Indian Hubris

 

 

Cricket 2014

 

Tales of the Unexpected

 

September 7^th 2014

 

Just when you thought that things could not possibly get any worse, England have come up with a new trick to disconcert their fans: they have won back-to-back games! The 5^th and final ODI could be regarded as an aberration: India had won the series with three smashing victories and had demonstrated that they were ridiculously superior in the format. They could be forgiven for relaxing a little, even in front of their adoring fans and letting Joe Root, Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes – making a welcome return to form with the bat – set a target that even the Indian batsmen could not chase, despite a desperate and spectacular late thrash from Ravi Jadeja as the innings disintegrated around him. You can almost believe that MS Dhoni was manifesting his wish to see his side challenged by allowing England to accelerate in their last 15 overs from what was looking likely to be a mediocre total to one that would require a real effort to chase.

Despite India being well ahead on runs at 30 overs and even at 35 overs, the England bowlers were able to create increasing pressure to take critical wickets and suffocate the scoring. Forty runs in nine overs for the loss of three wickets saw the Indian chase go off the rails in spectacular fashion. From 132-4 and cruising, the score staggered to 209-9 and imminent defeat.

How much we should read into England batting far better at the death than India is open to debate. England lost early wickets and appeared to be losing their way as thoroughly as they had in the previous three matches before the final assault, orquestrated by Joe Root. After a good start in his first two matches, Alex Hales has lost his way a little with two low scores and seems uncertain whether to block or blast. Alistair Cook still cannot make a big score: 46 from 64 balls will not convince his critics, although the win has relieved the pressure a little.

The temptation will be not to make drastic changes after this win, dead rubber against a relaxed side or not. Peter Moores though has very carefully not given clear backing to Alistair Cook and the latter has appeared to suggest that a change in captain is possible for the winter campaign.

Even if India were not switched-on for the final ODI, surely they would be for the T20? IPL stars versus the cricketing equivalent of Orphan Annie? India’s #1 ranking in the format at stake.

What we saw was a repeat of the 5^th ODI: England struggling in the middle overs to put up any kind of score, 99-4 after 15 overs, the partisan crowd asking if England should continue to play T20. This time it was Eoin Morgan, who broke his dismal streak with some brutal hitting, followed up by Ravi Bopara – 81 from the last 5 overs and, suddenly, India were again facing a decent total. A fast start that seemed to be setting up an easy win. 130-2 after 14 overs, 34 runs ahead of England at the same stage and two fewer wickets lost. How could India lose?

Incredibly, the IPL stars, the self-confessed experts in the format, panicked. Only 47 runs and 3 wickets from the last 6 overs and MS Dhoni turning down singles in the final over because he thought that he could win the match himself. Dhoni panicked. Chris Woakes did not. Thanks very much! Two precious dot balls where Dhoni refused easy singles and England won by three runs.

Hubris indeed.

You could not have made it up.

Two days running England’s attack strangled India when the match seemed lost. Two days running India panicked under pressure. If there was a suggestion in the ODI that Ravi Jadeja’s assault led to some loss of idea how to bowl at him, there was not too much that could be faulted in the efforts of Tredwell, Gurney, Finn and Woakes in the last six overs today, even when MS Dhoni made his final effort. It has not converted England into a good limited overs side, but it has at least shown that the elements for a successful side are there, if they are properly harnessed.

Are The Summer Series Showing Us A Glimpse Of The Future Of Cricket?

 

 

Cricket 2014

 

Putting the Summer in Perspective

 

September 3^rd 2014

 

Sadly, the Test win, completed less than three weeks ago, on August 17^th, is being out into perspective by the One-Day series. England beat a side totally disinterested in the format that was barely going through the motions by the end of the series. Why India agreed to a five Test series is one of life’s little mysteries at a time when the new generation of players prefers to find fame and fortune playing IPL and do not have the patience for the longer form of the game that does not provide either the riches or the exposure that a televised T20 match does. India’s heart is not in Test cricket and that suggests that the format may not last much longer, at not least as we know it.

England is in real danger of becoming totally isolated in world cricket. In England, the First Class game – the County Championship – is still regarded as the premier format of the game. Even ardent fans of a side are hard-pressed to recall when it won the One-Day cup in its various guises, or its side’s fortunes in the T20, but will know exactly when the County Championship was last conquered. In a world where First Class cricket outside Test matches is fast becoming an irrelevance, scarcely followed and with no viewing public to speak of, the English county game is thriving. Attendances have climbed year on year for some time now. Every game is broadcast live, ball-by-ball. Attendances of several thousand are commonplace (English cricket, of course, complicates this because it only calculates the members of the public who pay at the gate, not the members who, effectively, have a season ticket to games, so attendances can often only be guessed). As an exile, I do not get to many games but, the last one that I attended, on a cold, blustery day in May, must have seen at least a couple of thousand in the ground, as was spectacularly demonstrated at the lunch break as the shops and walkways around the ground suddenly filled with punters who poured out of the stands in torrents. There is an image of county cricket being attended by “one man and his dog”, but that has scarcely been true for at least twenty years – there are sparsely attended days with just a couple of hundred spectators, but there are many more with attendances that would make lower division football clubs envious. Out grounds like Cheltenham, with their smaller capacity, talk proudly of filling, even for Division 2 games. The purported cricket fans who say that no one goes to county games and no one cares are simply parroting an image from thirty years back (yes, I did attend a game back in the 1980s where, one afternoon, my entry substantially improved the gate, at least percentually).

Contrast that with India or Pakistan, where there is scarce interest in the First Class game. Even in Australia, the Sheffield Shield is no longer the focus of attention. Australian cricket followers will tell you who is winning, but few ever make the effort to attend a game. If you want to get an Indian to be passionate, ask him (or her) about the fortunes of the Mumbai Indians or the Chennai Super Kings, not about Hyderabad or Tamil Nadu’s performances in the Ranji Trophy.

First Class cricket exists as a feeder for Test cricket and as a regional form of the game where those one step below Test standard ply their trade. If Test cricket disappears, the reasons to have a First Class structure largely disappear too. Much of the Test history of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka has been played out without a domestic First Class competition, with club and schools cricket acting as a feeder. The West Indies and New Zealand have, in recent years, expanded their First Class programmes from a very precarious base – First Class cricket in the West Indies was, for a time, very much an endangered species with barely a handful of games played. The West Indian domestic finalists will now play as many as eight games and in New Zealand all side play ten when, at one time, the majority of the domestic First Class season was played over the Christmas holiday so that players would not need to take time off work. In India, Karnataka played as many as twelve First Class matches (not so different to the modern English domestic season of sixteen First Class fixtures), but most sides in the Ranji Trophy play eight.

However, scratch a little deeper and things are not so healthy, even in England. There is constant pressure to cut the First Class programme to accommodate other forms of cricket. There are persistent cries that there are too many First Class counties: Derbyshire, Gloucestershire and Glamorgan are frequently mentioned as counties that no one would miss, often followed by Northamptonshire. Might not Surrey and Middlesex amalgamate so that there is just one London team? Why not make Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and maybe even Worcestershire form one supercounty to compete where the individual sides cannot?  There was even a rather unhealthy desire to see Darwinian selection take over in the form of a few counties failing to bankruptcy, without the need to wield the axe. Rumour has it that the recommendations on the future of the First Class game in England favoured a reduction to 12 or, at most, 14 games per side and a significant reduction in the number of counties.

One result is a strange, fragmented, First Class programme. The season starts earlier than ever and is half-completed by early June, it then has a substantial break until a frenetic climax in  late August and September. Four of the nine Division One teams had completed 10 of their 16 games by June 25^th and were into the final run-in. This mirrors the Sheffield Shield, which has a two month break from early December to early February and the Plunkett Shield in New Zealand with its odd format of a round of (non-simultaneous) games in late October, followed by two in mid-December and then games from February until April. In prestige, the First Class tournament may be the one to win, but it has to take its proper place, squeezed around the more financially attractive cricket with its TV income and larger gates (even so, one-day attendances in England have dropped year by year and now, not even the Final is a sell-out). It is a wonder that the County Championship survives and hard to see that there is not an element of reducing the appetite for the County game involved that would make it easier to cut back the fixtures in the future.

Indian fans are already asking why India bother to play Tests. They are kings in the short format and do not need Test cricket, particularly if they are to receive repeated hammerings. Series with Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and New Zealand are unattractive in many senses. The FTP has been tacitly forgotten (how many tours of India have Bangladesh made? When was the last England-Zimbabwe or India-Pakistan series?) Where India lead, others follow because they need a slice of the IPL and Champions League pie.

It is not hard to imagine a future, possibly not far away, where all cricket is played as a long-format (40 or 50 overs) and a short format (T20) only. There may even be a move to an even shorter format, with sides playing two games in an evening as in baseball. Maybe a few marquee series such as England v Australia v South Africa may continue to be played, perhaps as occasional one-off games. In such a world, would there be any place for a First Class programme at all? Probably not? Would traditional counties and State sides make any sense in such a world? Of course not! There would be a rapid change to franchise-based sides.

In such a future, England would be likely to continue with its traditional county game, probably in glorious isolation. One-day fever burnt out in England years ago. There are signs that T20 fever is burning out too: England invented T20, as they did the one-day format, but it is the traditional game that retains its popularity and importance. Even in Australia though, the shift to a game based around the short formats seems inexorable, with a powerful Grade structure as likely to supply the stars of the future as the Sheffield Shield. Other countries would probably shed their First Class programmes with some relief and throw everything into the limited-overs formats.