Atul Sharma exclusive interview and pics in June issue of Spin magazine

Buy the June issue of SPIN featuring an exclusive seven-page interview and photo shoot with Atul Sharma, here.

The new issue of SPIN magazine is in the shops on Friday (May 8). We’ll have full info here from Wednesday but I just wanted to flag up one story that I think is going to make a bit of a splash.

This is my interview with Atul Sharma. UK-based cricket-watchers will never have heard of him at all, I shouldn’t think; while, among Indian supporters, even the biggest devotees of fansites will know only a little.

No use Googling Atul Sharma or looking at cricinfo either. Because they don’t have anything on him.

The thing is: Sharma has never played a senior game; in fact has not played a competitive game of any kind for seven years – and yet he is in the Rajasthan Royals IPL squad, alongside Shane Warne, Dimitri Mascarenhas et al.

The story that explains these two apparently contradictory facts is – and I don’t think I’m overegging it here – one of the most remarkable in modern sport.

Sharma, now 23, has spent the last seven years teaching himself to bowl at speeds in excess of 100 mph. He’s trained with US Olympic javelin coaches and built the body of a power-athlete, rather than of a traditional fast bowler. He’s also worked with the English fast bowling coach Ian Pont, a firm believer that pace and control need not be mutually exclusive – indeed, that the two are both influenced by the same factors.

Anyhow, I’ve had a very long and enjoyable chat with Atul in which he has told me his full story – including overcoming injuries that threatened to stop him playing at all. I found his story unique and genuinely inspiring – he has not been involved with any official academies or coaching set-ups; he’s funded everything himself, just following a teenage hunch with complete single-mindedness.

Not that I want to hype him(!). I think getting a pro contract at 23 having never played a game is remarkable enough in itself, even were he never to take a wicket, or to bowl at ‘just’ 85 mph. But he does seem to be on the verge of being India’s and possibly the world’s fastest-ever bowler.

We’ve also had some beautiful pictures taken of him training in South Africa – showing his innovative action step-by-step – by the top snapper Jurie Potgieter.

The whole package runs across seven pages of the June issue, out in the UK on May 8.

Buy the June issue of SPIN featuring an exclusive seven-page interview and photo shoot with Atul Sharma, here.

Against the odds, a huge success: the IPL’s half-time report

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.

Flintoff returns from IPL, faces knee op

England talisman Andrew Flintoff is to undergo knee surgery that will put him out of the game for up to five weeks.

Flintoff returned from the Indian Premier League today (Friday) to undergo surgery on a torn meniscus in his right knee.

Flintoff had been appearing for Chennai Super KIngs in the IPL when he felt discomfort in his right knee. The Chennai medical staff immediately contacted ECB Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Peirce.

Scans were taken of the right knee in a Durban hospital and they detected a slight medial meniscal tear in the knee and after these scans were viewed by Nick Peirce, radiologists the surgeon it was decided that Flintoff should return to London.

Flintoff, whose career has been interrupted by four ankle operations and one for a hernia already, will undergo an operation early next week. Surgeons are confident that he should recover from the keyhole surgery within three to five weeks.

Flintoff’s participation in the IPL, ahead of England’s busy summer schedule, was the subject of some controversy. However, Peirce said that the injury was not the result of anything that had happened during Flintoff’s three games in South Africa: “This sort of degenerative injury though is one that could have happened at any time any where.”

Hugh Morris, England Cricket Managing Director, added: “Andrew has been extremely unlucky with injuries but if there is one saving grace it is that the injury has occured now rather than on the eve of either the ICC World Twenty20 or the npower Ashes.

“Having the surgery now means that Flintoff should be available for both those events although he is certain to miss the npower Test series against the West Indies.”

England announce their team for the first Test v the West Indies, next Wednesday.

If Flintoff returns to action in five weeks’ time, it will give him precisely seven days’ grace before the start of the ICC World Twenty20.

IPL: the show goes on, in soggy SA

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.

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