Wisden India Almanack 2019 & 20

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PART ONE

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Wisden India Honours

WISDEN INDIA HALL OF FAME

We honour sportspersons in various ways; by naming streets, roundabouts and stadiums after them, by instituting trophies in their memory, by turning them into adjectives (‘Bradmansque’), by arguing, generation after generation, over the relative merits of our heroes. The most enduring and dignified method in recent years has been to induct the best into the Hall of Fame. It is the concept – often a virtual ‘hall’ – that is the honour, not the bricks-and-mortar building.

Lala Amarnath (Page 89)

Gundappa Viswanath (Page 85)

SIX CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year – a tradition dating back to 1899 in the original Almanack – is given a subcontinental flavour in Wisden India Almanack. The six cricketers are picked by the editor, the selection based on the players’ positive impact on the season under review. It is necessary to highlight the distinction since in recent years, some players who have made an impact have done so for the wrong reasons. Negative impact does not count.

Jasprit Bumrah (page 104)

Smriti Mandhana (page 101)

Mayank Agarwal (page 108)

Fakhar Zaman (page 111)

Dimuth Karunaratne (page 113)

Rashid Khan (page 116)

BEYOND THE BOUNDARY

‘Beyond the Boundary’ acknowledges the ‘person of the year’. Introduced in the 2016 edition of the Wisden India Almanack, it recognises contributions of people off the pitch.

Imran Khan (page 120)

WISDEN INDIA BOOK OF THE YEAR

Cricket Country: The Untold History of the First All India Team by Prashant Kidambi (page 889)

Notes by the Editor

2019 wasn’t the greatest World Cup of all time. There were too few really exciting games, hardly any stunning upsets, and virtually no tactical or strategic advances. But it was a proper showpiece, and the final might have seen the finest one-day finish ever. To the victor the spoils, writes Lawrence Booth in his review here, adding charmingly, And, for once, to the losers too.

The ICC’s decision to field only ten teams had come in for much criticism, but it deserves the benefit of the doubt. Just because television prefers it that way doesn’t necessarily make it bad. A qualifying tournament ensures that the best teams make the finals, and that is fair. Every team playing every other once is a good format. And we need to look at Virat Kohli’s suggestion that the team finishing on top deserves another shot at qualifying for the final, as in the IPL.

Before the tournament, it was possible to make two lists for India. First, the reasons for an Indian success and second, reasons for failure. The first included the sustained form of their top three batsmen, Shikhar Dhawan (later, K L Rahul), Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, the firepower of their fast men led by Jasprit Bumrah and enough runs lower down to cover up for a dodgy middle order. If India failed, it would be because of the middle order and the fact that they might have peaked too early in a tournament lasting nearly seven weeks.

India began well, and quickly looked like the top team. Too quickly. The defeat against England didn’t lead to much soul-searching; it was dismissed as one of those things. Did India get overconfident in the semi-final, especially after rain had ended the first day’s play with New Zealand on 211 for 5 in the 47th over? In their final two matches, New Zealand showed themselves to be masters of defending the small total, 239 and 241, and became the favourites everywhere (except in England).

The final was a celebration of cricket, revealing the possibilities of the 50-over game, which was thought to be on its death bed.

For long, it wasn’t a particularly good match. The Lord’s wicket was too slow and the occasion seemed to get to the performers. But the finish changed everything. A tie is exciting enough, but a double tie? The questions will remain, though. How could England have won when New Zealand didn’t lose?

Sport is not perfect. Often imperfection is the crack through which we see it at its best. Rules are arbitrary, so it is as valid to say the team with most boundaries wins as it is to say that the team that loses the fewer wickets does so. In the end, the best team took the title.

The argument that England’s ‘extra run’ led to victory assumes that everything else would have remained exactly the same. But one variable can affect others too in real-life situations.

If New Zealand did not deserve to win the World Cup, it was for one reason only. They played a brand of cricket that was a throwback to the English style of old: overcautious, unadventurous, riskaverse. This, at a time when the format was in danger of being wiped out by T20, and the sport itself was struggling to attract new fans. Something was needed to provide the energy and flair that would revive it, and England delivered that in style. The accent was on attack — whether batting or bowling — and the approach attractive.

World Cup winners set the agenda. Had New Zealand won, it might have been a step back. England winning means that other teams might attempt to play like them, in a positive, sexy style that can only be good for the game.

New Zealand have been the best-behaved team in international cricket, and in Kane Williamson they had a gracious captain with a fine tactical brain. It was difficult not to love him and his team just as it was difficult not to sympathise with the team for the non-defeat that ended all dreams. In the ideal world, the Cup might have been shared.

But sport abhors such fragmentation. Competition demands that there be one winner, and all games have rules for breaking the tie from penalty shootouts to (in the old days) bowl outs and Super Overs. It is not a perfect system, but it is there, and no one had an issue with it before the tournament began.

Before Duckworth-Lewis appeared and fans stopped complaining about results because they didn’t understand the rule, ODIs were decided in a variety of ways. We can get too mathematical about the Lord’s final, and forget the human drama and the spirit of the players involved. Ben Stokes, for one, deserves better.

The final was unforgettable, even if Williamson might not echo Roger Federer’s words after his loss at Wimbledon a few kilometres and a few minutes away: I shall try to forget.

Back to the future

We have seen the future of one-day cricket. It is remarkably like the past. In its infancy, the game was about positive batsmanship and negative bowling; in its teens it was about keeping wickets in hand in the first part of the innings, then accelerating, and finally hitting out in the ‘slog overs’. Bowlers had realised by then that the best way to keep runs down was to take wickets. That was in the 1980s, and that’s how it is now.

What does ‘retirement’ mean?

World Cups are often viewed as finishing posts to international careers. After 2019, Imran Tahir, Shoaib Malik and J P Duminy called it a day, while Chris Gayle, who had said he would do so, changed his mind and expressed a desire (selectors willing) to take on India in the home series next. Which brings us to the question: What does retirement mean? In 2014, Mahendra Singh Dhoni declared in the middle of a Test series in Australia that he was retiring from Test cricket, but not from the shorter formats. Ricky Ponting had gone in the other direction a decade ago, retiring from T20 cricket to extend his run in Test cricket.

It was so much simpler earlier. A player announced his retirement — which meant he would play no more Test or first-class cricket — and disappeared behind the mike in a broadcasting studio. Today, players announce their retirement from international cricket but hope to continue playing in domestic T20 franchise cricket. The dollar-to-effort ratio is in his favour, after all. After much thought, therefore, we decided to drop the ‘Farewell’ section this edition. Old cricketers never retire, they merely lose their appeal.

Circle of life

Sport can be cruel. Yesterday’s champions become today’s no-hopers, top teams sink below competitive level. Younger players and fans know only failures, older ones try to convince them of the power of the glory days.

The four teams at the bottom of the World Cup league table were Afghanistan, West Indies, Bangladesh and South Africa. South Africa were the No.1 team not so long ago and West Indies twice world champions. Afghanistan, except against India, have looked somewhat out of their depth, leaving the romantics struggling to find inspiring things to say about them.

Yet in recent years, Afghanistan’s has been the story of cricket. A team put together in times of strife in the refugee camps of another country, whose ‘home’ turf is a third country. The story has been told many times, yet it still surprises many that someone like Mohammed Nabi looks so cool and calm in the face of great pressure as he did while nearly getting his team over the line.

A bit of perspective here. Nabi has been through worse than a yorker-rich over from Bumrah. His father was kidnapped and held for ransom while his country was in turmoil. At least one cricketer was killed by an American raid. Years ago, Australian all-rounder Keith Miller put things in perspective after the World War when he said, Pressure? There’s no pressure in cricket. Real pressure is when you are flying a Mosquito with a Messerschmitt up your arse! No doubt Nabi and his mates will have their own definition of ‘pressure’. Cricket is unlikely to figure in it.

Both West Indies and South Africa lost key players through injury, but their decline recently has been the other story of cricket. Rebuilding can be a long and troubling process; after this performance, older players are likely to call it a day, and younger players will wonder if they can handle the transition.

The bottom-placed teams can take heart from India’s recovery after their disastrous performance in 2007. India bowed out of that World Cup in some disarray, having failed to qualify for the knockout. The picture of the senior players with shocked expressions, some of them weeping openly, made an impact on a disappointed nation. Yet in four years’ time the team had been rebuilt and did well enough to win the World Cup. Sometimes defeat can force changes that lead to victory.

No harm no foul

Some years ago, ‘Richie Benaud’ tweeted, Indians just don’t get conflict of interest. The account was fake, but the sentiment was sound, as evidenced by the uproar it provoked in cyberspace.

Indians don’t relate to conflict of interest, said the social scientist Shiv Viswanathan. It is a cultural perception. Conflict of interest is not taken seriously, except for raising some curiosity. We would rather maximise interests than agonise over conflict of interest.

Not so long ago, the president of the BCCI owned an IPL team, his son-in-law was an important official in it while the chief national selector was a brand ambassador of the same team. Wearing two or more hats was not only seen as an individual’s due, it was accepted as a perk of his stature in the game.

Then came Justice Mukul Mudgal and his clear delineation of conflict of interest, and Justice Lodha who ruled on how it ought to be handled. BCCI’s Rule 38(4) lists 16 posts of which no two may be held simultaneously. Yet, many stars who became officials at state or national level still kept their other jobs including television commentary.

Players argue that cricket pays the bills even after their playing days, as they turn coaches, commentators, technical advisors, expert columnists, administrators and thus remain attached to the game. To deny up and coming players their experience and expertise would be unfair. The argument, therefore, is that a job in one of these spheres should not make them ineligible for a post in the national or state bodies.

The question that needs to be answered (the issue has been sent to the Supreme Court as we go to press) remains: Is there a balancing point? Can the BCCI work out a compromise where a former player’s expertise is at its disposal while ensuring that conflict of interest, though technically present, does no harm?

Perhaps it is time to allow former players a role by introducing the phrase material difference into the rule on conflict of interest. If it does not make a material difference, another old sporting rule may be invoked: No harm, no foul.

For 20 balls fewer

In a few months, there will be yet another doorway into cricket. Nearly half a century ago, when cricket was dying (as it is apparently doing again today), the one-day international arrived to rescue it. A few years ago, when cricket was dying again, T20 arrived. And now, with cricket dying once more, The Hundred is here to rescue it.

It is impossible to tell just how many T20 enthusiasts walked through the door to swell the ranks of Test cricket enthusiasts. Or even if the traffic moved in the opposite direction.

In England, thanks to The Hundred, a five-year television deal worth £1.1 billion will see cricket return on terrestrial TV after two decades. Is The Hundred the answer? The scepticism was summed up by the editor of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack who wrote that this is English cricket’s Brexit: an unnecessary gamble that had overshadowed all else, gone over budget and would end in tears because it hung over the English game like the sword of Damocles, suspended only by the conviction of a suited few.

Will a fourth format be a better doorway? Will doorways be different in different countries?

Every new format of the game has engendered sceptics. India were the biggest sceptics when the T20 came around, and were reluctant entrants into the inaugural World Cup in that format.

Then they won, and life changed. The IPL was born, a doorway within a doorway, and millions of dollars, fans, words later, it is the one every player hopes to be picked for.

The average fan at an IPL game is a raucous, impatient supporter of cricketers rather than the cricket (the distinction is an important one) and would be thoroughly out of place, even miserable, at a Test match. T20 has shortened history, with memory that goes back only to a few matches; Tests call for a better historic sense. What IPL has done is create a new audience — one that sees in the match an evening of entertainment and banter rather than one that looks to enhance understanding of the well-bowled off-cutter or the perfect cover-drive that does not go for six. The product is everything, the ends justify the means.

If T20 was a marketing solution to a cricketing problem, so is The Hundred. And should 20 balls make such a difference? How much can we take away from the game and still retain its character?

This is the ‘heap of sand’ paradox. Imagine a heap of sand. You remove one grain. It is obviously still a heap of sand.

Then you remove two, and three and four and two thousand and five hundred thousand and so on. Is it still a heap when there are just ten grains left? Or three? At what point does the heap cease to be a heap? At what stage does cricket cease to be cricket?

Administrators aren’t too fussed about ancient Greek paradoxes. Their philosophical quest is much simpler: to discover at what stage lack of money becomes bagsful of it.

Morality and convention

The charm of cricket has always been its illogicality and complexity. Matches last for five days with no result guaranteed. What is legally fair is often ethically unacceptable. What was unacceptable in one generation is commonplace in another. It is a game of nuance and varying shades, making it difficult for those who think in black and white to understand or appreciate.

There are written laws of the game, and then there are the unwritten rules. The latter have greater power and purpose. A bowler over-stepping is no-balled, a player overstepping is blackballed, sometimes by his own team-mates. In an era when international players have been caught cheating on the field, it might seem precious, even pretentious to criticise a bowler for running out a non-striker backing up too much.

Yet, if you don’t understand that this is not cricket, then you don’t understand what cricket is.

R Ashwin can argue that in their IPL clash, Jos Buttler was attempting to gain an unfair advantage by stepping out before the ball was bowled; he can also claim that the law allows him to run out such a batsman.

True, and true. And since he himself was leading, there was no call for the captain to interfere, as skipper Virender Sehwag did, recalling Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Thirimanne when Ashwin ran him out similarly during a one-day international. If that was soft, Sehwag was quoted as saying then, that’s the way we are.

When Vinoo Mankad did it in Australia, or Kapil Dev in South Africa, they each warned the batsman first. The law does not require this — yet convention does. And sport has to follow both laws and conventions. There was an element of entrapment about Ashwin’s move; he checked his bowling action and waited that split second till the batsman moved out before whipping off the bails. If bowlers did that, about 90 per cent of all dismissals would be run out in this ‘mankading’ fashion. Especially in the white-ball game.

We confuse morality and convention in sport, thus leading to much sound and fury. The philosopher David Papineau distinguished between the two thus: Morality is universal, independent of authority, and has to do with genuine welfare, while convention varies across societies, depends on decree, and governs matters of no intrinsic importance.

Sport is of no intrinsic importance, and seen in perspective, it is quite meaningless. But it is this artificiality that makes us infuse it with the kind of ethics that we do not expect in other areas of human endeavour. This is our way of giving sport meaning.

There are those who feel — and this includes players past and present — that too much is made of such incidents, and that ethics have no role to play in sport. Thus you wait for the umpire’s signal even if you know you have edged the ball to the ’keeper, or claim a catch despite knowing it wasn’t a clean one. The justification is that this is done in the team interest. That is a slippery slope. There are a number of things you can do — injuring a rival player for instance — that can be justified thus.

Trying to bluff the umpire might be a legitimate tactic in some sports, but in cricket it is looked down upon. Yet it is now accepted that batsmen are under no obligation to ‘walk’, and the DRS has taken the moral weight off the catcher’s shoulders.

We can avoid some of the ambiguity of the ‘mankading’ situation if the law lays down that a batsman must be warned once or twice. Yet, what is gained in clarity is lost in sportsmanship. When conventions become law, it suggests a lack of moral strength. Something is done or not done because the law demands it, not because that is the way the game ought to be played. Players must be given the ethical choice so we can see what they are made of.

There are some things you don’t do on a cricket field, because that is the nature of the game. The laws of the game tell us what we should do; the spirit tells us what we should aspire to.

Division of labour

Watching Kohli captain India in the white-ball series against Australia, and to a lesser extent in the World Cup, one thing stood out. He was happy to let former captain Dhoni call the shots when India were fielding.

Indian teams in the past have been led in two different ways: captaincy by the individual and captaincy by committee. Now here is a third, captaincy split between the batting captain and fielding captain. Not entirely, of course, but significantly. Kohli often fielded out of range of the wicketkeeper or bowler, relying on Dhoni’s rapport with the spinners in particular to see their spells through.

There is nothing inherently right or wrong, good or bad about this so long as the captains are on the same page and the lines of authority are clearly drawn.

Indian captains have often been burdened by the inclusion in the team of former captains. Dhoni himself led teams with Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag in them; all had led earlier. In general, however, seniors have expected younger captains to kowtow to them and behaved like visiting mothers-in-law happy to point out mistakes.

As Mike Brearley wrote in his classic on captaincy, a captain has no place to hide. Yet, an arrangement such as the Dhoni-Kohli one might allow Kohli to look at a game from a different perspective and keep himself mentally fresh if there is a long chase to come.

Dhoni’s directives to the spinners captured by the stump mic have been both pragmatic and effective. He instructs, explains and then adds, but it’s up to you. It is a wonderful system so long as it is effective, not so wonderful if there is any confusion especially under pressure.

Captaincy is a difficult job, and anything that makes it easier for the individual or the team should be welcomed. Shared captaincy might become a feature of future ODIs.

Leaving little to imagination

Professional sport is seriously competitive; sportsmen and women react when frustrated or feel badly done by. The distance between the performer and the spectator once lent sport a unique charm — and enabled writers like Neville Cardus to invent conversations. The quotes he fabricated were often humorous or imaginative, so the players didn’t mind. And then came the stump mic.

There were two unintended consequences: they picked up the chatter around the bat, and they served as a vehicle for free advertisement.

This last was a response by the Australian team during the ‘Sandpaper’ series in South Africa when the broadcasters refused to turn down the mics, and the players plugged their personal sponsors. The umpires, sponsored by Emirates, were asked, How good is Qantas? and Australian beers were fondly mentioned. Australia had done this in 2006 too when they played Bangladesh.

Whether it is more irritating to hear plugs for sponsors or well-articulated four-letter words and banter that wouldn’t pass muster in a low-grade movie is difficult to tell. Broadcasters love it; often listeners too, convinced they are being allowed into the sanctum sanctorum. The adage that what happens on the field should be left on the field no longer applies. What happens on the field lands up in our drawing rooms and on the match referee’s table. Pakistan captain Sarfraz Ahmed and West Indies bowler Shannon Gabriel were suspended for racist and homophobic comments respectively, thanks to the all-hearing stump mic.

Cricket is once again being asked to play the moral leader, to set an example for those who get away with casual racism or homophobia in everyday life. Perhaps the message will get through to the general public; perhaps it won’t, but there is an argument for keeping the mics on full-time to a) discourage bad behaviour and b) punish it so it stays as an example for those watching who either don’t know or don’t care that certain behaviour crosses a line.

Should cricketers be subject to such intense scrutiny? A day at a cricket match is work for the players, entertainment for the spectators. Players tend to swear on three occasions: at themselves when they make a mistake, to rile an opponent, or in response to an opponent’s attempt at riling.

It is convenient to believe that sledging is a modern phenomenon, invented by Ian Chappell. This is ridiculous. Read what Walter Hammond said to Don Bradman when Bradman was given not out when caught at slip, or the South African fast bowler Peter Heine’s threat to English batsman Trevor Bailey: I want to hit you, Bailey, I want to hit you over the heart.

Has the stump microphone improved player behaviour? Players quickly worked out how to say nasty things just out of range. In 2007 when the stump mic was introduced at the World Cup, the intention was to help umpires with their decisions, not compare the vocabulary of the players.

Perhaps players object to the stump mic because they don’t want us to know the real truth: that much of the chatter is banal. The best cricket stories don’t come to us via the stump microphone, but through imaginative writing, manufactured post-event.

Cultural revolution

The change has been gathering pace, and now it is clear: India are prepared to win looking ugly, by grinding it out.

It is the triumph of pragmatism over romance, placing winning above the dictates of looking pretty. Attractive, wristy (often risky) batsmanship and flighted, tantalising spin — the clichés about Indian cricket — have made way for practical run-making and sustained fast bowling. It is a cultural revolution, no less.

It was an attitude anathema to Indians through generations of going down fighting attractively, of showing flair and flash that contributed little to the result. But the oohs and aahs as a batsman played a beautiful cover-drive usually spared him the condemnations when he threw it away in his 20s or 30s.

Those were the days when a fighting draw was all that mattered. The Indian team transited from perennial Test match losers to one capable of drawing matches to one expected to win as the No.1 side in the world. But through it all, one theme dominated: it was important to look good. Flair and flash, flamboyance, even a bit of ostentation was rewarded with greater public acclaim.

Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid might have been the bedrock of the batting in their respective eras, but even these masters of defensive batsmanship were stylish, they had what the public called class.

Class was important. So was charm.

It was the same with bowling. The visual attraction and legends built around the great spinners — Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan — were millstones around the necks of generations that followed. Every succeeding left-arm spinner was compared to Bedi and lost out in the comparison. For years Indians never forgave Anil Kumble for lacking the poetic vulnerability of Chandrasekhar, for not being an extravagant turner of the ball. World class did not automatically mean India class!

The Melbourne Test in the Australia series seems to have completed the transition. A generation more intent on the what and less focused on the how describes both the players and the majority of their audience back home.

Cricket and society reflect each other. Flamboyance as a by-product is acceptable, but as the main event will not be forgiven easily if it doesn’t lead to victory. K L Rahul’s struggle is both technical and historical. Here’s an attractive batsman who is out of step with team philosophy.

Whether Cheteshwar Pujara is a product of the new culture or the one who is driving it, he is certainly its finest exemplar. He made centuries in both the Tests India won in Australia, supremely unconcerned about such mundane matters as strike-rates and putting bowlers in their place with dismissive, even arrogant batsmanship. Pujara is the unexpected Test star of the new India — but unexpected only in the eyes of those who haven’t been following the trend away from romanticism.

When Kohli first led in Australia four years ago, romance was still king. He led with flair, making two centuries in a Test and throwing everything into a chase that nearly won India the match. So near and yet so far — the staple of headlines on the sports pages not so long ago. Kohli became a hero to the generation espousing romance, but a villain to the pragmatists.

Cricket’s ego system

The more sensitive of cricket followers sometimes pause to ask the question: what kind of a national team do we want? In Australia, after the ball-tampering row and the ban on their top players, an official inquiry into the culture of the game there examined that very question.

Can you imagine anyone giving much thought to a related question: what kind of administrators do we want?

In recent years, the Board of Control for Cricket in India has gone from being a powerful body led by powerful men to a bunch of seat-grabbers who have little impact on international affairs, and little energy to expend on the game with everything focused on court battles, finding loopholes in the rulings and playing the victim.

The Committee of Administrators set up by the Supreme Court functions in a manner indistinguishable from the body it was meant to reform.

What kind of BCCI do we want? One which is an arrogant, self-serving, politically-influenced, money-making outfit that still does a lot for cricket and cricketers, or one which follows the rules, and generally appears blameless but contributes nothing to the game?

How much are we willing to sacrifice in terms of international image and acceptance, financial jugglery, wastage, personal convenience and ignored rules in return for efficiency? Should it be 30 per cent mess for 70 per cent effectiveness? 40-60? 50-50? How much of a margin is acceptable?

The choice, naturally, should not be that extreme. Surely we can get a top professional who will do his job without bothering about the next election? Yes, but that will mean changing a feudal system built on favour-mongering and largesse-distribution.

It is a long battle, and changing the culture is not an easy task. The BCCI even at its worst was the best sports body in the country, but self-perpetuation was its unspoken motto. In the Indian folk tale, anyone who sat on the throne of Vikramaditya spoke only the truth. Similarly, anyone who sits on the chairs of administrators behaves like BCCI officials.

The cynics might say that the CoA is enjoying the perks of the job too much to want to change. In effect, therefore, the BCCI is an organization without a proper president or secretary, without an effective CEO and overseen by a committee that has issues of its own. Cricket’s ecosystem has been overtaken by its ego system.

The thrice-bowled tale

The first international sporting contest between Uruguay and Argentina was in cricket. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of that event, two exhibition matches were held in Buenos Aires. Our intrepid correspondent, Andreas Campomar, who has written a wonderful history of Latin American football, writes here of the sesquicentennial celebration. The story of cricket in Latin America, and India’s connection with it is fascinating; as is the fact that he managed to get bowled three times in the same innings….

The rotating cup syndrome

BHARAT SUNDARESAN

"Rotating cup da, rotating cup. It’s apparently one of those injuries that’s common with your cricketeers (Tamil for cricketers), my aunt screamed from her emergency ward bed of the orthopaedic hospital she’d found herself in. Earlier that day, she’d slipped and fallen on the footpath outside her home. Attempts at breaking the fall with her palm had done severe damage to her right shoulder. And the doctor’s prognosis, in her words anyway, didn’t sound like any bodily issue I’d ever heard a cricketeer suffer from. It sounded more like a kitchen experiment gone wrong. Eventually it took my cousin to clear the air as he announced, My amma suddenly just found something she shares in common with both Javagal Srinath and Sachin Tendulkar. She’s torn her rotator cuff."

Srinath, after all, was the first Indian cricketer of the modern era to introduce us to this vital part of the shoulder made up of muscles and tendons that assist in all kinds of upper-torso motion, not just in bowling fast. This anatomical enlightenment happened in early 1997 when India’s then pace spearhead broke down following a hectic and extended stint on the road. He’d bowled over 400 overs during the previous year across Test matches in England, South Africa and at home. The breakdown was inevitable. Srinath was India’s only genuine fast bowler in that era. It was a big deal that he was gone for nearly nine months. So much so that a national daily even carried a spoof story on April 1 of that year claiming that the Mysore Express was planning a return to the team as a left-arm spinner.

But the rotator cuff and shoulder injuries remained fast bowler problems and therefore rather alien, not something that would worry Indian cricket too often, till Sachin Tendulkar came under the knife in 2006 for a shoulder surgery. It wasn’t the exact same issue though.

Like it had been the case and would continue to be so till the end of his career, a Tendulkar injury ended up burgeoning India’s medical vocabulary. And by then, the ‘tennis elbow’ had already become the all-time most popular sports injury in India. ‘SLAP lesion’ was only the latest entry into the book. It was basically a muscle tear caused by excessive use, a throwing injury more than a batting or bowling one. After battling with it for a few months, Tendulkar was finally forced to go for surgery, missing five months of cricket in the process.

A Tendulkar injury ended up burgeoning India’s medical vocabulary. – Getty Images

India always had a strange connection with the Tendulkar anatomy ever since he made his debut and got struck on the face by Waqar Younis as a 16-year-old baby-faced prodigy, whom everyone in the nation wanted to mother. For all the pages he filled up in the record books over 24 years, Tendulkar’s career could easily be converted into a medical journal, the time he spent with physios, trainers and doctors.

Somebody once told me I could write a book on medicine, Tendulkar would say while launching his autobiography a few years ago.

There was hardly a part of his body that didn’t give Indian cricket fans heartache at some point or the other during his career. If it wasn’t his back, which was a recurring issue and famously flared up during that 1999 Test against Pakistan in Chennai, it was his toes, his fingers, his ankle, his knee, his hamstring, his neck or his abdomen.

He wasn’t feeling the pain alone though. His pain somehow became every Indian’s pain.

None of his injuries caught on like the dreaded tennis elbow. It was perhaps the closest Tendulkar came to losing his aura as he struggled to cope with the debilitating injury. It harangued him for nearly two years and forced him to seek Dr Andrew Wallace’s help, which led to surgery. Wallace would have Tendulkar in his operation theatre a year later for the aforementioned shoulder issue. While wild theories abound over the cause of this injury — from him having used a heavy bat all his life to this being a karmic conspiracy — every Indian had some definitive knowledge of its effects. Understandably, a lot of them started relating to the tennis elbow issue as well. It didn’t seem to matter if they hadn’t spent three quarters of their life holding a bat and scoring a multitude of runs or if all they’d ever used their hands to carry were a few utensils at home or a briefcase to work.

There was suddenly a surge in tennis elbow diagnoses, and the demographics of those suffering with the problem ranged from housewives to medical representatives to the nocturnal kinds on a heavy liquid diet.

The tennis elbow has remained in vogue ever since, even as Tendulkar recovered and played for another half-a-dozen years. I know of at least three members in my wife’s family, all teachers, who have been diagnosed with the problem as recently as last year. Just saying.

The fast bowling revolution in India kind of coincided with the rapid increase in people taking to running as their primary exercise across the country. It came about in the wake of the many high-profile marathons that propped up in all the major cities. Soon enough, the likes of Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Munaf Patel would break down with injuries to various parts of their legs. And soon enough, there was a sudden rise in household sports injuries around India, particularly to the lower part of the body. People have been pulling up ever since with bad ‘hammies’ or the odd ‘adductor muscle strain’ (the groin) from Cubbon Park to Marine Drive. Even the rotator cuff made a return to the mainstream as Zaheer and Munaf suffered and recovered to win India the 2011 World Cup.

It’s not of course only in India where cricketers’ injuries and in lieu their bodies become topics of national discourse. Michael Clarke’s hamstring was discussed as intensely as craft beer and weather forecasts all across Australia in the lead-up to the 2015 World Cup. As was Shane Warne’s shoulder in the lead-up to the 1998-99 Ashes, Andrew Flintoff’s knees and ankles through his career and every time Shane Watson walked on to a cricket field.

There have been a few bizarre health issues that didn’t quite catch on in everyday use or create much of a stir despite them having inflicted two cricketers of superstar reputation. Harbhajan Singh’s groin infection that made him miss a Test in South Africa and Shoaib Akhtar’s genital warts that ruled him out of the 2009 World T20, which Pakistan incidentally won, are two examples. For that matter, even Lakshmipathy Balaji’s osteitis pubis injury — which put him out for many months — where there’s pain and inflammation in the pelvic region, didn’t get much attention, maybe because it was just too darn difficult to pronounce.

The days of a multi-billion population fretting over one man’s body and its vagaries might be over. Somehow despite Virat Kohli’s omnipresence as a cricketing megastar in India, neither he nor anyone else will ever come close to the kind of national importance that used to be attached to Tendulkar’s fitness. Kohli’s neck injury in the lead-up to what was supposed to be his maiden county stint was on the front-pages with one tabloid even managing to get a sneak peek into the hospital reports and claiming it was a ‘slipped disc’ — which for good reason wasn’t the case considering how staid and non-exotic it sounds.

Cricket will continue to remain a source of medical lessons in India, though, especially with fewer rest days and the amount the players play only burgeoning. Rest assured you haven’t heard the last of rotator cuffs, or rotating cups.

Bharat Sundaresan’s book The Dhoni Touch was released in 2018.

Was the day ‘very easy’, ‘easy’, ‘moderate’, ‘moderately hard’, ‘very hard’, ‘very, very hard’, ‘extremely hard’, ‘sub maximal’ or ‘maximal’? – Getty Images

Play and submit

GIDEON HAIGH

Recently I sat down with an Australian cricketer and caught sight on his phone of the Cricket Australia app — his two-way communication with the organisation’s team performance department. I had seen these before, but when I expressed interest, he offered, with a tone of good-humoured chagrin, to take me through its functions.

The app, developed by Microsoft, serves as a diary for every player in CA’s elite system — conveying details of games, training, travel et al. In the whirl of the ceaseless Australian season, all but a tiny well-organised minority would be lost without it. Its other purpose is as a real-time monitoring system, collecting data on the players’ physical and mental states for synthesising at Brisbane’s National Cricket Centre. In the jargon, it goes to the cricketer’s IPP (Individual Player Profile) of the AMS (Athlete Management System).

The app’s dashboard presents eight options accented to playing and training workloads, calibrated to a fine degree. If a player has batted on a certain day, for example, they must account for the elapsed time and balls faced, and whether the activity was ‘very easy’, ‘easy’, ‘moderate’, ‘moderately hard’, ‘very hard’, ‘very, very hard’, ‘extremely hard’, ‘sub maximal’ or ‘maximal’.

A wellness section solicits information about sleep, soreness, stress and fatigue. ‘How do you rate your fatigue?’ the app asks with quiet insistence: are you ‘always tired’, ‘more tired than normal’, ‘normal’, ‘fresh’ or ‘very fresh’? Other pages surveyed ‘reflections’, on training and on games. Did the player have a ‘Clear Plan’? Did the player ‘Stick to the Plan’? How had they gone ‘Creating a Contest’? Did they achieve ‘Focus’ and ‘Execute Skills’? I was struck by one tiny box on this screen: ‘Enjoyment’. Remember that? I asked. Not really, he laughed. Underneath was an instruction: ‘Submit’. The choice of word could hardly have been more appropriate.

We were talking cricket, so it wasn’t quite the moment to chew on French philosophy, but I reckoned Michel Foucault could have mined that app for tens of thousands of words. Foucault’s famous study of the prison, Discipline and Punish, originated the concepts of surveillance and panopticism by exploring Jeremy Bentham’s scheme for a circular penitentiary, designed in such a way that the inmates could never be sure whether they were being observed from a central tower. Foucault saw this as prefiguring modes of surveillance in modern society so internalised that every man became effectively his own overseer, policing himself for fear of punishment.

The concept is almost a bit hoary now in a world of social media’s mass voluntary data collection and personalised content creation. Incessant scrutiny, of course, is what keeps cricket’s economy afloat — from the everyday business of putting big cricket to air to the minute interest in every moment of Virat Kohli’s day. Cricketers have locked themselves in a gilded jail, consenting to supervision by a staggering profusion of technologies, from pitch microphones to infra-red cameras; CCTV even pursues them into stairwells, as David Warner and Quinton de Kock learned in Durban.

But there is expanding an unseen realm of control that presents itself benignly, in the guise of greater efficiency and improved welfare. It is not yet fearfully efficient; it is data being collected mainly because it can be, and not yet that meaningful because there is so little to compare it to. But it is a phenomenon that in cricket is not to be removed, only expanded and refined, edging cricketers along to road to the status of automata, regulated and perhaps even one day selected by machine-learning algorithms. For a generation of cricketers is emerging whose life has been altogether pervaded by technology, who show off their digital ankle bracelets as jewellery, to whom the word ‘submit’ has no unsavoury connotations.

The CA app also has two self-reporting features related to psychic wellness: players must regularly update their EPQ (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire), an inventory of character traits, and K10 (Kessler Psychological Distress Scale), an index of depression and anxiety. Interested, I asked around other players to see how they related to this. Shoulders were shrugged: one basically filled in whatever it was felt would keep CA off one’s back. To them, the exercise felt tokenistic. I was told the story of a female player who failed to fill in her EPQ and K10 for a couple of weeks because she was depressed. All she received was a call admonishing her for delinquency. So she resumed, reporting low levels of mental wellness for the next fortnight. Nobody contacted her. What mattered, clearly, was ticking her boxes.

Early days yet too, I dare say. But what does it prelude? Players as individuals confiding in a distant database rather than their peers? Players turning aside from one another on the assumption that the system will palliate all suffering? Resourceful and resilient teams have always picked up and carried along their vulnerable members. But what is a ‘team’ in this schema? Simply a temporary vehicle for self-expression, remotely tended by all-seeing, all-knowing superintendents? As one bonded with cricket a lifetime, I often feel incomparably blessed, spoiled for choice, stimulated by the game’s growth, excited by my watching opportunities. But what I’m watching also feels less free, less spontaneous, more contrived and constricted. There are giants who rise above it, and in some ways, they are magnified more than ever; the rewards for the mass, too, have happily never been greater. Yet I cannot help a feeling that these developments have come at a cost to the cricketer’s dignity, independence and pleasure. They are all just passing one another by, units of production, never at rest.

The cricketer with whom I was chatting was nearer the end of his career than the beginning, but did not regret it. Cricket’s changed so much even in the last five years, he said. I know it’s always changed, but there’s become something about it that’s so… As he reached for a suitable sentiment, I interpolated: Joyless? He nodded. That’s the word, he said, looking down at his phone. Joyless.

Gideon Haigh is an Australian sportswriter and prolific author whose latest is the true crime work, A Scandal in Bohemia.

Prickly to change

MIKE BREARLEY

Five of the major issues facing world cricket over the past forty-odd years have been:

The advent of ODIs (1971, World Cup 1975)

The advent of T20 cricket (2003, World Cup 2007)

The introduction of DRS (2008)

The experiment of occasional day-night Tests (Australia v New Zealand 2015)

The possibility of cricket applying for admission to the Olympics.

On all these issues, India have at first, and in some cases for years, been reluctant, resistant and at times obstructive.

ODI

Until their surprise (and freakish) World Cup victory in 1983, India showed little interest in one-day international cricket. This was epitomised by Sunil Gavaskar’s innings in the first-ever World Cup match, against England at Lord’s in 1975.

India’s premier batsman amassed 36 not out in 60 overs, England having made a then record score of 334. According to the rules for that competition, in the event of two teams tying in the four-team groups, the one with better run-rate would go into the semi-final. So even if, as was suggested as a reason for his (and the rest of the side’s) extraordinary performance, India were almost certain to lose whatever approach they adopted, there was no justification for not bothering about the rate of scoring.

India’s supporters, especially those in England (no ODIs were televised live in India until the semi-final against England in 1983) made no secret of their frustration. Police were busy keeping protesters off the ground. Gavaskar said afterwards that the pitch was too slow to play shots — though not apparently for England. The team manager, GS Ramchand, at first defended Gavaskar: he had considered the score unobtainable, Ramchand said, and had used the opportunity for practice. Two days later, the manager changed his tune; he now said it was the most disgraceful and selfish performance he had ever seen. Gavaskar too had a different story. He spoke of his ‘mental agony’; of how he couldn’t force the pace and nor could he get out. Years later, he went further: he was out of form, played a few slogs early on, then got into a defensive rut.

India showed little interest in ODI cricket early on, as epitomised by opener Sunil Gavaskar’s 36 not out in the first-ever World Cup match. – Getty Images

But what is the evidence for India’s (rather than Gavaskar’s) stance towards ODIs? One small but striking fact is that whereas England played ODIs from 1971, India did not do so until 1974. Their first ODI captain, Ajit Wadekar, years later commented to Suresh Menon: We saw the one-day game merely as an extension of Test cricket … We didn’t take the game seriously. And we had no idea of tactics. As John Woodcock wrote in Wisden (1984), In the early years of limited-overs cricket no one, themselves included, took India seriously.

Perhaps the transition from India’s old style of cricket — with gifted spin-bowlers, defensively-oriented batsmen and incredibly patient crowds — entailed a revolutionary shift in attitude.

T20

When the Benson and Hedges Cup, an early-season, one-day, domestic competition in UK, came to an end in 2002, the England and Wales Cricket Board needed a second limited-overs competition to boost the game’s popularity and to make money. The counties voted 11-7 in favour of the radical proposal for a new county competition of 20 overs each side, which began in 2003. It was instantly successful. The first T20 match at Lord’s, between Middlesex and Surrey, attracted an almost full house of 27,509 spectators — the highest crowd for a county match there since the immediate post-War era, the halcyon days of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich.

Pakistan (2004), Australia (2005) and West Indies (2006) followed suit; India eventually inaugurated the IPL in 2008.

The first T20 international took place in 2005, between New Zealand and Australia in Auckland, and this too gained instant appeal. India’s first match was not until December 1, 2006, against South Africa in Johannesburg.

When in March 2006, a global T20 tournament was first mooted, BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah was quoted in the Indian media as saying: T20? Why not ten-ten or five-five or one-one? And he insisted: India will never play T20.

India were, then, as with ODIs, initially resistant to this new format, and slower than the other main countries to get involved. Since then, of course, they have run the biggest, razzmatazziest tamasha of them all, the IPL.

Now, in the light of the new ECB initiative to be called, it seems, 100-ball cricket, T20 seems almost old hat. Like world records for 100m sprinting, how far down will cricket go? (This could be an expression of my resistance — not to the short game in itself, but to the threat its advance poses to Test cricket.)

DRS

India did agree to try out DRS early in its history, the trial taking place in Sri Lanka in 2008. Notoriously, however, India subsequently refused to join all other Test-playing countries. Different arrangements (no reviews) applied to all Tests involving India — though they had to put up with its use in ICC-run World Cups. For most other Test matches, DRS operated. India seem to have reacted strongly to that experience in Sri Lanka: They lost the series 2-1; of their 21 reviews only one was successful, whereas Sri Lanka succeeded in 11 of their 27 reviews. In reality, India’s bigger problem lay in not knowing how to play Ajantha Mendis’s unorthodox bowling, alongside Muttiah Muralitharan’s.

Officially, India’s reasons were three: First, the technology was not perfect. Second, the idea of players being allowed to ask for a review contradicts one of cricket’s strongest ethical values, namely that one shouldn’t question the umpire’s decision. Third, as Anil Kumble argued, it is wrong to have differing final decisions, depending on interpretation by the third umpire, when the situations were identical — in which case DRS is not the final word.

My own views on these issues were, and are, that being imperfect is a matter of degree, and it has long been indisputable that the technology means a higher percentage of correct decisions. Moreover, this feature is not only of value in itself, vindicating truth and therefore justice, but also contributes to better behaviour on the field. As to questioning an umpire’s decision, the procedure used formalises the process (as in tennis), lessening the amount of querulous and bitter questioning. As to Kumble’s point, there is bound to be an element of interpretation in the reading of any situation, including reading what happens on the screen. Of course, one has to tinker with the procedures, and with the check-list of questions that the third umpire must ask himself, but this is true of any set of administrative arrangements.

India’s call: Reluctanty embracing DRS technology. – Getty Images

Many suspected there were also other reasons for India’s objections. It was suggested that India’s top batsmen were the source of opposition, that they feared they would fare worse with DRS. There was some truth in this: In the first place, umpires are in general slightly less willing to give top players out, since mistakes that apply to the best batsmen tend to make a bigger difference to the outcomes of matches, and a greater degree of scrutiny is given to mistakes involving such batsmen. Second, because opposition captains are more likely to risk losing a review on the chance of reversing a decision of not out against, say, Sachin Tendulkar, than they would against more ordinary batsmen, whom they would expect to dismiss sooner rather than later.

Day-night Tests

India refused to agree to Australia’s proposal for a day-night Test in Adelaide in 2018. Coach Ravi Shastri has said that India lack practice in it, while their opponents have played four such Tests.

I fear that though this is understandable, it is narrow-minded, short-sighted and selfish. Day-night Tests are, it seems to me, one small but crucial element in a range of possible remedies for the looming crisis for Test cricket: its vulnerability to gradual diminution if not extinction as a result of the inexorable encroachments of domestic T20 tournaments, which have proliferated and thrived like rabbits did in Australia. Restoring and re-establishing Test cricket at its previous place at the pinnacle of cricket will take as serious an effort as it has taken to save the Madagascar kestrel. It’s not that Test cricket has reached the nadir that this kestrel reached — only four pairs remained in the wild when conservationists intervened and bred them in captivity. But the cricketing kestrel of the future needs conservation-minded administrators, not short-term market devotees. I admire Cricket Australia for taking the initiative in staging day-night Test matches. In my view, other countries should see the bigger picture, and make it a priority both to cooperate and to follow suit.

The Olympics

In 2012, the ECB and BCCI were opposed to any application for cricket to be included in the Olympics. By 2018, only India stood in the way.

Here the intransigence seems to be both personal, based on some tension between those running the Indian Olympic Association and senior figures in BCCI, and to do with the issue of omnipotence. While other countries are willing to cede ground to the Olympic association, and to comply with Olympic rules on issues such as sponsorship and drug testing, BCCI continue to jib against the loss of total control over all cricket activities.

Why this intransigence?

Being stubborn in one area may be justified; there is no guarantee that the majority is always right. But in five?

In any family, group or team, people learn to function on give and take. Sometimes we adopt courses of action to fit in with the majority. Sometimes we swallow our pride in the interests of cooperation and experimentation. But not, it seems, India. Or not without an extended wrangle. Why not?

There are many reasons for reluctance to embrace change, some of them good. We may fear unthinking change, or change for the sake of change. We may fear being pulled too far out of our comfort zone. We may lack confidence and be uncertain of our resilience when it comes to untried paths. Or we may be bloody-minded.

Might it be that there is a collective feeling in India of having been for so long ruled over, and over-ruled, by emperors running not only the country but the game? Does a long-term grudge underlie the stance of BCCI in having to have things their way, in their refusal to see others’ points of view and to make ordinary compromises?

In 2013, I tried as chair of the World Cricket Committee to contact N Srinivasan with the idea of debating the topic of DRS. I was suggesting a conversation with me and with WCC. Instead of replying, he complained to the chair of ECB, Giles Clarke, who wrote to me as follows: I would be very grateful if you could follow the established ICC protocols regarding communication with other Boards by any entities from a different country. I will give you the background when I see you, but in the interim should you wish to deal with BCCI, please do so through either myself or David Collier. I found this petty.

With regard to ODIs and T20s, it seems that India fully embrace change only once they have had success, as in 1983 (World Cup winners under Kapil Dev) and 2007 (T20 winners under MS Dhoni, the senior players not having participated).

For whatever reasons, India have often behaved arrogantly with the ICC. They seem to pride themselves on getting their own way, with limited regard for the overall good. Sometimes other boards support them, as when England and Australia collaborated with India in 2014 to create a two-tier system within the ICC. Often other countries are against them, but are nervous about opposing the playground bully with the bulging pockets who keeps other countries bankrolled.

Perhaps India is both an emerging young country full of confidence, brashness and energy, combined with some insecurity, and a conservative one, expressing the unconscious thought: What is five minutes against eternity?

It has been a relief to have a more accommodating and thoughtful voice in international cricket discussions in the form of Shashank Manohar, reappointed in 2018 for a second term as ICC’s chairman.

In several of these cases, India have in the end come around. But there often seems to be a prickliness and a stickiness that takes a long time to dissipate.

Mike Brearley played 39 Tests for England, from 1976 to 1981, and was captain in 31 of them. His most recent book is On Cricket.

Shared love of cricket: Nobel laureate Harold Pinter (right) with actor Harry Burton.

Coming home to the Gaieties

HARRY BURTON

The past is a mist — or so Harold Pinter wrote in his bleak late comedy Moonlight, about marriage, death and football referees. Back in the days when Pinter’s beloved Gaieties CC toured the North-East of England, we actually played in a proper mist once at Gateshead Fell. Summer seemed to have evaded Newcastle entirely. Visibility was down to about 20 yards. If the ball was hit off the square, the only way for a fielder to know if it was heading towards him was Pinter’s imperious baritone barking his name from slip.

Founded in 1937 by Lupino Lane, the vaudevillian leaseholder of the Gaiety Theatre (long demolished) in The Strand, Gaieties CC plays wandering Sunday cricket around the M25 motorway — or what used to be called the ‘home counties’. I first got to know Harold when I joined Gaieties as a 19-year-old. He’d enlisted in 1969. Our association began in a shared love of cricket (certainly greater than sex, he famously asserted, although sex isn’t too bad either). With time,