than they otherwise would. So where Australia are taking a man's success and building on it, feeding off it - the cornerstone of their cricket in general - India are using it, bizarrely, as an occasion to play inside their abilities.

Some of India's recent post-Sehwag dawdles make damning reading. At the MCG last season, when Sehwag was fourth man out, having made 195, the run-rate plummeted by 1.75 points (or 157 runs per day). At Kanpur against South Africa this season, when he was second out, having scored 164, it dropped by 1.52 (137 runs per day). At Kolkata in the following Test it fell by 1.02 (92 runs per day) after he was gone for 88. And at Mohali most recently against Pakistan it dipped by 1.46 (131 runs per day). Of the above matches India could only win the Kolkata Test. And there too South Africa, had they shown more resolve in the second innings, could have made India regret the tardiness, as the Pakistanis did at Mohali.

About 4 years later here's Prem Panicker on his blog collating some of the best pieces written on Viru by some very good cricket writers. Read the entire post, if you will, for links to some fine pieces of writing.

g) And just to show that he is not just a fan of Rahul Dravid, Suresh Menon unloads about Virender Sehwag.

VIRENDER SEHWAG’S batting is a reminder that there are no absolute standards in sport. “They told me in the dressing room that I was hitting good balls to the boundary,” he said after his neartriple century in the Mumbai Test, “but actually I was hitting only the bad balls.” The combination of innocence and ruthlessness, of self-doubt and self-awareness is unique.
(...)
HIS ROLE in the rise of India to the No. 1 spot in Test cricket has been fundamental. In the last 25 Tests (eight series), he has scored more runs than anybody else (2,093 in 20 Tests) as India beat Pakistan, drew against South Africa, beat Australia, England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka (they lost in Australia and Sri Lanka).

As Sehwag went berserk against Sri Lanka to the tune of 293 runs, there were many spectators with stories of their own to share.(By the way, I did not know that Sehwag was the vice-captain of the current Indian team. With MS Dhoni getting suspended for a couple of ODIs Viru should be back at the helm again. It will be interesting to see how he juggles the middle-order, sans Dhoni).

h) Even as the current edition begins to reach for the #1 spot in Tests and ODIs (getting there is not enough, staying there is more important IMHO), Indian cricket's next generation readies itself. Here's a handy guide to the players who will represent India in the Under-19 World Cup in a few weeks. Which of these names will be hawking televisions and toothpastes when not playing cricket in the years to come? Your guess is as good as mine. I will try to keep up with their progress and if I spot anything I will be sure to pass it along to you.

i) I have a fun comparison for you. Here are the stats for two Test players currently representing their country.
Player A: 48 Tests, 87 innings, 3509 runs, HS 160, average 42.79, 9 hundreds, 20 fifties, 44 catches.
Player B: 49 Tests, 88 innings, 3144 runs, HS 199, average 39.79, 8 hundreds, 21 fifties, 45 catches.

Not much to choose from between the two, is there? Both were lauded as the future of their countries' hopes but have been treated very differently by the media. Player A is the proverbial golden child, handled with cotton gloves as his mistakes are glossed over, his potential constantly brought up, and is likely to captain his country very soon, while player B is on the verge of having his career stalled because of a perception that he has not done enough with his chances. How would you react if you were either player?

(Update: CricInfo's Andrew McGlashan seems to have picked up on this and talks about it in his latest column.)

There is a lot more to this than plain numbers but you can see how players' livelihoods are really at stake when the media decides to lay tags on them.

(By the way Player A is Alastair Cook and Player B is Ian Bell)

j) Take a look at the first two items on sports page from December 8th, 2003. The seeds for so many different things were sown on that day that it boggles the mind to play a game of what-if based on "what if Sourav Ganguly had not succeeded that day?".

k) Finally, just for kicks, here's VVS Laxman.

(Reuters 2003)