Setbacks Aren't a Big Deal - One Can Adapt

A Rambling Round-Up of Sorts

A couple of days from cricket can set you far back these days if you are trying to maintain a journal on the game. There is so much happening that it flicks past one's eyes and memory like a remote-seized television screen, for one reared on diet of careful attention and digestion of a game at a time.

However, yours truly was also bred during the period humanity leapt to march at a brisk pace in its evolution. He was born on the cusp of humankind's next evolutionary lurch forward, and that, let me tell you, involved plenty of g-force setting one back and required plenty of adaptation.

Man had launched himself into space and grabbed the moon from the lexicon of dreamers and poets by stamping all over it. Beatles happened, hippies went berserk, flower children were born, jeans flared away towards the feet, television went satellite for the first time, UHF tuners became the norm...medicine and science broke away from hereditary ideas and established radical new ideas.

It was a period when Chuni Goswami had switched from soccer, after retirment, to playing cricket. And he did creditably too for Bengal, leadinng them twice into the finals! There indeed was plenty of adaptive capability and necessity in those days. Times were changing indeed....Roy Gilchrist of West Indies, was playing the Ranji Leagues back in those days for Hyderabad alongside the likes of ML "Jai" Jaisimha, Abbas Ali Baig and Syed Abid Ali...Robin Waters of Sussex, Ireland and Bengal was keeping wickets for Bengal.

If you are wondering where this is all leading to, I did forewarn you about the ramble, and I assure you there is a useful purpose in pausing once in a while.

Charlie Stayers, the West Indian test pace bowler was playing for Bombay ( now Mumbai ) in the Ranji League and knockouts in that period....Chester Watson the West Indian test paceman was playing for Delhi...cricket was extablishing the body of its history. Cricket in India was then testing out clothes which would become a fashion 45 years later, when two leagues would be born and reintroduce foreign players to the domestic game in these parts. When, retired cricketers would dust out their flannels again and step out to the field...when retired sportsmen could be tempted to take up cricket as a sport, when many children would actually return to sports, and cricket in particular, with visions of a proper career in their eyes.

So while things of that period were closely linked to tradition, it was also pioneering in a manner. Setbacks happen in pioneering times and adaptability is a compulsory attribute.

As a representative of that era and of cricket watchers therein, I too adapted after the setback of missing out cricket yesterday and a little before that. I took in the highlights of the test match and replays of the ICL over the weekend-night which is mine and mine alone.

That long-winded intro actually sets the tone for what coming!



In the same pioneering spirit, the Saffers too adapted brilliantly in response to the evolutionary leap forward which a Sehwaggian mutation propels cricketing mankind into.

The g-forces of that lurch towards the unknown and uncharted boundaries, like that V-cut for six over third-man for instance, can be enormous and frequently killing. Blood can be drained instantly from the brain and drop you into a comatose zone forever. One has to be enduringly fit, agile, rehearsed and innovative, to survive through that drag and live to break the barriers of unfathomed internal frontiers.

SA took a deep breath, analyzed the play, came up with some solutions, rehearshed them overnight and put them in play the next morning. The line changes, the well-trodden corridor vacated, and resorted to only as a sedctive bypass. The results were immediate. The 400 was not to be...not yet anyway. This could be the SA tactic for the series now...cat and mouse game trying to outguess each other. One who blinks first loses.

Indian batsmen who had soaked in the Sehwaggian mutation in euphoric doses from the dangerous rests of the pavilion found their mental distance between mind and ball fixed in what now was illusory expansiveness. Adaptation had occurred somewhere, lines had changed, and elsewhere the g-force was still stretching the players to expect the standard corridor channel. The mixing up was smart and without any hint, and the unprepared bats could not accomodate the swift, frequent, and disciplined changes in line. They nicked and nudged completely out of line , and fell.

The Mercury was launched ...but the Apollo series was yet to happen. Sehwag got to his second triple but not yet to his first quadrupule.

Dravid is India's heritage. He is a standard which must be adhered to through all change. He raised the bar with 10,000 runs, but heritage must be woven into change.

India has spun out of control in recent past. In test match cricket at home, it has come to rest upon Kumble. Spin is no longer its forte...Harbhajan did well in the first innings here but hasn't been a top in the recent past. Here, Kumble fell silent.

The pitch didn't crack-up to help (yet) and neither was it sporting enough to assist the new weapons of Indian cricket's trade - it's pacemen who could do with some help.

They are not yet disciplined like the Saffers are, nor are they supremely fit as the Proteas.

So the Sehwaggian mutation certainly induced a response but could not tranform the Indian teamkind to a different level of existence.

The match now is a draw, India incapable on day five, and SA would rather they practiced batting than offer any elixir of a spurious declaration.

Coming to the leagues I neglected through the week...ICL first. It is here that my earlier ramblings become relevant

The second edition of Indian Cricket League: Edelweiss 20's Cup

The Badshah's are assured of the finals...perhaps the trophy. The Heroes assured themselves yesterday of a semi-final clash by turning the Chandigarh Lions into mewing kitties yesterday. the Chennai Supes are already in.

Now the Tigers and Giants will joust for the final spot. However, the Giants are behind on the NRR.

In an earlier article on the ICL here, I did feel that Heroes looked the best team to challenge the Badshahs. However, it does look like a semi-final encounter between them to me...or am I wrong? Time will show the final positions below the Badshahs.

Now the Englishmen want to play! On this blog, I had earlier urged the various boards to adapt...and adapt fast. To weave heritage and change into a useful, coherent, valuable, progressive, sustaining fabric. In other words, I had urged the idle officious butts sitting on the game for long in all boards to move it, consider the players as human beings and their aspirations as valid realities, and actually get to some constructive work than pontificate from their idle self-serving perches.

Design a few leagues around the world to include more players, offer greater exposure, remuneration, and opportunities to players and newbiews, use the funds to spread the game as well as sustain heritage....find one window to fit them all in (different players will be contracted to different leagues of course and cannot be playing in all)....before some privateering buccaneer, or a band of such, grab the game away from them.

The answer is not in repression and suppression. The answer is not in cutting down test matches...the answer lies first in acknowledging the reality of aspirations first. Have a window ( or two windows for the southern and northern hemispheres ), and build your test schedule around it.

The players too will have to adapt. In a pro world they are seeking, those who are very best to represent in tests will have to take steps to accomodate their earning season withoout compromising their test seasons and fitness. They need to find the extra for that extra. But the leagues will help more players than only the 110 likely to represent 10 test playing nations. Leave it to the players to choose their league of choice...get the window period done, and get back to test cricket after that.

The boards will have to rational too. Spurious one-dayers will have to go. They will have to be made leaner, fitter, and more meaningful entities, so all formats can be accomodated and appreciated. The player base will also expand commensurately and all boards must give up the defensiveness at the rising power of the player.

If Test Match Cricket ( with quality) has to survive, and be profitable, it will need these adaptations and adjustments to be made by all boards.

We may have a window for T20, we could have a window for 50-50, and the largest window being reserved for test match cricket.

A Petition to Join Voice Against Two Test Match Series or WorseAnd once and for all, minimum test matches must be three in number in a series. There is no place for Buurstadized versions of it (like two test series and one-test series) among test match playing countries. Test match status itself should mean a minimum level of high standard and expansions of it should be on merit only. In case expansions do happen in the test match status numbers, there should be two leagues with the top eight in the first and the second league having the next eight with relegation and promotion system.

Either adapt with the lurch forward or be dragged down by the g-forces of it like India has been in this test match.

At the end, I request you all to sign the above petition (those who haven't please click the Save Test Match Cricket Icon)) to save test match cricket through wise transformation rather than silly chopping and restructuring without detailed collective thought. And oh yes, tours cannot be cancelled, they could be played elsewhere or postponed for a reasonable time.

I have drawn attention of a friend in one of the popular news and web portals to the concept of this petition and if he could have the theme at least discussed in their sports section. let's see how it goes.