Different coaches for Tests and ODIs

In a write up earlier this week, Tim de Lisle suggested England to get a new coach for their one-day team and keep Fletcher for test squad. I think it’s a brilliant thought which might well be the case in future. From the times of same teams playing all matches we now have seen specialist players and even different captains for different forms of the game. So why not coaches?

Already international teams are looking to have specialist coaches. England proved last summer how important it was to have Troy Cooley as assistant bowling coach during their Ashes winning campaign. So much so that even Australians had to look beyond much successful John Buchanan and steal Cooley from English to help their bowlers. Pakistan just recently purchased services of great Jonty Rhodes for some fielding lessons to the likes of Inzamam-ul-Haq. India got Australian bowler Bruce Reid to help their pace attack on 2003-04 Australian tour and his efforts were much appreciated. And not to underestimate how past greats have been helping present generations voluntarily for ages.

Today teams have specialized support of fitness trainers, physiotherapists, computer analysts, sports psychologists and what not. It will be ignorant to dismiss different forms of the game not being strategically different. It’s still cricket, calls will always be made but the fact is strategies and planning can’t be exactly same for different versions of the game. May be there are individuals out there who understand a particular form lot better than the other.

It’s worth trying and interesting to see who will take the lead if any? The scheduling of international programs has made it practically possible now. No longer are ODIs and test matches intervened. In 80s and a for a good part of 90s it was all too common for teams to start with 2 one-dayers, then play a test, play another one-dayer, play 2 tests and come back to finish final few one-dayers. Annual tri series in Australia used to be played on either side of test series. New Zealand and Zimbabwe even played an ODI in the middle of a test match in November 1992 in Harare. All this switching from one form to another would have made it impossible to have separate coaches for one day team and test team. Now with one day and test segments of a tour are played after one another and ‘specialist’ players are flying in/out for their segments, different coaches can be tried out.

Will we see anything like that in next few years?

Irresponsible

Drugs?

FICA chairman Tim May’s warning of players might resort to drugs to fight fatigue is completely irresponsible. It’s a threat and an insensitive one. Is he trying to legitimate the use of drug? Will he come out one of these days and blame ICC for handing a ban to Shane Warne for drugs use? If the job pressure or social pressure or any other reasons forces people to illegal activities such as drug use or stealing, who should be punished? Mr. Tim May needs to be told that international cricketers are not the only ones with a demanding job. Billions others all over the world in all kind of professions including sports deal with a lot of pressures and very few get engaged into anti social solutions for their problems.

With the increase in amount of cricket played, a very good support structure also started to appear. From not even having a coach now teams have all kind of support staff to help them with their primary task which is to play cricket for their team. What will he choose given a choice, a 10 year sporting career with enough in the bank to last a lifetime or 20 years career with 20% of matches played by a modern cricketer and still looking for a job after retirement?

One statement where he was spot on was that top players can’t play all the games. And apparently the problem is public wants to watch top players. If this is the case then he or anyone need not be worried at all. If the matches without top stars are not anyone wants to watch naturally they can’t go on for ever. Market forces will settle it down. If ICC is all about money making then these games will loose money and administrators will have to shun those.

So Mr. May please raise the issues for welfare of cricketers but do not legitimize illegal acts such as drug use. It just feels like you need to be in news anyhow all the time. I have lost a lot of respect for you.

Cricket and Soccer

Today soccer world cup kicks off in Germany with whole world watching including fans from non soccer countries. Well there are hardly any non soccer countries so lets say those where soccer is not among top sports. Nine months from now another world cup will take place in Caribbean islands. Sixteen teams will be taking part and don’t be surprised if people of some participating nations won’t even follow their teams’ progress. In fact many won’t be aware that there exist a game called Cricket and their own national team is playing in the finals (a term I borrowed from FIFA).

About a decade ago ICC (International Cricket Council) started to be more professional and consciously or unconsciously started to act more like FIFA. The influence can be seen in many places. Title sponsorship was made a thing of past for cricket world cup and it’s now known as ICC Cricket World Cup much like a FIFA World Cup. A new winner’s trophy every world cup (prepared by hosts) was replaced with an ICC world cup trophy and since 1999 world cup all teams fight for that same trophy. Again it’s clearly a FIFA influence. In some ways these are important steps as all this gives a much better identity to cricket’s flagship event. But the most important change is a dream of making cricket a global sport much like soccer or football as it’s known in most of the world.

Any globalization effort demands money and an outrageous amount of it. ICC went ahead and introduced a lot of programs across the world and to fund all that they acquire complete rights of world cups (until 1996 it was host who had all rights) besides throwing up new tournaments such as Champions Trophy or a misadventure called Super series. The road could never be smooth. The result has been controversies and criticism. Controversy over personal sponsorship contracts of many leading cricketers which were in direct conflict with ICC global partners (read sponsors) is well documented. The latest was corporate sponsorship in some of India’s top cricket centers that couldn’t be honored if they were to host upcoming Champions Trophy in September. The result, these stadiums had to be missed out and remember that includes Eden Gardens in Kolkata. And certainly the most talked about controversy has been overkill of cricket, too much burdens on players.

Many leading cricket writers have criticized ICC’s global development program. Some argue that Cricket can never become soccer. It can never be popular in new places. One valid argument is length of the time a cricket game takes as oppose to most other sports including soccer. Another valid argument in favor of soccer is that it’s so cheap to play; all you need is a ball. Of course relative simplicity of soccer also helped making it the most popular sport on planet.

Despite agreeing with such arguments I disagree that ICC should not attempt to make cricket a world wide game. Will it happen in next 50 years? Definitely not. But could there be 15 test playing nations in next 50 years? Not impossible. People usually run out of patience too fast. Case of Bangladesh is prime example. Few noticed that any other new entrant would have gone through same series of defeats if they were playing as much when they first arrived on the scene as Bangladesh did. India, New Zealand and West Indies were all granted test status in 1926 and they had to wait years to even play their first test matches. If three nations as diverse as the distances between their national boundaries were made part of the elite, was it not an effort to reach out and make the game more widespread. So why is it wrong now? How long can administrators can sit and just wait for things to happen itself?

There are so many examples to observe. USA where soccer is still not very popular has its team playing in the world cup. Only a decade since they started MLS (Major League Soccer) but already signs of progress are visible. Consider China, world’s most populous nation, was a rather spent force in sports until they decided to do something about it. Today they are not just among top Olympic nations they are coming up in more and more non-Chinese sports.

Sport is part of culture and any new sports require a culture change to be very popular and it will take time, a lot of time. This doesn’t mean though efforts should be curbed. May be it’ll be much easier to spread the game among neighbors of big cricketing nations. So it could be that countries like Scotland, Ireland, Bermuda, Kenya and Nepal etc. graduate to big league before others like Canada. That doesn’t stop from planning and promoting. Almost certainly in our life time we won’t see 50 test playing nations from 6 different continents but our future generations will sure do. After all how many in 1880 envisioned even a 3rd or 4th cricketing nation.