Sankaran Krishna
Beware the ire of the Indian armchair fan
Is it likely that the higher the level at which one has played the game, the calmer and more balanced one is likely to be in reacting to its fluctuating fortunes?
Sankaran Krishna
29-Apr-2015
A scroll down the reader's comments section of any cricket article on the web will quickly educate one into the reality that we fans are an emotional lot - quite intemperate in our praise or excoriation of our idols, and invariably scathing about our team's opponents. The blogosphere is filled with bloviators foaming at the mouth, and while no nationality seems to have a monopoly on stupidity, some definitely seem more extreme than others. Belying cricket's image of a bucolic game played by gentlemen, the game's keyboard warriors seem cut from much rougher cloth than anyone would expect.
In this blog, I ponder a theory: is it likely that the higher the level at which one has played the game, the calmer and more balanced one is likely to be in reacting to its fluctuating fortunes? And conversely, the less adept one was at playing the game, the more extreme one's judgements may be? I'm not very sure about the veracity of my claim; it's obviously a generalisation with many exceptions.
During the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, a group of us fans in Honolulu pooled resources for a live telecast of the matches and watched at the home of one of us. Our small group was multinational - weighted towards the subcontinent - though I don't recall anyone from either the West Indies or Africa (South Africa or otherwise). I viewed the occasion as a chance to compile an ethnography of cricket fans. And gradually I noticed that it wasn't the nationality of the fans that correlated with the ways they reacted to events on the field. Rather, the calmest watchers were invariably also the best cricketers, often people who had played the game at a level that required real skill - representing a university renowned for its cricketing prowess, for instance.
Full postIn defence of the stylist
It's something of a misconception that elegant batsmen like Rohit Sharma "throw" their wickets away
Sankaran Krishna
25-Mar-2015
It is perhaps one of the most storied first balls of any Test career. June 2, 1978, the second day of the first Test between England and Pakistan at Edgbaston. David Gower walked in at 101 for 2, the captain, Mike Brearley, having just been run out. England were already within sight of Pakistan's meagre first-innings score of 164. Left-arm medium-fast bowler Liaqat Ali came charging in and dug one in just short of a length to welcome the debutant. The lissome 21-year-old swivelled and sent the ball scudding to the midwicket boundary with a dismissive pull. There was a breathtaking nonchalance to the shot, and a star was born.
Over 117 Tests, Gower scored 8000-plus runs, held his own against fearsomely fast West Indian and Australian pace attacks, and averaged 44 in an era when that really meant something. One stunning indicator of his ability to caress the ball to the fence rather than bludgeon it is that he hit 979 boundaries but only ten sixes in all those Tests.
Yet from the outset Gower's talent seemed to be held against him. He made batting look too easy with that languid grace that left-handers often have, and he always seemed to have more time and options to play every ball.
Full postTales of Greig and Lloyd
In the '70s, the two towering tourists managed to win the hearts of Indian fans with their charm and prowess
Sankaran Krishna
20-Feb-2015
Cricket at its best transcends nationalism and narrow partisanship. And some cricketers seem to evoke the best from fans in foreign countries. In my recollection, two such cricketers stood out in the way they impacted Indian crowds: Tony Greig and Clive Lloyd.
Greig came to India with the MCC (the England Test team as it was known then) in the winter of 1972-73. Standing 6ft 7in, the blond cricketer could not be missed. Back then, every Test match in India drew capacity crowds, with up to a 100,000 packing Eden Gardens and about half that number in most other stadiums.
Greig had pioneered the silly point position, from where he towered over every batsman. He clearly enjoyed playing up to the crowds and they responded in kind. He had made more than 100 runs in the low-scoring first Test in Delhi (which England won) without being dismissed in either innings, and in the second Test, in Calcutta, he took 5 for 24 in the second innings apart from scoring 67 after coming in with England at 17 for 4 chasing 192 (they would fall narrowly short).
Full postThe many crickets of an Indian boyhood
Growing up in India, you play a number of varieties of the game, each contributing to the development of certain skills
Sankaran Krishna
27-Jan-2015
One of the joys of growing up in the India of the 1960s and '70s was the multiple forms of cricket played all around you. There was tennis-ball cricket, cork-ball cricket, French cricket, cricket played on matting wickets, turf cricket with a proper cricket ball, and a host of other forms - some of them possibly unique to India and owing to what one might call our context of scarcity and surplus of imagination. I'd like to ruminate on some of these forms and the special skills they necessitated and developed.
Tennis-ball cricket (though sometimes the ball in question was nothing more than a lowly rubber ball) was the predominant form in most playgrounds and schoolyards, especially among the younger lot. Given the sheer surfeit of players and the need to rotate strike as quickly as possible (everyone fancied himself a bastman, of course) you were out caught even after the first bounce. Batsmen - the good ones at any rate - rapidly figured out the virtues of playing with soft hands, placing the ball into gaps, and using their wrists to control the trajectory of the ball. You could hit the tennis ball a long way if you had the elusive kinaesthetic skill of timing and always hit with the wind and never into it.
As I heard foreign commentators rhapsodise on the wristiness of Indian batters like Azhar or Laxman or Vishy, I've often sent a silent thank you to those days of one-bounce tennis ball cricket that is probably to credit for overdeveloping those skills. As a bowler in tennis-ball cricket you quickly realised your best bet was to perfect the length and vary the pace ever so slightly. With all the tennis-ball cricket played by the youth of India, we should have been churning out metronomic bowlers in the Glenn McGrath mould.
Full postThe characters of maidan cricket
From the Nonstop Commentator to the Flat-footed Slogger - a lowdown on the players who defined Indian club cricket in the '70s
Sankaran Krishna
04-Dec-2014
Some years ago, I published a piece on the various types of Indian cricket fans in all their eccentric glory. Here, I look at the sheer surfeit of characters you encountered when playing "maidan" cricket in India in the 1970s:
The Insatiable Batter: This guy was impossible to get out once he got his eye in (which was, depressingly, often). He would go on and on, playing for days on end, accumulating runs by the hundreds. The IB hated fielding or anything that didn't have to do with his own run-making - and often, when dismissed early in the day, would turn up to bat in an entirely different match in a different part of the maidan. While the IB can be found in all parts of India, he tends to be especially concentrated in and around Mumbai.
The Practice Hero (PH): This cricketer was dynamite in the nets but a damp squib outside them. He looked like a million dollars as he flayed the bowlers all over the place during warm-ups and practice, and he spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting his technique, oiling his bat, and making sure he was smartly turned out in spotless whites. Unfortunately, come the day of the match, he would invariably return sheepishly to the pavilion with a duck against his name. PH generally had elaborate explanations for his early dismissals, ranging from the eyesight of the umpire to the ball inexplicably keeping low. His conviction that his big breakout game was just around the corner was rarely shared by any of his team-mates.
Full postThe appeal I didn't withdraw
How long can you remember an error of judgement on the cricket field?
Sankaran Krishna
05-Nov-2014
It was sometime in the early months of 1980. An inconsequential and long-forgotten match in the annals of cricket but one that left an imprint on me. The Jesuit college I attended in Madras had about 600 students living in its hostels. We were divided into five or six teams that competed across all sports through the year. The range of talent was quite wide, with seriously good players rubbing shoulders with game triers of limited ability. For the most part it was all good fun, something to do on weekends in an era where the television had one channel, social media was an unknown concept, and Prohibition ensured we could not buy alcohol we could not afford.
Our inter-hostel cricket matches were played on a soccer field in the shadow of a lovely steeple and adjacent to a small churchyard. In a soft-focus photograph the tableau might even have been mistaken for a village green in England rather than dusty old Madras.
Towards the end of the cricketing calendar in my final year, the two teams vying for the title of champion were set to meet on a Saturday. It was a quick-and-dirty 30-overs a side affair. Our regular captain could not make the match (I forget whether it was the after-effects of his Friday-night shenanigans or some more legitimate reason), and I suddenly found myself leading the side. More than any ability, I think seniority and enthusiasm were my main assets. We mustered just over a hundred runs, and I remember biffing the ball about for 24 as a lower-order batsman.
Full postA soft spot for the dibbly-dobbler
These apologetic, innocuous trundlers come in various shapes and sizes. But in the modern era, they are slowly turning into an extinct species
Sankaran Krishna
10-Oct-2014
Dibbly-Dobbler. The very word evokes the image of a somewhat rotund bowler ambling up to the wicket and delivering a slow-medium ball that wobbles in the cold air, shapes in a tad, straightens just enough to graze the outside edge of the bat and nestle snugly in the gloves of the wicketkeeper.
The batsman trudges off, brow flushed in anger at having been dismissed by a mere trundler - someone who was neither fast nor spun the ball but bowled something so innocuous as to defy all description. "I should've crunched the damn thing through covers," he mutters under his breath.
Meanwhile the bowler, the dobbler himself, rather self-deprecatingly joins his celebrating team-mates. A timeless scene from cricket grounds everywhere, but especially in England and New Zealand, whose often cold and overcast summers create ideal conditions for dobbling.
Full postDon't blame the bowlers for India's sorry record overseas
Batting collapses, even in friendly conditions, have been the chief cause
Sankaran Krishna
25-Sep-2014
That India are one of the world's worst touring sides is by now a truism. Eight decades after graduating to the league of Test-playing nations, they are yet to win a Test series in Australia and South Africa, and they had to wait until the new millennium to win a solitary series in Pakistan. A large part of the blame for this abysmal overseas record, especially in recent years, is laid at the feet of their bowlers. A glance at the average runs per wicket, strike rates, and wickets per innings of India's main bowlers outside India confirms this evident truth.
Anil Kumble averaged 24.88 runs a wicket at home versus 35.85 abroad for his 619 Test wickets. Harbhajan Singh, with over 400 wickets, took them at 28.76 at home but at 38.83 abroad. Ishant Sharma's 62 wickets at home cost 33.46 runs apiece and the 112 away cost 38.50. Javagal Srinath took 108 wickets on the allegedly flat and lifeless Indian pitches at an impressive 26.61 each but gave away 33.76 runs per wicket for his 128 wickets outside India. Their all-time great, Kapil Dev took 219 wickets at home at 26.49 but his 215 abroad cost him 32.85 each.
The disparity approaches a chasm in the case of R Ashwin, whose 95 Test wickets in India have come at just 24.12 runs each, whereas his 12 wickets (in six Tests) outside India cost 64.5 runs each. The only mainline bowler to buck this trend is Zaheer Khan, whose 104 wickets in India cost 35.87 runs each whereas his 207 wickets abroad have come at 31.47 (though, as with Ishant, neither average is particularly impressive).
Full postThe joy of seeing a sledger receive his comeuppance
It's deeply satisfying to see a known potty mouth, especially one who has wound up your team, be defeated on the field - though it doesn't always work out that way
Sankaran Krishna
24-Aug-2014
As Jimmy Anderson turned at the top of his bowling run-up to steam in to Ravi Jadeja during India's first innings in Manchester, a familiar, and sickening, sense of despair enveloped me.
Anderson had taken the previous three balls away from Jadeja and everyone - as the commentators on Sky intoned - sensed the next would straighten into him. I also knew it was very likely Jadeja would play all around it and get bowled or be caught plumb in front, as had happened in the previous Test. Like a replay of a horror-movie sequence, that's exactly what happened and Jadeja became the fourth Indian batsman to be out for a duck (two more of which were to come). India were duly hammered by an innings defeat in under three days.
Anderson sneered as Jadeja - looking down and away - walked past him to the pavilion.
Full postLet's hear it for cricket's capriciousness
The game's idiosyncrasies can lead to plenty of talking points, but they also add thrill to the outcome
Sankaran Krishna
17-Jul-2014
For those of us who grew up playing and watching cricket, the game's various eccentricities escape our eyes as they are a part of our normal experience. Something a bit out of the ordinary - living abroad where other sports abound or explaining the game or a controversy in it to a neophyte - throws these eccentricities into sharp relief and forces us to ask ourselves, "Why does it have to be this way?" I would like to explore three such instances.
In the first Test between England and India at Trent Bridge, there occurred a moment which can only be described as bizarre. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami had frustrated the English bowlers to distraction and had already put on over 100 runs for the last wicket. It was well into the second day with no breakthrough in sight that Liam Plunkett lumbered in and induced Bhuvneshwar to snick one to the wicketkeeper. Alastair Cook, fielding close to the bat, went up in an animated appeal - but neither Matt Prior nor Plunkett or any of the others nearby joined him with any conviction.
Honestly, they all looked simply too knackered to bother. The umpire seemed doubtful, and then denied the appeal. To anyone watching, it was obvious that the tepid nature of the appeal strongly influenced his decision. Soon enough, though, Hot Spot and the Snickometer showed a clear edge. The batsman had been reprieved because the appeal had not been convincing enough.
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