If the quality of telecasts of sporting events can give a leading clue of the financial health of a particular sport, what would you infer about Cricket if you are following the IPL (Cricket in India at large these days)? Or better still, get someone who’s a complete Cricket alien to watch IPL and see what he infers. It’s quite possible that he thinks Cricket is this poor sport which is followed by a handful, and that the benevolent broadcasters and administrators are shelling money out of their pocket to the benefit of the niche cricket-mad audience, and in the process try to recover some parts of the cost through the intrusive ads and the non-stop product plugs. Now, tell him it’s apparently worth $4.1 billion dollars.

 Why is Cricket in this abysmal state of presenting itself in its most disgraceful form when it’s at its most prosperous, essentially to the very people who have contributed to its prosperity? How did we enjoy standard quality telecasts for all these years when Cricket was a much poorer sport? Has cost of production gone up so steeply? Or have people expressed their wish to have inferior quality coverage? Let’s hear it from someone who considers himself to be a neutral voice on the state of the game in India; someone who has worked in the broadcasting industry for almost two decades now, and with a management degree from one of India’s premier B-schools to boot. He thinks it’s because we don’t have a subscription driven revenue model in India. Woah. Wow! Sherlock Holmes reincarnate. Mystery solved. All can go back and sleep in peace now.

Did we, all of a sudden, stop paying the TV subscriptions since the IPL had introduced 2 more teams into the mix? Where were they making money from before? Oh my god! Were they doing the cricket watching public a service by absorbing mounting losses over many years? Cricket is a glorious game on many counts; one of them is the breadth of advertising real estate it provides. An ODI game has about a 100 breaks, with almost no intrusion, neatly designed into the game for commercial exploitation. So long as the revenues from these ads exceeded the cost of the broadcast rights and operating cost, the broadcasters made money.

 Is subscription an absolute non-issue, then? Of course not. It’s an issue for channels in the business of producing content, the cost of which far exceeds the potential revenue from ads. Let’s take the IPLogist’s assertion seriously and assume that every cricket watcher in the country agrees to pay subscription for Cricket telecast. Would it solve the issue? What if they sell the broadcast rights for $3.5 billlion the next time, and hike the subscription to Rs.200 then? Or maybe Rs.500? What if they still have the intrusive ads on top of it? Where is the incentive for them to curb this practice? Why don’t we see this in other sports? Can the world of subscription payers match the revenue potential of non-stop clatter of ads superimposed over the triumvirate of Xavi-Iniesta-Messi in a Champions League final or Fedal in a Wimbledon Final?

The simple act of stipulating the conditions for what constitutes a standard quality coverage is beyond the IPLogist’s perspective. A break clause in a contract, he’s never heard of. Covenant is a word that he didn’t come across even in the GRE word list. The IPLogist doesn’t stop there:

“ Clearly India has to play the role of the statesman in nurturing product quality, but it is just as true in the corporate world that market leaders place great emphasis on profitability. The great institutions of the world are able to find the right mix; their product quality doesn't drop, nor do their margins”

Hah! The sweet irony of using a corporate analogy for an institution which is created under the Societies Registration Act; an institution which is served by honorary members and refuses to pay the full tax due; an institution which is vehemently protesting the move to bring it under the ambit of RTI.  How many companies work with such comfort? A robust principal-agent relationship: honorary members with revenue maximization (with no emphasis on long-run sustainability at that) as the foremost pursuit in their roles, and yet flout taxation. Subsidized, if not free, prime real estate for stadiums, yet no accountability. A monopolist-right to organize a team which can represent the nation in a sport, yet the commercial benefits of a free market. And we haven’t even scratched the surface on the rigor of transparency and accountability norms required in the corporate world.

“On the subcontinent, we are different. Maybe because of the great need to merely exist, we are very price-conscious; we do not mind putting up with things as long as they don't cost too much. Hence the unbelievable amount of advertising on television.”

How about this: In the subcontinent, you can screw your patrons as you wish - ah sorry, you call them consumers, don’t you? – so long as they are vulnerable. You can run a sport like some vultures run business, though you have absolutely no personal stake in it – let's have honorary CEOs please. You can enter into contracts which openly allow your counterparties to exploit the patrons, ouch! consumers, who have no other recourse but to self-penalize and give up on the game. No wonder then that we have a government which asks women to stay at home after 8 PM as a solution to raising instances of rape. Don’t like the rule, please leave the place. We believe in absolute free choice, you know?

 If this is the enlightenment we get from a neutral voice, imagine what a mouthpiece of BCCI is capable of. Oh, wait…

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“For Test cricket to remain the mightiest form of the game, it must become self-sufficient. It cannot be on the dole from T20, or 50-overs cricket, and yet despise those forms. For that to happen, it must establish a commercial connection with the follower.”

Let’s imagine a world where Tests and T-20s are different sports, administered by different entities.

Let’s have year-round T-20s and Tests.

Let’s stop sharing the calendar, at least stop pretending to. 

Let’s invite all our cricketers to a negotiation table. Call Tendulkar, Ponting, Clarke, Steyn, Anderson, Sehwag, Kallis, Kohli, Roach….call them all. Tell them, it’s time to put an end to this business of straddling two worlds. Tell them, it’s time to make a choice.  Give them two offer letters: one, to sign up for only Test Cricket, and the other for only T-20 cricket. Give them time too. Let them come back after a month to indicate their final choice. Let them introspect; talk to friends and family; reflect on why they are in the game that they are in. Absolute freewill. No pressure.

Now, ask yourself this question:  How many of these Cricketers would choose T-20s over test cricket or vice-versa?

Given whatever answer you have in your mind to the previous question, guesstimate the impact of having, or not having some of these players in T-20s/Tests. Compared to the price of the broadcast rights prevalent for each of these formats right now, which format’s broadcast rights will be more valuable after this partition of cricketers between the two formats? Let’s say, the cost of test match broadcasting rights is $8 million for a single test right now and that of a T-20 is $2 million. Oh, T-20 won’t be a two-month gig anymore; the calendar is going to swell. Factor that in please. What is your guess on the price of these broadcasting rights after the partition?

"It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked." 

Don’t stop there.

How many business cycles has T-20 seen? And Tests? Oh yeah, just a great depression here and a couple of world wars there, and maybe one recession too many to keep count.

Just imagine the state of both these sports long into the future, say 50 years down the line. Ya, it’s way too long to forecast. Just humour me. Imagine, with all our inherent limitations for forecasting that far ahead, just take a guess.

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It all started with a photograph in The Hindu, one of Dravid playing a sweep shot. I had never seen him bat till then. I had seen his name in so many scorecards before in the paper, of Ranji matches, Duleep Trophy matches, Challenger Trophy, against Pak A, England A, Kenya and who not. The image of that perfect sweep shot was from the Ranji Semi-final against Hyderabad in which he made 153, and followed up with another hundred in the final at the MAC, which sealed Tamil Nadu’s hopes of ending the title drought. If my memory serves me right, it was also the first time ESPN telecasted the highlights of Ranji Trophy. If the photograph evinced interest, the full-stride-forward cover drive in the highlights package made me go all in.

***

I studied his stance with a little more interest than solving Quadratic Equations, and needless to say, I found it a lot more fascinating too. The stance with the feet so wide apart was a pain to imitate, but that didn’t deter me from doing it anyway; I shortened my long running strides to appear cooler, like Rahul. Even in a 12-over Tennis ball match, I exhibited my exquisite judgment in leaving the ball alone with that typically extended follow-through. He made a stroke out of “well-left”.  Heck, I even read Discovery of India because he was reading it at that time.

***

By the time Dravid toured Australia for the first time in ‘99, he had already built a huge reputation for himself as an all-conditions batsman with hundreds in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and narrowly missed out on a hundred in England and West Indies. “Dravid in Australia could be as dangerous as Sachin”, said Steve Waugh on the eve of the series. He was standing on the cusp of greatness, of clearing the final hurdle before he could take his place in the pantheon, against an Australian team that had just whitewashed a Pakistan team which, on paper, had a far greater chance of upsetting Australia.

In his sternest examination on the cricket field yet, Dravid came up short, woefully at that. He had a monumental struggle in the first innings in Adelaide, followed by a tame dismissal in the second innings. He headed to the next test in Melbourne carrying neither form nor much confidence with him; he didn’t even cross double digits in the first innings, edging a thunderbolt from Brett Lee to Gilchrist.

Out-went Laxman in the second innings dismissed for next to nothing, in-walked Dravid to join Ramesh in the middle. It was near the end of day’s play. With 376 to defend, and for the last over of the day, Brett Lee steamed in like a man on a demolition mission; he nearly rearranged the fingers of Ramesh’s bottom hand with a brute. Dravid was on strike for the remaining 5 balls. Dravid, whose wicket was far more critical to the team’s cause than Ramesh’s in this context. Dravid, who came in with a lofty reputation which is crumbling to pieces by each innings. Dravid, who’s under immense pressure to live up to his almost maniacal obsession to do well in Australia, to earn the respect of his teammates and the opponents. He could have been excused if he wanted Ramesh to play out the nervous last over so that he could begin afresh the next day. The next ball he faced, he glided the ball to fine leg by turning the face of the bat for the bread & butter single, only that he didn’t choose to run. He didn’t choose to expose his injured partner to a lethal Lee for the last few balls of the day. He survived the over, came back the next morning and got out soon after, edging Lee to Gilchrist.

***

Sidvee, like he usually does, wrote another fine piece on Dravid today, in which he points out the futility of watching Dravid’s batting clips on YouTube.

“So if my grandson were to ask me about your batting, I would be lost. The only way anyone can begin to understand your craft is by watching you bat through a whole day, by experiencing your pain. There are no short cuts.

There are a million links that pop up on YouTube when I type ‘Rahul Dravid’. All of them show you batting. None of them contain your essence. There is no Rahul Dravid in there.

That’s sad. But maybe that’s also a good thing. I was fortunate to be able to watch you bat. My grandson won’t be as lucky. He’s going to be born at the wrong time. Let’s go with that. It’s much easier”

As much as I agree with his point, I don’t quite share his concern for Dravid’s legacy for future generations. His legacy is secured and sealed in cricket literature. It’s hard to believe our future generations would appreciate the essence of Dravid any more or any less than my generation appreciated the essence of Bedi or Sunny. In fact, I grew up with a constant stream of stories on Sunny’s inexhaustible patience from my Dad. And the first time I saw Sunny bat in a cricket classics video, I was gobsmacked; I felt cheated. No, that’s not the mental image I had of Sunny. But people stuck to the narrative of Sunny being a khadoos, disciplined batsman so religiously that they missed out on the million nuances in Sunny’s batting. That most gorgeous straight drive added such great allure to the impenetrable numerals – 10122 and 34. I might have missed out on the essence of Sunny had I just relied on You Tube, but without You Tube/Cricket Classics I couldn’t have seen the Sunny that my Dad never told me about.

For all the doggedness and determination on display in Dravid’s batting, there’s great flair as well. So, 50 years from now kids might watch the video of Dravid standing tip-toe to flick Gillespie past midwicket in Mohali and wonder why some of us oldies only talk of Lax and Azzu when it comes to wristy batsmanship. Some would watch the video of him take his long stride forward to smother the prodigious spin, to meet the ball where it pitches, only to go through with the stroke with full swing of the arms, lofting Murali over extra covers for a six, at Taunton and feel cheated by the definitive narratives that we’ll pass onto them.

***

After the horror tour of ’99, Dravid returned to Australia again in ’03 with an even more enhanced reputation and perhaps as the finest batsman in the world at that time. He had scored 3 successive hundreds in England, followed by another one against West Indies at home. He hit a purple patch and had never batted better in his life. If failure in the last series was expensive, it wasn’t so much as even a choice this time around. Oh, the ghost would haunt him all his life.

Almost as if he was continuing from where he left off in ’99, he started off the tour with yet another failure in Australia. Is it just him or the conditions? Is it the bowlers? Or just plain luck? Is he equipped to score runs in Australia at all? What more does he have to do? John Wright did offer a peek into the self-doubts that Dravid was desperately trying to keep at bay after the first innings in Brisbane, in his book Indian Summers. He did help himself to a fluent 43* in the second innings which was his highest score in Australia till then.

That Dravid played his career-defining knock in the next test in Adelaide is history. A lot of us grew up without knowing what it felt like to win a test in Australia, Dravid almost singlehandedly set that right. It’s easily the finest day in Indian Cricket for people of my generation at least. The moment was so historical that the last few overs of the chase were shown live on national news channels. The shot of him playing the square cut, jogging across the pitch and then kissing his India cap will be etched in a generation’s memory forever.

Australia had amassed 556 in the first innings. India were in trouble at 85 for 4, hoping for a redux of the Kolkatan miracle. I don’t remember the exact score when this incident happened, but I don’t think Dravid had even crossed his 50 by then. Brad Williams bowled an absolute snorter which took off from a good length and hit the swaying Dravid, and flew right into the waiting hands at slip cordon. It looked terribly close. It could have been bat or either of the elbows. No one could have been sure on watching it real-time. Dravid, with so much at stake individually and with his team in dire straits, could have been excused if he had indicated to the umpire that he didn’t nick it, even if he had actually nicked it.

He didn’t nick it.

And he stood there expressionless. No shaking off the head, no pointing the elbow to the umpire. He stood there like he would have had he just let the ball go.

David Shepherd got it spot on. It hit his right elbow.

That’s class. In a moment of extreme vulnerability.

No, it doesn’t come with a price tag. 

***

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These are turbulent times in Indian Cricket. In the good old days, people’s attitude would swing in correlation with the performance of the team. Some would have burned effigies and some, threatened to give up on the game; some would have called for the retirement of senior players and some, bickered on the bad influence of money on players’ attitude. But there was always the erudite fan who didn't believe in such superficial expressions. He believed in thorough analysis and the importance of detecting the root cause. He would point out the technical deficiencies, the abominable fitness standards and the lack of a culture of excellence. He would write an academic paper on the massive revamp of our domestic structure – from pitches to the points system – required to achieve excellence. It was all part of the package, of having invested so heavily in the game.

Nowadays, it’s becoming a little complicated, especially the role of the erudite fan. Not for the new age Indian fan, the simple cause and effect analysis. He has read Black Swan, and swears by Heisenberg. He has the swagger of a guy who knows his economic might. What kind of a fan you are is more important to him than what kind of a team you are a fan of. The volatile emotions of the chest-thumping-one-moment-burn-the-effigies-the-next are for those sissy fair-weather fans. He’s no tribal patriot, yet a fierce loyalist.  Somewhere amid this passing of the baton, I seem a little lost. I am trying to locate myself in this matrix of gen-next Indian fans. I am looking for cues… 

I heard him say India is going to dominate the cricket world both on and off the field for the foreseeable future.

I heard him say MSD is better than Tubby, after Barbados.

I saw him pounce on anyone who dared to question the merits (er..the lack of it) of the Dominica farce. “Do you even know what it feels like to be in the middle? So, you think, sitting here in Valasaravakkam, you know more than what Dhoni knew being out there in Dominica, huh?”

I heard him say we’ll thrash England 3-1 or something and also some chatter about Sachin’s 100^th.

I heard him say we have never played well in the first test of a series abroad.

I heard him say we were due one bad series after all the successive winning streaks we have had in the recent past.

He called the bluff on the fair-weather fans and flipped the collar of his Indian ODI t-shirt up despite a 0-4 drubbing. 

He refused to buy into the systemic overhaul argument. After all, we won the world cup and notched a series of test victories abroad with the same system in place, didn’t we?

He shows his middle finger to anyone who dare point a finger at the IPL for the test debacle. Either you are an envious gora still suffering from the colonial hangover or you are the socialistambimama who’s lost his marbles since the Indian economy opened up in the early 90s.

I heard him say World Cricket would declare bankruptcy if Indian Cricket chose to walk out of the circus.

I heard him say something about Free Markets and IPL.

He delivered a lecture on Capitalism 101 when I ranted about intrusive ads in the cricket coverage.

(I went back and reread Shiller and Bernstein)

Apparently, BCCI’s hyperinflating financial might is a matter of great pride for all countrymen and the annoying intrusive ads are but a small price to pay for it.

I saw him swearing in the general direction of Australia. “If you can celebrate Packer, why can’t….”

“Anyway, get HD, no?”

And what about matches at home? “Watch it on the internet”

Capitalism 101.

I heard him say something about revenge. “5-0 is as much a whitewash as 4-0 was”

I asked him about the obnoxious scheduling of a series against West Indies at home which may eat into the preparation time for the all-important tour down under. He murmured something about Australia playing two tests in SA and how no one talks about that.

I heard him talk about resumption of normal business with the Aus tour. “Sachin is due for a big one. Has Lax ever failed in Aus? If only we had a fit Zaheer in Eng, we would have known the real deal. Hehe, and they lost to New Zealand of all teams”

I heard him say something not-so-complimentary about Australian cricket community after reading a Malcolm Conn article. I asked him about Boria Majumdar and he lectured me on some vague topics called Extrapolation and Stereotyping.

There seems to be some legitimacy about this slow-starter theory now. Let’s put down the MCG result in that bucket.

I heard him travel back in time to Calcutta ’98 after Sydney.

I saw him cringe on reading praises about Clarke’s captaincy. “Oh, this media I tell you. They are the biggest momentum players in the market out there."

I heard him say “what do you know about Captaincy that only Dhoni knows”

“hahahahaha, the world’s no.1 test team were whitewashed, huh? Who’s heaping laurels on the central contracts system now?”

Before I could even jump in about the margins of defeat, he shut me up. “A whitewash is a whitewash. Scorecards don’t lie”. “Ahem…What about Sydney ‘08?” “That ****** Bucknor……..”

I heard him say something akin to ISI having a stake in Cricinfo.

I heard him say “Warnie and Tugga were no friends. So, why this double standards against Dhoni and Sehwag? And boss, this whole rift is just a media creation anyway.” Sid Monga would have pocketed a handsome bonus for his story on the rift, I guess.

“When the team was doing well, everyone played along. Now, the system is bad; the players are old; IPL is evil; BCCI is an association of thugs, huh?”

The world is conspiring against Indian Cricket – that’s the only explanation I am left with. 

Oh Mr.Heisenberg, What have you made of us?

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It’s impossible to miss the splendor of Sydney even before you step into the city. You get a great view of the city while the flight is about to land in the Sydney Airport, with mountains on one side and the most gorgeous sea on the other.  The city is just as spectacular as the landing prepares you for. In fact, any city which boasts of roadways, railways and seaways for local transport has to be beautiful. But unlike Melbourne, it has the feel of a major city. You see traffic, you see people on the roads – almost as many as some parts of Mumbai, you see queues, and a general sense of vibrancy that grips you.

I often think that a tourist should be the last person one should rely for an informed opinion of any city/place. In fact, after seeing MCG and SCG, I would even wager that a cricket ground in the city gives you a greater sense of the place than some of these ill-formed opinions. SCG is everything that MCG wasn’t. While MCG wasn’t intimidating for a stadium of its magnitude – in fact, from outside it looks extremely simple and small – its opulence can’t be missed. It was a breathtaking yet graceful opulence. SCG is graceful too but in a far more intimate way.

For all the intimacy of the SCG, it’s a bit underwhelming to be out there than watching the ground on TV. The members stand and the ladies pavilion look as picturesque as it does on TV, but the rest of the ground could have been a shot from any other stadium. Also, unlike MCG (it’s incredible that every angle made for a great viewing in such a huge stadium), it has a few spots which clearly make for bad viewing. Towards the Victor Trumper stand, the ground has a fairly big slope and if you are at the ground level, like we were for the first one hour, it’s easier to lose perspective of the action on the field.

Even logistically, SCG is a microcosm of the city itself. There were long queues to get into the stadium; rest rooms were overflowing during the breaks; to get out of the stadium and come back in after the lunch break is a task. It wasn’t inconvenient, certainly not anywhere near the standards of the stadium experiences in India. It’s just the way life in the city is. MCG seems to reflect the more comfortable life of its city where traveling at 80kmph in an 100kmph speed limit road is considered to be serious traffic congestion. MCG had 70k people on the first day of the test but you could have been fooled into believing that there were less than 5k people if you go by how conveniently people got in and out of the stadium. It’s both an engineering and logistical marvel.

MCG is the kind of stadium that you would travel halfway around the world to visit as pilgrimage, while SCG is the one that you would want to have in your city where you watch every alternate match – a bit like MAC in Madras. Oh yeah, a MAC with those picturesque members stand and ladies pavilion. 

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After two thoroughly awestruck days, I have grown a bit more familiar with the G now. It also helps that I stay at a place which is extremely close to the G. For the first two days, I couldn’t figure out if what I was watching was special or where I am watching made it special. But today, it’s reached a comfort zone.  I am still awed by the stadium experience, but in a less-gasping, more balanced way.

After all these years of cricket watching, I still struggle to reach the fulcrum between altitude and distance.  But like I said yesterday, I seem to have come closer here at the southern stand. I can’t have enough of the top tier view.  It’s just beautiful.

When we left home in the morning, we were discussing about the quantum of lead for India by the end of day. Within a session, the equation changed completely. Before we could even ponder the worst case scenarios, Australia had the now all-too-familiar top order collapse. By the end of the day, I was talking to an Australian who thought India were the clear favorites to win the match, while some of us were wondering if we should emotionally hedge ourselves by punting some money on Aussie victory. What do you call this phenomenon? Reverse endowment effect, perhaps?

Hang on. Did we witness such fluctuating fortunes on a drop-in pitch? So, it’s not entirely difficult to produce a good sporting drop-in wicket, huh? What are we whining on and on about for a decade now? I would rather have this drop-in pitch than the organic ones in most stadiums in the world today.

While I absolutely cherish every aspect of the MCG cricket watching experience, I have a very clear preference for watching fast bowlers bowl here more than the spinners. I would prefer a Chepauk or a Trent Bridge over MCG (not that it’s a much lesser experience)  to watch a spinner at work, because I don’t really need the altitudinal beauty that the MCG adds. In fact I would prefer to be as close to the ground level as possible to fully appreciate the flight and the movement, and the MCG gives that too but with farther distance from the place of action than Trent Bridge or Chepauk.  But to watch fast bowling, there’s not a better place. It’s the most awesome theater.

I can’t envy the generation which grew up watching Holding/Marshall and Lillee/Thomson bowl here enough. While I thought about it, it also struck me that I have never seen a test match live where the quality of fast bowling was as good as what we have witnessed so far in this match. I have seen McGrath & Gillespie at their best in Chennai and Steyn & Morkel on a featherbed, again in Chennai. So, purely in terms of reputation, I have seen better fast bowlers in action before, but not better fast bowling in an entire test match. Here, we have 6 good bowlers who have consistently bowled well.  Forget live, I can’t remember the last time I saw fast bowling as consistently good as this even on TV.

The test match promises to be a humdinger. I hope it gets the final day it deserves. At a time where 55 has become the new 50 for batsmen, such tests offer so much hope.

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“One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort.  A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”  ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Rarely do I disagree with Chuck, especially not on the abovementioned quote. But today, I have to slightly alter my agreement with the statement. Yes, a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection, but sometimes your expectations could be surpassed. Be prepared to cherish it, if and when it strikes you. Today was one such day for me. I experienced perfection for nearly 2 hours.

To fully absorb the panoramic view of the MCG from the top tier of the Southern Stand is quite a surreal experience, even intimidating actually. Initially it’s scary to stand up without any support for the fear of gravitational pull. The stand is so beautifully constructed that it maximizes the capacity without pushing the field of action too far away even for the farthest spectators, which results in the stand being extremely steep. With far less distance than what an altitude of the top tier typically warrants, you get to have the most stunning view to watch a cricket match ever.  Pigeons are flying below your eyeline. There are only 3 floors of a rather tall Hilton hotel above your eyeline. You look up the sky and look down; you’ll feel a bit dizzy. But keep looking down on the field and it’s absolute bliss.

Add Tendulkar in divine form into the mix. And that straight drive, man….ahhhhhh.

 If that is not perfection, then nothing is.

If Cricket has any bit of relevance in your life, you must visit MCG once in your life and watch a match from the top tier of the Southern Stand. I can’t explain the feeling. I don’t think anyone can. I experienced perfection for 2 hours. Yes, it’s that same damned unexplainable fleeting feeling. But for 2 full hours.

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It’s both ironic and appropriate that the first two countries that I watched cricket in, beyond India, are England and Australia. I wonder if any other sport has such contrasting grounds as Trent Bridge and MCG. One is as accessible as it gets and the other is the most awe-inducing. One makes you feel closer to the game, relate to the players at so many levels, it makes you want to hug the ground if it’s possible. The other draws the line clearly. It places the athlete in a pedestal. It puts you in your place – you are just the spectator. And once it puts you where you belong, then it treats you royally. It allows you to absorb greatness from a vantage point, to stand in awe, to create myths.

It’s almost uncanny that the stadium in which the match takes place influences a fan’s experience as much as it does. At least so it was for me. When I see a short ball being pulled away for a six in Trent Bridge, I admire the shot for sure, but the bowler is still occupying my mind space. I almost feel for the guy. Of course he knows he shouldn’t have done it, but he did. He’s human. TV is a cruel device in that sense that it inanimates the whole experience. It’s easy to be cold. It’s an armchair critic’s best friend. And when I see the same short ball being pulled away for a six in MCG, my mind has no space for anything but glorifying the batsman, to marvel at his ability to pick the length early, to back his instinct, and to execute it perfectly to clear a rather lot of real estate. I am not sure if MCG inspires greatness from players but it surely elevates it for the viewer.

If Trent Bridge makes you want to hug it, MCG would make you want to prostrate at its feet.

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When I was a kid, my dream was to save one lakh rupees.

When I grew up a bit more, I thought if I earn 50k a month I would be a contented man.

At around the same time, I had added a visit to the MCG to my bucket list.

Looking back now, I can dismiss the first two as naiveté.

Today, I took a stroll around the G.

I met Ponsford who was perhaps setting off for a run, yet another one in his marathon collection. There was Lillee a few meters away in all his brutal beauty, and Bradman too, basking in the familiar delight of yet another pom-bashing I reckon. Then there was the superstar, Keith Miller. If someone had told me that he ruled the world, I would have believed it. As if to get me out of the time machine, there was Warnie too, in that quintessential posture where every part of his body synchronizes to produce the magnus effect , only that looking at the ball wouldn’t give any clue of that to the batsman yet.

I did what I wanted to do 20 years back.

I was as thrilled as I had first entertained the idea.

And I haven't even been to the museum yet. Nor did I get to go inside the ground. Just the stroll around the G.

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Oh yeah, this is yet another piece on Sachin’s 100^th. Trust me you have a choice to stop here.

Oh, you’re still with me? You didn’t read Mukul Kesavan’s column yet? Go read.

Woah! Still there? Now, I have got a captive audience.

Tell me honestly, this has been a frustrating time, no? When did the 99 happen? 12^th March or something? This year or last year?

How long can we go on like this? When do we indulge in our favorite debate again – Is Sachin the greatest batsman of all time? Melbourne, you say? Let me list down all that you have said to date:

20^th March 2011:

He would do it today, man. Sach wants to get rid of the burden of the 100^th before the most crucial match against Australia. Also, Chepauk has always been his favorite hunting ground. Give me 2:1 odds dude, I’ll hit.

24^th March 2011:

Glad that he didn’t make the hundred in the last match.  Some inconsequential game against a poor WI team. Cometh the moment, cometh the God.  How many times has Sachin failed against Australia in a crunch match? Today is the day. Surely. This is going to be the doppelganger of March 23, 2003. It’s meant to be against Australia, in a world cup knock out game. Can’t get better than this.

30^th March 2011:

So near yet so far against Australia, man. It’s all written, I guess. He made his debut against Pakistan. His greatest ODI innings came against Pakistan in a World Cup knock out match. And this match is even bigger than the Centurion one.  Has there been a more high profile ODI match ever before? This is it.

02 April 2011:

It’s good that he didn’t get it against Pakistan. Why would you want to have such a flawed innings for posterity to mark such a grand occasion? Think about it, a world cup final (Sachin’s most cherished dream) in front of a home crowd. Can he get a better stage than this? And it’s so apt that we are playing SL in the final – revenge for ’96 Kolkata.  Who writes his scripts, dude? That’s it. I am ok even if I die tomorrow. A Sachin hundred would seal the world cup today. Forget the odds dude. Let’s go even.

23^rd July 2011:

It would have been awesome if God had scored the 100^th in the World Cup final. But, honestly I would rather have him score his 100^th in tests. Also, he’s never scored a hundred in Lords (ya, ya, I am not counting the Diana memorial match).  It’s meant to be at Lords, machi. It’s just meant to be, you know.

1^st August 2011:

It’s been a terribly long wait, yaar. But come to think of it, it’s only fair that Sachin’s 100^th epitomizes the chunk of his career. It just had to happen this way. Team absolutely floundering abroad, a Sachin masterclass at one end, with absolutely no support at the other end. The more the team has progressed, the more it has remained the same. Sigh. At least we would have the consolation of the 100^th. 

22^nd August 2011:

Terrible series, man. We should salvage some pride by drawing this match. Sigh. This is so 1990. Hang on, the situation is not all that different from what it was in the Old Trafford test, no? It all started there – the first hundred, a counterattacking match saving hundred. It’s so appropriate that his hundredth will be so similar in character to his first.

25^th November 2011:

He’s looking good, no? It has to happen in Mumbai, da. This is where he grew up learning the craft. This is where he made his mark as a young prodigy. In a perverse way, it’s also appropriate that it comes against a not so great West Indies team, because Sachin is still the torchbearer of the Bombay school of batting and the khadoos attitude. It goes onto show that his preparation, his sense of responsibility, and his commitment as a batsman doesn’t waver just because it’s a lesser team.

Yawn.

Fair enough. But Boxing day, dude. Does it get bigger than this? Sachin in Australia. Can the script get any better?

Hang on, but Sydney is his favorite ground, no?

&^%#**** 

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This was originally published here.

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Sometimes it’s hard to explain why you are a fan of a certain cricketer. Tendulkar, well of course. Lara, oh wow! Astle – but why? There was a time when I went to every corner of Delhi in search of an Astle poster. Brian Lara, I could find. Mark Waugh, I could find. Richie Richardson, I could find. But not Nathan John Astle. Damn, there was even one of Harbhajan Singh (this was around 1998).

It’s a weird fandom. He doesn’t play for India. He’s no legend. He’s not a bowler that I could model myself on, and I had already started copying Dravid in my batting. So, no slot there. And for God’s sake, he used to play predominantly in a time zone which screwed up my sleep cycle. Not that waking up to watch him bat was always a rewarding experience. For all the inexplicability of it, if you had cut your teeth on this maverick innings as I did, it’s not that inexplicable.

Trailing by 227 in the first innings and at 28 for 2 in the second innings, against Ambrose, Walsh and Bishop, he didn’t have much of a choice but to counterattack.  But boy, did he grab his chance! It was flashy, magical and maddening in equal measure. Almost having a license to counterattack is one thing, but to walk down the wicket against Ambrose and Bishop, and smash them over the head is the stuff rockstars are made of. He had finished with 125 from 150 balls and followed that up with another brilliant hundred in the next match. The following period was patchy. He was never really consistent after that. But I was spoilt.

He is quite a frustrating cricketer to follow. You set the alarm and wake up at 4.30 AM to watch him bat, and he’ll play an expansive drive to a wide half-volley and get out caught in the slip cordon for next to nothing. But the thought of missing an Astle special was too gruesome to give up on this ritual. It came a few times in between. There was a solid 156* against the all-conquering Australia, which nearly won the series for NZ. But nothing quite like the way it did against England at Christchurch in 2002.

This was special. Very very special – the kind of innings that some of us, standing with a bat in front of the mirror, would have dreamt of playing.

On the back of a double hundred from Thorpe, Hussain set New Zealand a target of 550 to get in the fourth innings. Astle walked it at 119 for 3. Not exactly the ‘license to go all-out attack’ situation. It didn’t matter. This was Astle’s day.  Totally.

He stood tall and cut anything pitched short, covered the swing beautifully and played expansive drives for anything pitched up, even played a flick drive – a la Azhar – straight back past the bowler, lofted Giles out of the ground with those exquisite full swing of the arms, played his trademark bat-jamming-the-pad flicks for deliveries drifting towards the leg stump. While he was putting on a show at one end, the wickets started tumbling at the other end.

New Zealand looked dead and buried at 301 for 8. That’s when Astle decided to let it rip. Let it rip – well, he did a little more than that. The next one hour was quite simply the most maddening passage of batting I have seen, outside of Sehwag, in test cricket. He was launching all the English bowlers out of the park almost with contempt, literally dancing down for every non-short delivery. It was like a celebration, a six hitting competition. Caddick who had taken a 6 for by that time, was taken to the cleaners, and Hoggard wasn’t any better. This was cricket in its most raw form. A counterattacking batsman on top of his game against bowlers of pedigree, marshaled by a good captain, with no field restrictions. They pushed the field back, Astle was still finding the gaps. When he couldn’t find gaps, he took it out of the equation and simply launched them out of the ground.  They bowled short, he hooked them past square leg. They pitched it up, David Lloyd screamed “new balls please” in the commentary box.

The first four overs with the second new ball cost 61 runs – quite amazingly, that included a wicket maiden. Hoggard was pulverized for 41 runs in two overs, and Caddick was smashed for 38 runs in just seven balls spread across two overs – with one of the sixes landing on the roof over extra-cover. Yes, you read it right, a six over extra-cover landed on the roof of a stand.  In between, Ian Butler got out and in came Chris Cairns at no.11 (because of an injury). With Cairns for company, Astle blasted 118 runs in 55 minutes of 69 balls to go onto become fastest scorer of double century in tests.  At one stage, David Lloyd was worried if England would have a team to field for the next test at Wellington fearing if most of the England fielders would end up with stiff neck after watching balls fly past them at such regularity.

During the course of the last wicket partnership, if you had a look at Hussain’s reactions, you wouldn’t have believed that this is a captain defending 550 in the fourth innings, with the opponents on the mat at 333 for 9. Hussain had serious fears of the match slipping away. Another hour and it was gone! If an innings can instill the fear of a loss in the opponent when chasing 550 and still more than 150 runs adrift with only one wicket in hand, it ought to be rated among the very best.

*******************

 Watch that innings here – Part 1 and Part 2 ( Courtesy: robelinda2)

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This was originally published here.

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A sizeable crowd had gathered to watch the Indian team’s net practice on the eve of their tour game against Victoria. Behind the queue of net bowlers eagerly willing to show off their skills against Tendulkar, stood a man who is almost completely forgotten in Australian cricket today. A man who had, for a brief period, captured the imagination of a cricket crazy nation, stood there in near-anonymity now. But one man in the stadium recognized him and he wasn’t an Australian. Sachin walked up to him and had a chat with him at the end of his batting session.

EI caught up with the forgotten magician for a chat:

 “It still feels like yesterday, you know….the last time I bowled to this lad, Sachin Tendulkar”

“I ran through a very strong WI batting line up in the fourth innings of the Melbourne test to win it for Australia. That was just my fifth test.”

“Everyone thought I was the most exciting cricketer at that time. Benaud thought I was better than Grimmett and O’Reilly. Chappelli thought I was the best thing to have happened to Cricket at a time when there was a serious dearth of quality spinners in the game.”

“In fact, I had a poor start to my career. In hindsight, I thought my selection was rushed up a bit. I played my first test against possibly the best players of spin in the world. Indians took me apart. I thought I would never play another test.”

“But my captain stood behind me. Border was a dream to play under. He assured me that I wouldn’t be judged on one performance and that I would be a given a fair run and he stuck to his word”

“It took me some time to get used to international cricket. I struggled a bit in Srilanka after that. But against West Indies here at my home ground, it all came together. It was magical. The ball did everything I wanted it to do.”

“I don’t know…I was a bit cursed I guess!…I mean…in my first match I had to bowl to Tendulkar and when I just about managed to find my rhythm, I ran into a rampaging Lara. He was in breathtaking form in Sydney. At that time I didn’t know that I was bowling against two of the finest batsmen of this era. But boy, it was a task!”

“I had a very good series in NZ after that. It was a drawn series and I got about 17 wickets or so…It was all falling in place just in time for the Ashes”

“It was my first Ashes. The hype was unbelievable. Everyone thought I would single-handedly win the Ashes…It wasn’t just the general public who thought so but even some of the former Australian cricketers.”

“I don’t know if I got carried away by the hype, but the tour was a disaster from the beginning. I couldn’t play the tour matches because of an infection. Then I played the first test directly, and was sent on a leather hunt all match. It was almost as if some of the Indians had turned up for England!”

“The end was rather hurried. One terrible match at Old Trafford followed by another at Lord’s. My confidence was absolutely shattered. I could never get my rhythm back again. Not at international level. I went back to play for Victoria. But I couldn’t rediscover my rhythm in Sheffield Shield either. It was inexplicable. It was painful.”

“It took me two years to move on. I wasn’t even selected for Victoria from the next season. I could neither give up Cricket nor could I get my form back. Eventually I moved on to things beyond Cricket. I got a job with a bank and I didn't get back to much Cricket after that.”

“Looking back at it, my fate was sealed with the first ball I bowled in Old Trafford. My first Ashes ball. I got carried away by the hype. Surely. Nothing else explains it. I wanted to bowl the million dollar ball. I wanted to flummox the batsman straightaway. I thought I was a magician capable of pulling tricks at will. I gave the ball an almighty flick, tossed it up hoping it swerves in the air at three-quarters length, grips the pitch on the batsman’s blind spot, and has Gatting play all over it – a delivery that I knew I was capable of producing.”

“….But it ended up as a rather loopy little full toss on leg stump and Gatting came down and whacked it over mid-wicket. That was that.”  

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“Are there absolute limits in sports? Is there some speed no runner will ever exceed? A home-run distance no batter will ever reach? A weight no power lifter will ever hoist above his head, even a thousand years from now?” asks John Brenkus in the opening lines of ‘The Perfection Point’. 

It was impossible not to think along similar lines while watching the US open final on Monday. Can Tennis hope to get any better than this? It seems like it's scarily closer to the perfection point already. Of course, I am exaggerating here. But the exaggeration suits well in this context. 

Rarely do we sense that we are witnessing something transcendental, while the event is unfolding live in front of us. Often it's retrospective sense-making and sometimes purely force-fitting narratives. There are moments, like the 2009 Aus Open final - where Rafa clearly overtook Federer - or the '95 Aus-WI series, where the passing of baton so clearly came to the fore. There was an underlying contest but just as relevant was the overarching narrative. But these are about shifts of power, change of dynamics and not quite game-changing leaps that John Brenkus is talking about. But on Monday, apart from Djokovic consolidating his status as the best player on the planet now, there seemed to be more to it, a major milestone in Tennis’ quest to reach the perfection point. Or so it appeared to me at least.

Djokovic was out-Nadaling Nadal. He was returning like Agassi - sometimes even better, his backhand strokes made even an Edberg-tragic like me contemplate if his was the greatest backhand in the game, his inside-out forehands seem to be nearly as good as Federer's. Throw in a Sampras serve and Johhny Mac's volley - you nearly have the perfect Tennis player! Nearly.

Did we just witness the next big quantum leap in the evolution of Tennis? Steve Tignor talks about how the transition from the wooden frames to metal frames changed Tennis drastically in his very fine book ‘High Strung’. But that change was waiting to happen and its impact shouldn’t have been entirely surprising. The lighter weight and a huge sweet spot made power a new tactic in Tennis.

“Swede. “Billy,” Lendl said, “you just rally with him in the backcourt until you get a forehand you like. Then you crash it hard, crosscourt.” Scanlon, still thinking in terms of classic tennis strategy, finished the thought. “And then I can approach the net because his backhand is vulnerable?” Lendl paused and gave Scanlon a quizzical look. Then he said, “No, he doesn’t get the forehand back!”

The killer forehand tore the cover of the game. Groundstrokes were never the same again. A humongous milestone in the evolution of Tennis was crossed. Tennis has seen no such technological advancement since then. Of course Racquets are getting better by the day, players are fitter than ever before, and the polyester strings have made an impact on the game. They have all contributed to a gradual move forward but none of them are game-changing leaps. None of them till Federer came along.

Federer raised the bar so high that he threatened to leave the rest of his fraternity behind and inhabit a parallel universe. There was the general standard of Tennis, and there was Federer’s. For a few years, they could so easily have been different sports.

There was a space for sporadic excellence before, lesser mortals were winning a major here and a major there. But when Federer was reigning, he completely shut the door on lesser mortals. He owned the court, and sometimes appeared like he owned the game. Tennis and Federer became indistinguishable. Some of his Wimbledon matches could so easily have been a celebrity spotting contest - the world couldn’t have enough of Federer. Nike might as well have designed a halo for him instead of a headband.

A generation with plenty of promise – Roddick, Hewitt to name just two – fell by the way side. The next generation grew up knowing fully well that Federer demanded sustained excellence and 'Total Tennis' from them. Anything less would be quashed. There was just no respite.

“Until 1954, many people thought that a sub-four-minute mile was impossible for human physiology. The species just wasn’t engineered to do it. ……………But one day at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track, with the wind so bad he almost withdrew from the race, Roger Bannister clocked a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. He only broke the barrier by six tenths of a second – slightly more than an eyeblink – but he changed the world of foot racing forever”

Federer was the Tennis equivalent of the sub-four-minute mile. His domination was neither a result of technological advancement nor because of a major change in the game that his previous generation (like the transition from Amateur to Pro era) was deprived of. This was a gifted man, with an insatiable appetite, and a Tendulkarine work ethic who redefined the limits of human potential.

Once he broke the glass ceiling, the rest could have either lost their careers consigning themselves to relative mediocrity or liberated themselves to become greater players than they could have otherwise become. Nadal grew far beyond his clay-comfort and his natural leverage against Federer. He took on Federer on all surfaces, and went onto even surpass him. 

Then Djokovic exploded...so much so that he seems to be the perfect beast that Rohit Brijnath wrote about. I wouldn't bet that he can sustain this level of intensity over the long run, but just the thought of "what if he does" is bloody exciting.

Of course, Tennis is far away from reaching its perfection point. Who can rule out a technological leap that can make sub-100 gms Racquet a reality. But as things stand now - in terms of courts, racquets, balls, strings etc., - there is very little room for Tennis to get better than what it has been in the last one year. The US open final was the breaking point of the high-intensity Tennis that the Trivalry has been building upto all year.

Is the new found intensity sustainable? Or would this be documented as an exceptional Golden Age a few decades later? Will this continue to be a Trivalry or would others knock past the glass ceiling as well? Is Tennis on the cusp of a quantum leap or are we just a privileged generation?

January 16th cannot come any sooner. 

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There was a time when I used to pick up The Hindu every morning before anyone else in the family could lay their hands on it, flip back to the last page (the second last page in the later days) and gaze at it for a few minutes and that was that. My utility for the newspaper was done for the day, without reading a single word of the written pieces. Those were the pre-internet days, and satellite television had hardly proliferated even in big cities (we could watch only the SF and Final of Wimbledon in India those days), leave alone the Kanchipurams of the country. I had all the reason to latch onto every word written about a match that had been consuming my mind all day and didn’t get to watch. For some strange reason, I didn’t choose to. But I was the first one to wake up on hearing the noise of the paper sliding through the door. Why? Why else, but the scorecard!

Is there a more space-efficient way of summarizing a 5-day match in such a coherent way? No, not by a mile. The only memory that I have of Sachin’s first hundred is the mental image of The Hindu scorecard the next day. In fact it wasn’t much of a problem with India matches. All the home matches were covered on TV. We followed the abroad tests on Radio, got to see the highlights the next day, and the DD news covered all the matches as well. The real joy of studying (it was nothing less) the scorecard was in matches not involving India. One of my everlasting mental images of a scorecard is Lara’s double hundred agt Australia at Adelaide. 277 off 372 balls with 38 fours and no sixes (IIRC Hindu didn’t use to report strike rate for a long time – doing the mental arithmetic added its own charm as well!). That’s it, my imagination took over. It was simply the greatest innings that I had known but not seen. 277 off 372 balls and no freakin sixes! Wow! I had seen him bat in the ’92 WC before and I didn’t have to be a Harry Hopman to figure out that he’s a special talent. I had recreated the images of every boundary that he scored in my mind. And I had to wait another four years to cross-check that with reality. There wasn’t too much dissonance, I must add.  

By 1994, Satellite Television had become commonplace. We had access to most of the cricket going around the world. I had also graduated to reading the newspaper beyond scorecards. But the fascination with scorecards continued. My eyes continued to register every little detail in a scorecard. I saw the 102 off 40 balls before I could see the headline and was dumbstruck. The fall of wickets column gave me a greater sense of the day’s play than what most match reports did. I just glanced through this scorecard and immediately knew it was one of the most astonishing matches of all time. Boy, I was so thrilled as if I had seen an UFO that day. I cringed on seeing Ted Corbett write about “Another Steve Waugh hundred in crisis”, when the FOW indicated that he came in at 134/3. FFS.  

Then started the internet age. Cricnfo happened. It opened up a huge world for me. I have gone through the scorecards of every match that Michael Holding has played and tried to relive the match in my own mind. I have visualized him destroying Australia with unplayable spells in as artistic a fashion as a near-assassination can get. I time-travelled to the Bradman era, the Benaud era, the spin quartet era through those scorecards. Over years of practice, I had acquired the scorecard reading instincts – ability to size up a match just by glancing at the scorecard.

But somewhere down the line, I had lost it completely. Nowadays I feel like a dyslexic when I try to comprehend a scorecard. Every match played in every corner of the world became accessible. I could choose from at least 10 good match reports on the internet for each of the matches. I got lost in the narratives of the Brijnaths, the Sidvees and the Roebucks. The macro took the center stage and the mirco went out of the system. It wasn’t about a match or a series anymore. It was about the elegance, the drama, the context, the background and the history. It was about soul-searching. It was about erudition. It was even philosophical at times. But the good old scorecards didn’t excite me anymore. They became a mere post scriptum.

Recently there was a discussion on Twitter about the sublime beauty of Laxman’s batting, and naturally I went back to his Sydney masterpiece. Even by Laxman’s standards that innings was breezy. Even if Sachin didn’t have to play with monkish discipline to work his way back into form in that match, he would have been happy to play second fiddle. It was a sight for the Gods. I have always had this grouse that the innings hasn’t been celebrated as much as it should be. I pulled out the scorecard link of the match from Cricinfo to share it on Twitter, and I noticed something incredible. Here I am talking about Laxman at his most fluent, playing with Sachin at his most sedate by entirely cutting out 90 degrees from his batting and see what the scorecard says.

Sachin - 241 of 436 at 55.27. Laxman - 178 of 298 at 59.73.

Oh! poor little scorecard, you deserve a lot more respect than what I have given you in the recent years. I promise to make amends.

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To an extent, I know how much Cricket means to me, but I often wonder how much I mean to Cricket. What does Cricket know of those who only know Cricket?  Do I help it as much as it helps me? Hell, do I help it at all? Is it even a fair relationship? Am I a consumer or a stakeholder, or worse still, just a slave? Every time I was confused about life, I turned to Cricket. Now Cricket is the biggest ambivalence in my life. So what do I turn to?

No, I am not worried about the health of Test Cricket. It has survived imperialism, world wars, terrorist attacks, and what not? The threat of T-20 taking over is too myopic and exaggerated. That the pitches around the world are getting flatter by the day - to ensure the match lasts the full length - is a genuine concern. But even that is not the reason for my ambivalence. 

Despite the flatter tracks, proliferation of T-20 and cramped up schedules, Cricket always gave us reasons to stay faithful. We complained, cribbed, moaned, but never moved away. How could I move away? It's the one constant in my life. The thought of missing the next Sachin special is too gruesome to contemplate. So we stuck on, with great unease at times. Match-fixing raised its ugly head every time we stopped being skeptical, but after a brief period of posturing, we came back to it. We stayed faithful, for we knew no better.

Sometimes we looked at IPL and wondered if it's cricket at all. Not that the quality of cricket had too much to be derided about, but the dumbing down of coverage, the intrusive ads in between deliveries, the DLFers, the Citi moments, and not the least of all, the less attractive cheerleaders in the commentary box were just unpalatable. Oh God, why did Cricket have to stoop so low, we asked, safe in the knowledge that our beloved Test Cricket is untouched by all these commercial excesses. Slowly the IPL standard of coverage started spreading across to Test cricket as well. We thought this was our own Fight Club. We thought no one would disturb it. Now it's become a brothel too.

But then Neo Sports was struggling to survive, was defaulting on its loans. Maybe, we can put that down to the desperate efforts of a company struggling to survive. Well, if only it had stopped with Neo Sports. In fact Ten Cricket has been on a mission to make Neo Sports appear like the Gold Standard, and quite amazingly they have succeeded too.

Then other channels joined the party. Ashes was not spared either. And for brief moments it even touched that holiest of sporting institutions - Wimbledon, last year. Imagine the screen compressing to 3/4th the size  while Federer plays out his orgasm-inducing inside out forehand, and a 'closeup' ad playing out on a quarter of the screen. If this is the case with Wimbledon, what hope do we have for Cricket? 

The last ball is cut short; first ball has no run up; the batsman walking out to the crease has became a banned activity to be televised, and now it's reached a stage where on an average one can watch 24 inches of Cricket on a 29 inches screen. 

Hey, but the free markets maniac in us wakes up again - so long as there are takers, it'll be a seller's market. So we try to prove a point to these greedy sellers. We try and stay away from it, just like the way we did after the match-fixing saga of 2000 till Laxman fooled us back in. 

We switched on to see if the standard of coverage has got any better from the abomination of IPL, in the test series in SA, only to realise it's stooped even lower. Bang the remote and move away. But Steyn was pulling us back in with a spell, make that spells, for the ages. And that blaggard Sachin...

We are such suckers.

So long as there are takers, it'll be a seller's market. Repeat.

But hey, where are the markets here? One guy wins the bid and screws us like is his wont and you call it markets, huh?. What is my alternate choice? Give up Cricket? Why not a channel offering a better coverage? Oh, these are exclusive rights. A quasi monopoly. So WTF is BCCI doing here? Oh sorry, wrong question.

Poor broadcasters. Have paid a fortune to acquire the rights. Don't have a choice but to maximise the ad space as much as possible to be able to sustain it. Says who? Says who? The guy who used to sell us the story that we were the stakeholders of Indian Cricket. Hmmm. 

But I didn't ask them to bid so high, no? Why do I pay the price for their desperation and irrationality? Ohk. So either I should take what I get or beep off, huh? Ok.

Why can't BCCI set minimum standards of broadcasting that whichever channel wins the bid has to adhere to, with a break clause attached? Oh freak, wrong question again.

ohk, I am beeping off. bye.

Aha! what a gorgeous cover drive...R G Sharma, you beauty!

Damn.

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I have made a few good choices in life; following Federer is perhaps the foremost among them. With most of my icons, at one stage or another, I wanted to be them or at least like them. But with Federer, I have never entertained such a thought, for I feel watching him is a greater privilege than playing like him. I wonder if he can fully appreciate the beauty of his Tennis when he is playing it himself. Of course he watches tapes of his matches, but would his experience be anyway similar to mine? I doubt so. At least I would like to doubt so, for I want to feel being a Federer fan is a bigger blessing than being Federer himself. 

As is the case with most people, my relationship with Federer began in that fourth round match against Sampras in the 2001 Wimbledon. But it has not been a blind drive on a highway all along, for it has been a journey of its own. I attempt to capture the various phases of that journey through this post.

Back to the roots 

I had seen Federer play before, but more as a journeyman than as a potential champion. But all that changed after one match. In 2001, Sampras may have been past his peak, but he was still the King on grass. He had annihilated Agassi in ’99; cruised past Rafter in ’00; entered the 2001 Wimbledon as the overwhelming favorite, and his tag as the greatest grass courter well intact. That Federer took him on and downed him in a classic is worth “a champion is born” story of its own, but the real deal was the way he downed him.

I started following Tennis when I was 6, an age when I couldn’t tell a Deuce court from an Ad court, leave alone the nuances of the game. But I was absolutely absorbed by Edberg’s Tennis in the ’90 Wimbledon final. I didn’t care about how many Grand slams he had won, or his ranking, or for that matter the result of the match in itself. I could close my eyes and relive those moments even now for I had not seen anything remotely as graceful as Edberg’s tennis before. His rather exaggerated service action, the one-handed backhand, that most swift move to the nets, and those cotton-wool volleys – there’s not a more fulfilling experience.

Watching Federer on this day against Sampras took me back to the roots, for he began where Edberg ended. All silken grace.

Internal struggle 

My Tennis following lineage is a rather weird mix of Edberg-Agassi-Federer.  I can’t point out when Andre took over the mantle from Stefan, but somewhere they started existing in almost parallel universe for me. While Edberg helped me fall in love with tennis, Agassi’s fandom reached borderline obsession. I had grown up, and all of a sudden these sports icons meant a lot more to me than when I was first enthralled by Edberg’s volleys. They started representing me. “Tell me your Sports icons, I’ll tell who you are” I said.

From a compulsive serve and volleyer to a guy who puts up a tent at the baseline, from a guy who played as if he didn’t want to hurt the ball to the one who could treat it as his worst enemy, it was a rather strange transition. It was partly Agassi’s personality, but largely his Tennis though. It was weird. But if given another chance, I would still do the same. With Edberg, I would have killed to watch him; With Agassi, I would have killed to be him. I wanted to have the long hair, the earing, the bandana (at the later stage) and what not. What possibly drew me to Andre was the fact that he was more than holding his own in an era of great serve and volleyers. He had an awkward serve and a double-handed backhand, but he also had those thunderbolt returns, the all powering groundstrokes, and an all surface game. Outside of Sachin, I hadn’t followed anyone with as much intensity till then.

When Federer took me back to the roots, Agassi was still closer to his peak – in fact he had the best year of his career a couple of years before, in ’99. I couldn’t shift loyalties for I had invested too heavily in Agassi. But Federer was magical and impossible to defy. They played each other in the US Open Semifinal the same year, and Agassi beat him comfortably in straight sets. It was a bit awkward. Thankfully Federer delayed his appointment with invincibility by a couple of years; by then, Agassi was fairly past his peak. I watched Federer play the best grass court tennis of his life in 2003 and ’04, and was looking for odds on him surpassing Sampras. He had taken over my temple completely.

And just then, Agassi chose to have a fairytale run in the 2005 US open to set up a title clash with Federer. The worst nightmare came true. The guy that I have always wanted to be, is playing some of his best tennis at 35, and has a chance to walk out of the game in style, against the guy who plays Tennis like no else has done before. Could it get any worse? Those 3 hours (or a little more) were the most annoying Tennis I have ever seen. Agassi came back from a set down to put on a masterclass on playing in windy conditions, only for Federer to better it. It was suffocating to watch. If there’s one match of Federer that I wouldn’t want to watch again, this is the one. There was just no winner in it.

Thank God, that was their last match against each other.

Basking in the glory

Sidvee wrote a lovely post on Roger recently, in which he says he lost Federer to greatness. I don’t know much about his other sports icons, but for me this was the first such experience. I couldn’t have enough of it. Edberg didn’t exactly set the world on fire; With Agassi it was always a roller-coaster ride; even if I could borrow from another sport, Sachin provided such moments as an individual, but it was always accompanied by the rather volatile fortunes of the team. I was awake till 4 am to see Andre go down to Sampras in the 2002 US Open, to hand his rival and friend, a dream finish to his career. It was masochistic at times.

Watching Federer was liberating.

He curtailed his volleying a lot more for what was the Gold Standard in the previous era, had become the stock groundstroke by then. The change of grass in Wimbledon made the surface slower; the players became fitter and more powerful; the racquets and more importantly the strings (Agassi called the polyester strings illegal when he first used them!) were getting better all the time - pronouncing the near death of the serve and volley brand of Tennis. The artist had to operate within constraints, but it didn’t matter, for Federer made playing from baseline just as attractive. I could switch on the TV, fully secure about the result, sit back in my bean bag, and ponder over: what in those array of the finest strokes would I pick as the play of the day; is his forehand the perfect Tennis stroke that there could be?; has there been a better a single-fisted backhand ever before? (of course yes, Edberg’s!), so on and so forth.

It was absolutely liberating. Except when he was playing the French Open final.

At one stage, it appeared extremely easy to be Federer and even easier to be a Federer fanatic. Thank God for Nadal.

Initially, Nadal had two things going for him. That he was an extremely good left- hander and that he was near unbeatable on clay. Federer is the closest to a perfect Tennis player, but not quite perfect. A single-fisted backhand gives you a greater reach, but lesser maneuverability, especially at an awkward angle and height. That’s exactly what Nadal brought to the table, especially on clay. He could keep hitting forehands high on to Federer’s backhand all day, putting him in a tangle. He was finding out vulnerabilities that nobody imagined existed.  Not because he was the better player overall, but because he was particularly better against Federer.

Then Nadal got better, made huge strides as an all-surface player, reached the finals of Wimbledon in successive years (’06, ’07), only to lose to Federer. It wasn’t ‘Champion vs Challenger’ anymore, but Champion vs possibly a lesser Champion. And he raised the stakes ever further next year by demolishing Federer in the French Open final like no one has done before. Damn, he even bagelled him in the final set. As if that’s not enough, he went onto conquer Federer in Wimbledon, in what is touted as the greatest match of all time. It ceased to be a blind drive in the highway anymore.

Worse was still to come. Federer lost to Nadal in yet another classic in the ‘09 Australian Open final. It hurt Federer so badly that he broke down. But what appears to be the lowest point of Federer’s career is quite strangely the best sporting moment I have witnessed in my life. That Federer cried while losing was endearing, and the grace with which Nadal carried himself was absolutely heartwarming.

When I can’t find the words, I generally resort to Rohit Brijnath. So here we go:

“I like sport like this - big-hitting, big-running, big-hearted sport. I like it when we are reminded, because we do forget, that these impossible-shot-hitting, insane-tension-managing automatons are in fact men. Unlike us, yet just like us. I like it when men let go and reveal themselves occasionally, so we know what's going on inside.”

Tennis wasn’t just about Federer any more. It was about Fedal. It’s a fascinating rivalry. Nadal, a product of his times, and Federer – a timeless classic.

Federer can travel back in time, play with a wooden racquet against Laver and still hold his own; travel 50 years ahead, play against athletic marvels, with ultra light raquets, who can hit monstrous groundstrokes with great accuracy and still not look out of place. That’s the beauty of Federer’s Tennis, for his game is designed on the founding principles of Tennis.

On the other hand, Nadal is this super athletic, big-hitting, double-fisted backhand player, aided by polyester strings and an everlasting stamina. Of course his game has finesse, a beauty of its own, hitting winners from angles that no other player can dream of. But he is unmistakably a product of his times.

Apart from the quality of Tennis, these two are as classy as they come.  

Bittersweet Symphony

While I didn’t have a problem in celebrating the Fedal rivalry, that Federer wasn’t as successful as before started to irk me. Losing to Nadal was fine, but Soderling? Berdych? That too in Wimbledon. No one expected his invincibility to last forever. In fact some believe he isn’t the same player since he was down with mononucleoisis in late ’07 and early ’08. But he was still winning titles, albeit a little lesser. Now they started to dry up. He was losing the clutch moments to lesser players. He wasn’t starting as favourite in Grand Slams. Hell, he wasn’t defending any of the majors in a long time. Meanwhile Djokovic started to realize his potential and then some more. He made it a trivalry. He went onto have one of the most successful runs in the history of the game, pushing Federer and Nadal to the backpages. He had a swagger about him now and sure as hell, he earned it. He beat Federer in Australian Open, defeated Rafa in the Madrid finals. They said Madrid isn’t the real clay. For good measure, he beat Rafa again in the Rome finals. He was making a mockery of the trivalry. He was playing the new age game they said. Federer is too old to catch up they said. It’s even beyond Nadal on clay they said.

In a perverse way, I had been yearning for this moment. I had it in abundance with Agassi, but Federer rarely provided it. He hardly tested us. He didn’t give us a chance to lose faith. Not even when Rafa was dominating him in majors. Now he did. For the first time, supporting Federer meant we were supporting the underdog. The markets were quoting 19-1 odds on him winning the French.

Then began the French Open. He was cruising through the early rounds to be there to face Djokovic yet again this year. Down 0-3 on head to head in the year so far. This was the moment I had been waiting for. And Federer turned the clock back! He was tactically brilliant and technically sublime. And that twirl of the finger after winning the match – ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

He went onto lose the final to Rafa. But that has happened before. Even when he was at his absolute best. In fact this one was far more close than some of the previous encounters at RG.

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. 

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I had lost a lot of my zeal for a debate on Sachin after the 90s. We had scrutinized every aspect of his batting to its limits; compared him with batsmen from all eras and teams. We rattled off facts, opinions and judgments. And eventually reached a point of no returns, because by then he had already reached a zone of his own. Towards the end of 90s, Sachin vs Lara debates lacked the intensity; Sachin vs Mark Waugh sounded ridiculous; Sachin vs Inzamam was an outdated joke. Ponting in the noughties threatened to get into Sachin-Lara zone, but never quite sealed it.

A part of the zeal returned a few days back, when Siddhartha Vaidyanathan wrote a blogpost on ‘Sachin and the clutch question’. This was not another skeptic making a callous point to undermine Sachin’s greatness. In fact, this is by someone, who I would happily concede is a bigger Sachintard than me. He wasn’t so much as making a point as thinking out in an open forum, I guess. It generated a lot of interesting comments too. As a follow up, he wrote another lovely post on tangential observations related to the topic. While I largely agree with him on his thoughts about greatness and history’s judgment, I wouldn’t share his doubts on Sachin’s lack of a “a single transcendent event to fix him in permanent memory”. This is why:

In many ways, Cricket is different from other sports. It’s harder for a cricketer, more so for a batsman to stamp his legend through one single transcendent event. Diego had it, so did Zizou and Jordan. Also Woods and Sampras – but in an individual sport, it’s a lot easier to evaluate. The problem with Cricket is that it doesn’t have a structure where it leads to one grand stage, one definitive achievement where a player can seal his status as a legend. Perhaps the ODI World Cup is the closest such thing in Cricket and Sachin, despite raising his game in World Cups, didn’t quite seal the moments in the final. But to place so much emphasis on just two innings of a two-decade career is unfair and stupid.

In Cricket, legend is largely achieved in parts, series after series, match after match. Like many people had pointed out in Sidvee’s blog, Jordon or Zidane had the advantage of lying flat all match/tournament and seal the definitive moment in a few minutes of inspired magic, but for a batsman, one mistake and his date with history goes awry, and one inspired boundary doesn’t quite have the symmetrical effect.

Amongst the cricketers, some batsmen seem to have come closer to immortalizing themselves with a single transcendent innings more than Sachin. Lara had his almost divine 153*, Laxman had his Kolkata masterclass, Steve Waugh defied near death (facing an angry Ambrose was nothing less) to tilt the balance of power in world cricket with his 200 in Sabina Park. Is it fair to argue that Sachin is not as big a clutch player as some other batsmen are? Here is my take:

The problem with Sachin is that he is consistently brilliant, unlike a Lara or a Laxman. Lara’s peaks stood out because of his troughs, and not because his peaks were superior to Sachin’s. Laxman’s is a similar case too. It’s almost as if a bit of mediocrity otherwise helps to contrast the finest moments even better.

Take Lara’s 153 at Bridgetown for instance, and juxtapose that with Sachin’s 136 against Pakistan at Chepauk. Two legends of modern day cricket, whose careers ran parallel for more than a decade, quite extraordinarily had a shot at their career-defining-moment hardly a couple of months apart.

Coming on the back of a first innings duck; chasing 271 against a Pakistan attack that included Wasim, Waqar and Saqi (at his best); on the last day of the test; with the team score at 82/5; fighting back spasms; overcoming a highly controversial dismissal (Ganguly was wrongly given out caught off a bump ball); with Mongia for company; Sachin raised his game to a level that even he hadn’t reached before. Walking in at six for two, it was the occasion that his body and mind had been waiting for all his life, the moment to leave a definitive transcendental event for posterity, an everlasting stamp of his genius. And he took it, just like Lara did 2 months later in Bridgetown against Australia in a not too different situation. He had a higher target but had the cushion of a better start and a greater support from the lower order.

But there was one difference, Lara’s innings lead to a victory and Sachin’s didn’t. With ten odd runs shy of target, Healy dropped Lara, and with 17 runs away from target, Akram took Sachin’s catch. That was that. One moment of luck was all that separated Lara’s finest moment from Sachin’s most haunting. Also when Sachin left, there were 3 wickets in hand, whereas Ambrose joined Lara when 60 runs were required and only Walsh to come in.

At an individual level, a batsman can only impact those clutch moments and hope those moments prove to be the difference between a victory and a defeat for the team.

If you judge a batsman by his ability to stamp his authority in clutch moments as an individual, Sachin is far ahead of the rest. When Taylor’s Aussies came to India, with Warne having established himself as the best spinner in the world by then, they had pretty much conquered the rest of the world except India and Sri Lanka (was still an ordinary test team then). The pre-tour hype had reached insane proportions. It was as much a Sachin vs Warne battle as it was India vs Australia. For a batsman already hailed as an all-time great, Sachin didn’t have a choice to fail. There was a little story floating around about Sachin’s susceptibility against leg spinners bowling from around the wicket. His dismissal to Rawl Lewis in Sharjah a few months before seemed to have given it some credence too. And you don’t count on Taylor/Warne to miss out on that, do you?

As if the pressure of playing a series against Australia was not enough, Sachin had the added pressure of taking his rightful place in the pantheon of all-time greats. A failure in the Warne-litmus test would have been catastrophic. He could have played it safe, nudged around, grafted runs , secured his status, before launching an attack. But that’s for lesser mortals. He sensed the grandness of the battle; he wanted to take it head on. He prepared himself for it weeks ahead. And then he did something unusual. He captained Bombay in the tour match against Australia, and launched one of the most brutal attacks on Warne and almost single-handedly won the match. In a three day match, a city team beat the ‘unofficial’ world champions of the day. Now that is “wrapping the wrists around history’s collar and throttling it into submission”.

When the bandwagon moved to Chennai for the first test, Warne settled the scores by dismissing Sachin for four in the first innings. Australia took a 71 runs lead. Sachin walked out again, at effectively 44/2 , the contest was absolutely hanging in the balance, and so was his personal duel with Warne. He took both of them by the scruff of their necks and slogswept them over deep mid-wicket with utter disdain. There was only winner from there on, both in the team and the individual contest.

I have merely quoted a couple of instances here. Out of his 51 test hundreds, at least 25 of them would be ‘clutch innings’ and add a few non-hundred specials as well. And there's also the little matter of his ODI career! Purely at an individual level, there’s not another batsman anywhere close to Sachin in clutch situations, leave alone being better. To marginalize the whole debate into a solitary ‘did it lead to a victory or not?’ is a rather shallow argument in the context of a team sport in general, and cricket in particular.

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We lived in the same apartment, went to the same school, same college, played Cricket for the same team, partied (in whatever way teetotalers could) on April 24th of every year, and even took many of the Agassi-Sampras debates too personally to affect our everyday lives. We don’t wish each other on birthdays, we don’t even shake hands when we meet, and invariably took the opposite side on any debate where Sachin was not the topic of discussion. But we were doing fine - in the most awkward way. Thank God, he married one of my best friends. If not for that and Cricket, we wouldn’t have been in touch for at least 3 years now.

Many of the ups and downs of our personal lives were highly correlated with the performance of Indian Cricket team. We threw the cue sticks and walked out of that dingy snooker parlor in some corner of the goddamned Virugambakkam, when Punter took a blinder to dismiss Sachin in the Mumbai test. Our Cricket watching careers were plunging new depths. No sooner had it plunged the depths that it touched new heights. Kolkata happened. Then our board exams er…the Madras test. This was the beginning of an era. From then on, we started winning more than we lost.

For a generation overfed on the imagery of Kapil Dev running back to catch his place in history, we wanted to move beyond that. Going into the 2003 World Cup, we knew we had a team to help us do that, despite the horrible results in NZ preceding the WC. All the hopes came tumbling down after our first match against a non-minnow. Effigy-makers had a field day. Stone-pelters made it to the front page of national dailies. Then Sachin came out and made a statement, assured us of better performance, and strangely, normalcy returned. Sachin personally took it upon himself to guide the team through to Super 6, one match at a time. On the first day of March 2003, he sent the entire country into a collective delirium. March 1st must have been the longest day of our lives till then, because it lasted till March 23.

And then March 23 surpassed it. We read every word of all the previews of the match written on the internet. A few of my friends gathered at my place to watch the match. JR went back to his house after the Zaheer horror in the first over. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day, only we were naïve enough not to see it coming. For once, I hated watching Gilly bat. After 20 overs, it was too suffocating to watch. It was a torture. The accumulated good work of the past 2 years was going in vain, one boundary at a time. It was humiliating. So we decided not to watch any further. We wanted to go out somewhere, to a place where no one talks cricket. JR didn’t join us. The entire city of Madras was deserted. But for once, we couldn’t enjoy biking on empty roads. We went to an internet center, and that damn guy had hired a TV specifically for that day. #Fail. We went to Marina, but beach has this extraordinary power to exacerbate whatever mood you are in. Didn’t help, #Fail. The sandwich shop at 'Alsa Mall' was open, that 'lvdkbl' was listening to commentary on the radio, Sandwich cancelled, #Fail.

We returned to JR’s home when the Indian innings resumed. We knew he went to the temple to pray! And he admitted just as much. I am sure if he had known the ‘stars’ of all Indian players, he would have even done an ‘archanai’ in their names. On another day, I would have ridiculed him, but not this day. But his prayers went unanswered. The probability of miracle went from minuscule to negligible at the end of the first over. Sehwag finally found some form. Ponting bowled his spinners to complete the 25 overs soon for there was a threat of rain. The move backfired. Sehwag launched Brad Hogg out of the park for a couple of sixes. Someone did the wise thing of bursting firecrackers then, for it was the only time we even had an outside chance of winning the match. It left a deep scar on us. We couldn’t even talk ourselves up. We could have hated Australia, but we didn’t want to. They were clearly superior.

The next day, I woke up. My pavlovian instincts picked up the newspaper and opened the second last page almost by reflex. God, it was painful to see, even for those 2 seconds before throwing away the paper in disgust, after which I was on a mental diet of not reading anything related to Cricket for a few days. I went down to JR’s place. We sat in his room. We sat there for nearly 2 hours. Spoke a few words in between – ‘did you call Rama?’ …’hmmm. No’. That was it. It was painful. We didn’t want to move on. We wanted to live the pain, for moving away is for unfaithfuls. His mom came into the room a couple of times. She wanted to say something, but she knew it would be stupid, so she didn’t. It was awkward, but comfortably awkward.

When Dhoni immortalized himself by launching Kulasekara over long on, and followed it up with that wonderful twirl of the bat, I was watching it with seven other people in Chembur. It was perhaps the most ecstatic moment of my life. I knew at least one other person who would have felt exactly the same way as I did, probably sneaking into a room to wipe his tears off. Maybe, I should have called him up. But we wouldn’t know what to speak. Maybe after a couple of minutes, he would have given the phone to V (his wife). It would have been awkward. 

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It's often said of Viv Richards, that there was not a more intimidating sight in a non-contact sport. I am not so sure if batsmen around the world who have faced Shoaib Akhtar would nod in approval of that statement. Watching Shoaib Akhtar in full flow was surreal. It was scary, intimidating, thrilling, and beautiful. His near marathon sprint to the crease had a wonderful rhythm to it, a fascinating build up to the eventual brutality of the craft, of launching a thunderbolt. Thunderbolts they were, not one or two in a spell, but ball after ball. If Cricket world was still stuck in a time warp and had not invented helmets, Shoaib would have got them out of the time warp. 

There is typically a * (conditions apply) sign over Shoaib's status in the pantheon of great fast bowlers. Many dismiss him as lacking in craft, 'bowls extremely quick but lacks the skills'. As if pace is a jackpot that he won by fluke. Would you hear this about batsmen? 'Take his timing away and Laxman is ordinary'. 'If not for his balance, Sachin would be no better than Ian Bell'. Pace may partly be a gift, but a good part of it is also learned, practiced and attained. If great batsmen have the ability to hit boundaries of even good balls, Shoaib had the symmetrical skill for a bowler. He could take wickets of bad balls. A 155kmph half-volley has broken many a bastman's defence. In fact, my first memory of Shoaib was one such dismissal. In only his third test, against South Africa in South Africa, he got a fiver without any help from the fielders, and a fair bit of help from the odd use of bent-elbow. In that spell, he bowled a dead straight half-volley to break open one of the most formidable defences in modern day cricket - that of Jacques Kallis. Had it been any other bowler, it would have been a certain boundary. But not with Shoaib.

Not that the notion that 'he is all speed and no skill' is true either. In fact, for someone known for his extreme pace, Shoaib had developed a wonderful slower delivery in the later part of his career. Pace was his standout quality, but he also had that quintessential Paki ability, to bowl the revere-swinging yorkers at will, in abundance. There may have been greater exponents of reverse-swing, but on his day, Shoaib was the most effective.  I have seen Wasim and Waqar running through sides in brilliant toe-crushing spells, and I have also seen Shoaib do the same, albeit less frequently, not in spells, but in overs. The gestation period between setting up batsmen and dismissing them was nearly nonexistent. One spell against Australia in Colombo summed it up perfectly. I had the privilege of watching Ambrose, Wasim, Waqar, McGrath, Steyn and Donald at their best, but none to match this spell.

Ponting triggered the collapse by playing a lame delivery onto the stumps – again, the ability to get wickets of relatively bad balls. Mark Waugh was cleaned up with the trademark full and swinging torrent. Then Shoaib nearly cleaned up Steve Waugh for a hat-trick with a replica, but Waugh marginally survived. It didn’t matter, he got him the next ball with another full, fast, swinging bullet that trapped him plumb in front. The world’s most vaunted middle order was finished in a matter of 4 balls. But that was not all. There was a little matter of a Gilly left. But the way Shoaib was going, it looked beyond even Gilly that day, and so it proved a couple of overs later. Shoaib sprinted in and bowled the inevitable full, swinging yorker which went through all that Gilly could bring into arrest the ball’s momentum to hit the base of leg stump. It was fearsome. The track was supposed to be flat and slow, but Shoaib simply took the pitch out of the equation. 

Enigmatic is a tag too easily attached to Cricketers.  Graeme Hick, Mark Ramprakash, Ajit Agarkar – who not? Anyone who was expected to succeed but didn’t, was termed an enigma. That’s an injustice to the word. If ever there was an enigmatic cricketer, it’s Shoaib. At his best, he has made the best batting line up in the world look like second grade club cricketers, and at his worst, a second grade club cricketer would whack him all over the park.  Sachin launched one of the most brutal attacks on him in Centurion, and he came back to dismiss him with a snorter.  I have seen him run through NZ with a 5-yard run-up in an ODI, and bowl dollies with a 40-yard sprint. In all sports, Shoaib must be the least fit athlete to have exerted so much of out of his body. And we are not even talking about his off-field antics.

The question, with Shoaib, was often about how good he could have been, rather than how good he was. He could have been one of the all-time great fast bowlers, a legend of the game. He wasn’t.  Let’s learn to live with that, but let that not mask the fact that he was still damn good. And above all, let’s salute him for all those wonderful sporadic moments of jaw-dropping brilliance that he gave us. If there was a more thrilling sight in Cricket than watching Shoaib in full flow, I haven't seen it. In a decade of pancake pitches, not many instilled a sense of fear in batsmen, he was that rare one. Cricket would have been poorer without him.

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To be able to fully appreciate Saina's achievements, it's important to understand the system that she operates in. Badminton is a cruel sport to take up as a profession, especially in India. The facilities are woeful, cost is prohibitive and the rewards are a pittance. For instance, the winner of the Badminton World Championships gets lesser than the first round winner in Wimbledon. Contrast that with the cost - the most basic brand of Yonex shuttles cost about Rs.800 to Rs.1000 a box, which is the bare minimum a player requires for practice in a day.  Add the cost of equipments and the inadequate facilities into the equation, there are few more irrational people than professional Badminton players in India.

And we are not even talking about the gender equation yet. In many ways, it's appropriate that we don't, because she doesn't burden herself with such delusions. She's aware of her status as a role model and has even openly indulged in the odd feminist talk at times, but as relevant as these aspects are, they can only serve as a distraction to the Saina story.

Rohit Brijnath described Federer and Sampras as "task-aware" athletes in one of his columns - "focused completely on what they are doing, what they have to do". Let me add that Saina would sit comfortably in that league too. She doesn't allow outside influences to affect her much - 'control the controllables'. Saina came onto the international scene in a period of absolute Chinese dominance. In fact, the top 5 players were all from China. They have a great infrastructure, government subsidies, excellent coaching and above all, an unmatched peer group. The best keep playing against the best day-in and day-out.

Ask Saina about it and she doesn't so much as shrug it off, but at the same time doesn't see it as an insurmountable challenge either.

"I overcome that handicap by playing against the boys"

"I don't play with the girls at all. Of course, the boys play a different kind of game from the girls; they smash a lot more. but I request them to play more of the rally game - tosses and drops - and they end up getting tired"

If only it's as simple as she made it sound. Imagine Sunny preparing to play against Holding by asking Madan Lal to bowl from 16 yards - probably worse than that.

Saina's single-minded focus in chasing her ambition is quite extraordinary. For starters, she doesn't have the perfect game, in fact, far from it. Her strokes are not the most refined, her backhand was practically non-existent for a long time, and hardly a threat to the opponent even now. She admits just as much. but ask her about her chances against the Chinese:

"....beating the Chinese is not impossible"

"They may have a tremendous system, but the girls themselves are human beings- they get tired and they can be put under mental pressure in a tight match"

Pressure is the crucial word here, her game is built on that. She's an extremely fit athlete and her court coverage is probably the best in the game. Her backhand maybe vulnerable, but exploiting that is fraught with risks, because her over-the-left-shoulder forehand is lethal. She can smash or drop from the most awkward of angles with ease. And they don't come easy, nor are they natural gifts. They are the results of a 13-hours-a-day, 6-days-a-week, monk-like training schedule. It's not that she is not aware of the limitations in her game, it's that she is quickly finding ways to improve them or at least not allowing them to be exploited. She's not in search of the perfect game, but the optimum game.

This is where the role of Gopi Chand is critical. Saina was extremely fortunate to have Gopi coaching her at the right stage in her career. It's a happy coincidence that Gopi started coaching almost immediately after his international career was over. Saina was bold and smart enough to shift her base from Lal Bahadur Stadium to Gopi Academy soon after.  Let's not forget that by the time she joined Gopi Academy, she was already an extremely successful player in age group tournaments. For a player who had a fair amount of success at the international level and yet couldn't sustain it, Gopi knew exactly what Indians lacked and fitness was right on top of the list. No wonder, Saina has turned out to be one of the fittest athletes in the world.

After her early success in the age group tournaments at the international level, Saina didn't take much time to challenge the Chinese hegemony in the professional league. She became the first Indian woman to win a Super Series title by beating Wang Lin in the final to win the Indonesian Open in 2009. She became the most talked about player in the circuit thereafter. She was the rest of the world's representative to take on China.

After the high of Indonesian Open, Saina was down with chicken pox leading upto the World Championship in Hyderabad. She just about recovered in time and reached the Quarterfinals. A period of patchy form followed, and then she hit the purple patch towards the end of the year. Over the next few months, we got a glimpse of her full potential, her ability to be the pre-eminent player of this era in women's badminton. She won the Indian Open, Singapore Open and the Indonesian Open back to back. Not even the legendary Prakash Padukone had achieved such heights. She had reached a career high  no.2 ranking and had just turned 20!

And just when she was expected to march to the no.1 ranking, her opponents had worked her out. She was found wanting in the QF of next World Championships in Paris against Wang Shixian. She came back strongly to win the Gold in Commonwealth Games, but was laid low by the ankle injury later in the year. Despite the disappointing end to the year which saw her ranking slip to no.5, 2010 was undoubtedly Saina's year - the year in which she announced herself as a potential world champion.

Saina will be taking huge strides in converting the potential to realisation this year. In fact, one of the biggest tests of her career awaits her in a few hours from now  - The All England Open Badminton Championships. She took on the world in 2010 and nearly reached the top. Now, the world will take her on. Her opponents, especially the Chinese contingent, would have scrutinised her game to its tiny bits. She's not going to get any easy points; her backhand will be exploited to its limits; She'll have to be on top of her to game to withstand it, and have to use every ounce of her mental strength to come out triumphant. I, for one, wouldn't bet against it.

Go Saina!

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