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Day five, the Test’s still alive
By Will 2 years ago, mid-December, 8 Comments »
India need 256; England, just nine wickets. The greatest game of all is still alive and well, and there is a small but delicious irony in the delicate state this match finds itself in. That it is taking place so soon after the Mumbai terrorist attacks is honourable and pleasing. But that Chennai should be producing such a corking match, in India, at the end of a year which has seen the Twenty20 machine snowball almost out of control…it’s a reminder to everyone, in particular the often one-eyed BCCI, of our responsibility to cricket’s richest asset. Not Twenty20; not television or advertising revenue; not even Sachin or Brett or MS or KP, and certainly not Mr Stanford. But Tests. The oldest and still the most rewarding format of the game, and possibly the best of any sport there is.
It’s like a really good bottle of port to Twenty20’s vodka and Red Bull: rich, occasionally musty, with a multitude of flavours.
8 Comments »Something rotten at the core
By Alex Try 2 years ago, mid-November, 12 Comments »
India’s cricket team is heir apparent to Australia’s world champion crown and its board is the richest and most powerful in the world. Over the past week Yuvraj Singh has scored two memorable hundreds, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India has attempted to shift the dates of the first Test match to accommodate a newly created money-spinning Twenty20 competition – the Champions League. The two sides of Indian cricket are captured in these events: sublime stroke-play, and a behemoth greedy for more cash.
The ECB rejected calls for changes to the Test dates, but even before this tour got under way England’s itinerary has been suspect. Most of the ODI’s are being played in provincial industrial cities like Rajkot or Indore – and not in the premier cricket grounds of Calcutta or Chennai.
Beside the fact that I would rather see England play in some of the world’s great stadiums – the rotation policy has left the tour itinerary in a constant state of limbo. The game originally planned for Jamshedpur was moved to Bangalore because the stands were unsafe and Guwahati in Assam is a potential war-zone. Just a couple of weeks ago 18 bombs planted by separatists in the city killed 64 people and injured over 300. Around ten thousand people have died in the regions political struggles over the past three decades.
The BCCI’s ticketing policy also leaves much to be desired. Despite its gleaming new website it does not sell tickets online, only locally around the respective stadiums. I am relying on friends in Cuttack and Delhi to get me into the ground, while the Barmy Army will not officially comment on the problems it has had in gaining a quota of tickets for the Test series lest it anger the BCCI in public – putting their quota in jeopardy.
For every great performance by India there is an example of the greed and bloody-mindedness of the BCCI. I would much rather be writing about Yuvraj.
Alex Try is in India blogging England’s tour for The Corridor
12 Comments »Totalitarian media
By Will 2 years ago, mid-November, 5 Comments »
A considered, accurate, and bloody good piece by David Hopps at The Guardian on the problems facing cricket’s media. You might think that the likes of us (Cricinfo) and newspapers are nothing more than freeloading loafers with inflated egos and an unhealthy appetite for free lunches. You’d be right for the most part, too, but this particular industry is in a state of flux.
CricInfo has endured this treatment for years. One of the most popular websites in the world is persistently refused accreditation by the BCCI because it does not fit in with their grand design. It has learned to scramble for accreditation where it can. Established newspapers, who feared CricInfo’s pioneering of free internet cricket news as much as the BCCI did, were not about to run to help. Had they done so, sports journalism in the independent, mainstream media might not be facing the threat that it is today.
Dozens of sports journalists were laid off at the end of the summer. Some were from the nationals, who have been covering cricket for two decades or more. Others were from regional newspapers who quite often have a cricket desk of one person. Quite what these people will do next year is anyone’s guess, but it’s a worrying time for cricket journalism as a whole.
As you’ll know, Reuters refused to cover Australia’s tour of Australia, and there were more difficulties with contractual terms in regard to Getty Images. And a few days ago, Reuters boycotted New Zealand’s tour of Australia. BCCI and Cricket Australia – and others in the future? – want editorial control over the photographs taken. They want to know who is using them and for what purpose. For the BCCI, they simply can’t cope with the idea that, for example, Cricinfo has been online since 1996 yet they only launched their website a few weeks ago. We had nearly three million people watch the last Test between India and Australia, and none of them had to pay. Apart from Australians. They had to pay in self respect.
So, public – watch out. These greedy boards are soiling themselves about the internet like it’s 1990 all over again, and instead of working with it, they’re fighting it. Dangerous times for all.
5 Comments »BCCI’s official website
By Will 2 years ago, mid-August, 1 Comment »
Aberdare cricket club has one. Und auch des Deutschen Cricket Bundes. But the richest cricket board in the world, the BCCI, has stubbornly refused to be apart of the internet – until now. In a few days (though I’ll believe it when I see it), BCCI.TV will launch as their official presence on the sprawling tinterweb.
Hang on a minute – BCCI dot what? Dot…TV? Either the Indian board have an unquenchable thirst for sardonic humour – I know for a fact they emphatically do not – or, and this is a far bigger worry, this is to be the start of something really monstrous.
Chances are that .com and .co.in were unavailable. But there’s a delicious irony, isn’t there, that the cricket board whose vast wealth was built on selling the sport to television has chosen a domain name like that.
1 Comment »BCCI flex their muscles
By Will 2 years ago, mid-February, 24 Comments »
There is yet more evidence of the power that the BCCI wield, and the influence of the Asian bloc, with the news that the Indian board have bluntly warned Australia not to pull out of their tour of Pakistan. What right do they have to “warn” Australia? Not a lot, you would think. After all India is only one of ten members. But such is their immense financial clout, they will always get support from the Asian bloc (and support any Asian country who, in the BCCI’s opinion, need it) and Zimbabwe, West Indies and South Africa are easily swayed to help give India a 7-3 majority.
BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla said Australia would face major repercussions if it abandoned the six-week tour, due to begin mid-March.
“There will be serious consequences because you can’t just pull out a committed tour when the host board is giving you assurances about security and so is the government,” he said.
“If the host board and government is willing to give assurances, you have to accept that you can’t just cancel a confirmed FTP tour,” he said.
From Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
A deeply worrying development. Cricket is as unstable now as it has ever been, and I have absolutely no idea where it will all end up in five, 10, 20 years. Asian bloc v the rest? You wouldn’t bet against it.
24 Comments »On effigies, cheating and monkeys
By Jonathan Liew 2 years ago, at the start of January, 56 Comments »
This has all the makings of an Asia-Rest of the World showdown that has been threatening a denouement for several years now. I really hope not.
But first things first: fire and the burning of effigies don’t exactly have the same significance they might have in Britain or Australia. Fire is an intrinsic part of Indian culture – at a Hindu wedding, for example, a fire sacrifice is made, and the bride and groom have to walk around it seven times. And nobody really takes the death threats seriously. And the donkey thing – well, that was just funny. Some of Benson’s Kent team mates will have had a good chuckle at that.
As for cheating – well, there’s no evidence anybody deliberately cheated. Walking is nice, but not compulsory, and while some of the appealing and catch-claiming was pure, cynical gamesmanship, it wasn’t illegal. It’s therefore a disciplinary issue alone, to be discussed at length in an air-conditioned room with plenty of cold drinks available.
And the ‘racist slur’ – it doesn’t really matter if the word ‘monkey’ is racist or not. We can’t be sure it was said. There was certainly enough evidence to charge Harbhajan (and possibly Symonds too) with verbal abuse, but Mike Proctor and the ICC are really going to wish they hadn’t opened up the whole ‘racist’ can of worms. How – I mean, honestly, how – did they think this was going to end?
But however wronged India may feel, they’re forgetting rule number one of cricket – get on the field and play. You can get angry afterwards. Let’s hope that the TV companies have a quiet word with the BCCI. Perhaps money can achieve what diplomacy clearly can’t.
56 Comments »Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?
By Will 4 years ago, at the end of August, 33 Comments »
Just had a brain flash, more often known in my world as a brain fart. Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? If you assume the ICC as the court, or the judge, then Pakistan are the party being tried. But without evidence, surely this incident should not have progressed to its current state so quickly? Pakistan haven’t so much been tried as convicted. Not even the BCCI are coming to their assistance and bailing them out.
I ought to point out my stance on this, or rather my own confusion. I don’t know where I stand, because no evidence has been put forth. None of the 26 cameramen saw anything but, as I said yesterday, if Darrell Hair honestly believed the ball had unlawfully altered in shape then he was perfectly in his right to call Inzamam-ul-Haq’s team to account. Pakistan, then – in my opinion – ought not to have reacted so strongly. In doing so, they almost came across as the blushing cheater at the back of the classroom. That’s at least what they might have appeared to be: guilty. But their knee-jerk reaction was inevitable and fully understandable too given Hair’s notoriously gloomy reputation in the subcontinent, and past history with Sri Lanka and others.
Hair is no fool, though. Courting controversy over eleven years is not something an umpire can do without reason. He will have known, in his gut, the storm he would provoke by making these allegations; I simply cannot believe he is the heartless dictator people are making him out to be. He’s a straight-talking bloke merely doing his job, isn’t he?
All’s fair and rosey in retrospect, of course, but it’s an interesting thought comparing this incident to the legal system. If nothing else, at least the ICC should learn from this mess. Well…we can hope
33 Comments »BCCI (comb) back Hair, not Pakistan
By Will 4 years ago, at the end of August, 8 Comments »
Sensationalist headline, apologies for that. How about I improve it with the news that the BCCI are acting like a soothing, herbal shampoo for Darrell; that’s right, the India board have stated their allegiance to the ICC, not Pakistan.
This has many implications, some of them a little worrying; others rather amusing; most utterly fascinating. In short….had India agreed to Pakistan’s stance (and Sri Lanka’s too) on refusing to play in any matches Hair officiates in, the umpire’s career would be over. And that would’ve been the very start of the problems.
I stuck up the full fart in all its wafty glory on Cricinfo:
8 Comments »“We would never say no to any umpire that the ICC supported,” Shah told the Sydney Morning Herald. “If the ICC is happy with [Hair], then we are happy. Let us see a report first, and if Mr Hair has made a mistake, then we will see what happens. But it is up to the ICC to take action.”
Were India to side with the ICC and not Pakistan, a potentially disastrous situation would be avoided. Given Hair’s history – he has courted controversy with Pakistan in the past, as well as Sri Lanka – it is unlikely he will ever umpire games involving either of those two countries. And if India were to be added to that list, his role as an elite international umpire would be reduced to officiating in only half the international sides. Hair also cannot stand in matches involving Australia, his birthplace.
“If the Asian bloc gangs up on him and says, ‘We don’t want him appointed in our games’, there might be trouble,” Dick French, a former umpire and Hair’s mentor, told AAP. “He can’t umpire Australia as a neutral, so he can’t then just umpire South Africa, West Indies and England for the rest of his career. So that’s a tough one for the authorities.”
The importance of being earnest
By Scott 4 years ago, mid-April, No Comments; be the first!
Tim de Lisle opened up in Cricinfo with an interesting post relating to independence in the media.
Trescothick is much liked, and even after his story changed, most commentators were gentle with him. But one pundit was conspicuously tough: Mike Atherton, cricket columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, who said Trescothick’s virus line was “so utterly implausible” that “ridicule is the only proper response”.
Atherton used to open the batting for England with Trescothick. He was a team-mate for years at Lancashire of Trescothick’s agent, Neil Fairbrother, who also came in for criticism in Atherton’s piece, albeit unnamed. The condemnation possibly went a touch too far, but it came from the right place: a belief in honesty. Atherton can’t stand spin – of the PR variety – and he is right to highlight the way it is spreading through the sports world.
Atherton is one of the best ex-player pundits for three reasons. He wants to get better; after a tentative start, his writing has steadily acquired more scope and flair. He is curious: he asks questions, while some ex-players still wait for the questions to come to them. And he has a clear grasp of the importance of being independent. He knows he is now batting not for England, but for his readers.
In a free press, that distinction is straightforward. In televised sport, it is becoming a grey area. The ultimate producer of cricket in India is now the Indian board. Atherton, who commentated for Sky on the India-England series, says local commentators were “asked not to mention sensitive subjects”. This provoked denials, but it will continue to be an issue. And some ex-players just don’t seem to see that it matters.
I posit that it is not quite so simple as this though. As a general rule of thumb, in whatever field you work in, you do not crap in your own nest. Cricket authorities are different in various places but all of them expect their broadcast partners to be supportive. And the management of the broadcasters themselves would be most displeased if the commentators were to disparage the game, lest they invite viewers to change the channel.
After all Michael Atherton would hardly expect the Sunday Telegraph to be very friendly to him if he bagged the paper in his column.
That is why there will always be a role for newspapers and blogs in cricket and indeed, in many other areas. We can ask the questions that broadcast media can not ask.
No Comments »India, this is Nike
By Will 5 years ago, at the end of December, 3 Comments »
India have secured the sponsorship of Nike for the next five years. That’s a significant development. It’s no surprise that India have managed to attract such a global marketing icon such as Nike, but it bodes well for the game. The BBC have more on this. To my knowledge, it’s the first time Nike have sponsored an entire team; Shane Warne was one of their minions a few years ago (maybe he still is). Maybe Ganguly will welcome Nike’s obsession in putting air in their trainers…
3 Comments »England’s tour dates for India 2006
By Will 5 years ago, at the end of October, 2 Comments »
The BCCI are acting like only the BCCI can, but today they’ve been poked into life and have announced, at the last minute, the tour schedule for England’s tour there in March 2006. More at Cricinfo:
First Test: March 8, Ahmedabad
Second Test: March 16, Nagpur
Third Test: March 25, Mumbai
