Sussex Fail To Turn Up Against NSW
October 11, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under News
The Sussex Sharks failed to make any impression on the Champions League T20 tournament when they returned a miserable for 95/8 (20 overs) in pursuit of the New South Wales Blues 130 for two on a low bouncing pitch at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi.
The “shooter” of a wicket played much like the one next to it that was used here on Friday for two low-scoring affairs. The entire square, which used to host prolific run fests, was recently relaid with imported clay. Good wickets take years to mature and this one is not yet fit for international cricket by any stretch of the imagination.
Phillip Hughes (62 off 61) and Moises Henriques (51 off 33 deliveries) added 90 runs for the third wicket. Brett Lee clean bowled Sussex opener Ed Joyce first ball and conceded an astonishing eight runs in his four over spell. Henriques then followed up his batting performance by taking three for 24 (four overs) with the ball.
When one hears a score like 130 for two, it always sounds sub par in a T20 match. Looking at this pitch in your binoculars, you would most likely say it was 30 runs short of competitive. But, as good as the track looks, cricket balls bounce on it as if they were made of lead.
The organisers of this tournament are already plagued with the issue that a very real possibility exists of none of the three IPL sides goes through to the next round of the tournament. The financial success of the CLT20 depends on its popularity in India, where crowds and television spectators pay the piper and want to see two things: Indian teams winning and high scoring matches.
The small crowd at this evening’s game had nothing to shout about. A semi final here between two foreign sides would represent another damp squib for the both fans and organisers alike. This pitch can be watered and rolled till the groundsmen are blue in the face, but she ain’t gonna bounce…
Friday: India face first real test of ICC World Twenty20
June 11, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under News
At Lord’s on Friday, the defending World T20 champions do battle with the most unpredictable side in world cricket. It should be a corker.
The group stages have not given us any conclusive proof of what to expect from either side. While India have cruised to wins over the inferior opposition of Bangladesh and Ireland, West Indies have a) thrashed Australia before b) looking back to their usual haphazardness against Sri Lanka.
On Wednesday, in a dead rubber, Sri Lanka named their best side and played to win and maintain momentum, while the West Indies rested key players and showed that they couldn’t give two hoots whether they won or lost.
Sri Lanka scored 192 runs and in reply the West Indies fell 15 runs short, far fewer than the number of runs they gifted to Sri Lanka through over ten counts of appalling outfielding from, some of whom wore neon pink, yellow and orange sunglasses. Chris Gayle’s pair looked like the kind you get in a one pound store – fortunately he only used them to watch from the sidelines as he was sitting out to rest his various injuries.
You never know which West Indies will turn up on the day.
Maybe it will be the West Indies that thrashed Australia through Gayle’s onslaught of 88 runs off 50 balls looked dangerous with the ball and didn’t field too badly, which is saying a lot.
By contrast, India found themselves in the easiest pool of the opening round. Bangladesh and Ireland might have given India an effortless route through to the next round, but they offered precious little by way of match practise.
Virender Sehwag, the most explosive batsman in world cricket, has pulled out of the tournament, thanks to his shoulder injury. Luckily India have a more than able replacement in Rohit Sharma, the Under-23 player of the IPL. Sharma grafted a graceful 36 off 23 balls against Bangladesh, which he bettered with an unforced and unbeaten 52 off 48 balls against Ireland. He is a batsman in form who offers a handy bowling option too. Sharma took one of the three hat-tricks in the IPL and is just one of a team of potential match-winners.
Dinesh Kartik, who was excellent with the bat and the gloves during Delhi’s IPL campaign, has been added to the India squad in replace of Sehwag.
Zaheer Khan showed he has recovered from his own shoulder injury when he claimed the figures of 4/19 that helped his side reduce Ireland to 112/8 in and 18-over match on Wednesday.
“It will be good if we can get early wickets against the West Indies,” Zaheer said after India’s eight-wicket victory. “Removing Gayle will be a great advantage for us. I am hopeful because we are clicking as a bowling unit and each bowler understands his role.
“We are chipping in with wickets at the right time.”
“The shoulder is coming along well. I feel better day by day and I am improving, I feel 100-percent now” added Zaheer.
Captain M.S. Dhoni admitted that his team was yet to peak when he said, “Every game you start from scratch.”
“The bowlers did very well and it’s a real positive that they are doing their jobs. But we can do better in the field. It was not our best day. I am talking about 85-90 percent efficiency, but we can do it.”
The match is certainly India’s first real test of the tournament and after South Africa’s comprehensive win over England, it will no doubt tell us a lot about who is likely to go through to the semi-finals from that group – and what England have to do in the next three days to stay on at their own party.
West Indies (possible): Gayle, Fletcher, Marshall, Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Bravo, Pollard, Ramdin, Taylor, Benn, Edwards.
Lendl Simmons – who came in for Gayle – batted, bowled and fielded well against Sri Lanka – and may retain his place, possibly at the expense of Pollard.
India (possible): Gambhir, R. Sharma, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Raina, Y Pathan, I Pathan, Harbhajan, Zaheer, I Sharma, Ojha.
Lalit Modi: how we made the IPL happen
June 4, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under IPL, Indian cricket, News
Lalit Modi, chairman of the IPL, and Andrew Wildblood, Senior Vice President of IMG, the sports management company that helped make the IPL happen, sat down in Johannesburg with SPIN’s Nick Sadleir.
Lalit, you seem to have been at almost every IPL game this year…
Lalit Modi If there are two games on the same day in different cities, I leave the one game 20 minutes before it ends and I get to the other one twenty minutes after it starts.
Andrew Wildblood Lalit doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of commercial travel.
There must have been plenty of unknowns, shifting venue at such short notice…
LM Everyone told me it would be impossible. They said I was wasting time and money. I said, ‘Well, we are going to do this’.
AW Lalit called me at five in the morning one day and asked what the hell I was doing sleeping when there was work to be done. He said that the IPL couldn’t happen in India. I told him if we could do it in India, then we could do it anywhere!
He told me to meet him in Johannesburg the next day. So he came in his plane and I came down on a BA (flight).
LM We landed here, met the agencies, got Etienne de Villiers [until recently the head of the ATP tour] and Francios Pienaar [Saffer rugby legend, still very influential in SA sport and business] on the case. Etienne and Francois have been with me every single day for over two months – they moved out of their houses and into my hotel and have come with me everywhere.
You spent a lot of money advertising in SA…
AW Yes, Lalit uttered the immortal words – “I don’t want share of voice, I want all of voice.”
To pretty much sell out 59 games during the South African rugby season is good going….
LM The advertising agency gave us a budget of $3.5m. They said that was what they thought was appropriate and that it was probably the biggest advertising expenditure by any brand at any one particular time. Of course they expected us to cut it because all clients cut the budget. So I told them to multiply it by five. They told me I was wasting money on trying to fill the stadiums. I told them they should worry about the campaign and I will worry about filling the stadiums.
Andrew, when were you first involved in the business side of cricket?
AW In 1989, when satellite broadcasters were first finding their feet. I come from a generation whose only live football match in a year was the FA Cup final. In those days, sports revenues were driven by gate. The concern was that if you put everything on TV then you would diminish the value of the ticket revenues. We at IMG started to realise that the value could actually be in the television and not in the gate.
In 1990 England were touring the West Indies and the West Indies cricket board came to see us and said, “We are the most successful cricket team in the world, yet we are bust. What can we do?” When we told them that they could put this series on television they said they had approached the BBC who had said it was impossible – because the logistics of getting a production crew between the islands was too expensive. We said we could do it, sold the rights to Sky, and every ball was broadcast live.
So the IPL is not the first time you have turned cricket on its head…
AW I then went to India where a similar situation existed because their television infrastructure was not suitable to creating a level of coverage that was consumable internationally. They didn’t have the equipment or the people to do it at that time. So we took a huge quantum leap. But even in 1990 our broadcast in the West Indies was only filmed by seven cameras. Here we have at least 36 cameras in each game.
Throughout the 1990s we covered almost all the international cricket in the West Indies, India and Pakistan. We organised the Sahara Cup in Canada and the World Cup in Pakistan…
Has IPL been hurt by the global recession?
LM I would have said it is pretty recession proof.
AW I think a combination of uncertainty in world economics, Indian elections and the move to South Africa meant that we did not sign two other official partners. We had had some good conversations going on that started to die when the uncertainty came in as to whether this year’s event would happen or not.
What this guy (Modi) does unbelievably well, is to not let anything get in his way. One thing I have had to learn about Lalit is that differences in opinion are nothing personal – they are just for that moment. We get things done, move on and are then friends again. Without that energy, drive and commitment, and without the backup of IMG, then this wouldn’t happen.
LM I have the vision and I know what I want. And when it comes to implementing that, these guys (IMG) are the very best.
So, IMG runs the show?
LM Yes, they run the show.
How has the IPL transformed Indian cricket?
AW We realised that in order for the tournament to be respectable then we had to do something that benefited Indian cricket. So we implemented a minimum number of under-23 players, and a maximum number of foreign players, in each side. There must be at least seven Indian players in each team. That makes at least 56 Indians who otherwise would not be exposed to international cricket.
So it is unlikely that we will see the cap on international players increased from four, as called for by Kolkata’s John Buchanan?
LM No no, it’s not going up, it’s not going up!
AW People bully him about it all the time.
LM It’s not going up, it’s not going up! Not while I’m the commissioner. They can remove me and take it up, if they like.
It seems a lot of money is wasted on international stars that can’t get a game.
LM It is not wasted. Their experience counts for a lot. Look at Glenn McGrath sitting on the bench and giving pointers to Dirk Nannes…
AW The irony of it is that McGrath is coaching the guy who is keeping him out of the team! [Laughs]
What do you say to people who accuse you and T20 of killing off the old game?
LM If you do a survey around the stadium at an IPL match, you will find many people who have never watched a match before. They are getting a taste for the game, and many of them will graduate to Test cricket. They will then watch their stars performing in every version of the game. We are only increasing the base. The base is small and is quickly becoming bigger. Twenty20 is going tohave compounding effect on all parts of cricket.
Lalit, did you know that there was such a large and cricket-crazy Indian population in South Africa before this tournament?
LM No… But we do now!
Is it true that a senior television person in India told you that he had little interest in screening Test matches?
AW Yes, Kunal Dasgupta (then CEO Multi Screen Media, Sony) told me that and it was then that I realised that something had to be done about Test match cricket, to shake it up. But no one has ever done anything about it except the Australians, who took it from a 2,5 runs per over to a 4 runs per over game. That made it a lot more exciting and greatly increased the chance of getting a result.
Would you support night Test matches?
AW Funnily enough no – I think that would fundamentally change the brand. What I would support is: four day Tests with 100 eight ball overs a day, massively punitive fines if you don’t deliver your overs. There is a lot of stuff you can do without messing with the fundamentals of the game.
If you have eight-ball overs the amount of time you save is huge. An over is only six balls long because that is half a dozen. Don Bradman was a huge advocate of eight ball overs and who are we to argue with him?
Ali Bacher told me the other day that twenty five years ago he received a five page document from Bradman on why he supported eight ball overs and Bacher hugely regrets throwing it away.
Yuvraj Singh, new balls and waking up Daniel Vettori: my latest week at the IPL
May 14, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under Features, Uncategorized
Last Thursday at Supersport Park, Centurion, something most unusual happened. Yuvraj Singh hit the biggest six of the tournament and in doing so, lost the match for his team. In a rain reduced match against the Chennai Super Kings, the Punjab Kings XI were chasing 185 runs in 18 overs, a daunting 10.3 runs per over. After a couple of wickets and a slow start, the asking rate shot up to 13 runs per over.
And then the fireworks began. Simon Katich hit three consecutive sixes before holing out on the boundary. Yuvraj Singh was joined by Mahela Jayawardene at the crease and their partnership quickly mushroomed as they continued to keep up with the intimidating asking rate. But when Yuvraj hit the monster of all sixes, measuring 119 metres, he lost the slippery wet ball that was coming so readily onto the bat and over the boundary.
The replacement dry ball allowed Chennai captain, MS Dhoni, to put spinners Muralitharan and Suresh Raina on for a few economical overs, thereby winning the game. As in any other form of cricket, the prevailing conditions are never in one’s control.
As Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood megastar and co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals outfit said in Cape Town at the start of the IPL, “It is the unpredictability of cricket that makes it the best game there is.”
East London, nicknamed “slummies” for obvious reasons, is a coastal city in the Eastern Cape. I went to boarding school 100 miles away in the far smaller town of Grahamstown. Bunking out to the big lights of East London ten years ago offered such great excitement and I hadn’t been back to “slummies” since those exciting weekends away from school, where I remember seeing such fantastic things as indoor laser games for the first time.
And so I decided to visit East London last Friday for an IPL cricket match. On arrival I couldn’t help realise what a small and sleepy town it really is. Not much happens in EL and when it does, it happens slowly. The Xhosas, who make up most of the Eastern Cape population, are a very laid-back people and schedules run on the quintessential African time.
There are no taxis at the airport and the airport to hotel shuttle minibus stopped seven times during an hour and a half journey before dropping me at my hotel, just 15 miles from the airport. To their credit, Neil Mckenzie and Ramiz Raja, didn’t complain once as our driver stopped to run errands and wave at his girlfriends. One of five Wisden cricketers of the year in 2008, Mckenzie, helped a wheel-chaired lady in and out of the minibus and then carried her grandson’s bag to the foyer of their hotel. Mckenzie, who is commentating on the IPL, hadn’t been recognised by the couple, he’s just a great guy.
I had a few hours to kill before watching the Delhi Daredevils thrash the Mumbai Indians so I enjoyed a delicious fillet steak and a pint of castle draught at the Blue Lagoon hotel deck. I shared the deck with a pair of dassies (rock rabbits), who moved slower than the Xhosas as they soaked up the sun. I was contemplating the fact that this obscure animal’s closest living relative is the elephant when a charming Xhosa brought me my bill.
The total damage was R49, roughly a third of the price of the equivalent meal in a Johannesburg or Cape Town hotel. No wonder Lalit Modi and the BCCI chose cities like East London over the original London town when the Indian government decided it would be unable to provide the appropriate levels of security for the tournament.
The cricket ground, Buffalo Park, is only 150 yards from the sea, without a stand in between, and boasts the largest grass bank I have ever seen. Stretching hundreds of yards up a hill at an awkward angle, the bank affords spectators an awful long range view from which to watch the cricket as the offshore wind blows their picnics away. I guess the locals don’t know any better.
Not that many aeroplanes come and go from East London and when I boarded my plane the following morning I found that my aisle seat was next to Mr Daniel Vettori’s. His wife and two month old son, James, were by the window. He recognised me from my asking lots of questions at press conferences and he congenially said hello but he clearly wasn’t after a good old chinwag.
I guess the New Zealand captain and highly economical spin bowler, who is ranked number four in the world ODI bowler’s rankings, didn’t want me to ask him why he played in only the first few matches this season. He has sat out of the next seven matches.
When I looked up the Reliance Rankings, as they are now named, I saw another Kiwi’s name at number two. Kyle Mills is apparently fit as a fiddle and desperate to play for the Mumbai Indians but he is yet to be given a game.
The amount of money wasted on cricket player’s salaries for this tournament would be enough to put a dent inn the battle against world hunger. Consider the fact that Mashrafe Mortaza from Bangladesh receives a salary of 600 000 US dollars per season from the Kolkata Knight Riders and has never even played a match for them.
So I was sitting next to Vettori when I thought I would stretch across his sleeping body and lift up the blanket covering his son’s face to get a good look at the little tiger, only to find the baby breastfeeding. Vettori senior awoke at this delicate point in procedings and I quickly looked the other way.
However East London is a bustling metropolis when compared to Kimberley. The stark beauty of the North Eastern Cape landscape surrounds the airstrip where my 40-seater twin-propeller South African Airways plane landed on Monday. My father calls it mamfa – miles and miles of fuck all!.
The old diamond town was a British stronghold where rogues like Barney Barnato and Cecil John Rhodes found their fortune was famously besieged by the Boers for 124 days over the turn of the 20th Century, during the Boer War. The town is famous for the big hole; a seriously deep crater dug by hand that yielded 15 million carats of diamonds.
I arrived at the De Beers Oval nice and early for the match and mine was the fourth car in the queue to enter the media car park. Amazingly it took forty minutes – the same amount of time Bangalore yesterday took to score 110 runs – to enter the car park. Each car and bag inside it was thoroughly searched and then searched again before it could progress up a ramp so that my car’s underside could be checked for explosives. Fifteen policemen handled the operation and I missed the toss.
The Deccan Chargers posted a formidable 166 runs with newcomer Andrew Symonds making runs for the second time in as many matches at that ground. But it was the Calypso batting of West Indian Dwayne Smith that earned the player of the match (what was wrong with saying man of the match?) award.
The Rajasthan Royals put up a poor fight as they were bowled out for 113 runs. But their biggest potential loss of the evening was that their captain, Shane Warne, pulled a hamstring and may spend the final ten days of the tournament on the sidelines. Warne would prefer to be in the thick of the action but it would allow him more time to play poker and womanise.
The first impressive performance this season by a New Zealander took place last night as the under pressure Kolkata captain, Brendon McCullum, smashed 84 runs from 64 balls to help his side post 173 at Centurion. It looked a winning total but could the side that has won one match from eleven defend it on a pitch that offered assistance to both swing and spin bowlers?
Of course they could not. John Buchanan, who coached Australia in their glory years, is an awful T20 coach and McCullum is a pathetic T20 captain. The relatively unknown Sri Lankan, Angelo Matthews was preferred to Charl Langeveldt, probably the best death bowler in South Africa and Mccullum’s bowling changes were inexplicable.
Mystery spinner, Ajentha Mendis was given the second over when the ball was swinging like a banana. David Hussey was given only one over and that over was during the powerplay. Ganguly, the most economical bowler of last year’s tournament and a bowler that is most effective when the ball is swinging wasn’t given even one over.
Bangalore required 14 runs an over with four overs to go when another Kiwi, Ross Taylor launched his assault on Ishant Sharma, aged Ajit Agarkar and inexperienced Angelo Matthews. Taylor’s 81 came from 33 balls – an astonishing strike rate of 245.45 runs per 100 balls – as he struck seven fours and five sixes and outdid his fellow Kiwi, McCullum, winning the match with four balls to spare.
The Kolkata Knight Riders are the only team of eight that cannot qualify for the semi-finals. Delhi looks safe at the top of the table and Chennai and Deccan look relatively safe just behind. So it looks most likely that Mumbai, Bangalore, Rajasthan and Punjab fight it out for that highly coveted fourth spot. But, of course, it’s not yet as clear cut as that!
Against the odds, a huge success: the IPL’s half-time report
May 5, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under News
We are now at the half-way point of the double round-robin stage of the second season of the IPL. 28 matches have come and gone and as much as I expected South Africa to host the tournament adequately, I believe the organisers have outdone themselves.
I laughed when Lalit Modi fibbed to us that 90% of tickets for the IPL had been sold within a couple of days. Doing the sums in my head, that is not far off a million tickets. But almost every game has indeed been packed to the rafters. In particular, the South African Indian community has embraced the tournament, turning up in large numbers at all six of the venues used so far.
The two venues that are yet to hold a game are Kimberley and Bloemfontein, both small and predominantly Afrikaans speaking cities. When I initially heard that these two cities would be hosting the Indian Premier League, I guessed that they would struggle to attract more than a few hundred schoolchildren at each game.
Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State, a province in which Indians were not allowed to sleep a night until the late 1980s. Ghandi was imprisoned there in 1913. The idea of the big Indian cricket jamboree coming to town seems something of an ironic joke.
But after seeing how South African cricket fans have taken to the tournament across the country, I have no doubt that even Kimberley and Bloemfontein will join the party. The IPL is not only boosting South Africa’s cricket and tourism industries; it is also highlighting the extent to which the country has moved on from the days of apartheid.
I first had this thought a few days ago at a match in Centurion, Pretoria, where the press box seats are in the grandstand and not a glass box. The ground was full and as usual, boundaries were met with extremely loud music, fireworks and shooting flames. Much of the music was of the Bollywood variety and much of it was in Afrikaans. The DJ continued to alternate between the two and the crowd continued to go bananas. It was terrific.
On another matter altogether, it was pointed out to me that there has been an alarming number of golden ducks in the IPL so far. An explanation I can offer is that South African pitches are very very fast. Middlesex’s Dirk Nannes has looked like Alan Donald at Centurion and the Wanderers. Add this to the fact that Indian batsmen are used to slower pitches, and you get some cheap wickets.
Of course, not all the golden ducks have come from quick pitches. Kevin Pietersen was out LBW to the first ball he faced from Muttiah Muralitharan in Port Elizabeth. He got in trouble for showing dissent to Simon Taufel, who had made the correct decision. KP effected a golden duck himself when his Bangalore side had Brendon McCullum, of the hapless Kolkata Knight Riders, caught at point with the first ball of a match in Durban.
It was also in Durban that I was lucky enough to witness a live hat-trick for the fourth time in my cricket watching career. I will never forget the first of those when I saw Brett Schultz rip through the old Transvaal at the Wanderers where, aged 11, I sold scorecards. Yuvraj Singh took a hat-trick returning figures of 3/22 before top scoring with 50 runs from 39 balls, in vain, as the Kings XI Punjab lost to the resurgent Bangalore Royal Challengers.
After last night’s upset nine wicket win by Bangalore over the Mumbai Indians at the Wanderers, things really are heating up on the table. Four teams have eight points, three teams have seven points and the Kolkata Knight Riders languish at the bottom of the table with three points.
Last night’s match saw Jacques Kallis prove that there is a place for him in the shortest form of the game. He smashed 69 runs off 59 balls at a jam-packed Bull Ring, thereby cementing his place in the South African Twenty20 World Cup squad that was announced today.
It was the very same Wanderers strip where South Africa scored 438 runs to beat Australia in an ODI and, boy, it was a cracker. Any bat on ball races to the boundary but there is always something for the pace men too. Bangalore debutant, South African Dillan Du Preez, had veteran Sachin Tendulkar out with his third ball. He had Ajinkya Rahane caught in the off-side with his next ball. The double wicket maiden wicket over was followed up with the prized wicket of JP Duminy in his second over to round off the perfect start to an IPL career.
In their pursuit of 150, Bangalore’s Kallis and Uthappa added a record breaking 126 unbeaten runs for the second wicket. Uthappa walloped 66 of those runs off 42 balls against the side for whom he played last season. A straight inter-season swop between himself and Zaheer Khan had taken place during the transfer window period. Khan pulled up with a shoulder injury two overs into his spell.
Cricket is not usually played after the autumn in South Africa and at the Wanderers the press box is again outdoors, on the top floor of the highest stand. Johannesburg winter days are lovely and warm but the nights can be bitterly cold, and last night was no exception. At the highest press box in the world, I managed to contract a cold. I don’t think it is that swine flu hogwash because no-one in the press box has recently been to Mexico. Given the pace of T20 cricket growth, the game might arrive there before H1N1 gets here.
I have put in a request to the Wanderers for a tender to sell jerseys, scarves, gloves and blankets at the ground. The revenue will surely far exceed that of writing about cricket and I will be able to stay safely on the ground floor. I have heard it said that tickets for the final on 24 May are trading hands at five times their face value, but there is a very real threat the cold winter puts some fans off coming.
John Buchanan, coach of the Kolkata Night Riders, has said that the maximum number of foreign players in each starting eleven should be increased from four, the status quo. Doing so would no doubt increase the standard of play on the field. Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah returned home without getting a game for their franchises and players like Dale Steyn and Daniel Vettori are consistently being left out of theirs.
Each team is allowed up to ten international players and good money is being wasted to pay these chaps to sit on the bench while inexperienced Indian players drop catches and struggle to get bat on ball.
IPL: the show goes on, in soggy SA
April 22, 2009 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under Featured Content, Features
The Indian Premier League is in full swing in the not so sunny South Africa, where rain has fallen on the covers at some point during each of the first four days of the tournament.
Not that the weather has stopped me from savouring the high quality action from the warmth and comfort of the press box.
Watching Shane Warne weave a masterful web around the Bangalore middle order on day one was certainly a highlight. And I could feel the anger that still exists between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds as they did battle at the most beautiful ground in the world, against the back drop of Table Mountain.
It does seem ironic that billboards across the country advertise the IPL with the slogan, “The heat is on!” as we go into the South African winter. But at all three grounds thus far it has been evident from my chats with fellow spectators that they are enthralled by the extravaganza that is the IPL.
Considering South Africa was preferred to England on weather grounds as the replacement tournament host, the fact that the weather in England has been lovely and sunny over the same period makes for a good chuckle.
Frozen toes and soggy blankets are a recipe for a poor day out, no matter the quality of the cricket on show. And do spare a thought for the scantily clad cheerleaders in tight wet spandex outfits. [Don't worry about that – Ed]
Only one of the first eight matches of the second IPL season has been called off without a result: Mumbai and Rajasthan shared the points in a match in Durban on Tuesday without a ball being bowled.
Another thing about miserable weather is that it is not conducive to high scoring matches. This does not suit the IPL and its big talking boss, Lalit Modi. Modi is the kind of guy you either love or hate. He has boasted that his tournament will bring lots of runs and 2 billion rands (approx 200 million US dollars) worth of revenue to the South African economy.
Modi has also told us that 90 per cent of tickets for the out of cricket season tournament have been sold out, so – to judge from the empty seats at some of the games – it is probably prudent to take his claims with a pinch of salt.
Modi is a marketing whiz with a colourful background. He is a US dollar billionaire with friends in high places. Modi’s energy and ambition to get huge things done represents the antithesis of what he have come to expect from cricket administrators.
The Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has seen its revenues grow seven fold since Modi joined its ranks in 2005. A good whack of this extraordinary growth in revenue comes as a direct result of Modi’s power broking in the sale of media rights for the IPL and the Champions League for 2 billion dollars and 723.6 million dollars respectively.
Whilst there was rain around, it did not interrupt proceedings at the opening double header in Cape Town on Saturday. However, Bruno, a black labrador did slow things down as he toyed with umpires, players and officials for 11 minutes mid way through the opening innings of the tournament.
Bruno turned down a game of fetch with the cricket ball, resisted dives from several players who attempted to make difficult catches at various fielding positions and was fed a bag of biltong by an IPL official. Fortunately for the groundstaff, Bruno eventually trotted off without dropping a DLF Maximum on a length.
It was a long day at a chilly Newlands but the near-capacity crowd stuck it out to the end, despite the impressive opening ceremony, which took place – of course – after the first two matches, finishing 90 minutes behind schedule.
It was surprising that there was nothing Indian about that ceremony but I must say that the combination of Cirque du Soleil and big bosomed African drummers looked bloody marvellous under all the lasers, fireworks and smoke machines.
There has been a mixed response to the seven and a half minute “tactical breaks” that happen half way through each innings. Another brainchild of Mr Modi, the breaks are nothing but an opportunity to increase advertising revenue in the style of American sports.
On the second day in Cape Town a 12-over match was subjected to this break even though the day was again running over an hour behind schedule. The breaks are boring for all concerned, especially on double-header days. Furthermore, they negatively impact on the momentum of the batsmen at the crease.
The good news is that matches at the four highveld venues are highly unlikely to be affected by rain. They are also guaranteed to produce some high scores. But as a good friend pointed out to me today, the IPL and Cricket South Africa should have ensured that they have two super soppers in working order at each of the four coastal venues. At both Cape Town and Durban there has been only one in semi-working order. Possibly, in South Africa in the autumn, this is a basic error, when there is so much money at stake.
John Wright: ‘I wouldn’t need 13-man support team’
April 3, 2009 by Duncan Steer
Filed under News
John Wright – one of the leading candidates for the vacant England coach’s job – says he would not need the 13-man backroom staff currently used by the side.
England’s sizeable back-up staff, developed under Peter Moores, has attracted criticism over a winter that has seen just two wins in 17 games.
Wright, currently working as a selector and coaching consultant for New Zealand, coached India for five years from 2000 and, with captain Sourav Ganguly, was credited with developing the most successful Indian team in history.
“I only ever operated with a physio and a fitness trainer and once, when we went to Australia, a bowling coach,” said Wright, speaking exclusively to SPIN magazine. “Every coach is different and has different ideas. But players need space, because they’ve got to compete. It’s good if they’ve got clear minds and understand perfectly what they need to do.”
Discussing the epic 2001 series win that ended Steve Waugh’s Australians’ record run of Test wins, he said: “Before that series, we’d had a 10-day camp where we’d worked from 7am, with two three-hour sessions per day, then planning in the evening. It was only me, the physio and the team – I quite like that sort of intimacy. But you can’t coach [VVS] Laxman and [Rahul] Dravid to bat the way they did at Kolkata. They did that. It was just great to watch and to be thankful they’d saved my job.
“You want players that want to be world class and not just represent the country – they want to be ranked in the top three in the world and that’s it. If you get enough of those in your team, the winning is going to take care of itself. It’s that simple. You put around those champions some people who can support them.”
Asked whether the personality clashes that led to the departure of coach and captain Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores had been an issue when coaching India’s team of superstars, Wright said not.
“You’re part of a group so there have to be some group norms. They knew it wasn’t a good idea for them to be late for the bus. We tried to create some intensity at training and made sure no-one did anything to harm the team. Just simple things. Any of those simple things and sensible things that people can respect and understand, and know that they actually matter.
“As a coach, you have some non-negotiables. Just simple things that everyone in the team can keep, whether they’re a rock star, whether they’re the best player on the team or the least experience.
“I was very lucky with the boys I worked with. They have certain pressures that you have to understand and certain demands placed on them. They have a completely different set of demands than the young boy that has just come into the team so you’ve got to work around those sorts of things and understand the reason they’re there for is for cricket – and they’ve got to produce performances.”
The full interview with John Wright appears in the April issue of SPIN magazine in our 10-page special on international coaching, which also features interviews with Andy Flower and Mickey Arthur.
Didn’t you used to be…Dilip Doshi
March 11, 2009 by Roderick Easdale
Filed under Uncategorized
From SPIN magazine, June 2007
Halfway through SPIN’s audience with Dilip Doshi in his office in Hampstead, I check who he will be supporting in the forthcoming series. “India. India of course,” he says. But he has just been referring to England as ‘we’… “Yeah, yeah, I’m very happy to belong to this country, I am British. I owe a lot of things to this great country. But at the same time I am very much Indian – I live in India as well.”
When he retired from cricket in 1984, Doshi set up a business in England which trades in steel: spare parts, equipment and machinery. Ten years later, he formed another one in India to distribute luxury brands from Europe.
Business is booming. “But I am very passionate about the game still. Whenever I am in London I watch my son [Nayan] play for Surrey,” he says. His office paperweight is a gold bat and on the shelf above his head there’s a picture of him being presented to the Queen at Lord’s.
Is it hard to watch Nayan; do you get nervous? “No, no. The way I look at is that
he should enjoy doing what he is doing – which he does – and then your natural talent will come through if you have the dedication and the focus. We’re very similar bowlers, even our actions are similar. He is honing his talent and doing everything properly.”
Though he would play county cricket for Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, the young Dilip Doshi was always a Surrey fan, thanks to Peter May: in Calcutta, Doshi would listen to radio commentaries when May was captain of Surrey and England in the late 1950s.
Doshi’s love for the Rolling Stones, though, is in a different league. “Theirs is the only music I have listened to for the past 43 years,” he says. “I mean that literally. They have a huge repertoire so I don’t need to look elsewhere. I have seen them in concert 213 times. I first heard them on the radio when I was a schoolboy in Calcutta. I had problems finding the right station for the cricket commentary and that is how I first heard the Stones. I was hooked. I put on two Rolling Stones concerts in India in 2003 and, God willing, will do so again the end of this year.”
His enthusiasm for the Stones and cricket may be undimmed but his views on modern spin bowling are more mixed. “In the 1980s, when I played county cricket, almost every good county had both a left-armer and an off-spinner who would be good enough to get close to an England call today.
“And the doosra is the most overrated delivery. A waste of time. Ninety-eight per cent of your bowling is your stock ball. But for the doosra the wrist and shoulder action is so different that it interferes with your in-built muscle memory.
“Off-spinners have lost the art of spinning the ball and stretching the batsmen forward and hitting his pads, which is what all great off spin bowlers did. Unfortunately, many coaches have encouraged the doosra and you’ll see the result in years to come.”
Doshi also complains that captains have lost the ability to understand spin bowling:
“One-day internationals and Twenty20 means that the spinner’s role is more important than ever. But if a spinner is hit for six and four in an over, he’s taken off, but a pace bowler who is hit for two a ball is kept on. To hit a good spinner, the batsman has to take a risk. It’s harder to get that 10 from a spinner than it is 12 from a pace bowler.”
Doshi knows a thing or two about one-day bowling – he once got through his full complement of eight overs in a John Player League game for Notts with figures of 1/1. Does he remember how the run was scored? “Like it was yesterday! It was a snick that [wicket-keeper] Bruce French dropped, and Wayne Larkins took a single.”
Has he forgiven French yet? He laughs: “I was never upset. Just to be playing cricket was a bonus, to be doing the thing you most loved in the world. But it should have been 2/0.”
Is it true you were dropped for the
next one-day game? He laughs: “No. I wasn’t dropped for the next game. I was dropped for the next 10! They thought
they had to find room for Kenny Watson, a South African fast bowler, to justify him having a contract as he wasn’t in the championship side. That was the unprofessional side of county cricket.
“I even played in games for Notts when senior players would not be going all out because they wouldn’t want the credit going to the captain, Mike Smedley. They wanted to see him dismissed. I couldn’t believe the way wickets were being thrown away.”
To cricket followers in this country, however, Dilip Doshi is perhaps best known for his part in perhaps the dullest Test series of all, when England, under Keith Fletcher, toured India in 1981/82. Five of the six Tests were drawn. “Fletch was a boring captain and a boring batsman and Sunil [Gavaskar, India captain] wasn’t willing to take any sort of initiative after we won the first Test. England would win the toss and bat slowly for two days. Plus, the series was played on shirt-front wickets and my captain instructed me to bowl a very slow over rate. I wanted to bowl the overs quicker, but I was told if I did I would be taken off. But he didn’t back me up when I took flack over this. He kept quiet.
“Gavaskar and I didn’t see eye-to-eye.
I don’t harbour any bitterness, but if you are a batsmen once you’re in the middle you’re the master and the captain can’t do anything about it. But if you have bowled 20 overs and taken three wickets you can still be taken off and not bowl again in the innings. That happened to me a lot.”
Doshi made his Test debut at 32, reaching 100 wickets in 28 Tests. Only Aussie leggie Clarrie Grimmett has reached the 100-wicket landmark after debuting over 30.
“I always felt I could bowl to the best players in the world on any surface and get them out, which I was doing at all the levels I was playing at. I was dismayed many times when, despite India losing, they never changed the bowlers. When finally my turn came I was delighted, and I enjoyed every minute of playing for India.”
quick singles
PLAYED FOR: India (1979-1984);
Bengal (1968-1985); Nottinghamshire (1973-1978); Warwickshire (1980-1981); Saurashtra (1985/86).
TESTS: 33 – 114 wkts @ 30.71; 129 runs @ 4.60.
ODIs: 15 – 22 wkts @ 22.31, economy rate
of 3.96 runs/over; 9 runs @ 3.00.
FINEST HOUR: v Australia, Melbourne Test, 1981. “We should have won that series – we lost the first Test in less than three days because we were stupid enough to bat on a Sydney pitch. In all the previous games in the past 10-15 years the sides batting first had lost. The second Test at Adelaide was drawn. Then I fractured a metatarsal. I thought we’d win at Melbourne, so I kept my injury from everyone. I bowled 74 overs in the match and we won to square the series.”
How India won in England, 2007
Gautam Bhimani, roving reporter for ESPN’s TV coverage, is the man who takes the world of the team into the homes of the fans. He kept a tour diary of India’s 2007 win over England for SPIN
July 3 Glasgow
Team India pack their bags for the English summer after wrapping up a 2-1 win over South Africa in Belfast. First stop, though, is Scotland. The team flies in to face Pakistan in a one-day game, The Friendship Cup, to celebrate the two nations’ 60 years of independence. The proceeds of the match are to go to the Prince’s Trust.
The team, which had gone from a monsoon-soaked India to a wet and wintry Ireland before arriving in a drizzly Scotland, was not overly surprised to find the match called off. But it didn’t dampen spirits. Summer is the season for birthdays in India’s cricketing universe. My own was on June 25, the same day that India celebrated its 75th birthday as an international cricketing nation. Mahendra Singh Dhoni would be the next (July 7), closely followed by Sourav Ganguly (July 8), Sunil Gavaskar (July 10). Team manager Chandu Borde, running the tour in the absence of a head coach, would blow out a fair few candles – more than 70, in fact – at Lord’s. Plenty of opportunities for celebration.
As broadcasters, we have a good relationship with the players. They may be superstars at home but they are a very down to earth, normal bunch of guys. The team are forbidden from giving press interviews on this tour, except at close of play. Cricket is such big news in India that players have to be careful of print journalists looking for the next big story. But TV can’t be misquoted and, because of the nature of our coverage, there is arguably a greater element of trust with us.
Our links with the team are all the stronger because our commentator Ravi Shastri went on the recent tour to Bangladesh as the team’s cricket manager. For this series is back with us. I think he made a big difference to the team: he’s someone who can relate to the guys, the perfect person for the coach’s job – but obviously his media work comes first. Because we weren’t showing the Bangladesh series, he thought, ‘What the hell’ and went over to help out. He helped bring out their aggression a little bit.
July 4 London
Fly south. But only stay in the capital briefly. The first real stop in England will be on the south coast. Hove’s a good place to start a tour: Sussex County Cricket Club has plenty of Indian history. It has been graced by the likes of Ranjitsinghji, Duleepsinghji, as well as the Nawab of Pataudi. Within a few days the teams will begin a contest for the Pataudi Trophy, celebrating 75 years of clashes between the two nations.
In all modesty, I probably get to sign as many autographs on the streets in India as the players do. The players, of course, don’t get to get out so often. So the fans over-compensate by going after anyone connected with the players who does walk down the street. In a typical place, they’ll mob me. In a small town, it’s serious. It shows how big the game is that I’m just someone who reports on the game and this kind of thing happens to me.
As for the players, England is not quite the safe haven from their adoring fans that you might imagine. There’s enough fans around to mean they might be spotted somewhere. There’s someone round every corner. The players need to be somewhere like the Gold Coast in Brisbane; that was the last time I saw the whole team out at the mall, completely chilled out.
Socially, the ringleaders tend to be Yuvraj Singh and – when he’s in the team – Harbhajan Singh. Zaheer Khan is quieter but he’s in that group, too. Sreesanth will be sat, quietly, in the corner, wearing his glasses. If there’s not a crowd, he won’t be performing.
There has been a tendency for players to socialise according to their regions but, really, that’s to do with them looking for different kinds of food. Now, it’s more a case of the younger players going around together, regardless of whether they’re from the north or the south.
July 7
Hove, four-day game v Sussex
At last, sunshine. We are covering the warm-up games live – a first – and Hove has laid on gorgeous summer weather, providing relief to both the Indian team and the locals, none of whom have seen the sun for weeks. Travelling with Team India always means we renew some memorable acquaintances – and the arrival of Farokh Engineer makes quite a difference to the liveliness in the commentary box as well as the amount of space available to work in.
Next to pitch up is Ian Bishop, minus luggage! West Indies had beaten England at Trent Bridge, wrapping up the one-day series 2-1, and Bish was joining us straight from the game. So hard did he celebrate with the boys that he only realised that his luggage was still in Nottingham when he was 70 miles down the M1.
July 10
Warm-up stalemate
The match ends in a frustrating draw. Sussex, set 273 to win, end the day on 190/9, the last pair holding out for nine overs, with Robin Martin-Jenkins making 45*. July 13-15
Chelmsford, v England Lions
The town of Chelmsford conjures up two names for me: Guglielmo Marconi, who set up the world’s first wireless factory there, and Graham Gooch, who set up his own run factory. We were fortunate to have the latter as part of our commentary team – and he was another member of the tour’s birthday honours list (July 23), though many of us patriotic Indians were tempted to make him blow out 333 candles for having inflicted misery on our bowlers at Lord’s 17 years earlier.
At Chelmsford, Sreesanth does something I’ve never seen before. Not only does he chatter to the batsmen when he’s bowling but he also makes a point of running in from his spot in the field to talk to them when he’s not bowling.
In the commentary box, we get to hear the stump mikes; he was saying to Owais Shah – “You’re really fighting for your spot in the team aren’t you? Let’s see if you get in.”
There was one over when Sreesanth was fielding right on the boundary, at deep fine leg, and between deliveries he would run up to the batsman, chirp a bit and then go all the way back to the boundary. I’ve seen bowlers having a word – but this was a first for me Sreesanth is excitable. His sister is a dancer, so performing is obviously in the blood. To curb it might affect his game. Rahul Dravid has told him to be careful not to end up in the match referee’s office. But it’s his style. He is pretty much the only Test cricketer to come from Kerala, the idyllic southern coast region. He’s a superstar there. Kerala is very big on cinema and you do get the idea that Sreesanth could easily have been an actor if he had not become a cricketer.
July 17 London
After a drawn game with the Lions, the team eases into life in the capital for the serious business of Test cricket. This is when the Indian “Mamu” makes an appearance. This is a phenomenon that needs explaining. Since Indians have not, historically, been the world’s best travellers, the lure of home-cooked food has always been more than welcome, particularly for the increasing number of vegetarians. India’s global roaming population ensures that this is never more than a phone call away.
Not a phone call to the local Indian take away (which, in London, would likely turn out to be a Bangladeshi restaurant, in any case) but a call to some local cricket fans who thrive in the trade of food for autographs. A fair deal, you would have to say. These fans build up a rapport, even a long-term relationship, and provide culinary relief to the players and their families. It’s a species that can be found wherever on Earth the Indian cricket footprint stretches.
The Mamus are cricket-mad fans – not necessarily rich – who just want to look after the team. Players go to Mamus’ houses; or the Mamus bring food to the players in big containers.
The only one to avoid the Mamus is Sachin Tendulkar, who is also probably the
only self-confessed foodie in the team. Not only does he
have two restaurants named after him in Mumbai, but he was also actively involved in choosing the menus available in them. On tour, he tends
to be off on his own food trail,
far away from the clutches of the Mamu.
July 20 First Test, Lord’s
Team India have left the good weather in Brighton and, on Friday, Lord’s witnesses the kind of tropical deluge more associated with Mumbai. But, remarkably, the players are on the field soon after, thanks to the million-pound baby that is the pride of the Lord’s ground staff – a drainage system that should be a shining example for other rainy parts of the cricket world.
Around the media centre, which is a great place to hang out what with all the rain around, there are cricket captains galore… Gooch, Brearley, Gower, Atherton, Gatting, Benaud, Hussain, Shastri, Chappell, Gavaskar, knighted heroes like Sir Botham… and a few unexpected guests like Boris Becker, a first-time visit to the cricket for the former Wimbledon champion. Memories of bumping into Sir Paul McCartney here five years ago came flooding back.
July 22 Test goes with a swing
On the penultimate day, I had a strong sense of déjà vu as more than half of Lord’s chose to ignore the cricket and turned their attention to the golf in the British Open which was heading for an exciting finish at Carnoustie. Eleven years earlier I was at Lord’s waiting for my school mate Sourav Ganguly to complete his debut Test hundred. I remembered this quiet kid at school who had a fierce passion for football. (His elder brother Snehasis, also a stylish left hander, was always the one who was said to be likely to play cricket for the country one day.) On that day in 1996, diehard Bengalis did not budge from their seats but most of Lord’s had made their way to the Nursery End’s giant screens to watch England play Spain in a nail-biting penalty shoot out in Euro 96.
India’s lack of a coach has attracted criticism from many quarters at home. But they seem to be working it well. Chandra Borde, the manager, is like a senior statesman. The players look up to him. Dravid, obviously, is in charge but he has senior guys like Tendulkar and Ganguly to fall back on. It’s a nice balance. there’s a lot of seniors and a lot of effusive juniors. It makes for a perfect unit.
July 23 Escaping with a draw
At the end of day five the heavens have the last laugh (or more of an Indian snigger) as a final persistent drizzle denies England a certain victory. That evening, I reminisce about the game with Sreesanth, who survived some tense final moments. All he could talk about (other than the weather) was his new nickname, generously doled out by Kevin Pietersen, when he walked out at the bitter end. His new set of contact lenses had not arrived from India, and, as a result he went out to bat with spectacles and was greeted by: “Come on boys, let’s finish this off. Harry Potter just came in to bat.”
July 26 Nottingham
From the great escape at the spiritual home of cricket the Indians head for one of many social escapades, this time at the Notts County Football Club banquet hall, a regular feature whenever the team tours Nottingham. We meet local businessman Nat Puri – a man never shy to demonstrate his benevolence. This time, he hands out a fat cheque to Sachin Tendulkar (like he needs the moolah). Three years ago, during the NatWest Challenge, he did the same for Virender Sehwag. But more than the money, the occasion is another excuse for the team to indulge in some good Indian food without falling back on the Mamus. Physio and diet man John Gloster looks on as his strict food regimen goes out the window.
This is a family occasion. The India team travels with a big entourage of wives and children. Vijeta Dravid, Shailaja Laxman, Dona Ganguly and Mrs Powar are all there with kids in tow. The two wives of the openers, Mrs Jaffer and Mrs Karthik, are also there. While it’s mostly the wives who attend to the kids, offie Ramesh Powar takes charge of putting his daughter to sleep, the doting dad looking very different from his on-field avatar of long flowing hair and distinct bright red Oakleys.
July 27 Second Test,
Trent Bridge
The same rain that rescued India at Lord’s lends a helping hand at Trent Bridge, as conditions on day one make life difficult for the hosts. They are behind the eight-ball for the rest of the match. It is a game filled with drama, both on and off the field. Players on both sides improve their vocabulary. A few chewy sweets provoke Zaheer Khan to lead India to a famous win.
I spoke to Zaheer about the whole jelly bean thing afterwards and he was philosophical. He said: “Yes, it happened, let’s not get too much into it. But, basically, if they do it to me again and it makes me perform like this, then bring on the jelly beans!”
The team has surprised everyone with the way they’ve played. To come on a full tour like this without a coach, the media were ready to put the boot in. But they’ve been much more cohesive and upbeat than the Indian media had expected. And that’s shown in the results. And I think that’s going to carry on.
July 31 Party time
After India’s win – their fifth in England – Ravi interviews Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh. He introduces the piece by saying; “There’s been a lot of talk about who should be the coach. Well, I’ve got the bowling coach and the fielding coach here, we’ve just won a Test. Is there a problem? I don’t think so.”
Minutes after the victory, the Indian team dressing room is turned into what could have been a pub in Delhi or Bangalore. Batsmen turn into DJs, bowlers into bartenders, as Bollywood hits are accompanied by celebratory liquids.
Test victories overseas are a rarity for the team as the intensity of the celebrations prove. At times like these, Yuvraj usually takes charge of the music in the dressing room and even the best efforts of someone like VVS Laxman (who prefers things a little quieter) go in vain as the dressing room discotheque gets into action.
It’s a great occasion – but things don’t get quite as mad as they did in Jo’burg last December, after India won their first Test on South African soil. Then, even though cameras, spectacles and mobile phones were under threat from the amount of champagne and beer that flowed freely, no-one seemed to care.
The team pretty much trashed the dressing room then. Trent Bridge is left intact. In Jo’burg, the amount of lager that made its way into my hair meant that I could dispense with shampoo for a week – the main culprit being Mahi (MS Dhoni). My shoes were ruined. Sreesanth entertained everyone by providing action replays of his now legendary bat-wave dance at the expense of Andre Nel.
Trent Bridge was slightly quieter. Ravi went down for a glass of champagne. There were a lot of family members there; more than at Jo’burg, which may explain the difference in the level of antics. Little Samit Dravid was at both, looking on at the grown-up children at play, wondering what exactly it was his dad does for a living.
August 1 The morning after
The jelly-bean story dominates the headlines… Team India notes that when England’s cricketers tour India, a phenomenon known as ‘Delhi belly’ has been known to strike from time to time. At Trent Bridge, the hosts decided to return the favour and inflict a case of ‘jelly belly’. Needless to say, it failed.
The first Indian Idol
March 11, 2009 by Ciaran Baynes
Filed under SPIN Gold
Over 25 million Indian TV viewers saw Sukhvir Singh win cricket’s answer to Pop Idol . The young fast bowler tells SPIN how he’s enjoying his prize: a season with Leicestershire…
From SPIN, August 2007
With the Big Brother winner set to pick up a hundred grand, five months in Leicester may seem like one of the less glamorous prizes reality television could offer. But for the 25,000 young Indians who entered the Cricket Star television show in January it represented a dream.
The prize of a year’s contract with Leicestershire had hopefuls queuing round the block in 11 regional heats. TV audiences of 25 million saw contestants whittled down via a series of cricket and non-cricket tasks, before a public vote made Sukhvir the champion. And judging by Sukhvir’s demeanour at the County Ground when SPIN met up with him, he could not have been more pleased if he had been granted the riches of fellow reality TV winner Shilpa Shetty.
Instead of the three-week fascination of Heat readers, the 19-year-old son of a Punjabi bus driver craves a more long-term dream: to play cricket for his country. And he believes joining Leicestershire gives him a superb opportunity to help him reach this level.
“I want to play for India within the next three years,” Sukhvir tells SPIN, through his translator and house-mate Venkatesh Gurumoorthy, who works with Leicester as an analyst. “During this time I need to develop and learn my craft as a fast bowler. Coming here to England will help this.”
Cricket Star seized the imagination of the Indian cricketing public: Indian legend Kapil Dev was the Simon Cowell of the judging panel; Geoff Boycott, Waqar Younis and Monty Panesar made guest appearances, offering the hopefuls masterclasses; the winners of one task got to train with India before an ODI (Sukhvir clean bowled Virender Sehwag); and the final XI got to take on (and beat) Twenty20 Cup champions Leicestershire in a T20 clash.
Leicestershire coach Tim Boon says Sukhvir will be treated like any other professional. But first-team action is off the agenda and he is likely to be limited to games for club side Leicester Ivanhoe and the Foxes’ Second XI. “As well as practising in the nets and matches, I am also working a lot in the gym,” says Sukhvir. “The bowling coach Lloyd Tennant has told me to build up my stomach and back muscles, which he says will enable me to bowl quicker. I am getting a lot of encouragement from the players as well. Jeremy Snape and Paul Nixon both said they were impressed with my bowling action.”
Sukhvir took some time adjusting to the temperature of a Leicester summer, but he sees more positives than negatives in the English conditions. “I do wish I had brought more jumpers, but the weather is helping me here. I am working on swinging the ball both ways. This is one of my big priorities. As well as to learn English.”
He made a dramatic entrance for Ivanhoe, taking three wickets the day after arriving in Leicester, but found it slightly tougher to make an impression on his debut for Leicestershire Seconds against Derbyshire. A wicket-taking delivery with his final ball in the match, though, suggests he could establish himself at this level before long.
Sukhvir has set his goals higher, though. “I would love an opportunity to play for the first team this year if I take lots of wickets for the seconds. I have to perform well and take more and more wickets. Next year I’d love to come back and play for the first XI.”
This single-minded desire to reach the top in cricket has been there since he first watched his heroes on television back in Chandigarh and would emulate playing in the streets of his village with a tennis ball. “Cricket has always meant everything to me. I changed my schools because my first one only played Kabbadi [British Bulldog-style Indian game] and I wanted to play cricket,” he says.
Two years ago, Sukhvir was seen playing by T.A. Shaker, the chief coach of the MRF Pace Foundation – the academy for fast bowlers founded by Dennis Lillee in 1987. From there, Sukhvir spent time at the Mohali Academy and was eventually chosen as the sole representative of the Punjab in Cricket Star’s final squad of 23.
Sukhvir worked with Lillee himself at this time and credits the great fast bowler for honing his action. “I was very raw when I went there. He taught me to bowl outswingers and corrected my follow-through. It was a wonderful experience to work with him.”
One thing Lillee couldn’t change was Sukhvir’s demeanour. Nicknamed “Happy” by his fellow contestants, Sukhvar prefers to look to the new generation of Australian quick bowlers for his role model. “Brett Lee is my idol. I like his personality, his action and of course his pace. It is my aim to bowl at 160km/hr [100 mph] like Lee does. I even like his music!”
(SPIN found this very encouraging, until we realised it was not Lee’s pub rock band, but his Bollywood single that he was referring to.)
Like Lee, Sukhvir has no problems channelling aggression on the pitch, though, as India opener Robin Uthappa found out when he edged him over third man for six in one of the tasks. “It was tough to bowl to him, especially because my back was sore at that time. But after his lucky six I bowled a few bouncers at him – that got his attention.”
The man behind the show was Channel 5 commentator (and former SPIN columnist) Simon Hughes. “I liked Sukhvir and thought he had potential early on,” says Hughes. “I gave him a few bowling tips – not that that probably helped him much. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t really develop in this time. It was a surprise when he won.”
Sukhvir concedes he did not play to his potential in the matches or cricket tasks in the Cricket Star contest which saw the 23 contestants honed down to 11 before the public voted for their winner.
It was a rocky ride. Three times below-par showings left him up for eviction, his destiny in the hands of his team-mates. (Players’ exits were theatrically confirmed by selector Sanjay Manjreker who would walk up to the loser and rip the Cricket Star crest from his blazer).
Sukhvir was hindered in his performances by a back injury that flared up before the halfway point of the competition. “I began bowling very well and did well in the early tasks but then the back injury came, which really scared me. I prayed to God that it would be okay and that I would make it to the end and thankfully I did.”
So, why did he win? Sukhvir believes it is due to India’s ongoing desire to find a genuine fast bowler. “I bowled quickly early on, at least 134 km/hr [84 mph] and I was getting lots of calls saying ‘India needs a fast bowler. You should be playing for India.’ That’s why I think they voted for me. They liked my personality, but it was more because I am, or have the potential to be, a quick bowler.”
Hughes is less sure that Sukhvir’s success was 100 per cent cricket-related. “People liked his attitude. He didn’t look the most talented player and didn’t produce the best results. But people liked him and he got a lot of non-cricket support. Although he didn’t develop as a cricketer during the 11 weeks, he did develop as a person. He won the non-cricket activities and showed he had a very good attitude and natural talent.”
Hughes is hopeful that the Cricket
Star project will grow quickly in the next few years, branching out to other countries, although it seems unlikely that an English version – with Shilpa Shetty rumoured to be a presenter – will now happen. “I would love to see one here. But you need someone to get behind it and back it. Then broadcasters will get involved. It would be great for the ECB and I think they would really benefit from it, but sometimes they’re not forward-looking enough in this respect.
“Sri Lanka looks like it will be the next country to do it. We are hoping to start there in January. There is also interest in Pakistan and South Africa, though India is the country where it has the most potential.
“India has a bit of complacency about the way they pick up their players. Getting junior players is not as effective as it could be, so this kind of talent search really does benefit Indian cricket. The next one will be a lot bigger. The press were a bit slow on the uptake, but with a big advertising campaign behind us the next one will be better.”
Already, Sukhvir is a well-known name at home. And with eports filtering back on his every move in Leicester, he will be under real scrutiny when he returns to India shortly after turning 20 in September. He will be looking to impress the Punjab state selectors. “When I go back I will play for my club in the Punjab tournament – and hopefully then get a chance to play in the Ranji Trophy.”
The expectation of the Indian population can be a mixed blessing; just ask those players whose houses were attacked after the World Cup. But Sukhvir doesn’t seem the type to let the attention get to him. “Of course I feel extra pressure because of those who voted for me, but this only makes me more determined to play well over here and prove that their faith in me was justified.”
