What are the odds of another Sachin from India?

Nil. A heads up: this article may not be of the anticipated quality due to the angry frame of mind attached to the issue.

For years, three, four generations have seen and been almost overawed by the way Sachin Tendulkar has batted. But will the four generations after us and Tendulkar have another deity to look up to? There are so many players, so many talents coming up for us to enjoy watching in the next few decades. But, the point is there are no exceptional talents coming up. The point is there are no exceptional talents coming up. There are a lot of them available but not very many are moving upwards. Remember, we are speaking specifically of India.

There are patterns with which every Indian is expected to lead his life. This pattern varies from region to region and family to family. Unfortunately, probably 1% of these patterns involve sports. But, it is only partially accountable to the households.

In India, in the modern day, a person goes to his cricket camp faithfully, plays, and whether he is talented or not and more often than not, eventually gets out of cricket and back to the horror called studies. He gets back, because in the world of sports, returns are not guaranteed. The other side may argue that a player will eventually be able to recognize if he’s good enough to go on with the sport.

The problem with India is insecurity. An under 15, under 17 cricketer, with even the slightest doubt in his mind about his future will dump cricket for studies. This is because in India, the domestic circuit is in a deplorable condition. A person who plays the Ranji Trophy will never be completely sure about his financial situation. If you don’t even make it to the Ranji level and rely on cricket for your income, bankruptcy awaits you.

You will agree that to be a competent cricketer, a considerable amount of intelligence is required. This intelligence is what provokes these cricketers to quit at a young age.

Here’s where the education system comes in. If you have not been through the Indian education system, it is but my duty to inform you that a surprisingly small number of people actually enjoy sitting in the classrooms. An insider: such people are usually shunned by the student society.

Now this education system ruins the lives of so many sportsmen who may actually have the potential to be as good as Dravid. But, for no fault of theirs, they will just merge with the average crowd around him and get lost in this ridiculous system. And slowly, will grow his paunch as is customary.

I go to a very good school. I believe it is one of the better schools in the city I live in. It is almost a family. Everyone knows everyone else and ….. I spend 30 hours in school in an average week – which is about 1800 minutes. Out of which, I, a 15 year old, am authorised to play 40 minutes!!! That’s about 2.2% of my time in school playing.

When I began this article I thought I would go quite a bit further than as far I have gone now, but nothing more needs to be said.-BS

Suggested Reading

This is an article on cricinfo on how productive the NCA actually is. The article shows really how regressive it is. Having played at the NCA, I can tell you that there is sufficient infrastructure and sufficient oppurtunity for grooming talent.

http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/cricinfomagazine/content/current/story/307931.html

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They've taken the challenge but have to prove themselves

The Indian Cricket League has always earned a second glance from every cricket fan, connoisseur and analyst. So what is the situation? What is to be done? How good is this innovation?

The Zee Group’s boss, Subhas Chandra, over the years has been known to go in the right directions for business. In India, from the young boys to the grannies, everyone wants to know whether Sachin got his century. Here, the point is, if Sachin does not do so often, he has another opportunity to perform – in the ICL. A point to be noted here is that Sachin Tendulkar is a reputed player for the BCCI side led by Rahul Dravid. They are only playing for the BCCI and not India (even in legal terms.)

But the same issue could prove to be a disadvantage to the ICL. In the end, the ICL faces the danger of becoming but a retreat for players who were not able to perform on the other and currently bigger stage. To an extent, it is already a bit like that. Many players like Dinesh Mongia, etc have chosen to go to the ICL. Also, the foreign players who’ve joined the ICL have joined after they have retired (Boje and Cairns) when they cannot find a place in the side (Klusner,) or simply for political reasons (Yusuf and Razzaq.)

This is not a good sign. The ICL’s aim - or so it seems - is to run a parallel system so as to provide an opportunity for the players to avoid the extremely political setup which already exists. As far as I can see, only Ambati Rayudu has used the ICL for this purpose. Rayudu – with age still on his side - played for Hyderabad for a few years. He was then picked for the Indian under 19 side and performed. He almost got his place in the national side – which he richly deserved. Unfortunately either or both luck or big men were not on his side.

The ICL will find it difficult to draw crowds in their early stages. Their group of players primarily consists of the players of the genre discussed earlier. They are faced with lack of resources – both in the form of players and grounds - although Laloo Prasad Yadav has guaranteed to permit the ICL to use all the grounds owned by the railways around the country (which if I remember right, are 55 in number.)

If the ICL work hard, they may be able to grow big enough to actually compete with the other setup. They are already a major threat to the BCCI – who is so primitive that being the richest cricket board in the world opened their own website a only month ago which still is not completely operational and is very disappointing. The Indian Cricket League’s website has already been launched with the League itself being launched just two days before this article was written.

How should they work hard? The players from around the world, who already play for various teams, need to have a reason to come to the ICL. The ICL should really be able to impress and draw the attention of players around the world to the league. I believe that one of the best ways to do this would be complete and absolute transparency in all operations. The telecast of the matches should also be well presented. It would be nice to see the advertisements not showing complete disregard to play out in the middle and a group of good commentators. What happens to the umpires and the umpiring examinations? Is the ICL going to conduct them themselves or will the umpires have to take the BCCI’s examination? These are some thing to look at for the ICL. An extremely tough task ahead for them.-BS

A Rather Accurate Prediction

That cricket is going to stay in India there cannot be a shadow of a doubt; it has taken hold all over the country, and chokras can be seen playing in every village with any sort of old bat and ball that they can lay hands on. I should hope that it will do something to get over any racial antipathy; for instance, it must, I think, bring the several races together more and more, in a spirit of harmony that should be the spirit in which cricket is played. Unquestionably, it arouses excitement and enthusiasm, and extreme ambition that one's own side should succeed, bit it also ought to lead to friendliness, and that is what is needed in India. East will always be East, and West, West, but the crease is not a very broad line of demarcation – so narrow, indeed, that it ought to help bring about friendly relations.
Lord Harris, A Few Short Runs (1921)

Take Pride In Your Nation

Cricket Opinions wishes all its Indian and Pakistani readers around the world a very happy and proud Independence day. Be proud of your nation and its cricket and of course, keep coming back to Cricket Opinions.
Bharadwaj Sheshadri

Thank You Ashley Giles

Not many people will rate Ashley Giles along with the great left arm spinners – there haven’t been many either way. But, Ashley Giles contributed his bit to English cricket. He was the solitary spinner in a period of a few years when there was a severe dearth of quality spinners in England.

There was Min Patel, who was unfortunate to have come up against a century from Sachin Tendulkar on his debut; he played only one match after that. There was Shaun Udal, who also just could not keep his place in the side. Giles came in during the 1998 season.

When you see Ashley Giles bowl, the effort and perseverance that go into his spell is instantly evident. Giles had a noticeably unique approach. He preferred bowling left arm over. So many have said that he was negative in doing so and did not give himself and opportunity to attack. We’ll come back to his approach a little later.

He didn’t turn the ball much, but could consistently give the ball a pleasing amount of time in the air; a nice loop. He got his fingers nicely over the ball and his height was an added advantage. It is affordable to reiterate the amount of hard work he did. All this would still have been insufficient. This is where we come back to his approach.

All his effort would still have been insufficient if not for the role he played in the English side. Although, the English side he played in for the greater part of his career did not have a great bowling attack, the English captains did not exactly use him properly. This was probably because they did not know how to use him or due to the conditions they played in – the conditions were not favourable to spin. This is why his approach as it was was useful. He was usually playing second string to Caddick, Gough or Tudor at the other end. He really did not need to attack. He and his captains understood that he just needed to seal runflow and get the occasional breakthrough from one end while the action was at the other. Unfortunately, when you come up against India as a spinner, you have to do something constructive.

It is also incorrect to say that Giles was incapable of attacking the batsmen. Not very often, he went against his style, went around the wickets and frustrated the batsmen. Probably the most impressive aspect of his bowling was the trajectory of his deliveries.

Why did he develop the hip injury? When he bowled, in order to get the drift into the right hander, he exaggerated his pivot. Probably a bit too much for comfort. He exaggerated it to such an extent that he actually turned his upper body quite a bit from his hip. That added a lot more stress on his hip. That is the only perceptible reason for his hip injury – from my point of view at least.

It was sad to hear about his injury and sad to see him go. Ashley Giles probably will not be remembered like Underwood, but will leave his little footstep in the sands of time. Thank you Ashley Giles.-BS

Once again, there has been a delay in blog updating and once again the reason is the shambles of Indian education have been wasting far too much of my time.

Suggested Reading

Something that just HAS to be read. (on Tendulkar.) A point that has to be noted here is that all the time Tendulkar was being beaten to Sidebottom, he was playing well inside the line. This means that he was playing for the ball coming into him. So, if the ball did in fact come in, he was safe. And guess what. If the ball did not come in, he would have had nothing to do with it and would have been absolutely safe. Genius. Genius.-BS

http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/01/stories/2007080160392000.htm