Outside The Line

Dropping Weight To Keep The Tour Afloat

I've been thinking for a few days now about how to tackle the news of Rahul Dravid's recent drop from the Indian one-day squad. It just seems like an issue that I should say something about, since a) I am a cricket follower, b) I write for a cricket blog, and c) I have always been a big Dravid fan (and public booster), never quite getting enough of his humble orthodoxy with the bat, his utter implacability as a leader, or his narrow shoulders and sunken chest. Isn't this the kind of issue that made me start this blog in the first place? The kind that I can sink my teeth into and ruminate on for weeks, debating the pros and cons, with just the right combination of hard data, holistic team analysis, and soft-focus rhetorical nostalgia?

And yet I find myself curiously indifferent about it all. Dare I say... I just don't give a shit about it? In a way, I don't. Because when it comes right down to it, none of this is about Rahul Dravid at all. He's just the fall guy – a victim of expediency in uncertain times. If he had the ruthless drive or Machiavellian streak of, say, a Sourav Ganguly, Dravid would still be in that Indian team, living to play another day. But he doesn't, so now he's the one being put out to slaughter, regardless of his extensive contributions to the team in the past, his not-that-bad-when-you-really-bother-looking-at-the-numbers form in recent times, as well as his obvious ability under pressure and mental strength in a batting lineup typically beset by psychological frailty.

Normally, I'd be screaming Injustice! from the rooftops, but in this case I'll just say to Dravid what Mork from Ork once said to Will Hunting: "It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault." This has nothing to do with Dravid or the objective merit for his presence in the Indian one-day squad. It is about Sachin Tendulkar, and what is probably destined to be one long-ass, protracted Farewell Tour he is embarking on. As far as Indian cricket goes, it’s clear that their team will never really be able move forward until Tendulkar – the man, the symbol, and everything it represents – goes. In the history books, this is still Tendulkar's India, just like the Australia of the 1930s and 40s was Bradman's Australia. The man has been too huge a monster (in athletic, symbolic, and cultural terms) to just allow the team to 'move on' while he's still around.

So all you can do is wait and work around it. I mean, what else are you gonna do? Huh? Drop him? Drop Tendulkar? Who's going to make that phone call?

(Unfortunately, that means you might have to drop this by the wayside):

Where Is The Stalin Of Pakistan Cricket?

Enough is enough. A few days ago, my friend J-Paul sent me this email, and after hearing about Pakistan's latest game, I figure there is not better time to share it:

Yo, so is Nazir the worst -- of the 8 main  international teams -- one day batter going round? The guy has played 71 innings and has an average of 25. Take out Zimbabwe (his only 2 hundreds), and the tool averages a mere 22. This is a specialist opening batsman here. The sooner they purge themselves of the likes of his scum, the better. How 'bout Younis Khan opening with Razzaq? Shit, can't be any worse than Nazir and Hafeez. Oh yeah, I forgot, Younis isn't an 'opener', whatever the fuck that means in this day and age...

After Imran Nazir's 2 against South Africa today, I realise that not only do I agree with the sentiment, I think it doesn't go far enough. I'm starting to wonder whether Nazir could even make it into the Zimbabwe team. He now has an average of 24.95 from 72 innings. The current Zimbabwean openers, Brendan Taylor and Vusi Sibanda, have averages of 28.43 and 23.88, respectively. (Which, remember, understate their talents somewhat, since neither of them have ever had the chance to, well, 'play Zimbabwe' and inflate their records.)

I don't exactly know why Pakistan have such an obsession with shielding their talent from the new ball.
They have done so ever since Saeed Anwar became a hermit a few years ago, and they were left with an ensemble cast of young, undersized wafters to rotate at the top, with varying thicknesses of monobrow and equally unfulfilled potential. And so it became that Taufeeq Umar begat Imran Farhat, who then begat Imran Nazir, who begat Salman Butt, who begat Mohammad Hafeez, who begat Kamran Akmal, and so on.

I understand the idea of trying to protect your match-winning players from the dangers of the new ball, but what good does it do to always have your worst batters leading the way? Sure, I probably wouldn't risk opening with Younis and Yusuf if I was in charge. But what's wrong with having Younis opening, Shoaib Malik coming in at 3, and then Yusuf at 5? Add some padding in between those (a Yasir Hameed here, a Misbah-ul-Haq there, an Afridi floating around), and you've got yourself a batting order. And you'll stop wasting our time with B-list poseurs like Imran Nazir.

"I Believe That Is Mr. de Silva's"

It's Aravinda de Silva's 42nd birthday today, and I was hoping to post a video of one of his many glorious innings, but all I could find on YouTube was some grainy straight-off-the-TV footage of four of his boundaries from a one-day innings against India in 1998; and this, the trophy ceremony from the 1996 World Cup Final, when de Silva won Man of the Match:



(I love how many hangers-on there are onstage -- it's like the scene at the end of "Happy Gilmore," when Happy beats Shooter in the putt-off and wins the golden jacket. I half-expected Mark Taylor to jump in at some point, grab the MoM trophy and run off with it, leading to some scary Sri Lankan building site foreman with a pituitary disorder and a nail through his skull to start chasing after him.)

For a much better display of de Silva's undeniable magic, how about cricinfo's account of my favourite single delivery in the history of cricket, during the 2002 Champions Trophy Semifinal:

   6.5 de Silva to Hayden, OUT: down the track comes Hayden, trying for
        the huge heave-ho over midwicket. But he doesn't keep his eye on
        the ball, which keeps low and straight and crashes into the
        stumps. The bowling change doing the trick here.

I still remember how cathartic that moment was. Some context: Australia won the toss and chose to bat first. They were in one of their ridiculous ‘swing viciously at the every delivery and just let the other team drop their way to a loss’ moods that day, and by the sixth over were already racing along at 8/over. Then de Silva came on and triggered the most delicious of collapses you could imagine. The symbolism was so apt, it gave you goosebumps – this little pear-shaped Sri Lankan part-timer, being asked to stave off the Imperial onslaught in the 7^th over of the match. He faces big, fee-fi-fo-fum-ing Matthew Hayden, more than ready to inflict some serious damage… and he bowls him, straight through the gate. Australia are all out for 163, de Silva ends up with bowling figures of 10-2-16-1, and Sri Lanka chase down the score with 7 wickets to spare. Can it possibly get any better?

Right Next To Some Hockey Fight

Back in 2004, after NBA star Shaquille O'Neal was essentially forced out of a (winning) Los Angeles Lakers squad due to Kobe Bryant's constant hissy fits, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons tried to work out how angry and vengeful Shaq would be in his comeback season with a new team, the Miami Heat. In trying to answer that question, Simmons came up with the Vengeance Scale, drawn from the worlds of sport, movies, music and (somewhat excessively, I think) pro wrestling.

The Vengeance Scale ranges from 0 to 10, going up from least to most vengeful (0.1 being "O.J. Simpson's valiant attempt to find the 'real killers,'" 5.0 being "Crazy Joe Davola vs. Kramer and Seinfeld," and 10.0 being "Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects.")

I've been trying to think where Andrew Symonds' recent performance against India would rank in the Vengeance Scale. Think about it: 107 not out off 88 balls with the bat, 10 overs for just 39 runs with the ball, in the fifth game of a (still competitive at the time) series against India, after losing to them in the Twenty20 semi-final just weeks before. That in itself would already merit a decent rank, but when you factor in all the 'monkey chants', Sreesanth's schoolyard mind games, and all the extra sauce that has been added -- from both sides -- to this series, Symonds' feat starts to look more and more impressive. (The fact that he was also dropped by Sreesanth when he was on 2 can only add add points to his score.)

I'd say it definitely has to rank higher than "Snoop and Dre taking shots at Easy E in 'Wit' Dre Day'" (at 7.1), but still a little lower than "Cartman's revenge on Scott Tenorman" (at 7.8). Let's just split the difference and give it a 7.5.

How Long Till The IPL Again?

Am I the only one who is already feeling underwhelmed about the current ODI series between Australia and India? Maybe it's because it's coming so soon after the excitement of the World Cup, or maybe it's because my mind has involuntarily stopped caring about the one-day game ever since it realised that the format will soon be phased out, I'm not sure. Even though I get the feeling that it could end up being quite competitive, it just feels like a giant non-sequitur to me. Will it change the balance of power in the game? Doubt it. Will it tell us anything special about either team? Probably not. It's just there to... well, fill the time, I guess. And make a little money. Other than that, without any enduring context or storyline, I can't really see any purpose for such a series at the moment. (And "seeing Matthew Hayden's career end prematurely after being struck by a full-blooded cut shot to the face" doesn't count as a reason, since that's pretty much what I hope to see in every Australian series.)

The Other Bush Doctrine

Even though my prognosticating skills so far (1 , 2) have been about as accurate as those of the neoconservative movement in geopolitics, let me just make one more prediction, and let posterity judge it as it may:

 The 50-over international game of cricket will seize to exist in less than a decade. (The 2011 World Cup will most likely be the last major global event that will be staged in that format.) Twenty20 will eventually absorb the entire limited-overs spectrum.

That's it.