Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Question of Loyalties in IPL-- My Cricket Zen Moment

It is obvious to all those who know me that I do not approve the IPL in general, and the Twenty20 format cricket games, in particular. But it is the beauty of cricket that despite this absurdly reduced format, it still remains cricket. There are some differences, of course, for instance, (1) the balance between the ball and bat has further shifted in the favor of the bat, (2) chance plays far greater role than in longer forms, (3) there are no real ups and downs in a match and a couple of good overs for a team are enough to turn the flow of the game irreversibly.

Because IPL games are still cricket matches, because, cricket season in Germany is still few week away, (finally) because youtube offers free webcast of the IPL matches, I could not help watching the IPL matches over weekend.

While watching the matches I realized another change that IPL has brought in for me, which I might share with the Cricket purists.

I still follow all the international cricket [cricinfo is so generous and informative and updated] and I follow cricket with a clear bias, I always have a favorite team -- for all combinations of countries I have a favorite pre-decided e.g. India takes the precedence over all, and I do not like to see the Aussies win yet again.

But IPLis different, I do not have a favorite team, even though its in its third season -- maybe its a bit too early and I should wait until all the superstars of the longer forms of cricket retire. It is true that because I have my favorite players scattered in all the teams I cannot support any team in particular. I assume that most fans have same problem. Perhaps more teams in IPL-4 with 94 odd matches, fans will finally have to decide to follow one or two teams -- even an ardent fan cannot keep track of 94 games happening in less than two weeks.

Watching cricket, without loyalties was something new, and despite buffering issues on youtube webcast, I enjoyed it far more. There was no adrenaline flowing, thus, my head remained still on shoulders (like it should be in execution of a good drive) and I was able to appreciate the effort and skills of the players. My opinions about the game proceedings were more objective and even my predictions were more correct (have you tried the predictor feature on cricinfo -- its adds so much fun in following game over internet).

Overall it was my cricket Zen moment. And I have more clear plans for my weekends as long as the IPL3 runs. After that, our own cricket season starts...

In the meantime thank you very much cricinfo and youtube



Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The mongoose bat: Further unbalancing the contest between bat and ball

There is lot of talk going on about Matthew Hayden unveiling the so called 'Revolutionary Mongoose Bat' .

I remember, as a school boy, playing with such a bat for my village team. That was not a technological innovation for us, rather it was an improvisation -- a very good bat broke at the bottom and we did not have much money that we could discard the broken bat, so we chipped away the broken part, shaped the shoulders of the bat a bit to balance the weight and were left with a slightly shorter bat. And in retrospect, we had our own ingenious Mongoose bat. That bat became quite a favorite among the hard hitters in the team. However, even at the village level cricket it was clear that the shortened bat was not the best equipment to play the fast bowler bowling with new ball.

In our times anything that favors batsmen and in particular hard hitting batsmen is always welcome so in that sense it is not surprising that
such a bat has been approved for use in the international cricket.

In his first match of IPL-2010 Hayden was supposed to use it. As I read form the commentary on cricinfo that he wanted to start with conventional bat and then once settled, would bring on the 'revolutionary bat'.

I do not want to argue with such a strategy, but I have a couple of questions for the administrators of cricket.

Would they allow a bowler to pick up a ball in the middle of the match because the bowler thinks that with a slightly worn out ball he can get better spin (a spin bowler) or get more reverse swing (fast bowler) and so on... Hayden intending to change his bat to a different one in the middle of his inning is similar. But it is clear from the outset that bowlers will not be allowed to go for such a 'strategy'.

On related note, Hayden wants to use a bat that gives him a better hitting power, are we willing to give the bowlers a choice to chose a ball of his choice for instance one with slightly oval shape because that would swing more, or one with raised seam to get better movement off the seam...

Cricket is a contest between bat and ball and the rule makers and administrators of the game should be aware of this basic fact and follow it while making any policy decision.

There is lot of apprehension among the cricket fraternity about the survival of the game. If there is anything threatening cricket right now then it is biased approach of the rule makers and administrators, which is favors the batsmen more than the bowlers.

The Mongoose bat is yet another instance that reminds us of our bias against bowler and reminds that we should strive for equality of contest between bowler and batsmen else a batmen dominated game would no longer remain 'Cricket' as we have known it.