'Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause' Ramachandra Guha

Social historian Ramachandra Guha can easily cast a spell on the listener with his deep knowledge and his spontaneity. Guha, who was briefly, in 2017, a member of the Committee of Administrators appointed by the Supreme Court of India to oversee reforms in the BCCI, has written a cricket memoir, The Commonwealth of Cricket that traces his relationship with the sport from the time he was four. He says it will be his last cricket book, but as he reveals in the following interview, he will continue his love affair with the game - despite the way it is administered in India. Courtesy Cricinfo

This is your first cricket book in nearly two decades, after A Corner of the Foreign Field was published in 2002. Why did you decide to write it now?
Two things. One, I wanted to pay tribute to my uncle Dorai, my first cricketing mentor and an exemplary coach and lover of the game, who is still active at the age of 84, running his club. I knew at some stage I would like to pay tribute to him.

Paying tribute to people I admire, respect, have been influenced by, is something I have done through my writing career. I have written about environmentalists, scholars, biographers, civil liberties activists. So I also wanted to write about this cricketer [Dorai] who had inspired me.

And I did my stint at the board. That kind of completed the journey from cricket-mad boy through player and writer and spectator to actually being inside the belly of the beast. So I thought that the arc is complete and maybe I should write a book. 

In the book you have defined four types of superstars: 1. Crooks who consort with and pimp for bigger non-cricket-playing crooks. 2. Those who are willing and keen to practise conflict of interest explicitly. 3. Those who will try to be on the right side of the law but stay absolutely silent on […] those in categories 1 and 2. 4. Those who are themselves clean and also question those in categories 1 and 2." Bishan Bedi, you say, is the only one you can think of in that last category. Why is that?
Because he is a person of enormous character, integrity and principle. He never equivocates, he never makes excuses. And he calls it as it is. These kinds of people are rare in public life in India. They are rare in the film world, they are rare in the business world, and virtually invisible in politics. They are rare also in journalism, if you go by the ways in which editors in Delhi, for many years, have been intrigued with politicians, sought Rajya Sabha seats or favours, houses for themselves…

To find someone like Bishan Bedi, who is ramrod straight in his conduct, in any sphere of public life in India today is increasingly rare. He is also an incredibly generous man. When I first met him, at my uncle's house for dinner, he gave a cricket bat to my uncle - because he never wants to take freebies.

Bishan always has given back much more to youngsters he has nurtured. He is very blunt, he is abrasive, like me. He makes enemies because he sometimes says things in an indiscreet or impolite way. But it's really the quality and calibre of his character that compels admiration in me today. When I was young, it was the art and beauty of his spin bowling. Today, it's the kind of man he is. 

You write that the superstar culture "that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures". How does that start?
Your question compels me to reflect on a time when players had too little power. When Bedi once gave a television interview where he said some sarcastic things, he was banned for a [Test] match in Bangalore in 1974. Players had to get more power, they had to get organised, they had to be noticed, they had to be paid properly, which took a very long time. The generation of Bedi and [Sunil] Gavaskar was not really paid well till the fag end of their careers.

But now to elevate them into demigods and icons… one of the things I talk about is [Virat] Kohli and [Anil] Kumble and their rift [Kumble was forced to step down as coach after the 2017 Champions Trophy]. How essentially Kohli had a veto over who could be his coach, which is not the case in any sporting team anywhere.

[MS] Dhoni had decided: I'm not going to play Test cricket. He was only playing one-day cricket. And I said [in the CoA] that he should not get a [Grade] A contract. Simple. That contract is for people who play throughout the year. He has said, "I'm not playing Test cricket." Fine. That's his choice and he can be picked for the shorter form if he is good enough. [They said] "No, we are too scared to demote him from A to B." And more than the board, the CoA, appointed by the Supreme Court, chaired by a senior IAS officer, was too scared. I thought it was hugely, hugely problematic. So I protested about it while I was there. And when I got nowhere, I wrote about it.

Is it the fans who create this culture?
Of course. They venerate cricketers. That's fine. Cricketers do things that they cannot do. It's the administrators who have to have a sense of balance and proportion. And not just with cricketing superstars who are active but also superstars who are retired. Again, to go back to one of the examples I talk about in my book: that [Rahul] Dravid could have an IPL contract, but other coaches in the NCA couldn't. Now, you can't have double standards like this. Cricket is supposed to be played with a straight bat.

It is not Dravid's fault. He just used the rules as they existed for him. It was the fault of the BCCI management that it created this kind of division and caste system within cricketers, within coaches, within umpires, within commentators. It offended my ethical sensibilities. So I protested. 

You recently told Mid-Day that "N Srinivasan and Amit Shah are effectively running Indian cricket today".
It is true.

Are they really running the board?
Yeah, that's my sense. Along with their sons and daughters and sycophants. That's what it is. And [Sourav] Ganguly [the BCCI president] has capitulated. I mean, there are things he should not be doing, given his extraordinary playing record and his credibility, whether he should be practising this shocking conflict of interest. The kind of example it sets is abysmal. I say this with some sadness because I admired Ganguly as a cricketer and as a captain. I'm glad I'm out of it and I'm just a fan again. I can just enjoy the game and not bother about the murkiness within the administration.

Things were meant to change under Ganguly.
Again, I go back to what I said about Bedi: people of principle are rare in any walk of life. And in India, particularly, there is a temptation for fame, for glory, to cosy up to who's powerful. It's very, very, very sad, but it happens. Maybe it's something to do with a deep flaw in our national character, that we lack a backbone in these matters.

In the book, where you address the topic across two chapters, as well as during your tenure in the CoA, you say you were frustrated by how deep the roots of conflict of interest have grown, not just in the BCCI and state associations but also across the player fraternity. Why is it so difficult for both administrators and players, some of whom are former greats, to understand conflict?
Because it's ubiquitous and everybody is practising it. Woh bhi kar raha hai, main bhi karoonga. Kya hai usme? [He's doing it, so I'll also do it. What's the big deal?] It's hard to resist, you know, especially [when] the moral compass of people around you is so low that you just kind of go along with it. 

Sunil Gavaskar is another person who said had multiple conflict of interests.
To Dravid's credit, he saw the point and gave up his Delhi Daredevils contract relatively quickly. He exploited the rules as they were and once I protested and it became public, he realised that he had probably erred and done a wrong thing. Maybe Ganguly could have learned from Dravid in what he's doing now. Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause.

In 2018, the Supreme Court modified its original order of 2016, passed by Chief Justice TS Thakur concerning the Lodha reforms. In 2019, immediately after taking over, Ganguly's administration asked the court to relax key reforms, which would virtually wipe out the reforms. Is it now the responsibility of the court to decisively put the lid on the case?

I'm not losing any sleep. Cricket lovers have to live with a corrupt and nepotistic mode. We should just move on and enjoy the cricket.

In the book, you say you write on history for a living and on cricket to live. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
When I started writing this book, I had just finished the second volume of my Gandhi biography. It's a thousand pages long, inundated with millions of footnotes. And when you write a properly researched work of history, you have to have your sources at hand. So you compile a paragraph, which is based on material you gather, and then you have to scrupulously footnote that paragraph. One paragraph may be drawn from four different sources - a newspaper, an archival document, a book - and you have to put all that in.

Whereas I wanted to write this freely and spontaneously. I could only do that in the form of cricket memoir. So that's how it happened. I wanted a release from densely footnoted, closely argued, scrupulously researched scholarly work. And this came as a kind of liberation.

You call yourself a cricket fanatic. For me, on reading the book, it's the romantic in you that comes to life.
Yeah, I think I am more a romantic than a fanatic. I'm cricket-obsessed. I've been cricket-obsessed all my life, but more in a romantic way; "fanatic" may be slightly wrong because that assumes you always want your team to win. And that's certainly not the case with me anymore.

You write in the book about a fanboy moment you had: "On this evening I did something I almost never do - take a selfie, with Bishan Bedi and the coach of the Indian team, Anil Kumble." Can you recount that incident?
It was the BCCI's annual function. One of the few things I was able to do in my brief tenure at the board was accomplished on that day: to have [Padmakar] Shivalkar and [Rajinder] Goel, two great left-arm spinners, get the CK Nayudu [Lifetime Achievement] Award - the first time a non-Test cricketer had been honoured. And also to have Shanta Rangaswamy get the first Lifetime Achievement Award for Women.

So it was a happy occasion. It was in my home town [Bengaluru]. Bishan had come from Delhi. Kumble was then the coach of the [Indian] team. I know Bishan well and Anil a little bit. I don't know that many cricketers, actually. All these years running about the game, my only friend is really Bishan Bedi, apart from Arun Lal, who was my college captain.

Kumble, of course, would admire Bishan as a kind of sardar [chief] of Indian spin bowling. I saw them and I said I'll take a selfie. What I don't mention is that the selfie was taken by Anil, because he is technologically much more sophisticated than either Bishan or me. He took that selfie very artfully, which I would not have been able to do. It came out nicely. It is the only photograph in the book. 

I am a partisan of bowlers and of spin bowlers. For me, Kumble has always been underappreciated as a cricketer. To win a Test match you need to take 20 wickets. And, arguably, Kumble has therefore won more Test matches than Sachin Tendulkar. As I again say in the book, in 1999, when Tendulkar was about to be replaced as captain, they should really have had Kumble - he is a masterful cricketing mind, but there is a prejudice against bowlers. So in a sense, [the photo was with] someone who was a generation older than me, Bedi, and someone of a generation younger than me, Kumble - both cricketers I admire, both with big hearts, and both spin bowlers, as I was myself.

That's why the caption says: "two great spin bowlers and another" - kind of implying I was a spin bowler, but a rather ordinary one.

Is it true that this possibly could be your last cricket book?
Almost certainly. It would be, because I really have nothing else to say. This is a kind of cricketing autobiography and it has covered a lot. This is my fourth cricket book. I will watch the game. I will appreciate it.

Why don't more Indian cricketers write books?
I think Dravid has a great book in him because he is a thinking cricketer. So might Kumble. But my suspicion is, Kumble will not write a book. Dravid just might. He could write a book called The Art of Batsmanship. Bedi could have written a book because he is an intelligent person. He writes interesting articles, including on politics and public life. By the way, books don't sell. That's another reason. Occasionally, cricketers have thought, I will write a book and I will make Rs 30-40 lakhs (about US$50,000) on it. But cricket books don't really make that much money.

‘Superstar culture afflicts Indian cricket,’ writes Ram Guha as he resigns from panel

Dear Vinod,

It has been a pleasure working with Diana, Vikram and you in the Supreme Court Committee of Administrators. It has been an educative experience, spending long hours with three top-flight professionals from whom I have learned a lot in these past few months. However, it has been clear for some time now that my thoughts and views are adjacent to, and sometimes at odds with, the direction the Committee is taking as a whole. That is why I eventually decided to request the Supreme Court to relieve me of the responsibility, and submitted my letter of resignation to the Court on the morning of the 1st of June.

For the record, and in the interests of transparency, I am here listing the major points of divergence as I see it:

1. The question of conflict of interest, which had lain unaddressed ever since the Committee began its work, and which I have been repeatedly flagging since I joined. For instance, the BCCI has accorded preferential treatment to some national coaches (read Dravid) , by giving them ten month contracts for national duty, thus allowing them to work as IPL coaches/mentors for the remaining two months. This was done in an adhoc and arbitrary manner; the more famous the former player-turned-coach, the more likely was the BCCI to allow him to draft his own contract that left loopholes that he exploited to dodge the conflict of interest issue.

I have repeatedly pointed out that it is contrary to the spirit of the Lodha Committee for coaches or the support staff of the Indian senior or junior team, or for staff at the National Cricket Academy, to have contracts in the Indian Premier League. One cannot have dual loyalties of this kind and do proper justice to both. National duty must take precedence over club affiliation.

I had first raised this issue to my COA colleagues in an email of 1st February, and have raised it several times since. I had urged that coaches and support staff for national teams be paid an enhanced compensation, but that this conflict of interest be stopped. When, on the 11th of March, I was told that that there was a camp scheduled for young players at the National Cricket Academy but at least one national coach was likely to be away on IPL work and might not attend the camp, I wrote to you:

No person under contract with an India team, or with the NCA, should be allowed to moonlight for an IPL team too.

BCCI in its carelessness (or otherwise) might have drafted coaching/support staff contracts to allow this dual loyalty business, but while it might be narrowly legal as per existing contracts, it is unethical, and antithetical to team spirit, leading to much jealousy and heart-burn among the coaching staff as a whole. This practice is plainly wrong, as well as antithetical to the interests of Indian cricket.

I would like an explicit and early assurance from the BCCI management that such manifestly inequitous loopholes in coaching/support staff contracts will be plugged.

Yet no assurance was given, and no action was taken. The BCCI management and office-bearers have, in the absence of explicit directions from the COA, allowed the status quo to continue.

2. I have also repeatedly pointed to the anomaly whereby BCCI-contracted commentators simultaneously act as player agents. In a mail of 19th March to the COA I wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

Please have a look at this news report:

http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/pmg-signs-up-shikhar-dhawan-for-3-years-2776329/

Sunil Gavaskar is head of a company which represents Indian cricketers while commenting on those crickters as part of the BCCI TV commentary panel. This is a clear conflict of interest. Either he must step down/withdraw himself from PMG completely or stop being a commentator for BCCI.

I think prompt and swift action on this matter is both just and necessary. COA’s credibility and effectiveness hinges on our being able to take bold and correct decisions on such matters. The ‘superstar’ culture that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures. (Dhoni was captain of the Indian team while holding a stake in a firm that represented some current India players.) This must stop – and only we can stop it.

Yet, despite my warnings, no action has been initiated in the several months that the Committee has been in operation.

As the mail quoted above noted, one reasons the conflict of interest issue has lingered unaddressed is that several of the game’s superstars, past and present, have been guilty of it. The BCCI management is too much in awe of these superstars to question their violation of norms and procedures. For their part, BCCI office-bearers like to enjoy discretionary powers, so that the coaches or commentrators they favour are indebted to them and do not ever question their own mistakes or malpractices. But surely a Supreme Court appointed body should not be intimidated by the past or present achievements of a cricketer, and instead seek to strive to be fair and just.

Conflict of interest is rampant in the State Associations as well. One famous former cricketer is contracted by media houses to comment on active players while serving as President of his State Association (read Ganguly). Others have served as office-bearers in one Association and simultaneously as coaches or managers in another. The awarding of business contracts to friends and relatives by office-bearers is reported to be fairly widespread.

Had we been more proactive in stopping conflict of interest within the BCCI (as per Lodha Committee recommendations, endorsed by the Court), this would surely have had a ripple effect downwards, putting pressure on State Assocations to clean up their act as well.

3. Unfortunately, this superstar syndrome has also distorted the system of Indian team contracts. As you will recall, I had pointed out that awarding MS Dhoni an ‘A’ contract when he had explicitly ruled himself out from all Test matches was indefensible on cricketing grounds, and sends absolutely the wrong message.

4. The way in which the contract of Anil Kumble, the current Head Coach of the senior team, has been handled. The Indian team’s record this past season has been excellent; and even if the players garner the bulk of the credit, surely the Head Coach and his support staff also get some. In a system based on justice and merit, the Head Coach’s term would have been extended. Instead, Kumble was left hanging, and then told the post would be re-advertised afresh.

Clearly, the issue has been handled in an extremely insensitive and unprofessional manner by the BCCI CEO and the BCCI office-bearers, with the COA, by its silence and inaction, unfortunately being complicit in this regard. (Recall that the Court Order of 30 January had expressly mandated us to supervise the management of BCCI.) In case due process had to be followed since Kumble’s original appointment was only for one year, why was this not done during April and May, when the IPL was on? If indeed the captain and the Head Coach were not getting along, why was this not attended to as soon as the Australia series was over in late March? Why was it left until the last minute, when a major international tournament was imminent, and when the uncertainty would undermine the morale and ability to focus of the coach, the captain and the team? And surely giving senior players the impression that they may have a veto power over the coach is another example of superstar culture gone berserk? Such a veto power is not permitted to any other top level professional team in any other sport in any other country. Already, in a dismaying departure from international norms, current Indian players enjoy a veto power on who can be the members of the commentary team (read departure of Harsha Bhogle). If it is to be coaches next, then perhaps the selectors and even office-bearers will follow?

5. Ever since the Supreme Court announced the formation of the COA, we have been inundated, individually and collectively, by hundreds of mails asking us to address various ills that afflict Indian cricket and its administration. While many of these issues were trivial or clearly beyond our purview, there was one concern that we should have done far more to address. This concerns the callous treatment to domestic cricket and cricketers, namely, those who represent their state in the Ranji Trophy, the Mushtaq Ali Trophy, and other inter-state tournaments. The IPL may be Indian cricket’s showpiece; but surely the enormous revenues it generates should be used to make our domestic players more financially secure? There are many more Indian cricketers who make their living via the Ranji Trophy than via IPL; besides, for us to have a consistently strong Test team (especially overseas) we need a robust inter-state competition and therefore must seek to compensate domestic players better.

And yet, shockingly, Ranji match fees have remained at a very low level (a mere Rs 30,000 odd for each day of play); moreover, cheques for match fees sent by the BCCI are sometimes not passed on by the state associations to the players. We need to learn from best practices in other countries, where domestic players are awarded annual contracts like those in the national team, while their match fees are reasonably competitive too.

Several months ago, the experienced cricket administrator Amrit Mathur prepared an excellent note on the need for better and fairer treatment of domestic players. Both Diana and I have repeatedly urged action, but this has not happened.

6. I believe it was a mistake for the COA to have stayed silent and inactive when the Supreme Court judgment was being so flagrantly violated by people clearly disqualified to serve as office bearers of state and even BCCI run cricket bodies. The disqualified men were openly attending BCCI meetings, claiming to represent their state association, and indeed played a leading role in the concerted (if fortunately in the end aborted) attempt to get the Indian team to boycott the Champions Trophy. All these illegalities were widely reported in the press; yet the COA did not bring them to the notice of the Court, and did not issue clear directions asking the offenders to desist either.

7. I believe that the lack of attention to these (and other such issues) is in part due to the absence of a senior and respected male cricketer on our Committee. Allow me to quote from a mail I wrote on 1 February 2017, before our first full meeting:


Dear fellow members,

I much look forward to meeting you all later today. I know Vikram already and greatly admire both Vinod and Diana for their remarkable work in their chosen fields, and am truly honoured to be working with them as well.

I presume apart from discussing IPL, etc, with the BCCI representative we will get some time to discuss the way forward separately. I have several ideas which I wish to share with you about our collective responsibility, and wanted in this mail to flag what is most important of these. This is that we must incorporate into our committee of administrators, either as a full member or as a special invitee, a senior male cricketer with the distinction and integrity that Diana has. That will greatly enhance both our credibility and our ability to make informed decisions.

The absence of a respected male cricketer in the COA has attracted a great deal of criticism already, much of it from important stakeholders in Indian cricket. It must be addressed and remedied. The amicus curae had suggested two outstanding names, Venkat and Bedi, both of whom were rejected because they were over seventy. However, there are some cricketers of the right age and experience who fit the bill. Based on my knowledge of the subject, I would say Javagal Srinath would be an excellent choice. He is a world-class cricketer, was a successful and scandal-free Secretary of the Karnataka State Cricket Association and is an ICC match referee, and comes from an educated technical background to boot. I strongly urge the Chairman and the other members to consider approaching him in this regard. He would complement Diana perfectly, and the combination of these two respected and top class former cricketers would enhance our credibility and effectiveness enormously.

While Srinath is in my view the best choice, there are other alternative names too. I hope we can set aside some time at our meeting to discuss and resolve the issue.

With regards
Ram

p.s. Needless to say, I have not discussed this with Srinath or with anyone else.

I raised this issue in a formal meeting of the COA as well, but unfortunately my proposal to invite a senior male cricketer to join the committee was not acted upon. We should have approached the Court to take necessary action, or else incorporated a senior, respected, male cricketer as a special invitee. With such a person on board the COA would have gained in experience, knowledge, understanding, and, not least, credibility. Indeed, had we such a person on board, the BCCI management and the office-bearers would have been compelled to be far more proactive in implementing the Lodha Committee recommendations than they have been thus far. As the only cricketer on the COA, Diana’s contributions have been invaluable; on many issues of administration and the rights of players she has brought a perspective based on a first-hand experience that the rest of us lacked. A male counterpart would have complemented and further enriched her contributions; but perhaps it is not too late to make amends.

8. While all our meetings were held in a cordial atmosphere, between meetings perhaps there was not adequate consultation, and there were several crucial decisions made where all the COA members were not brought into the loop. For instance, a capable, non-political Senior Counsel representing the COA and the BCCI in the Supreme Court was abruptly replaced by another Senior Counsel who is a party politician. Surely other COA members should have been consulted by email or by phone before this important change was made.
I have taken too much of your time already, but permit me to make one last suggestion. This is that the place vacated by me on the Committee of Administrators be filled by a senior, respected, male cricketer with administrative experience.

Let me in conclusion thank you for your courtesy and civility these past few months, and wish you and the Committee all the best in your future endevours.

With best wishes

Ramachandra Guha

'A bad captain can make a great team look ordinary'

Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

India's youngest and most distinguished captain on the importance of honesty, transparency and inspiration when leading a side

To measure Tiger Pataudi by his captaincy record is to do him no justice. His true contribution lies in his seminal influence on Indian cricket: the manner in which he lifted it from its abyss of diffidence and negativity and instilled a belief to contemplate victory. He took over the reins as a 21-year-old in the fourth Test against West Indies in 1961-62, and went on to lead in all but six of his 46 Tests. He brought to the captaincy a tactical boldness and an originality of thinking rarely seen in India. Long before Clive Lloyd unleashed four fast bowlers on the world, Pataudi employed four spinners, doing away with the tokenism that characterised Indian new-ball bowling back then.

"A captain has to be honest, to the team and to himself. It should be obvious that the best interests of the team should be top of his agenda"© PA Photos

You once famously said that captaincy is all about either pulling from the front or pushing from behind. We could begin with an elaboration.

What I meant was that you had some captains who were great players themselves - [Don] Bradman, [Garry] Sobers, [Richie] Benaud. They led by the sheer force of their performance. Then there were captains like [Mike] Brearley, [Ray] Illingworth, myself to an extent, who were not the best players in their sides. We had to push the team from behind, get the best players to perform to the best of their ability. Bradman and Sobers walked ahead and others followed. Inspiration flowed from their performances. Whereas a captain who is not a terribly inspiring performer himself has to rely on extracting the maximum from his best players.

Would you say a non-performing captain has a much tougher task because of his over-reliance on others?

Brearley may have averaged less than 25 with the bat, but his great success lay in the way he brought out the best in Ian Botham. Brearley didn't lead in the field, he didn't go out and score 190 and say, "Now you follow my example." He coaxed and cajoled the others to perform. Bradman didn't need to do that. He went out and won matches with his own bat. Sobers wasn't the greatest of captains, but he just did everything himself. In my case, I had to get the best out of [Gundappa] Viswanath. He was our best batsman for a long time. I had to push him to give his best.

And how did you do that?

The first and most critical thing is to make a player realise his true worth - sometimes players themselves don't know how good they can be. Then you make him realise his importance to the team, how the team depends on him, and how he will let his side down if he doesn't perform at his very best. It's not very complicated really, but small things do make a big difference. As I said, you either get the team behind you or in front of you.

There is a management principle that a leader needs to be different things to different people. Doesn't captaincy require similar role-playing? Friend to some, guide to some, father figure to some and taskmaster to some? 

First and foremost, a captain has to be honest, to the team and to himself. It should be obvious that the best interests of the team should be top of his agenda. His team-mates must feel in their hearts that the captain's personal interests come below that of the team. We have had one or two captains who were always more concerned with their own performance.

Would you care to name them?

No, I wouldn't want to go into that, but people will know who I am talking about. When you have a captain who is more bothered about his own performance, it's difficult for him to get the loyalty and respect of his team-mates. Particularly in the Indian context, where there are so many internal dynamics operating, the captain has to be absolutely transparent. At no stage should any player feel discriminated against or feel that there is a bias against him. If a captain is honest and transparent, he can take harsh decisions without creating any ill will. The other thing is to always pick your best team. Pick the best batsmen, pick the best bowlers. It doesn't matter who you are playing or where.

So you are saying team selection should not be based on conditions or opposition?

Absolutely. I have never believed in the horses-for-courses theory. Harbhajan [Singh] will get you wickets on a green top and Kapil Dev will get you wickets on a turner, because they are both good bowlers. A bad seamer will not get you wickets on a green top and a bad spinner will not get you wickets on a turner. I played four spinners because they happened to be the best bowlers around. I had no Kapil Dev, so playing a seamer just for the sake of balance was useless.

And you wouldn't be concerned if a couple of them were difficult characters?

That's what a good captain is all about. If he thinks that the player has ability, it's his job to manage his personality. Every team has a couple of difficult characters - in my time there were a few. Salim Durani was one. I felt I couldn't handle him very well.

Why would you say that?

Because I felt I couldn't get the best out of him. He was an extremely talented cricketer who lacked a certain amount of cricketing discipline. We tried to organise it - me and a few other senior players. But we didn't succeed. He did well, but a man of his talent could have been made to perform much better.

Do intuition and instinct play a role in captaincy? Or is it mostly about method and strategy?

To start with, the fundamentals have to be solid. Intuition comes with experience. Over the years you acquire a certain knowledge and hindsight which help you to play to a particular percentage. You instinctively know that certain things will happen in certain situations and you make your moves. But your basic analysis and basic strategy have to be correct. Most of all, you need to be a good student of the game. Many things could go wrong even if you do the right things because a lot depends on how others perform. But if your basics are wrong, you've got no chance.

"A captain can't make a player perform beyond his ability. That's impossible. But very often, players are performing at only 50% of their ability. A good captain lifts that up to 80% and 90%. And I think Brearley got Botham to perform at 100%"

And the captain must seize the moment…

Yes, the sooner you are able to see the moment, the sooner you act. Sometimes moments come and go. Good captains, experienced captains, know to utilise the smallest openings. Sometimes two overs can change a game.

Is this ability to recognise a moment, see an opening, a gift of nature or can it be developed?

You have to be alert and you have to be thinking all the time. And to be a thinker, you must be familiar with cricket history. Reading a bit of cricket literature, knowing about great players of the past helps. Unfortunately, not many modern players read anything.

Do you think that stunts their growth?

I will say reading helps. It broadens your vision. It gives you perspective. Perspective does not come from watching television.

To be fair to them, modern players have very little time.

Oh, they have plenty of time to do ads. If you want to, you can find the time.

Would you say education plays a critical role in making a successful captain? Is it a coincidence that some of the great captains have been well educated? Imran Khan, Richie Benaud, Brearley, yourself...

Education is important, I wouldn't say it is mandatory. Education gives you some kind of depth, an outlook on your own life and life outside. It makes you less parochial. But there have been exceptions. Lala Amarnath was a good captain and he wasn't highly educated.

But isn't there something called a natural cricket sense, an inborn feel for the game? Most of us thought Tendulkar would be a natural captain.

Great players don't necessarily make great captains. The trouble with natural cricketers is that they never have to think about the game. Everything comes so easily to them. You ask them to coach somebody and they wouldn't know what to do. They have never had to learn, never had to study. Everything is so instinctive for them.

You became captain at 21. How well acquainted were you with the history and traditions of the game?

I had very little idea. I was lucky that the senior players were very supportive. Polly [Umrigar], Jai [ML Jaisimha], they were all very experienced. I borrowed a lot from them. And then I learned. I had captained Sussex previously, but that was a different ball game. Then I captained Delhi. But captaining an Anglo-Saxon side is different from captaining India. The politics here are so convoluted. It takes a little while to get used to.

Captaining India is surely not one of easiest jobs in cricket...

Oh, it's a unique problem in itself. But I was lucky that one or two senior players were retiring at the end of the West Indies tour [1961-62]. And a lot of us were youngsters at the time, going abroad for the first time. Those players stuck with me. Besides, seniors like Vijay Manjrekar, Bapu Nadkarni and others also supported me. There were one or two voices that were sort of unhelpful.

Isn't there a serious case for giving captains and coaches more powers?

Yes, certainly. The captain needs the backing of the board. They should take him into confidence and tell him that we are giving you full charge, get these guys to perform or they are out. I was lucky I got the full backing of the board. But very often captains don't get that kind of backing, and they are hesitant to take strong steps and that hesitancy can be seen very easily in the dressing room. There has to be coordination and cooperation among the captain, board members and selectors.

Did you always get the team you wanted?

Oh, almost always. I got the XI I wanted. You have to make some compromises on the 14 to keep a few people happy. But that was okay. Except when Vijay Merchant was the chairman of selectors. He couldn't even explain why he wanted to change the team. If he had given proper reasons, people would have understood, but he had no reasons.

It was suggested that Merchant's animosity towards you was rooted in his differences with your father, and that he got even by using his casting vote to keep you out of the side in 1971.

I think he found fault with me from the beginning. And a lot of his decisions made no logical sense. I never got the impression it was because of my father; I think it was more personal. The moment I was gone, all the people I wanted in the side were back in the team. All the young fellows he had got when I was captain were gone and the senior players were brought back.

That leads to the question whether the captain should have a greater say in the team selection. Should he have a vote?

The captain's inputs must be seriously considered. And if a captain can have a good understanding with the selectors and reason things out with them, he can have the team he wants. That was true, by and large, in my experience. But no, the captain shouldn't have a vote. It could lead to serious acrimony.

Does a non-performing captain have a place in modern cricket? 

I doubt it very much. Cricket has changed a lot in [recent times]. Not that the quality of cricketers is any better. You would not find an allrounder like Botham today or a fast bowler like [Fred] Trueman. But yes, it has become much more competitive and physically challenging. Not that you could carry a passenger even in those days. You had to contribute something and Brearley did contribute. A lot, in fact. He got Botham's act together. And Botham did play like six players put together in that series [1981 Ashes]. If a captain can do that he certainly deserves a place. So for Brearley to find a place in the side today, you first have to find a Botham.

What do you think Brearley did with Botham?

He talked to him, and he must have talked to him in a way Botham understood. A captain can't make a player perform beyond his ability. That's impossible. But very often, players are performing at only 50% of their ability. A good captain lifts that up to 80% and 90%. And I think Brearley got Botham to perform at 100%. That's phenomenal. I saw those matches. Botham was an inspired cricketer.

"Gavaskar brought pace bowling back into Indian cricket. Kapil's performance in his first few matches was terrible. But Gavaskar showed faith in him" © PA Photos


Going back to an earlier question: different players need to be handled differently. So obviously a captain has to be different things to different people.

Of course. If a player had the kind of ability Botham had, you had to treat him specially. If you treated him like a mediocre cricketer, his performance would be mediocre. You had to give him a little more freedom.

If you were his captain, would you mind if he went to a nightclub the day before the match and came back at 12?

If he came back at 12, I would be very happy [laughs].

A captain can't create talent. But he can lift the spirit of an ordinary team. Motivation is very important. Without it, a good team can become very ordinary. Richie Benaud was a great motivator. He was a great performer himself, great bowler, brilliant fielder, and he had the team behind him. I got to know him very well because we sometimes shared a flat in London. He was the sort of captain whose very presence lifted the spirit of the team. Even when he was injured and not playing, his presence in the dressing room motivated his players.

What about Clive Lloyd? Some say he wasn't so good tactically.

That's because he didn't have to do any captaincy. But Lloyd's greatest contribution was his vision. He brought about the most radical tactical innovation when he decided to use four fast bowlers. It wasn't conventional thinking in those days. And he was hugely respected by his players.

Who would you rate as the best Indian captain after your era?

[Ajit] Wadekar had the results. But it has to be [Sunil) Gavaskar. He was as talented a player as Tendulkar and he had a very good cricket brain. He brought pace bowling back into Indian cricket.

In a sense, he was lucky to have Kapil Dev around.

He had to encourage Kapil Dev. Kapil's performance in his first few matches was terrible. But Gavaskar showed faith in him. He wanted a good new-ball attack, perhaps because he was an opening batsman. He saw the talent and he nurtured it. Some people call him a defensive captain, but you have to analyse the circumstances in which he led.

A good captain must have a fair idea about the limitations of his side. I know a lot of Tests are ending in results nowadays and plenty of risks are being taken. I have always believed that you should play to win, but the approach varies from individual to individual. In Test cricket, it sometimes makes sense to ensure that you don't lose the match. To me, one of Sunil's greatest contributions was that he brought professionalism to Indian cricket.

On Cricket Commentary - WHY CONTEXT MATTERS

Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph

The idea that we should respond to cricketers in purely cricketing terms is a piety that cripples commentary on the game. Cricket commentary’s organizing conceit — that at every turn in a Test there is a technically optimal choice to be made — produces formalist bromides that explain neither the course of the match nor the performances of its main characters. A good example of the technicist fallacy was Michael Holding’s criticism of Sri Lankan bowling tactics during the second innings of the second Test at Headingley. The Sri Lankan pacemen were bowling short at Joe Root (picture) who wasn’t comfortable. He was hit on the splice, on his gloves, on the body which encouraged the Sri Lankans to work him over for about half an hour. This provoked Holding into Fast Bowling Piety One: bowling short is all very well but you have to pitch it up to take wickets. Coming from Holding, one of the great West Indian quartet that unnerved a generation of batsmen with scarily fast and lethally short bowling, this was greeted in the Sky commentary box with general hilarity. Holding insisted that the tales of West Indian bouncer barrages were overstated and offered as proof the number of batsmen who were out lbw or bowled. Botham, from the back of the box offered an explanation: the balls must have ricocheted off their faces on to the stumps. Nasser Hussain spoke up to make the point that Joe Root seemed to have provoked the Sri Lankans while they were batting, and they, in turn had decided to see if they could sledge and bounce him into submission. Given Root’s visible discomfort, Hussain argued that a short burst of intimidatory bowling was a reasonable tactic. In response Holding produced his clinching cautionary tale: opposing fast bowlers once peppered Michael Clarke with short balls and he ducked and weaved and got hit but he had the last laugh by scoring more than 150 runs in that innings. Middle-aged desis recalled a very different precedent: the 1976 Test in Sabina Park where the West Indian pace attack led by Holding hospitalized three top order Indian batsmen with a round-the-wicket bouncer barrage and battered Bedi’s hapless team into surrendering a match with five wickets standing because the batsmen who weren’t injured were terrified. Holding was a member of the West Indian team that ruthlessly ‘blackwashed’ England after Tony Greig stupidly provoked the West Indians by promising to make them grovel. His inability to see that Mathews’s targeting of Root was a symptom of an angry team’s determination not to take a step back was a sign of how completely the conventions of cricket commentary can distract intelligent commentators from the real contest unfolding in front of them. Sri Lankan teams have long felt slighted by the ECB’s habit of offering them stub series or one-off Tests early in the English season. They have been treated like poor relations and this time round they felt not just patronized but persecuted by the reporting of Sachithra Senanayake’s bowling action during the ODI contests that preceded the two-Test ‘series’. It was this sense of being hard done by, this collective determination to be hard men, not game losers that played a part in Senanayake’s Mankading of Jos Buttler, in Angelo Mathews’s refusal to withdraw Senanayake’s appeal and in the public support that Sangakkara and Jayawardene gave Senanayake when Cook and Co. threw a hissy fit afterwards. And it was this keenness to give as good as they got that spurred the Sri Lankan captain to go after Joe Root who had been noticeably chirpy in the field. That passage of play, with the Sri Lankans bouncing and sledging Root and Root battling it out, was the series summed up in half a dozen riveting overs. This is not to argue that short pitched bowling is more effective than pitched up bowling when it comes to taking wickets: merely to suggest that producing axiomatic pieties as a commentator without accounting for context is pointless. If Mathews had persisted with a failed tactic over the best part of the day as Cook did when Mathews and Herath were building their rearguard action, Holding might have had a case. But he didn’t, so Holding’s inability to recognize that this spell of short pitched hostility was a flashpoint in this two Test struggle for superiority is a good example of the way in which orthodox nostrums glide over the action they are meant to illuminate. It wasn’t just Holding who lost the plot in the Sky commentary box, so did David Lloyd. When Mathews began sledging Root and, in spite of remonstrating umpires, calmly carried on sledging Root, a historically minded commentator might have seen him as a worthy heir to Arjuna Ranatunga, that smiling, pudgy, implacable eyeballer of umpires, winder-upper of oppositions and, by some distance, Sri Lanka’s greatest captain. But all Bumble saw was a captain who, because he was sledging Root, had lost focus and lost control of the match. So what for the rest of the world was a spell of purposeful hostility with Mathews testing Root’s will to survive, was for Lloyd, a failure by the Sri Lankan captain to focus on his main job, thinking Root out. Just as Mathews’s sledging was read without context, the larger contest between England and Sri Lanka went unframed. On the one hand there was the English team backed up by a prosperous, hyper-organized cricket board which surrounded its Test team with a support staff so large that journalists joked about it, and on the other there was a Sri Lankan team at war with its board, whose players frequently went unpaid and whose principal spinner, Rangana Herath, had to apply for leave from his day job before going on tour. I learnt more about the Sri Lankan team from one brilliant set of vignettes on Cricinfo (“The Pearl and the Bank Clerk” by Jarrod Kimber) than I did through 10 days of Test match commentary. Do television commentators do any homework? Are they interested in the individuals in the middle or are the players they describe just interchangeable names on some Platonic team sheet? Virtually every commentator in the world is now a distinguished ex-cricketer; are these retired champions meant to embody totemic authority, to exude experience into a microphone, or should they pull information and insight together to tell us something that we can’t see or don’t know already? One answer to that leading question might be that ball-by-ball commentary has, by definition, a narrow remit. The answer to that, of course, is that you can’t take a form that originated with radio where the commentator had to literally describe the action in the middle and transfer it to a different medium without redefining it. Sky Sports’s stab at redefinition consists of more graphical information. We have pitch maps and batting wagon wheels which are useful, but surely the rev counter on the top right hand corner of the screen is an answer looking for a question. Does the fact that Moeen Ali gets more revs on the ball than Rangana Herath does make him the better spinner? Sky’s little dial seems to think so. The best human insights on the Sri Lankan-England series came from Shane Warne and he wasn’t even in the commentary box. The series cruelly confirmed his criticisms of Alastair Cook’s captaincy: having moaned about Warne’s unfairness and huffed about Buttler’s Mankading, Cook led his team to defeat with all the grit of a passive-aggressive Boy Scout. In the Sky box, we had Mike Atherton who earned a 2.1 in history at Cambridge but you wouldn’t known it from his commentary: he was as indifferent to time and context as his fellow commentators. Ian Botham was, as always, the Sunil Gavaskar of English commentary while the point of Andrew Strauss’s strangled maunderings escaped foreigners in the absence of subtitles. The one exception to the tedium of Sky commentary was Nasser Hussain simply because he was alert to the politics of a cricket match, to the personal and collective frictions that makes Test cricket the larger-than-life contest that, at its best, it sometimes is. I like to think that the reason for this is that he’s called Nasser Hussain and has an Indian father and an English mother so he can’t pretend that cricket is a self-contained country. Pace Holding, the rehearsal of textbook orthodoxy might be a necessary part of cricket commentary, but it ought to be a baseline on which good commentators improvise, rather like the tanpura drone that provides soloists with an anchoring pitch. Too often, though, cricket commentary amounts to just the drone without context, insight or information. If English commentators are frustratingly literal and narrow, their Indian counterparts make Holding and Co. sound like John Arlott channelling C.L.R. James. Policed by the BCCI, desi commentators are so mindful of their contractual obligations and so formulaic in their utterances that they could be replaced by bots without anyone noticing. Watching a cricket match glossed by the BCCI’s Own, is unnervingly like playing the FIFA video game with automated commentary, where software produces the appropriate cliché whenever the onscreen action supplies the necessary visual cues. Readymade words for virtual football are bad enough but canned commentary on real cricket needs a special place in hell. Tracer bullets, kitchen sinks, cliff hangers, pressure cookers, sensible cricket, best played from the non-striker’s end, give the bowler the first half hour, leg-and-leg… it never stops, and its petrifying banality turns live cricket into lead. With five Tests to play, this is going to be a long, hot summer. Welcome to purgatory.

On Batting: Go forward, not back

Why an initial back-foot trigger movement may not be a great idea

Sanjay Manjrekar

December 18, 2013

 

Alastair Cook: too late into position in Perth © Getty Images

A fireman once said, "We are crazy guys, you know. When a house is on fire, people are running out and we are running in." A batsman has to do something similar when a bowler like Mitchell Johnson is steaming in, hurling thunderbolts at 150kph.

Like for the firemen, it is like an inferno approaching a batsman from 22 yards away, and like the fireman, the batsman has a job to do, and it does not include running away. Watching some of the England batsmen in this Ashes series, I have been reminded of this analogy.

When Johnson runs in to bowl, they take a significant step backwards in the crease before the ball is delivered. That is fine when the ball is short, but when it is full - and Johnson bowls a lot of those along with bouncers - they become extremely vulnerable, as we have seen.

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Also Read - Martin Crowe on Gavaskar's technique

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Look at Alastair Cook's dismissal in the first innings in Adelaide and in the second in Perth. Both times, the ball was pitched up, but he was just too late to get into position to defend it solidly, which would not have been the case if they were short deliveries. We talk about how great those deliveries from Johnson and Ryan Harris were, and they were good, especially the Harris one in the second innings in Perth, but if Cook had got forward to them quicker, they would have been just two other pitched-up balls that a batsman defended safely.

I am not a big fan of the big back-foot movement - the one batsmen make with their feet before the ball is delivered - unless it's made in order to propel another movement forward. Both the England openers have that initial back-foot movement and only when are set do they use it to spring forward - until then, they seem to hang back a bit and so become vulnerable to balls pitched up, and miss a few scoring opportunities to balls pitched up.

	A short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending

With a big initial back-foot movement, you are committing yourself completely to a delivery of a particular length, short. So when the ball is short you seem to have plenty of time to play it, but when it is full you are invariably late on it, and if your luck as a batsman has run out, as Cook found out, that full, seaming ball will come early in the innings, hit the right spot and get through your defence.

As a batsman you ideally want the smallest trigger movement, so that you are prepared for all kinds of lengths and lines. In this Ashes, Michael Clarke, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and also Ben Stokes, have shown that kind of technique, with no pronounced prior commitment to any length. Because of that they have looked much better positioned to balls that are pitched up. Batsmen make the initial move in the crease because that way they feel they are setting themselves up for the challenge. Very often it's just a matter of "mental preparedness". Some do it to be in a good position to face a particular kind of delivery that they feel they are susceptible to.

My view is that if you have to move your feet before the ball is released, it's better to have a front-foot movement instead of a back-foot one: looking to move forward before the ball is bowled rather than back. That way, you are better prepared to handle the ball that gets most batsmen out in this game - the one that is full in length.

What about the short ball then, you ask? Doesn't the front-foot movement make you a sitting duck against it? Well, there you need to trust the instincts that we have all been gifted with as human beings, born of our evolution over millions of years and our survival instincts against physical threats. That short ball from a fast bowler is a physical threat to a batsman. Look at how batsmen react to a short ball from a spinner as opposed to one from a fast bowler.

	Batsmen like Hashim Amla have shown you can be extremely successful with big initial back-foot movements © AFP  Enlarge

As a batsman you will be amazed at how quickly you get on the back foot - though you are telling yourself to go forward - when the ball is short and quick. This back-foot movement happens automatically; it is a case of natural instinct taking over. My argument is, why deliberately try to do something that is going to happen automatically; instead, why not train yourself to do something that is against your instinct? Like getting forward to a fast bowler, because the ball that is pitched up is the one that's most likely to get you out.

The other great benefit in trying to get forward is, that way you also handle the short ball better. I believe that a short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending.

During the course of my batting career I had two distinct phases, one when I handled the short ball well and the other when I didn't. It was quite obvious to me that when I was in good form and in a good frame of mind I would look to go towards the fast bowler, try to get on the front foot, and that was when I handled the short ball comfortably. When you are looking to get forward, the head tends to stay forward, and with it the body weight. That is the perfect kind of balance you want to have as a batsman, whether you are playing off front foot or back.

When you are out of form, with a big back-foot movement, the head tends to stay back that fraction of a second longer, and because you are expecting a short ball, the head also stays quite high, which means you are poorly prepared for the full delivery.

Having said all this, there are still many extremely successful contemporary batsmen, like Hashim Amla, Graeme Smith, and Cook himself, who have big back-foot movements. Their success can be attributed to all the other strengths they have brought into play to succeed, but you will see even they look vulnerable early in the innings to balls that are pitched up and seaming.

As a batsman you should have a technique you can fall back on when you are out of form and low on confidence. Your other strengths will have deserted you by then, and your technique will be the only thing you can count on. You need a technique that can get you back into form from a bad patch, and that's where I have a problem with the big back-foot trigger movement.

Big Brother BCCI's Watching!

Sharda Ugra in Economics and Political Weekly

In May and June this year, when the Indian Premier League (IPL) was, much to its self-regarding outrage, being hauled away for questioning, N Srinivasan, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), found himself trailed by reporters, cameras and mikes. Distinctly displeased, as he headed for his car on one occasion, Srinivasan (Srini, to friends) barked out: “Why are you hounding me?” The simple answer? His son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, “high official/team principal” of the Chennai Super Kings, Srinivasan’s beloved IPL team, had been arrested by the Mumbai police for placing bets during the IPL. On the day in question, Srinivasan was three stories on two legs – BCCI chief, IPL team owner, father-in-law. The most powerful man in cricket tripped up by a black sheep in the family who had toppled his business. What’s not to hound? A simple answer to that question: because Srini was in the dock, because the media are hounds, because they – we – can.

It was a twisted, ironic turning of the tables on the man under whose regime BCCI has become not only enormously richer but also enormously in control of the messages around Indian cricket. During the IPL corruption scandal, those messages, for perhaps the first time in his reign, had gone out of Srinivasan’s control. His otherwise glacial disdain for a notoriously fickle 24×7 media was suddenly put under unrelenting headlights and left unprotected by either his position or influence.

BCCI’s relationship with the independent, mainstream media has gone from general chumminess to a teeth-gritting tolerance on either side. During the last five years, the time when Srinivasan rose from BCCI treasurer to secretary to president, the Board has become more determined to tighten an iron-fisted grip over the media, starting with the medium that generates the bulk of its revenues and reaches an audience of millions – television.

In 2008, BCCI put Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri on its payroll with gargantuan price tags. “Sunny & Ravi” Inc became mandatory mascots, required to be on commentary duty wherever India played, regardless of who owned the TV rights. The two most influential Indian voices on cricket television were safely co-opted. Their signing coincided with the advent of the IPL and the rise of BCCI’s Midas-like monetiser, Lalit Modi. The Gavaskar-Shastri duopoly was a beginning. As revenues skyrocketed through the IPL, BCCI set up its own independent TV production unit. This new team (partly cannibalised from Neo Sports/Nimbus who owned the TV rights to cricket in India until 2012) even purchased its own outside broadcast vans. Ownership over Indian cricket was to be established at every level.

Much of this could be put down to Lalit Modi’s desire to commercialise every inch of the Indian cricket “property”. But when the first round of IPL sleaze excised Modi from the system in 2010, his philosophy was kept alive. India’s wealth had earned it the right to become cricket’s Big Brother. When, during the 2011 tour of England, former England captain Nasser Hussain criticised BCCI’s obduracy over the Decision Review System (DRS), Shastri’s rebuttal was slightly petulant:

England are jealous about the way IPL is going, jealous that India is No.1 in world cricket, jealous that India are world champions. They are jealous because of too much money being made by BCCI.

The repercussions of that skirmish went deep when England toured India a year later. Star Sports won “media rights” for all cricket played in India but BCCI retained its hold over production rights. Through production came the full force of Big Brother’s thought police. Commentators on the home networks were told that three topics were taboo, never to be brought up on air: selection, administration and DRS.

Then followed a bitter battle over the cost of providing space and access to Sky TV and BBC radio in the broadcast areas at grounds. Sky had paid Star for the world feed, but a BCCI official huffily asked why the Sky commentary team should be given access in Indian grounds without a cost: “So that Hussain and others can come here and criticise India?” The inability to accept criticism was turned into a national project. Sky’s expert team worked out of studios in west London.

BCCI then refused accreditation to photo agency Getty Images for its use of Indian cricket pictures for commercial gain rather than editorial purposes. A media coalition made of wire services like Reuters, Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) boycotted the matches in protest.

Most certainly, there are commercial constraints at work in each of these incidents. In the past, overseas broadcasters have talked through requirements and arrived at agreeable fees or quid pro quo arrangements. Even in the case of the England tour, solutions could have been worked out, but BCCI chose to bring in the heavies. Sanjay Manjrekar, who did studio work for the England series for Star had tweeted “Fans like Boycott. Only guy who is free from BCCI shackles on our show”, before pulling it off his Twitter account. The kerfuffle with Getty continues; when Australia toured India in early 2013, Ian Chappell refused to be a part of the commentary team because of BCCI’s unwritten three-point don’t-do list. Commentary during the series sounded programmed and tinny: catches that went down after hitting Virat Kohli on the chest and M S Dhoni on his wrist were called “half-chances”.

In the IPL that followed, commentators Danny Morrison and H D Ackerman, in their high-volume excitement, introduced Virat Kohli, talking of him as a possible “future captain of India”. That happened to be the last IPL game both worked on. Big Brother was watching and listening.

Since the IPL’s second round of sleaze hit the headlines (but not on IPLTV, where the game’s greats made no reference to it), there came one final squeeze – this time, on the players. “Quiet words” have been had with Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Rohit Sharma for giving interviews to newspapers. Sharma called up one reporter, requesting him to spike the interview. This, after the players had produced the best news around Indian cricket in months – by winning the Champions Trophy.

On 19 July, 35 contracted players were sent an email which read:

Dear All, Trust you are well. You are requested to refrain from giving interviews to the media, without the prior, written permission of the BCCI. Regards, Sanjay Patel, Hony. Secretary, BCCI.

Never let it be said the BCCI’s Ministry of Truth doesn’t fill in its paperwork.