More on captaincy

This started off as a response to this but I’m making this a separate post because it contains (more) threads about captaincy in general.

All this is fine. So Dhoni is a better captain than Ponting (hell even I would make a better captain than Ponting but that’s a matter for another day). It’s all very well to be attacking; as you pointed out Dravid started out by being extremely attacking and would have done everything you say Dhoni did today (I didn’t watch it).

But the real challenge in modern cricket is to find a balance between attack and defence given your bowlers’ ability to bowl to their fields. No matter all of IanC’s protestations, there are times in (test) matches when you have to push fielders to the deep to stem the flow of runs; there are enough destructive batsmen today who can wrest a match with two hours of attacking batting. How you manage to combine this with enough fielders in catching positions to take the chances that do come is the test of your creativity; Vaughan is the best at doing this and I thought his captaincy in the 2005 Ashes provided a primer in how modern captaincy might develop.

As important as it is for a bowler to bowl to his fields, it is just as important for a captain to set fields corresponding to his bowlers’ ability. When you’re defending a low total in an ODI, it is all very well to get everyone close in; but if your strike spinner is Harbhajan Singh, he will pitch the first one short and wide and complain to his captain about not being given a deep point. That is Harbhajan; you just have to account for it with your plans. This was Dravid’s failure as far as his onfield strategy went: he was often forced to resort to defence and I thought he never could find the attack-defence balance (given that his resources comprised mostly of talented nutcases) and lurched between extremes of both. As for Dhoni, his attacking instincts are an auspicious sign but I’d rather judge him on his ability to find a balance.

P.s.: Yuvraj’s hamhandedness at the beginning of innings is horrible to watch.

Dhoni’s captaincy

Tactically, Rahul Dravid has been the best Indian captain that I’ve seen. Largely, he was attacking and positive with his field placements and bowling changes; something that’s not been a defining characteristic of recent Indian captains. With Kumble during the India-Australia Test series, it was a bit of a throwback to the dark days of numbing negativity (of course, Kumble was outstanding in the way he got his team to bounce back in Perth after the pain of Sydney and no amount of praise can be too high for the kind of steel he showed while trying to bat out those last few overs; however, here I am referring only to on-field tactics and strategy). Which is why it’s terrific to see that Dhoni fits into the attacking mould. His captaincy today, during the ODI at the MCG, was well-nigh perfect.

Ishant Sharma, of course, bowled magnificently. He’s maintaining that astonishing improvement curve in every game. The Star Cricket commentators were gushing over the decision to hand the new ball to him. However, Dhoni deserves credit also for the decision to keep Ishant on after Hayden went after him in his second over and hit him for 18. At the time, it was a courageous decision especially with Ishant having just bowled two no-balls (for two free hits) and looking like he was on the brink of losing his run-up completely with Hayden coming hard at him. Dhoni kept him on, Hayden edged a wide one, Ishant got his act together again and got Ponting soon after with a beauty. Later, with Australia 3 down and Ishant red-hot, Symonds and Clarke were trying to rebuild the innings. Symonds was under pressure but was getting off-strike by gliding the ball down to third man. Dhoni brings in a gully, denies Symonds that single, Ishant gets him edging behind the wicket next ball.

In general, most of Dhoni’s gambles paid off today. Front line pacers were kept on in the quest for more wickets when Australia were under pressure with the field in and plenty of slips. It worked beautifully as wickets kept falling at regular intervals and Australia were bowled out in the 44th over. The perfectly planned and executed Haddin stumping off Harbhajan capped it off.

Over the years, the Aussies have had the best captains (Taylor, Border, Chappell). Now, with Dhoni captaining India (and I daresay Ponting captaining Australia!) the boot’s on the other foot.

Update: Sehwag’s edged Bracken through a vacant second slip in the 2nd over and Tendulkar’s just edged Lee through the vacant third slip region in the 3rd over. With India chasing 160 to win.

Federer as James’s Romantic

In this post, Yatharth quotes this passage from Beyond a Boundary:

New technique consists in lessening such margins [of error], not in maintaining or expanding them. Some young Romantic will extend the boundaries of cricket technique with a classical perfection. .. He will drive overhead and push through any number of short-legs, as W.G. used to do, so that a whole race of bowlers will go underground for fifteen years as they did once, and once more emerge with new tricks. .. Our Romantic will do these things or other things – what he will – and the big battalions will follow in his train. We shall extol his eyesight, his wristwork, his footwork, his audacity, to which some nationalist fanatics will add his ancestry and climate. He may come from Pudsey or South Sydney, Nawanagar or Bridgetown. But wherever he comes from, and whatever he does, he will be doing what W.G. did – so reshaping the medium that it can give new satisfactions to new people.

This chapter (Decline of the West)¹ and the passage quoted here are among my favourites. When I began to appreciate Roger Federer in the second half of 2004, I kept going back to this passage again and again. I thought Roger was the very embodiment of this young Romantic: the lessening of margins of errors (how often does his immense topspin cause the ball to dip on or just inside the baseline), extension of technique with a classical perfection (how about the half volley backhand drive pass from the baseline or the slice pass to a net-rusher), whole race of opponents driven underground (big serving Roddick and counterpunching Hewitt), reshaping the medium to give new satisfactions to new people (yes, even the Americans get it now).

How lucky are we to have seen two of them.

¹ As pointed out, the chapter in question is of course The Welfare State of Mind. To paraphrase a quote from Yes Prime Minister, time and a separation from records have clouded one’s memory, though not unexpectedly for a person of one’s age.

Bhogle and Chappell

Bhogle: Vaas is back at this end now. He’s like a little kid in a chocolate shop. Doesn’t know which end he wants.

A typically Navjyot Sidhu-ish line. Which doesn’t do even Bhogle much credit.

Chappell: Vaas is probably more suited to low and slow pitches these days than quick, bouncy ones with no seam movement like the ‘Gabba.

Exactly right I say to myself, once he’s said it. Chappell can always be counted on to give the listener that little bit of extra insight (and this is not the best example). Not something that can be said of Messrs Gavaskar or Shastri. In fact, I reckon that the field of machine intelligence has progressed to the stage where Shastri’s commentary can probably be automated.

Rohit Sharma is my man

He’s batting on 14 from 22 and I have no doubt that he must be backed as one of the key cogs of future Indian batting lineups. Perhaps I’m getting overly excited but I’m willing to stick my neck out. We’ve seen the new generation of young batsmen: Gambhir, Uthappa, Yuvraj, Raina. Despite the talent, with all of them there’s something or the other missing. Sharma seems to be the complete package. Good off both the back and front foot, he’s got a nice fluidity about his batting. He just needs to pass the test of time.

P.S. As I write this, Gambhir has just been dropped twice in the slips; once by Hussey and then by Ponting. What’s happened to Australian slip catching? It’s almost like the degeneration of West Indian fast bowling.

An eminent cricket fan

Came across this interesting snippet in a book I’ve been reading about the great British number theorist G. H. Hardy:

Hardy’s first love was mathematics, and his second cricket. He peppered his mathematical papers with analogies to the game. .. . His words of praise for a great proof were “in the Hobbs class” after Surrey cricketer Jack Hobbs. When Don Bradman eclipsed Hobbs’ record, Hardy had to change the accolade: “Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss remain in the Hobbs class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They had better be moved from now on into the Bradman class.”

A related extract from here:

Another example of his trying to fool God was when he went to cricket matches he would take what he called his “anti-God battery”. This consisted of thick sweaters, an umbrella, mathematical papers to referee, student examination scripts etc. His theory was that God would think that he expected rain to come so that he could then get on with his work. Since Hardy thought that God would then have the sun shine all day to spite him, he would be able to enjoy the cricket in perfect sunshine.

Easily qualifies as a true-blue cricket fan, I’d say.

Enough already

Monkeygate (or is it Maa-Ki-gate?) has plunged to such levels of absurdity that the only way to achieve closure would be for Harbhajan and Symonds to settle it inside a ring, WWE style. My preference would be for a lumberjack match with their respective teammates acting as the lumberjacks. Procter can be guest referee.

p.s.: Wait, maybe this is what Roebuck had in mind when he gave Harbhajan this memorable sobriquet.

‘Get over it. Get over it quickly because it is happening right now’

Atherton paints quite a scary picture of the future of world cricket in his latest Sunday column. What surprised me most was this: “Had you been in India last week, you could not have avoided the issue: every day the Indian Cricket League, India’s domestic Twenty20 competition, was front-page news, and this despite the national team’s resurgence in Australia and another century from the game’s greatest current player, Sachin Tendulkar.”

Now, I’m currently living at the diametrically opposite end of the globe from India but I can’t imagine the ICL grabbing viewer attention in preference to India’s tour of Australia especially with Tendulkar having his most prolific series to date. I always believed that cricket fans would rather watch their ‘national’ teams (as debatable as that adjective is) than artificially concocted teams. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons that could be put forward to explain the failure of the Super Tests or the Afro-Asian contests. Cricket has been so inured to the idea of contests between teams formed on the basis of regional contiguity, be it international cricket or first-class cricket, that spectators may not be able to accept this new football-clubbish paradigm of franchise teams. The weight of history and the intangible benefits of naturally-formed cricket teams is a substantial (if perhaps impermanent) safety net against the IPL and ICL.

Which is why Atherton’s article is scary. If what he says is true, then my supposed safety net is being over-run at an alarming rate by these new Twenty20-fed beasts.

A pleasing commentary moment

A rough transcript from Channel 9 commentary late on Day 3 at Adelaide:

Healy: I think India have made a mistake by taking the new ball. It would’ve been ideal to have a crack tomorrow morning with the old ball and then take the new ball. India have missed a trick here.

Taylor: I disagree with you Ian. In fact, they should’ve taken the new ball about 4 overs back. They’ve tried the old ball for 107 overs and nothing happened. That’s far too long.

Healy: I agree with you Mark. They should’ve taken the new ball with 8 overs to go for the day’s play. But with 4 overs to go, they should’ve stuck with the old ball. They’ve made a mistake.

Taylor [laughing]: You’re just picking at straws, Ian.

Note: Reproduced from memory, so there might be some slight inaccuracies.

Taylor shocker

In an otherwise unremarkable interview with Sahi, this:

On his favourite captains (in order of his choice)

Ian Chappell: The way he played his cricket caught my imagination… He’d be aggressive, positive… He hated to lose and was a proud Australian.

Allan Border: He was my first Test captain and had a very strong nature… Was very competitive and, much like Ian, hated to lose.

Ross Turner: One of my first captains in grade cricket… His man management would be very good and he had excellent communication skills.

Mohammed Azharuddin: The fields he set for spinners would be very good… He’d been captaining for some years before I did and I found those field settings imaginative and effective.