…and you say this is not match-fixing?

It’s getting really difficult to perceive the Indian Premier League (IPL) as anything but a hundred-headed-hydra that has spread its poisonous tentacles to every nook of the cricketing globe to get the best for its Twenty20 extravaganza, whatever be the cost.

Sample this. IPL had the audacity to offer money to two South African teams to play the semifinals and final of the Standard Bank Pro20 tournament without their key players, who would otherwise miss the first week’s action in IPL!

Subsequently, one of the teams turned down the offer, while the other named a compromised squad even though it’s the business end of the tournament.

The South African players in question were asked to go home back right after the Kanpur Test to play in the Standard Bank Pro20 tournament, the final of which is scheduled on April 25. It meant IPL, which kicks off on April 18, would be without the Proteas for full one week.

Realising it may take some sheen off the event, IPL offered USD 100,000 to Cape Cobras and the Titans, asking them to spare the players for the Indian league, even though that meant playing the semifinals and final without their key players!

Titans (Albie Morkel, AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn belong to this franchisee), however, refused to fall for the lure and turned down the offer. But intriguingly, Cobras have excluded Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Ashwell Prince from their team – paving way for their IPL participation right from the start – even though they included Graeme Smith and JP Duminy in the squad for the domestic Twenty20 tourney.

Offering teams money not to field their key players should be reason enough to nab someone on charges of match-fixing and I’m afraid ICC’s connivance with IPL means the governing body itself, rather inadvertently, became the perpetrator of the crime it claims to be fighting against.

Image: Michael Philip Erb

Sting in the tail

Exasperated must be a gross understatement when you describe a captain, who watches helplessly as his bowlers, after blowing away the rival top order, are thwarted by a gritty lower order.

Traditionally, each and every Indian captain has often gone through this despair. For a change, it was Graeme Smith who wanted to bang his head against a brick wall when the Ishant-Sreesanth duo cobbled together 46 runs for the last wicket in Kanpur.

It once again underlined the importance of the bowlers’ ability to wield the willow to some effect. For an Ishant, just drawing the first blood with the cherry is not enough. He isn’t expected to champion the copybook but you can’t afford to be dud with the bat either.

While pushing the tally, every run scored by a rabbit and ferret does the other important task of draining the opposition of motivation and creating a sense of despair among their bowlers. A streaky 25 scored by a number nine batsman causes more damage and desperation than a brutal fifty by a frontline willower and Smith will vouch for that.

For long, the Indian bowlers, especially the pacers, have not taken their batting seriously. Few really bothered to hone it in the nets. Even the coaches didn’t see them beyond mere leather-flingers and hardly anyone expected them to contribute with their batting mite.

On the contrary, they are brought up in an environment where bowlers, when they swap the ball for bat, are expected to walk out only to clown about and make a hilarious spectacle. Theirs is supposed to the buffoon’s role in the entire act.

Gary Kirsten has an opportunity to bring about a change in the bowlers’ attitude towards batting. Once they are through with bowling practice, he should ask Ishants and Sreesanths to pad up and finetune their batting. They should be told that they have it in them to survive a few overs and make handy contribution with the bat as well. Give them confidence, place some faith and I reckon India would have more sting in its tail.

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Zaheer among Wisden Cricketers of the Year 2008

Cricket’s most overrated and certainly the most insignificant annual award is out again. Zaheer Khan, Ian Bell, Ryan Sidebottom, Ottis Gibson and Shivnarine Chanderpaul are named the Cricketers of the Year 2008 by the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.

Their influence on the past English season is supposed to be the lone criterion for the award but I have a sneaking suspicion that this time the reasons were different altogether. Let’s take it case-by-case.

Zaheer Khan: He actually got the award for his break-up with Isha Sharvani. Sick and tired of footing the bills of the tantrum-throwing WAGs of the English team, the ECB requested Wisden guys to discourage the growing trend among youngsters to date wannabe actresses and fringe models. The message was loud and clear -- dump the girl, get the gong.

Ian Bell: Sharing initials with Ian Botham is reason enough, thought the Wisden eggheads.

Ottis Gibson: For taking up England bowling coach’s role and agreeing to cricket’s own Mission Impossible of mending Steve Harmison.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul: For his dogged endorsement of the beneath-the-eyes-anti-glare patches.

Ryan Sidebottom: Well, the unique juxtaposition of his paradoxical surname was a clincher for the guy.

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How India could have escaped the Motera mauling

Doosra loathes to believe that despite having a mammoth support staff entourage, India could not plot a ploy to avert the mauling they received in Motera.

More than batting collapse, it was sheer lack of ideas, Doosra would put it like that.

Anyway, here are a few ways that could have saved India the second Test against South Africa. (Reading Doosra posts, I reckon, would henceforth be part of Team India’s strategising process.)

1. Motera curator Dhiraj Parsanna’s fault lies not in retaining the grass on track but his lack of pragmatism. Keeping in mind that, traditionally, green has made the Indian batsmen see red, Parsanna should have painted the grass grey. It’s all in the mind of our pampered willowers and you don't need to be a Paddy Upton to realise that.

2. I’m sorry but Anil Kumble has to shoulder some blame as well. After the first innings fiasco, Jumbo and his men should have refused to take to the ground, protesting China’s policy on Tibet; or soaring inflation; or farmers’ suicides in Vidarbhaba despite the BCCI chief doubling up as the Agriculture Minister; or South African cricket board’s transformation policy; or…well activism never runs out of causes, you know.

3. BCCI’s inertia is also to be blamed too. Headquartered in Mumbai, BCCI could have convinced the Shiv Sainiks – with an impressive track (digging) record– that South Africa is actually part of Pakistan and Graeme Smith’s team has no business playing cricket in India. Or you could simply tell them that Kallis & Co are die-hard Amitabh Bachchan fans, who are here to attend the ‘Bhootnath’ premier.

4. In case Shiv Sena was not at hand, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena – I admit they lack the pitch-digging skill of the Shiv Sainiks -- could be convinced that the South Africans are actually North Indian taxi-drivers and Ahmedabad actually falls under the Brihanmumbai or greater Mumbai.

Image: AFP

Inzy, Moin plan to sue Shoaib

Once they are done with the game, cricketers head for the commentary box, open academy, take up coaching, write memoirs. Shoaib Akhtar, however, seems destined to spend the rest of his life in court rooms.

As if the five-year ban was not bad enough, Shoaib has now invited further trouble with his former captains Inzamam-ul Haq and Moin Khan planning to sue him for dragging their name in the match-fixing scandal.

Shoaib apparently told host of a TV show in Pakistan that he was offered money by both Inzy and Moin to under-perform and the accusation has Inzamam livid.

An irate Inzamam told the TV channel We are waiting to see what happens. But myself and Moin are consulting and we will then decide to maybe sue him.

With Shoaib, you get the impression that he is a lonely man, with not a single fatherly soul around to guide him. Someone needs to lay an arm around his shoulder and tell him in clear words that he should keep his mouth shut till he weathers the crisis.

Already Shoaib has set his foot on a minefield with claims that he had been approached by match-fixers, an allegation that jolted ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit which would land in Pakistan anytime to seek an explanation from the speedster why he didn’t report it immediately. Now dragging Inzamam and Moin in match-fixing scandal only compounded his crisis.

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Get married, get over the blues: Meera tells Shoaib

Shoaib Akhtar has never been accused of listening to his friends and well-wishers. In all probability, he would ignore this one as well. But Pakistani actor Meera, a Shoaib pal, offers a panacea to all the ills that plague the pacer.

According to her, beneath the hulk lies a child with an unusually low tolerance level. Remember how he compounded his crisis by claiming he had been approached in India and South Africa to under-perform? ICC took note of that and its Anti-Corruption Unit officials are on their way to Pakistan to grill Shoaib why he did not reveal it earlier.

Meera, however, has full sympathy for her friend and says

…people need to understand that he is very childlike. That’s why he is always very demanding…Just like a child, Shoaib too has a very low tolerance level. He should first think before saying or doing stuff.

And like every good friend, Meera too has a suggestion for Shoaib to overcome the blues.

Shoaib needs to be mature and get married too.

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End of Shoaib, the enigma

This was probably inevitable. For a guy who toyed with career as if it was his enemy’s, this was bound to happen. And as the Pakistan Cricket Board handed out a five-year ban on the Rawalpindi Express, effective ending his career, you don’t know whether to sympathise with Shoaib Akhtar or hail the ban.

Here you had a youngster who had all the ingredients that could make him the best bowler of his generation, if not an all-time great. Scorching toe-crushers, a well-disguised slower, nasty bouncer and a perfect built to survive the ordeal called fast bowling– an aspiring fast bowler could not have asked for more.

But Shoaib was done in by a self-destructive streak.

He would push aside suggestions by the few well-wishers he had among fellow/former cricketers. Success got to his head at an early age and he could not banish the demon ever. Instead, he nursed it inside and the result was ugly manifestations, one after another.

Pampered by the Tauqir Zia-led PCB to the point of being spoilt, Shoaib steadfastly refused to change. Isolated from jealous teammates who grudged his privileged status in the side, Shoaib became selfish. Challenging the speedgun seemed his sole mission when he started the run up. Poor Bob Woolmer could not convince him to cut short that spectacularly long run-up, even though that often invited slow over-rate for the side.

The fitness regimen he followed was flawed to the end. Shoaib would probably go down in cricket’s history as the guy who was ruined by the growing gym culture that threatens to ruin many a career. Fledgling pacers need to develop muscle, but that does not mean you have to resemble the WWF hulks.

But there you had Shoaib, a torso as heavy as a payloader, gasping for breath in the boundary lines and frantically sniffing from an inhaler after a four-over spell exhausted him.

His macho image, frequent hobnobbing with glamour world – Shoaib gradually became a narcissist. He was more hype than substance. We saw more of those tantrums than his yorkers. He became a problem child that every captain wanted to abandon. And all along, Shoaib still could not see the writing on the wall and mend his ways.

This is not the way one would like to see a player go. Mentors around the cricket globe would cite his example before warning their wards not to go the Shoaib way. Shoaib could easily have been a history-maker. Alas, he preferred to be a history-sheeter.

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