Not cricket? Of course it is

I love cricket. [As if you haven’t noticed]. Been a fervent follower of the game for over 40 years, been privileged to watch may great cricketers during that time.

The years haven’t been short of controversy. The first I can remember was the D’Oliviera incident in 1968, when the South African tour was cancelled after Basil was included in the touring squad. Then there was the World Series Cricket breakaway, the Packer controversy as it was called. We’ve had questions about Tony Greig’s fielding position, Murali’s double-jointedness (leading to his exceeding the elbow extension and flexion limits that most cricketers have never heard of) , Paul Adams’s Frog in a Blender action, Lever’s use of vaseline.

We’ve had Ponting’s bat, Dravid’s ball, Brearley’s helmet (see Q517), all kinds of weird and wonderful things. We’ve even had the Trevor Chappell underarm incident.

We’ve had the limited-overs game introduced and then get more and more limited, as 60 became 50 and now we have 20.

In all that time, I have never seen a more stupid controversy than this one:

Kevin Pietersen has introduced a new stroke into cricket lore. He faces a bowler right-handed, and then, as the ball is released, switches stance and grip to become a left-hander, then sweeps the ball into oblivion past the boundary ropes, for six.

I watched him do this today, twice, as England played New Zealand. Absolutely amazing strokes, great talent, great timing, great strength. And then I heard about the controversy. [While I had read about it briefly over the last year or so, I had dismissed the arguments].

What is the controversy? That Pietersen starts with a right-hand-grip on the bat and then switches to a left-hand grip, and that this places the bowler at a disadvantage.

Pfui, as Nero Wolfe was wont to say. Double Pfui.

Here’s why:

1. The stroke of the reverse sweep has been around for a very long time. Hanif Mohammed is credited with having “invented” it, though some people say it was his brother Mushtaq. Hanif is known to have used the stroke in January 1958, over 50 years ago, in an “away” Test match, against one of the best teams in the world, the West Indies.

2. The “disadvantage” the bowler is placed under is apparently all to do with field placements. Law 41.5, The Fielder deals with onside limitations and potential no-balls. Law 36, the LBW rule, is focused on the definition of the offside.

3. The controversy is apparently around the use of the phrase “striker’s stance at the moment the ball comes into play for that delivery” in the LBW law, and in the phrase “at the instant of the bowler’s delivery” in the Fielder rule

Pfui again. The reverse sweep has been around for 50 years, and it was in use for a very long time before anyone had the talent and power and timing to use it for a boundary, much less a six. Pietersen has moved the standards even higher by having the sheer effrontery (and magical ability) to change his grip and not just his stance.

The two Laws being cited are laws that apparently came into place to correct other weaknesses in the aftermath of controversy, such as the Bodyline tour. If we have to change the law to state that the batsman is considered RHB or LHB based on what he declares himself to be as he takes up his initial stance at the start of his innings, then so be it.

But claim that he’s breaking the law, or that his stroke is illegal? Puh-leease. Nobody said it was illegal when Gatting failed to pull it off, with abysmal consequences, here.

What Pietersen is doing is playing cricket. Gloriously. If, as a result of KP trying the reverse sweep while changing hands, he is out LBW as a left-hander, then let’s have him given out. If, as a result of KP trying the reverse sweep while changing hands, he misses altogether, who is going to claim a no-ball? The umpire’s not going to call it. KP’s not going to ask for it. Maybe critics think that the bowler’s going to no-ball himself?

Enough of this guff.

Musing about lazy Saturdays and unGoogleable things

I grew up in a family where we were intense, almost obsessive, about many strange things. During my mid-to-late teens, I don’t think a day passed without there being a “session” at home. What do I mean by “session”? A gathering of people, numbering greater than 10, all focused on some activity or the other. What activities? They varied, in mini-seasons lasting a week or two, and included:

  • Carroms (played in fours lying at odd angles on the floor)
  • Table-tennis (on the dining table, using books to form the net
  • Card games aplenty (from “56” to Memorial Power, finding pairs, to Canasta, to TwoToTheLeft)
  • Chess (not as many takers though
  • Categories (which we called NamePlaceAnimalThing and played with real gusto).
  • Scrabble (played with an incredible intensity)
  • Board games in general, particularly Cluedo, but including Ludo, Chinese Checkers and Snakes & Ladders

That’s when it was too hot to play outside. Participant ages ranged from 6 to 60 (really) and everything was played with ferocious yet humorous spirit. Wonderful times. Usually half the people present were friends of one family member or the other, the rest were family or neighbours.

Sure we fought. It wasn’t always all sweetness and light. But in the main we played, played as close family and close friends, and we’ve stayed close ever since.

What I described above  was a daytime and weekend and holiday thing for the most part. Weekday evenings were all about hanging around together and listening to music; when it got late the scene shifted to playing duplicate bridge. And we read. We read by the shelf-load, by the truck-load. Draped in strange positions all over the place, usually munching on the food that would materialise by magic.

And one more thing. We were trivia freaks, but we didn’t call it trivia. We called it quizzing. It was perfectly normal for any one person to pull a dictionary, a book of quotations or a volume of an encyclopaedia off a shelf and then start asking passers-by questions. Calcutta had a brilliant quiz scene in those days, probably still has.

[Strangely enough, I don’t remember seeing anyone study. Or do homework. I can’t imagine where they could have, every room was packed with other, ultimately distracting, activity].

Anyway. As I was saying. We loved trivia. And we didn’t treat trivia so much as a test of knowledge but as a test of recall. More importantly, quizzing was a team sport and individual machismo was of no value.  Sure, “golden” answers were appreciated and respected, where you knew something that no one else on the team knew. But the important thing was the team.

These values made their way into the DNA of the quiz scene in Calcutta, particularly the “recall not knowledge” principle. Any fool could come up with a question that no one could answer. The challenge was to come up with a question that every team could answer, but not necessarily within 30 seconds while under competitive pressure.

It became a fine art, setting questions that danced teasingly on the tips of tongues. Those were the days Before Google. Nowadays it is actually quite hard to set a question that’s unGoogleable, and as a result the “recall versus knowledge” principle must be under severe attack. Particularly in today’s age of ubiquitous communication. I lost interest in the UK quiz scene once mobile phones with Web browsers and Shazam entered the scene; too many people resorted to, shall we say, alternate and assisted modes of recall.

Since then, just for fun, I’ve been quietly compiling lists of questions that can’t be Googled. Which means I look at many things with an unusual perspective. Take today for example. I was “watching” the cricket in Dhaka, and when I ran down the names of the Indian team, I noticed something:

The average surname-length of the team was below 6 letters, just 63 letters across the eleven people. Very unusual. [Incidentally, I also noticed that I have children older than half the team, a sure sign of my age].

So. Cricket fiends amongst you. What’s the shortest team you can come up with, the one that would trouble the scorers the least to put up. 63 is the target to beat. Sehwag Gambhir Sharma Singh Pathan Dhoni Raina Pathan Chawla Kumar Sharma. [I remember some Leicestershire and Northamptonshire teams in the early 1980s that had quite a few short-named players, must check].

Incidentally, the full name letter count could also be a record. 68 plus 63 makes 131. That’s low. That is very low … for a country that has had a President named Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, a singer called Madurai “MS” Subbulakshmi, a composer named Laxmikant Kudalkar;  and cricketers named Srinivasa Venkataraghavan and Bhagwat Chandrashekhar. [My own name and surname take up 21 letters].

the burden of captaincy?

A rushed post before taking off for Heathrow.

It appears that Dhoni scored fifty in today’s match against Sri Lanka. Not surprising. But without a single boundary? Wow. Dhoni? Now that’s a captain’s knock.

Knocked off their Perth: Why I’m looking forward to the Adelaide Test

I have the fortune of being able to support two cricket teams, India (where I spent the first half of my life) and England (where I’m spending the second). That means I follow a lot of cricket. [And when the two countries meet, I’m not conflicted. The Tebbit Test has me supporting India when they play England. ]

So when it comes to playing against Australia, I’m doubly privileged. Two sets of Ashes to watch, the original ones and the new ones. At least that’s how it felt to me. I really felt that India-Australia had reached “Ashes” status over the last decade or so, that the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was competed for as passionately as the Urn.

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I wondered whether it was just me, or whether the statistics would bear me out. Here’s the summary of Australia versus Everyone Else over the last ten years:

Versus England: Played 25 Won 17 Lost 5 Drawn 3 Win-Loss 3.40
Versus West Indies: Played 16 Won 13 Lost 3 Drawn 0 Win-Loss 4.33
Versus Pakistan: Played 12 Won 10 Lost 0 Drawn 2 Win-Loss —–
Versus South Africa: Played 13 Won 10 Lost 1 Drawn 2 Win-Loss 10.00
Versus New Zealand: Played 11 Won 7 Lost 0 Drawn 12 Win-Loss —–

Versus India: Played 20 Won 10 Lost 7 Drawn 3 Win-Loss 1.42

Now if you bear in mind that those statistics include the recent Sydney Test, you get an idea of just how competitive the match is. I hope that everyone has learnt from the last two Tests, and that in the end cricket won.

Just thought the cricket-mad amongst you would be interested in these figures.

O Captain My Captain

Managed to watch 10 minutes of cricket this morning. And it got me thinking. There are a lot of ex-captains in the Indian team. For sure I have seen Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag and Dhoni each lead the team on different occasions. For all I know Laxman may have led a Test somewhere, but I can’t recall him as captain, only as vice-captain. And I can rule out Jaffer, Pathan, Sharma and RP Singh.

So the current Indian team would appear to have Kumble as captain, and no less than five ex-captains in the team. I tried to check the web out for further information on this subject; cricinfo, for once, was less than helpful. The best I could find was this BBC Sport 2002 reference, where Bill Frindall seems to believe the record was then 3.

Any views? Surely 5 is the new record?