Test

Test

Stop the heat wave

At a time when people spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, I return to blogging.
I last blogged in September 2008. Believe me, it was not lethargy, but sheer work pressure which kept me away from blogging.

I am making a comeback and I hope that I can daily blog which will not necessarily be related to sports.

I am sick and tired of some of the news you see on TV and in print. IPL post mortems, India floundering at the ICC World T20 and not to forget sports officials wanting to stay in power till they breathe their last, all this is so boring.

I would much rather debate the heat wave which has seen every man suffer. The car AC is almost crying every kilometre I drive, the normal fans seem to be just throwing hot air and office ACs no better!

Why I think ‘heat’ is a hot topic is because it affects you and me. Drink more water, an old mantra to beat heat doesn’t work. Point is, after drinking so much water, water seems to have become tasteless!

But I will not complain because at least I am getting enough to drink. Some of the areas in Delhi are waterless.

I am hoping the weather improves because it concerns us all.

At the same time, after the overdose of T20 cricket, I am looking forward to the French Open rightaway. Federer vs Nadal is again going to be a hot topic. And with the FIFA World Cup just over a month away, people will be gripped by football fever.

And I sincerely hope the power cuts will go away. Not only will this have a cooling affect on all of us, we will be able to enjoy the world’s most beautiful game…

Sushil hasn't changed

This guy Sushil Kumar is such a humble soul. I happened to bump into him today and he hasn’t changed one bit after the highs of a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics.
I had warned him a day after he won the bronze that life would never be the same for him. He was, in fact, finding it hard to believe when I told him the moment he lands at the IG airport he would get mobbed.
Almost a month after returning home, things are very much the same for Sushil. Celebrations, reunion with family and other wrestlers at Mahabali Satpal’s akharaa are over. It’s back to business for Sushil, who was at a TV studio as he was attending to the giant of yesteryears, Chandgi Ram.
I almost fainted when I saw Chandgi Ram, his imposing figure now needing crutches to walk. But he hasn’t lost the spark in his eyes. And to see Sushil attend on him was such a great sight of how the Olympic bronze medallist is still a humble soul.
I promised Sushil I will come to see him the akharaa where he is training for the CWG 2010 and Asian Games. “Zaroor aiyiyee,” he said. I asked him for his mobile number and he rattled it off in Hindi. Amazing how this boys remains as rustic as ever.
As someone who has put Babrola, Haryana on the map, I will always respect champions like him. He reaches out to the masses like nobody else does.

Sack Bucknor!

Officiating in any sport is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs. It is a place where not just the players in the arena at the 'receiving end' show their disgust, even sports lovers glued to their television-sets thousands of miles away from the action can launch a hate campaign.
As India combat Australia in the second Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, one man who will be remembered for a long time, irrespective of the result, will not be Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly or Harbhajan Singh, but the widely respected West Indian umpire Steve Bucknor.
If you thought it was just a coincidence that the Indians have been at the receiving end of some poor decisions for many years, be sure Bucknor, the man who nods his head gently before raising the dreaded finger, has figured in it.
As far as familiarity with rules go, Bucknor cannot be faulted. Not many would be aware that long before Bucknor became a member of the ICC's panel of Elite Umpires, he officiated in football matches. Bucknor was a FIFA referee in the World Cup qualifier between El Salvador and the Netherlands two decades back. Soon after, Bucknor had to retire from refereeing because the FIFA age limit for referees was lowered to 45. However, it did not stop him from pursuing a career as a cricket umpire.
And what a career it has been. Just as our own beacons like Sachin, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman have battled it out to reach where they are today in the world of cricket, Bucknor has carved a niche for himself. Yet, many a time when there have been aberrations in umpiring decisions concerning matches where India have figured – Tests or ODIS — Bucknor has found himself in the middle of controversies.
It would be preposterous to state that umpires or referees, no matter what the sport, are biased. The world had looked at cricket umpires with suspicion in the decades gone by when certain Pakistani umpires were in the middle. The joke then was that a team playing in Pakistan was not taking on 11 players on the field, but also two men in white coats too!
Times have changed. The ICC's Elite Panel is supposed to consist of umpires equipped with good vision and heath, sound knowledge of the rules of the game, and above all, integrity. We won't doubt Bucknor on any of those counts. But if the word 'bias' can be used, Bucknor will find mention, even though it cannot be proved in black and white.
Bucknor is on record saying that Indians are guilty of excessive appealing in matches. And this was long before when we had a certain S.Sreesanth on the scene as a medium fast bowler who dared to stare at the batsman standing 22 yards away.
To chronicle instances when Bucknor has been in the middle of faulty decisions concerning India is something which can be done better with the help of a cricket statistician. Just that what he did on the first day of the Sydney Test, when he let off Andrew Symonds to carry his innings on will rankle for a long time.
It is a well-known fact that one decision can never alter the course of any contest. But this is cricket, where the umpire in the middle is supposed to be extremely alert and is in the best possible position to adjudge a caught behind or a leg before wicket decision.
The era when we had batsmen like the stylish GR Vishwanath walk back to the pavilion when they had edged or were certain they were out of the crease, are over. Today, a batsman like Andrew Symonds, even if he knows he is out, will not walk back. He will wait for the umpire to give his verdict – right or wrong.
Indian cricket captains have, in the past, complained in writing how they have felt about Bucknor. In fact, in the 2003-04 series against Australia at Sydney, when India were on the verge of a series win on the final day, Bucknor had refused a number of close leg-before decisions against the Aussies. Skipper Ganguly, in his post-series report to the International Cricket Council (ICC), rated Bucknor poorly and with adverse comments.
Nothing came out of it. And if any Indian batsman has been a "Bucknor victim", it is none other than maestro Sachin Tendulkar. Maybe, after Sachin retires from cricket, he will devote an entire chapter to this issue in his biography. These days, when players get pulled up so often, you cannot expect Sachin the genius to say anything on record.
Just to jog the readers' memory, way back in 1992-93, in the first post-apartheid series against South Africa, Bucknor became famous when he punched the third umpire's eye. In the Johannesburg Test, the Proteas were reeling at 73 for five. The Indians appealed for Johnty Rhodes' run-out. Bucknor refused to take the third umpire's help. Replays showed Rhodes was clearly short of the crease and went on to score a match-saving knock.
A lot has changed since then. Today, while other umpires have no hesitation in consulting replays, Bucknor is a cut above the rest, or so he feels. He doesn't need any help and has the enviable record of having stood in five successive World Cup finals since 1992. But the icing on the cake was the 2007 final in West Indies, after which Bucknor became the butt of ridicule. He seemed to be the only one not aware of the fading when Sri Lanka were losing to Australia.
As long as Bucknor has the ICC's backing, he is going to be there in the middle. He is 61and still going strong. FIFA has set an age limit on referees and it probably is high time for the ICC to start thinking on same lines.
But the ICC should also get its act together and makes umpires like Bucknor more accountable. If not, we are going to lose faith in the concept of neutral umpires totally. Or are we seeing the last of Bucknor in this series, if signals from the ICC headquarters are to be taken seriously?


(Appeared in Mail Today on Jan 6)

Dead end for Narain

As Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso battle it down to the wire for the Formula One drivers’ championship next weekend in Interlagos, Brazil, next Sunday, our own speed king -- Narain Karthikeyan – is stranded. He doesn’t know where to look: left, right or straight, which is a dead end.
Stories on Narain have been all over the place in the last one week – web, wires and papers – mostly speculative, but none has understood the nuances of what it takes to just be in F-1. If you ask Hamilton in his first year, he will have great stories to tell, other than, of course, last weekend in China when he drove into a gravel trap.
A DNF (did not finish) for Hamilton meant the whole championship got thrown open, but it left not even a window of an opportunity for Narain, who happens to be Williams’ test driver. I would have hoped that in an action-packed year in F-1, when fans hardly missed Michael Schumacher, Narain would have got a look-in for the last race as Alexander Wurz had retired. No, instead it was a Japanese answering to the name of Kazuki Nakajima who was nominated by Sir Frank for the finale.
I know there is no link between Narain racing in the last race and who goes on to win the title finally next Sunday, but Narain has again hit a roadblock. The world of F-1 is a strange one, where drivers come to know very quickly when they are not needed. If half a decade back, someone like Frenchman Jean Alesi, despite his rich experience saw the writing on the wall, right now Ralf Schumacher knows his continuance in F-1 is jinxed.
So where does it leave our own Narain, who made his debut three seasons back? The moment Narain had a low-key debut with Eddie Jordan’s back-of the-grid team in 2005, tongues had started wagging as to how he had raised the megabucks through his sponsors. Narain, despite all the talk, did as well as he could in a car which was no better than an Ambassador when compared with the rest of the speed demons on the grid.
But, then, just as in any other sport, Narain was also a victim of his own creation, not being articulate with the media, and saying the wrong things to people who had no clue of the sport. The end result, he lost his seat and managed a test driver’s role in 2006 and 2007, which is like being a dummy for some big actor when stunts are to be shot.
In Narain’s case, stunts, too can’t work now, as age is catching up with him and big teams are not looking . The sadder part is Narain does not know where to look and has chosen to move to A-1 GP, which is almost two rungs lower. Narain has confessed his future at Williams is very unsure, and being test driver for another season could be just a waste of time. More so, because under the new rules, the role of a test driver is very, very limited.
Talking about A-1 GP, there, too, Narain has made no big impact and if people close to him are to be believed, whatever he earns just helps him pay loans which have accrued. Loans? Yes, loans, because in motorsport, most drivers’, unless they are performing at the top, keep spending all their lives. In the end, when they turn back and look at their careers, there is nothing but disappointment to reflect on.
Today, despite the dollar becoming cheaper in rupee terms, finding sponsorship for participation in motorsport is very, very tough. It looks very rosy with billionaire Vijay Mallya buying an F-1 team. But don’t get fooled, nobody buys an F-1 team for patriotic reasons, deep down the essence is hard core business.
People have linked Mallya buying the team to an Indian being there in his Spyker team as a driver. But make no mistake, Mallya is not going to have drivers’ in his line-up just because of their nationality or because he happens to know the drivers’ like Ralf Schumacher. In the end, whoever makes it to the team will be there for two reasons: Either he is good enough to put the team at least in the middle of the race or brings in a huge sponsorship package.
In Narain’s case, his ‘racing juices’, as the phrase goes, is not extinct, but at 30, he is not getting younger. He has worked very hard on fitness and endurance, running almost 10km a day in the heat when needed and taken lessons in yoga for better concentration. Yet, in the end, all this means nothing when you are left just watching your teammates race and testing cars for any flaws.
Talking about results, if Narain has been left to cool his heels, another Indian who has made waves is Karun Chandhok. Competing in GP-2, a competition just a rung lower than F-1, he won a Grand Prix three weeks back racing for European outfit Team Durango. So, if anyone is actually going to get a look-in from home for Mallya’s team just on form, it has to be Karun.
The smart, young man has learnt the tricks of the trade very fast. And given his PR skills and dad Vicky Chandhok’s links with F-1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, the day is not far when Karun is seen in the real fast lane.
And what about Narain? Time is running out for the first Indian who made it to the biggest stage in motorsport. Sadly, all that remains now is just a blur.

Spare a thought for other sport..

If Indian cricket could have been listed as a stock in the BSE and NSE last week, it would have further boosted the bull run that now is crossing levels never reached before – be it the Sensex or the Nifty.
But then, just as share prices are not always true reflections of their intrinsic values, to evaluate Indian cricket based on the Twenty20 triumph would be foolhardy. Overall, in the fortnight-long extravaganza played out in South Africa, it was nice to see Yuvraj Singh smash sixes at will, youngsters come up with steely performances and finally see skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni take his shirt off.
It resulted in what is now being termed as the most historic win on a cricket field after Kapil’s Devils won the World Cup at Lord’s in 1983. But was Twenty20 – still not sure whether it was a World Cup or World Championship – such a big event that the nation took to the streets well after sunset to celebrate?
Unlike the United States or China, ours is not a nation that will be counted for in medals tallies at the Olympics or at any other big multi-discipline sporting extravaganza. Cricket is played by 16 countries and, at best, when we win, it makes the public go crazy, and in reply, we have the Board of Control for Cricket in India going bonkers and the rest following suit.
So, just some time after S. Sreesanth takes a catch to get rid of Misbah-ul-Haq in the Twenty20 final on Monday, it’s like Diwali. Just that the bonuses that the cricketers got were so high that even golfing pros are now wondering whether it is better to labour on long courses over 72 holes or play a cricket match that ends in less than five hours.
I am not complaining about the cricketers getting monetary rewards. The BCCI has promised Rs 80 lakh to each player and Rs 1 crore to Yuvraj, the new prince. He is going to get a Porsche as well, and if past examples are an indicator, I doubt if he’ll oblige P. Chidambaram and pay tax on it. Add to it the Rs 4 crore booty from the ICC, the Twenty20 stars are going to be counting their notes for a long time.
But we do need to spare a thought for other sportspersons who also toil. The first to take up the cudgels was none other than Joaquim Caravalho, the Indian hockey coach. He obviously does not subscribe to the view that Indian cricket (Twenty20) is such a good stock that not only the BCCI, even state governments go bonkers and start announcing embarrassing sums as rewards.
Mind you, all this is tax-payers’ money and we have no say in deciding whether we actually want to reward the ‘instant’ cricketers or would be happier to see the hockey players get a bit rich.
So, when the threat of a protest fast was sounded out by Caravalho along with four Karnataka hockey players, it threatened to snowball into a major crisis. Hockey happens to be our forgotten national sport, though the movie Chak De India has made people once again think of the game again.
So, was the Twenty20 win big or Indian hockey winning the Asia Cup in Chennai on par, where the opposition comprised China and Korea? Hockey can never match cricket’s popularity even if we win the Olympic medal again.
But the treatment the sport gets from its own federation (IHF), headed by supercop KPS Gill, the Sports Ministry and the corporate sector reminds us of Oliver Twist getting punished because he asked for more.
Had it been a coach other than Caravalho, he would have probably kept quiet. Way back in 1998, just after India won the Asian Games gold medal in Bangkok, coach MK Kaushik and star goalkeeper Ashish Ballal spoke out and were fixed. I thought Caravalho had shot himself in the foot, but he didn’t care a damn. His philosophy is clear: if the corporate sector wants to woo cricketers, let them do it, but how can state governments have double standards and treat hockey like muck.
There were some people who felt Caravalho was over-reacting but when world champion – in billiards and snooker – Pankaj Advani also spoke out, it was clear there was something wrong with the system. Sportspersons are supposed to be professionals, and with the exception of India and some other regions in the subcontinent, the money they make is through prize money or commercial endorsements.
So had Tiger Woods been an Indian, he would probably be richer than Lakshmi Nivas Mittal! The point is, today when someone as sensible as Jeev Milkha Singh also speaks about wanting some support for golfers from the government, there’s something certainly wrong with the fetish for cricket. And even as the nation celebrates the Twenty20 triumph, those who make big bucks from illegal betting syndicates are scared what is in store for them in the ODI series against Australia having commenced and Pakistan also waiting to come and prove their credentials.
Indeed, testing times are ahead for the Indian cricketers who are now drunk on the Twenty20 success. Good performances in the series against Australia and Pakistan will not be easy as tougher competition and the law of averages are bound to catch up. In the best of times, fans have never been forgiving when it has come to failure on the cricket field.
And in times like these, when cricket is played almost non-stop like tennis or soccer around the globe, Indian cricket under Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s leadership needs to keep performing. The same people who come and salute you will bring out the knives the moment there is failure.
And just as the Sensex or Nifty cannot just keep going up, Indian cricket needs a correction, as they say in the bourses. The aberration: Unlike the trading floors, nobody will come to invest in other stocks like hockey, golf, or football.
A pity, isn’t it?

Getting high on MSD

Whether the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was actually looking at the future when it named Mahender Singh Dhoni as captain for the 12 ODIs against Australia and Pakistan is something we will get to know soon. But what cricket fans at home and abroad must know very well is the fact that this decision had to be made as there was no suitable candidate after Sachin Tendulkar said ‘no’.
It is often said that leading the Indian side is not easy, given the pulls and pressures that come from various directions. Most importantly, the captain hardly gets to know if the BCCI will back him to the hilt in difficult situations. Yet, despite these strains, Rahul Dravid marshalled the resources well and also handled two high profile ex-captains – Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly – without any major glitches.
When Dhoni steps out for the toss against the shrewd, calculating and aggressive Ricky Ponting in the first ODI at Bangalore on September 29, he knows some kind of history is going to being made. Flip through the annals of cricket and you’ll find that rarely does a player go on to lead the country within three years of making a debut.
Dhoni played his first ODI against Bangladesh in 2004 and has been a regular in the squad since then, although his keeping came under the scanner on the recent tour to England just before the first Test. There was talk that the keeper had fumbled with the unusual ‘swing’ of deliveries this time in England and Dinesh Karthik could actually be given a look-in.
How times change. Just as we have cricket being played at a fast and furious pace (Twenty20), where bowlers probably need to pop in an Alprax before steaming in to bowl to the marauders, we have keeper-batsman Dhoni now ascending the throne. All right, Dhoni is just the captain for 12 ODIs and not the entire season and that the skipper for the Tests remains to be decided. Still, to have a Young Turk shoulder such a huge responsibility is something that the BCCI think-tank has never done before.
Forget what it will be like to draw strategies to match the Oz firepower in the ODIs, the first bits of homework Dhoni will need to work on is how to handle three former captains under him – Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly, each of whom is keen to play the ODIs, unless, of course, injuries or lack of form are going to keep them out.
When the triumvirate opted out of the Twenty20 World Cup, we knew it was the best decision, given the fitness levels and ages of these three. Ponting was almost a uncertainty for the India tour, thanks to his own fitness, before deciding he is going to come. So, apart from donning the gloves and watching every bit of action from behind the stumps, for Dhoni, the biggest test is man management, which will make or mar his future.
I am not trying to sound like Nostradamus, but Indian cricket is unkind. I am reminded of the oft-used cliché: Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan. For Dhoni to succeed as the Gen Next captain, he needs his batsmen to click, bowlers to be bang on target and the part-timers chipping in with the bat and ball.
Had this been an away-series Down Under, the BCCI perhaps would not have taken this gamble. But these are modern times, where we take the risk of hiring a coach as big as Greg Chappell, who eventually did more harm than good to a sport that is like a religion at home. I firmly believe when they are investing in a captain like Dhoni, the BCCI should put the hunt for a foreign coach on the backburner for the time being. In Chandu Borde, India had a good manager on the England tour, with coaches Venky Prasad and Robin Singh both working hard. The fielding came in for flak, but why blame Robin for it?
The cricket world has seen Dhoni as someone who is daring, flamboyant and ready to play such audacious stuff that it has purists tearing their hair! Captaincy is a burden, as has been described by Dravid and Tendulkar, where anyone and everyone from the panwallah to an MNC bigwig sits on judgment.
Dhoni knows he has to seize this opportunity with both hands, even if it means taking some hard decisions. He’ll have to decide the composition of the team on the basis of form, find the right balance and use the men at right fielding slots correctly. It’s a well-known fact that in ODIs, you cannot hide the bad fielders, and at most, you can put them in the slip-catching region.
But the best thing going for Dhoni now is that his vice-captain (actually his senior) Yuvraj Singh is in the most brutal form now. It is with this big plus and the advantage of flat tracks across the length and breadth of the country, we will see Dhoni lead a side that is a wonderful combination of youth and experience.
The decision which ‘Colonel’ Dilip Vengsarkar and his team have taken has come out of the blue for the traditional school of thought. But these are interesting times for Indian cricket, where the bosses are ready to spend big on domestic cricket, to think of their own Twenty20 and now a young captain whose rock-star looks make him immensely popular.
In a way, for the BCCI, which has handled crises before, the latest after Dravid’s resignation was a tough call. And unlike other captains who came with solid ‘backing’ – how can we forget that Ganguly had Jagmohan Dalmiya supporting him all the time? – Dhoni’s at a disadvantage.
Hailing from Jharkand, where you probably expect hockey players to come from, Dhoni has been a big revelation. For a man who has batted with scant respect for the bowlers and the copybook, captaincy should come naturally after the Twenty20 stint.
Despite the scare which the Oz bring with them, I still think Dhoni’s captaincy will be very innovative. And let us not judge him based on just these 12 ODIs. We need to plan for the 2011 World Cup, by which time Tendulkar and Ganguly should be in the commentary booth.
If we have taken such a big gamble, groom Dhoni for the future. Short-term losses are something that must be overlooked. The big target in sight is the next World Cup to be held in the sub-continent with the final in Mumbai. It’s time Indian cricket gets its high from MSD.