'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
Watching Virat Kohli play two exquisite square drives against Australia in March 2016, I tweeted: "There goes my boyhood hero G. R. Viswanath from my all time India XI." Those boundaries formed part of a match-winning innings of 82 in a T20 World Cup quarter-final, and they confirmed for me Kohli's cricketing greatness.
I had first been struck by how good he was when watching, at the ground, a hundred he scored in a Test in Bangalore in 2012. Against a fine New Zealand attack, Sachin Tendulkar looked utterly ordinary, whereas the man who, the previous year, had carried Tendulkar on his shoulders in tribute was totally in command. Two years later, I saw on the telly every run of his dazzling 141 in Adelaide, when, in his first Test as captain, Kohli almost carried India to a remarkable win.
The admiration had steadily accumulated. So, as he struck the miserly James Faulkner and Nathan Coulter-Nile for those two defining boundaries in that T20 match in 2016, the sentimental attachments of childhood were decisively vanquished by sporting prowess. Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar would open the batting in my fantasy XI; Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar would come next; and Kohli alone could be No. 5.
That was two years ago. Now, after the staggering series of innings he has played since - not least that magnificent 153 in India's most recent Test - I would go even further. In all formats and in all situations, Kohli might already be India's greatest ever batsman.
Their orthodoxy and classicism, which served Dravid and Gavaskar so well in the Test arena, constrained them in limited-overs cricket. Sehwag had a spectacular Test record, but his one-day career was, by his own exalted standards, rather ordinary. Tendulkar was superb, often supreme, in the first innings of a Test, but he was not entirely to be relied upon in the fourth innings, or even when batting second in the 50-overs game. Besides, being captain made Tendulkar nervous and insecure in his strokeplay. On the other hand, captaincy only reinforces Kohli's innate confidence, and of course, he is absolutely brilliant while chasing.
"No one in the entire history of the game in India has quite had Kohli's combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team"
I have met Kohli only once, and am unlikely to ever meet him again. But from our single conversation, and from what I have seen of him otherwise, I would say that of all of India's great sportsmen past and present, he is the most charismatic. He is a man of a manifest intelligence (not merely cricketing) and of absolute self-assurance. Gavaskar and Dravid were as articulate as Kohli in speech, but without his charisma. Kapil and Dhoni had equally strong personalities but lacked Kohli's command of words.
I was witness to the reach and range of Kohli's dominating self in my four months in the BCCI's Committee of Administrators. The board's officials worshipped him even more than the Indian cabinet worships Narendra Modi. They deferred to him absolutely, even in matters like the Future Tours Programme or the management of the National Cricket Academy, which were not within the Indian captain's ken.
In any field in India - whether it be politics or business or academia or sport - when strength of character is combined with solidity of achievement, it leads to an individual's dominance over the institution. And the fact is that, on and off the field, Kohli is truly impressive. No one in the entire history of the game in our country has quite had his combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team. The only person who came close, even remotely close, is (or was) Anil Kumble.
Kumble was, by some distance, the greatest bowler produced by India. He was a superb thinker on the game. Moreover, he was well educated, well read, and had an interest in society and politics. And he was not lacking in an awareness of his own importance, although he carried his self-belief in a Kannadiga rather than Punjabi fashion.
It may be that Kumble alone is in the Kohli league as a cricketer and character. That perhaps is why they clashed and perhaps why Kumble had to go.
But why was he replaced by someone so strikingly inferior, in character and cricketing achievement, to the team's captain? A person with no coaching experience besides? Only because, like the BCCI, the chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators surrendered his liberties and his independence when confronted by the force of Kohli's personality. As did the so-called Cricket Selection Committee. Ravi Shastri was chosen over Tom Moody (and other contenders) because Vinod Rai, Tendulkar, Sourav Gangulyand VVS Laxman were intimidated by the Indian captain into subordinating the institution to the individual. The unwisdom of that decision was masked when India played at home, against weak opposition, but it can no longer be concealed.
Had the BCCI thought more about cricket than commerce, we would not have had to go into this series against South Africa without a single practice match. Had the selectors been wiser or braver, India might not have been 2-0 down now.
Some Kohli bhakts will complain at the timing of this article, written after the Indian captain played such a stupendous innings himself. But this precisely is the time to remind ourselves of how we must not allow individual greatness to shade into institutional hubris. Kohli did all he could to keep India in the game, but the power of an individual in a team game can go only so far. Had Ajinkya Rahane played both Tests, had Bhuvneshwar Kumar played this Test, had India gone two weeks earlier to South Africa instead of playing gully cricket at home with the Sri Lankans, the result might have been quite different.
The BCCI and their cheerleaders brag about India being the centre of world cricket. This may be true in monetary terms, but decidedly not in sporting terms. From my own stint in the BCCI, I reached this melancholy conclusion: that were the game better administered in India, the Indian team would never lose a series. There are ten times as many cricket-crazy Indians as there are football-mad Brazilians. The BCCI has huge cash reserves. With this demographic and financial base, India should always and perennially have been the top team in all formats of the game. If India still lost matches and series, if India still hadn't, in 70 years of trying, won a Test series in Australia (a country with about as many people as Greater Mumbai), then surely the fault lay with how the game was mismanaged in the country.
To the corruption and cronyism that has so long bedevilled Indian cricket has recently been added a third ailment: the superstar syndrome. Kohli is a great player, a great leader, but in the absence of institutional checks and balances, his team will never achieve the greatness he and his fans desire.
When, in the 1970s, India won their first Test series in the West Indies and in England, Vijay Merchant was chairman of selectors. When much later, India began winning series regularly at home, the likes of Gundappa Viswanath and Dilip Vengsarkar were chairmen of selectors. Their cricketing achievements were as substantial as that of the existing players. They had the sense to consult the captain on team selection, but also had the stature to assert their own preferences over his when required. On the other hand, the present set of selectors have all played a handful of Tests apiece. The coach, Shastri, played more, but he was never a true great, and his deference to the captain is in any case obvious.
In Indian cricket today, the selectors, coaching staff and administrators are all pygmies before Kohli. That must change. The selectors must be cricketers of real achievement (as they once were). If not great cricketers themselves, they must at least have the desire and authority to stand up to the captain. Likewise, the coach must have the wisdom and courage to, when necessary, assert his authority over Kohli's (as when Kumble picked Kuldeep Yadav, a move that decided a Test and series in India's favour). And the administrators must schedule the calendar to maximise India's chances of doing well overseas, rather than with an eye to their egos and purses. (The decision not to have an extended tour of South Africa was partly influenced by the BCCI's animosity towards Cricket South Africa.)
Only when India consistently win Tests and series in South Africa, and only when they do likewise in Australia, can they properly consider themselves world champions in cricket. They have the team, and the leader, to do it. However, the captain's authority and arrogance, so vital and important to his personal success, must be moderated and managed if it is to translate into institutional greatness.
Kohli is still only 29. He will surely lead India in South Africa again and he has more than one tour of Australia ahead of him. Two years ago he secured a firm place in my all-time India XI. My wish, hope and desire is for Kohli to end his career with him also being the captain of my XI.
Kumble's resignation was no great surprise, as he's a strong-minded individual and the deteriorating relationship between him and the captain, Virat Kohli, had reached the stage of being a distraction. Kumble's character is relevant to any discussion about India's future coaching appointments. The captain is the only person who can run an international cricket team properly, because so much of the job involves on-field decision making. Also, a good part of the leadership role - performed off the field - has to be handled by the captain, as it helps him earn the players' respect, which is crucial to his success.
Consequently a captain has to be a strong-minded individual and decisive in his thought process. To put someone of a similar mindset in a position where he's advising the captain is inviting confrontation.
The captain's best advisors are his vice-captain, a clear-thinking wicketkeeper, and one or two senior players. They are out on the field and can best judge the mood of the game and what advice should be offered to the captain and when.
The best off-field assistance for a captain will come from a good managerial type. Someone who can attend to duties that are not necessarily related to winning or losing cricket matches, but done efficiently, can contribute to the success of the team.
The last thing a captain needs is to come off the field and have someone second-guess his decisions. He also doesn't need a strong-minded individual (outside his advisory group) getting too involved in the pre-match tactical planning. Too often I see captaincy that appears to be the result of the previous evening's planning, and despite ample evidence that it's hindering the team's chances of victory, it remains the plan throughout the day.
This is generally a sure sign that the captain is following someone else's plan and that he, the captain, is the wrong man for the job.
India is fortunate to have two capable leaders in Kohli and the man who stood in for him during the Test series with Australia, Ajinkya Rahane.
It's Kohli's job as captain to concentrate on things that help win or lose cricket matches, and his off-field assistants' task is to ensure he is not distracted in trying to achieve victory.
India's opponents in the final, Pakistan, were unusually free of any controversies during the tournament. They were capably led by Sarfraz Ahmed, who appeared to become more and more his own man as the tournament progressed.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court told lawyers representing the Board of Control for Cricket in India that if the Board’s president, N. Srinivasan, didn’t step down from his post voluntarily, the court would pass orders compelling him to step down. The court went further; it declared that it was “nauseating” that Srinivasan was still in office. It didn’t stop there; referring to the earlier inquiry commissioned by the BCCI into the scandal (conducted by two retired judges of the Madras High Court), the court asked rhetorically, “Can we say that the probe report was managed and if we say so, then what will be the consequences?”
The uncompromising ‘go, or else’ tone, the unusually strong language and the startling suggestion of impropriety seemed to spring from the bench’s exasperation with Srinivasan’s refusal to step aside as president for the duration of the investigation. The judges believed that the investigation into the fixing and betting scandal involving Srinivasan’s IPL club franchise, the Chennai Super Kings and his son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, couldn’t be fairly conducted while he remained in office.
The story of the CSK scandal has been the chronicle of a fall foretold. If the Supreme Court had intervened decisively a few years ago, there mightn’t have been a scandal at all. The large reason why matters came to this pass is this: Indians have the greatest difficulty in agreeing upon what constitutes a conflict of interest.
The squalid sequence of events that culminated in the CSK scandal was set in motion, ironically, when the BCCI decided to amend an excellent provision in its constitution expressly intended to insulate Board officials from conflicts of interest. The clause laid down that “No administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in the matches and events conducted by the Board”. The amended version specifically excluded the IPL, the Champion’s League and Twenty20 cricket.
This amendment was passed retrospectively, eight months after the inaugural bidding for the IPL franchises, to regularize N. Srinivasan’s ownership of the CSK franchise. When A.C. Muthiah, a former president of the BCCI moved the Supreme Court arguing that an administrator of the cricket board shouldn’t be allowed to own an IPL franchise because of the obvious conflict of interest, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict. This meant that till the matter was resolved by a larger bench of the court, Srinivasan was free to simultaneously own CSK and function as president of the BCCI.
Justice J.M. Panchal was one of the judges on the two-judge bench that delivered the split verdict. His reasons for rejecting Muthiah’s petition are instructive. He ruled that no conflict of interest existed because a) no member of the BCCI or franchisee had objected to the amendment, b) the rules were framed long before the IPL was conceived of and therefore didn’t apply and c) the BCCI had suffered no financial loss because of the “so-called conflict of interest”.
To judge the force of Justice Panchal’s arguments, we need a working definition of “conflict of interest”. The standard definition cited by Wikipedia goes like this: “A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest.”
By the terms of this definition it seems plain that Srinivasan’s position as the treasurer of the BCCI at the time when franchises were allotted created a clear conflict of interest because as a BCCI official, he would be involved in administering a tournament in which he owned a franchise. The fact that the IPL didn’t exist when the BCCI’s conflict of interest rules were framed should have had no bearing on their applicability to the tournament.
The whole point of having written rules is to lay down principles that allow an organization negotiate novel circumstances in an ethical way. You could even argue that the framers of the rule that Srinivasan had amended were prescient because they anticipated an IPL-like circumstance and sought to forestall it.
The absence of objections from other franchisees or members of the BCCI should have made no difference to the application of the principle. A circumstance that creates a conflict of interest exists independently of the opinions or responses of people who might be affected by it. A bunch of franchisees keen to feed at the IPL trough weren’t likely to antagonize a powerful BCCI official determined to own a franchise. Good rules — like the conflict of interest clause — help organizations achieve ethical outcomes without the need for individual heroism.
Justice Panchal’s third reason for dismissing Muthiah’s petition was that Srinivasan’s dual role hadn’t caused the board any financial loss. This conviction that a conflict of interest objection is valid only if that conflict of interest has caused actual material harm is widespread. It is also, I think, misplaced. As the Wikipedia entry on the subject goes on to say, “[t]he presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs” (emphasis added).
The reason the Supreme Court should have upheld Muthiah’s objection is not because Srinivasan’s double role as administrator and franchisee had caused the BCCI any harm at the time but precisely to ensure that it didn’t harm the BCCI in the future. The risk of wrongdoing, the fact that conflicting interests can potentially corrupt motivation should have been reason enough to force Srinivasan to choose between being a franchisee or a board official. The split verdict saw the case referred to a larger bench and in the interim Srinivasan rose to become president of the board. The rest is history.
The tendency to dismiss conflict of interest charges while indignantly waving the standard of personal integrity, is epidemic in Indian cricket. Thus K. Srikkanth saw no difficulty in simultaneously being the chief of the national team and the brand ambassador of the Chennai Super Kings; Kumble was comfortable with being the chairman of the National Cricket Academy, the president of the KSCA and the director of a player management company and Dhoni, India’s captain in all three formats of the game was briefly a shareholder in a player management firm called Rhiti that counted R.P. Singh and Suresh Raina amongst its clients.
These are intelligent, successful men who seem to view the conflict of interest caution as an allegation of corruption, when it is, in fact, a principle intended to safeguard their reputation and integrity. This isn’t surprising: people take their cues from the men at the top and BCCI’s president isn’t just the supremo of Indian cricket and the owner of Chennai Super Kings, he is about to become the chairman of the International Cricket Council. If Srinivasan’s colossal conflict of interest could be retrospectively legitimized and glossed over by the BCCI without swift corrective action by the courts, why should anyone involved in Indian cricket declare a pecuniary interest for the sake of transparency or recuse himself from situations that create a conflict of interest?
Now that the Supreme Court, spurred on by the Justice Mudgal report, has brusquely declared that Srinivasan’s presidency can’t be reconciled with a fair investigation of the CSK scandal, the scandal begins to seem like a cautionary tale. Instead of talking about the potential for wrong-doing created by Srinivasan’s conflict of interest and trying to forestall it, the courts and the police are now dealing with allegations of actual wrong-doing. The amendment that gelded the conflict-of-interest clause by exempting the IPL was the original sin: it led directly to Srinivasan’s fall and it’s responsible for the collateral damage to cricket’s credibility.
Will the example of the apex court encourage Indian cricket’s many publicists to press for a reinstatement of the original clause? Will it help them speak truth to power? I wouldn’t hold my breath: Lalit Modi’s downfall didn’t reform the BCCI: its publicists and clients switched their loyalties to Srinivasan without missing a beat. Conflicts of interest can be fixed; servility is a permanent condition.
Jagmohan Dalmiya (left), who, in 2006, was expelled for life from the BCCI for corruption, is now back in the organisation as its interim president.
IN NOVEMBER 2010, Anil Kumble, a legend of unquestioned personal integrity, retired from active cricket and got into cricket administration with the stated mission of bringing fairness, transparency and probity to the running of the sport. It transpired, however, that while serving as president of Karnataka’s state cricket association—putting him in a position to exercise control over players in the region—Kumble in his private capacity ran a player-management agency, and was thus also able to further the careers of players signed up with his firm.
When Kumble was asked about the conflicting interests inherent in this situation, this was his answer: “I don’t see any conflict of interest here … and I have to look after myself. At this stage of my career, I have to do that. Otherwise, you’d have to become like Gandhi and give up everything.” Implicit—no, explicit—in these words is a casual acceptance of self-interest and an equally casual dismissal of any motive beyond personal benefit.
The response passed without challenge, and so it should have. No statement is independent of context, and the context of Kumble’s words is the world created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)—ostensibly a not-for-profit organisation, but in real terms a body that has institutionalised, even sanctified, the single-minded pursuit of self-interest at all levels, even when such actions are in direct violation of the body’s own written constitution.
India’s cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is also known to have interests in a sports management firm. The clients of the firm are national cricketers, in whose selection and career prospects Dhoni has direct influence. If their careers blossom, he can benefit. The conflict of interest is glaring.
Shortly after Ravi Savant, the president of the Mumbai Cricket Association, was selected as the BCCI’s new treasurer last month—replacing Ajay Shirke, who resigned in protest over the board’s handling of the Indian Premier League spot-fixing scandal—he dared to point out the obvious. “Dhoni,” Sawant said, “should immediately dissociate himself from the management firm while he is captain.” Sawant further suggested that the captain’s contract with the board be examined, and that Dhoni be given notice of conflict of interest.
Within minutes, literally, of Sawant’s statement hitting the headlines, the board hierarchy lined up in repudiation. “Ravi Sawant was speaking in his personal capacity,” was the explanatory chorus. Interim president Jagmohan Dalmiya stated that the board had “taken note” of the reports—about time, too, given that the media has been talking of this for over four years—and would “look into it”.
“But we are not going to hound someone,” Dalmiya added.
Dalmiya’s cautionary codicil had the undertow of personal experience. In December 2006, the BCCI’s executive committee met to consider a report charging him with corruption and misappropriation of funds dating back to the 1996 World Cup. N Srinivasan, then the board treasurer, prosecuted the case. Dalmiya appeared in his own defense but was, in the words of an administrator present at the time, “shredded” by Srinivasan.
The board voted 29–2 in favor of punitive action and, in an official statement, said that Dalmiya had been “expelled from the board for life” and “barred from holding any position in any organs of the BCCI, including state associations.”
“I am being hounded,” Dalmiya said then.
The story has an interesting coda. In June 2007, the Calcutta High Court lifted the suspension on the grounds that the BCCI had filed a false affidavit, misled the court, and committed perjury. The core issue was a BCCI claim that Dalmiya had been suspended under a specific clause in the constitution. However, no such clause existed at the time. It was post-facto written into the constitution, and the amendment had not even been officially ratified when Justice Indira Banerjee heard the case and tossed the suspension on the ground that it was “illegal”. (Of course, it was only the suspension that was overturned, not the facts relating to the misappropriation itself.)
Cut to the board’s annual report of 2010–2011. The BCCI treasurer MP Pandove began his presentation of accounts with these words: “I feel the figures, like facts, are stubborn in character. Accordingly, I would like to take all members with me through the figures, which speak a thousand words, without saying.” Tucked into his accounting at the very end, just this side of an afterthought, was a particularly interesting item: “Reversal of Amount Recoverable from Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya—PILCOM/INDCOM/World Cup 1996 (Refer Note 7(b) of Schedule 15): ₹ 466,416,703.”
See what Pandove meant about figures speaking “a thousand words, without saying”? Dalmiya’s sins—the documented misappropriation of ₹46.64 crore (₹466.4 million)—had been forgiven, and the amount had been written off. It was a small price to pay to get Dalmiya to drop the many court actions he had launched against the BCCI. (To apply a few coats of irony to this story, Dalmiya has now come in to save his erstwhile prosecutor-in-chief, N Srinivasan—who stepped aside as BCCI president for a reputation-cleansing few months while a toothless inquiry pretends to investigate his tenure.)
When Dalmiya, after assuming the interim presidency, announced a programme of minor correctives that he dubbed “Operation Clean-Up”, here’s what was forgotten: the problem in cricket is not individual acts of corruption by a few naïve, greedy cricketers. Nor is it the casual acceptance of conflict of interest by otherwise upright men like Kumble and Dhoni. These are only symptoms of a far more invasive disease.
The problem is rooted in the fact that in the years since 1996, the BCCI perfected to a fine art the business of cricket, and brought unimaginable wealth into the sport, without any revision of operating procedures to guard against corruption. Thus means, opportunity, and the ability to rationalise aberrant behavior—the three classic elements of the fraud triangle—came together. And to this, the BCCI systematically added a fourth element as a safety net: over-arching political patronage.
THE PRESENCE OF POLITICIANS in the realm of cricket administration is not new. NKP Salve was board president from 1982 to 1985, while serving as minister in the Cabinet of then prime minister Indira Gandhi. A former club cricketer and first class umpire, Salve loved the game, so much so that Gandhi reportedly took him to task for spending more time on cricket than politics. “Madam,” Salve is said to have responded, “I am doing what I really love, and will gladly give up my Cabinet position to continue working for cricket.”
“The presence of politicians in cricket then was very necessary,” a senior administrator who made his bones during that time told me. “While the quality of Indian cricket was improving, there was absolutely no money in the sport. Politicians and public figures who were motivated by passion for the sport came in to try and save cricket from imminent bankruptcy.”
The turnaround began when Salve spearheaded the successful bid to bring the World Cup to India in 1987, and roped in Reliance Industries as sponsor. By 1996, when the BCCI led the bid to bring the World Cup to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the board—under the leadership of Dalmiya and IS Bindra—had engineered a tectonic shift in the economics of Indian cricket. The Dalmiya-Bindra combine convinced ITC to come on board as title sponsors (it was known as “The Wills World Cup”) for a sum of approximately $10 million, they sold television rights for another $10 million, and monetised anything else their imagination could conceive. (Coca-Cola was “the official World Cup soft drink”.)
“Before the World Cup, politicians entered the game because there was no money,” the administrator quoted above said. “After the Cup, politicians entered the game because there was money.”
Until the mid 2000s, the grant given by the BCCI to state cricket associations was measured in lakhs. The lesser state bodies—the bottom feeders of the domestic competition, without a proper stadium and other facilities to their names—got between ₹ 15-25 lakh annually.
It was Lalit Kumar Modi who changed all that when, with the blessings of then BCCI president Sharad Pawar, he set out to monetise every aspect of cricket. It began in late 2005 when he signed up Nike as kit sponsor of the national team for a sum of $27.2 million, and reached its climax a year later when he sold television rights for the IPL to a Sony-World Sports Group consortium for $1.026 billion.
It was from that moment on that Indian cricket began valuing its worth in the billions—and as the money began to pour in, the BCCI brass put it to use to cement alliances, to buy silences.
So why are politicians so eager to run Indian cricket? Before we come to what happens to all that money, consider the case of Sharad Pawar, who does at least have some indirect affiliation with the sport—his late father-in-law Sadu Shinde was a Test cricketer of 1940s vintage. Before Pawar became president of the BCCI in 2005, his appearances in the national headlines usually involved famines, rising food prices, or farmer suicides. After 2005, he was transformed into cricket’s knight in shining armour—the man who saved the game from the clutches of the rapacious Dalmiya and who, through the IPL, gave the public a dazzling new circus where earlier he was vilified for not being able to provide bread.
And consider a few others: Rajiv Shukla, a one-time journalist with political ambitions, who used his clout as an Ambani insider to insinuate himself into the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association and then into the BCCI. His ability to ingratiate himself with the influencers saw his elevation to the post of IPL Commissioner. Under his watch, the league was hit by spot-fixing scandals twice in two years and yet, the commissioner not only remained untouched, but managed to reinvent himself as the disinterested champion of clean cricket.
Then there is Arun Jaitley, a politician with ambition but no base, who for 13 years and counting has ruled over the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association despite serial scandals; Narendra Modi, who saw in cricket another oppotunity to remake his image; Lalu Prasad Yadav, the doting father of a son with cricketing ambitions, who took over the Bihar Cricket Association and used his clout to get Tejaswi Prasad Yadav gigs with the India Under-19 team and then with the Delhi IPL team.
The list has only expanded in recent years, with one association after another anointing a politician at its head. (As you read this, Pawar is readying for a second stint as Mumbai Cricket Association chief. Ask yourself why he would want a regional post after having headed both Indian and world cricket.)
The benefits of this political patronage inevitably flow even to those not actively involved in the sport. Through judicious use of the annual grants—which, thanks to lack of oversight, effectively become slush funds—the board and its state chapters are positioned to suborn almost anyone, any department, to their cause.
For starters, the annual grant to state associations, first raised to ₹ 8 crore (₹ 80 million) when Pawar took control, was more than doubled before the end of his tenure. From then on, you could run a state association with no major cricketing or talent-development activities or even infrastructure to speak of, and you would still get close to ₹ 20 crore (₹ 200 million) every year, regular as clockwork—without the burden of having to strictly account for how you spent the money.
Associations also get to apply for ‘special grants’ that are routinely sanctioned; a particular favorite has been “stadium development”. Thus, if you control a state association and you play by the rules, you can run the tab as high as ₹ 60 crore (₹ 600 million) in a year.
These sums are not accounted for individually in the board’s annual reports, but bucketed under opaque and vague line entries such as “cricket development activities” and “establishment expenses”. Nor is this spending detailed in the reports of state cricket associations—in part because most don’t even file annual reports. Without itemised and detailed accounting, once the money is doled out to the states, there is no way for anyone to keep track of what happens to it, which may be exactly the point: by giving out such large sums with little or no oversight, the BCCI is tacitly buying the cooperation of the state associations. The state associations are effectively shielded from scrutiny—and in the unlikely event of a zealous governmental department poking its official nose into the finances, the board has sufficient political clout to ensure that such inquiries die still-born.
Instances abound. I’ll pick a lesser-known one as exemplar of how deep the rot extends.
In February 2010, the Ministry of Defence formalised the transfer of 15.3 acres of prime defence land to the Hyderabad Cricket Association without the mandatory approval of the President of India. The land, valued conservatively at upwards of ₹ 125 crore (₹ 1.25 billion), was handed over for a payment of just ₹ 1.88 crore (₹ 18.8 million) and an annual rent of ₹ 13 lakh. When the scam broke, a startled AK Antony, in his capacity as defence minister, was moved to order the Director General of Defence Estates to inquire into who within the ministry had so cavalierly handed over government property to a private body.
Oh, by the way—this grant, in two tranches of 5.71 and 9.59 acres, was first made in 1992. In February 1996, Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, who also held the defence portfolio, annulled this agreement with an official order, though no one acted to reclaim the land. Almost 17 years later, the defence ministry is still trying to figure out how the HCA held on to it all these years.
See what political patronage can do?
This is the real problem—one that Dalmiya’s “Operation Clean Up” does not even pretend to address: taking advantage of its self-proclaimed status as a “private body” (a fiction to which the board tenaciously clings despite repeated repudiation by the various courts in this land), the BCCI has created a moral safe-house where ‘everyone does it’ and therefore no one is to blame. Thus a Kumble, of unimpeachable personal character, can see nothing wrong in a clear conflict of interest; MS Dhoni, otherwise a young man of spine and integrity, sees a business opportunity in his elevation to the post of national cricket captain. The BCCI’s ultimate achievement is the creation of an environment no one can enter without being subsumed by the pervasive stench of corruption.
- See more at: http://caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/twirlymen?page=0,1#sthash.kf3ZRnIU.dpuf
Gaurav Gupta, TNN | Jun 4, 2013, 01.21 AM IST It has been an open secret for ever. India captain Mahendra Singh Dhonimaintained a strategic distance but his association with Arun Pandey, the face if not brain behind Rhiti Sports, was well known in top cricket circles.
In 2010, he turned it into a business partnership by signing up with Pandey to market him for a whopping Rs 210 crore-deal over three years. It now transpires that the relationship went much deeper: Dhoni owns a 15 per cent stake in the firm, even if it was only for a brief while, as they are so feebly claiming.
Not surprisingly, Indian cricket has responded angrily, with players and officials crying foul. The company, incidentally, also manages Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Pragyan Ojha and RP Singh (who denied being part of Rhiti at the moment), four players who have been almost regular fixtures in all three formats of the game for Team India.
More than that, the preferential treatment that Raina and Jadeja have enjoyed under his dispensation at Chennai Super Kings has always seemed strange. Jadeja, in fact, was acquired for an incredible annual fee of $2 million. One can imagine the killing Rhiti made when the deal was stuck.
TOI spoke to a cross-section of players and BCCI officials and almost all of them conceded that the skipper of the Indian team holding shares in an agency that manages players in his team itself was not an ideal situation. "It should not be allowed because the captain does influence the selection of as team; in fact, overseas, he and the coach have the sole authority on team selection. Now, I can only think of all the instances that looked like 'wrong' selections in recent times," former Board secretary Jayawant Lele said.
"It is better that the BCCI deals with the issue quickly before it gets any bigger," said former India off-spinner Erapalli Prasanna.
Dhoni has shown a preference for certain players in the team, and this revelation has only added fuel to the fire, with many connecting the dots. According to his critics, many talented players have been dumped during his reign without a fair opportunity. Dig deeper into first class cricket and you can cull out those names: batsmen Manoj Tiwary, Saurabh Tiwary, all-rounder Abhishek Nayar, seamer Dhawal Kulkarni, leg-spinner Amit Mishra, wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel, to start with.
"With him, it's a question of like and dislike. If you are disliked by him, good luck to you! You can keep performing in domestic cricket, it doesn't matter" said a player.
Dhoni and N Srinivasan aren't alone in the 'sea of conflict of interest in Indian cricket' though. A Board member pointed out: "Anil Kumble heads the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) and runs a player management agency (Tenvic). When Dilip Vengsarkar & Co selected Virat Kohli ahead of S Badrinath in the Indian team, Srinivasan was miffed, and got the then Board president, Sharad Pawar, to remove that selection committee on the pretext that those who were office-bearers in the state associations could not be selectors at the same time. Now, the same Board has allowed Roger Binny, who is the vice-president of KSCA, to be a selector. Ratnakar Shetty, till last year, was a vice-president with the Mumbai Cricket association (MCA), while being the CAO of the Board. I can cite ten instances in Indian cricket where there is a conflict of interest. All this works according to people's convenience," he says.
A few voices, though, defended Dhoni's association. "I don't see any conflict of interest here. Unless it is proved that he has been influencing the players to join the company or is pushing the said players' inclusion in the Indian team, it is not proper to make such allegations. He may have a stake in the company but that doesn't mean he is guilty of foul-play. Can't a player invest his money in a business?" questions former India left-arm spinner Venkatapathi Raju. "Dhoni can have stakes in a company and that should not be looked in a different way. Dhoni is a captain and knows what to do. We are unnecessarily making an issue out of it," says Rajasthan batsman Robin Bisht.
Most childhood myths endure for longer than they should. Some are never forgotten. So it has been with me in the matter of Bishan Singh Bedi, the Sardar of spin and the most prolific of India's famed quartet of the sixties and seventies. Once mythical status had been bestowed on Bedi by me, mesmerised I was and remain, by the exploits and imagined possibilities of the man blessed with that poetic bowling action.
It all started with a conspiratorial revelation by an uncle when I was at an age when wonder and superheroes rule, and logic and reality are alien concepts.
Clustered around the radio we sat one day, listening to the commentary of a Test match India was playing in. A gaggle of excited kids, surrounded by our own expert commentators - vocal fathers, uncles, and the odd grandfather thrown in to maintain a semblance of decorum amid the mob.
And then, in what I am certain was a tense situation in the match, Bedi proceeded to concede not one but three boundaries in one over. Consternation all around. A forest of hands thrown up in dismay, followed by shouts of "He is going to ruin this for India if he continues!" and "Bring Prasanna on right away!" from not just the kids but even the adults in the group. In the midst of all this agitation, my eyes caught an uncle sitting there, smiling at the radio, a sea of calm. He leaned over to me and whispered with theatrical intrigue, "Don't worry. This is just a part of Bedi's plan. He will make the batsman pay in a few overs. He is setting him up to look foolish. Be patient."
Disbelief replaced the alarm on my face, but cashing in some of the trust and goodwill the uncle had accumulated in me, I turned to the radio again. Surely he was putting me on? Payback in a few overs' time? How does that work? Surely the batsman was no fool to get sucked into Bedi's extended sting operation?
The next Bedi over upped the ante. A relatively quiet over; no wicket falls. Quick look at the uncle begets just a knowing smile and raised eyebrows. Back to the radio again, staying away from the rest of the mob, now being led by the grandfather himself in hollering for the local lad, Erapalli Prasanna. Two or three balls into Bedi's next over and I hear, "And he has bowled him! Through the gap between bat and pad. Completely deceived him in flight. Bedi strikes!" Look up in disbelief and see the conspiratorial look replaced by a look of satisfaction, hands rubbing in delight.
Thus the myth enters the imagination. So the bowler pays up, and pays up again and again till the batsman coughs it up and hands it over sheepishly. The phrase "buying a wicket" was now de rigueur all of a sudden. It also proceeded to cause endless headaches every time Bedi was bowling. Following the progress of the match became a temporal jigsaw puzzle that had no solution. Every ball was a head-scratcher in itself: furious thinking would ensue as one tried to place it in a pattern initiated overs ago. Or was a new sequence of trickery starting with it? Now, was that a set-up ball, to be cashed in by the Sardar a few overs later, or just a bad one? Or was it just an innocent bridge piece in the composition before the cymbal crash came, causing the batsman to walk back? Wicket balls were the easy ones, and a relief, too, for they reset the puzzle. Yes, those times were magical. The period when the strategy has sunk in but the tactics are shrouded in mystery.
With exposure begins the fraying of the edges of the myth. The rewards for the watcher are substantial. When the fundamental aspects of a spinner's art reveal themselves gradually, causing one to follow the game in a completely different way. When the batsman's footwork begins to reveal secrets about the ball that was bowled. When the amount of daylight between the umpire and the bowler at the point of delivery is keenly noted. And when a batsman's looking foolish as he loses his wicket is not a reason to giggle at him but a time to look at the bowler in admiration. Foolishness needs to be pried out of good batsmen, and it is truly special when it happens.
Every ball was a head-scratcher in itself: furious thinking would ensue as one tried to place it in a pattern initiated overs ago. Or was a new sequence of trickery starting with it? Now, was that a set-up ball, or just a bad one? Or was it just an innocent bridge piece in the composition before the cymbal crash came, causing the batsman to walk back?
Once this comprehension had set in, Bedi's bowling was a fascinating study. I remember, for example, a dismissal of Kim Hughes in the seventies. Hughes, with his superb ability to use his feet against spinners, had many memorable battles against Bedi, but this one stands out to this day. Flighting the ball and pitching it up each time, Bedi proceeded to get Hughes to use his feet and advance repeatedly to smother any turn and drive the ball into the V. Then, as if feigning a realisation of folly, he proceeded to draw back the length of his deliveries over a few overs. Of course, Hughes caught on and the advances down the pitch became less pronounced as this developed. Till the momentous over when the length had been dragged back, ever so gradually, enough to be unobtrusive. Then, the offering. A flighted and floated delivery that was creamed into the stands for six. A slightly fuller ball followed, but Hughes was ready with his immaculate drive for four. But he had already swallowed the bait, except he didn't know it yet. Till a ball later. Floated up again, but a shade shorter. Hughes rocked back to cut but the arc of his bat was still at its midway point when the ball crashed into his stumps. The dipping faster arm-ball had done him in. The sting operation had lasted at least five overs. Hughes made it to the front pages as proof the next day, bat in mid-air, stumps pegged back, looking down in horror and looking a tad foolish. And my uncle was still a prophet.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their backs on you, You get the chance to put the knife in. - "Dogs", Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)
Those were the rock n' roll days, and thus it went on with Bedi for years to come. Many were the heists that were designed and executed by him, with his accomplice Prasanna, another genius in the genteel art of mid-air deceit and deception, against players of all ilk, at venues of all geographical persuasion. Newspapers regularly brought us pictures of duped and out-plotted batting stars, looking the wrong way, staring back perplexed at stumps astray, stranded out of position having whiffed at the ball, or nailed on the back foot seconds after the ball fizzed into their pads bang in front. Looking foolish all the time.
THE RETIREMENTS OF BEDI AND CO. brought on a dry period in world cricket of the hoodwinking spinner, with just one notable exception in Abdul Qadir in the eighties. The nineties gave us some wonderful spinners in Anil Kumble and Muttiah Muralitharan. Very special bowlers they were and are, but they somehow didn't fit the image of the con artist or the trickster that was tattooed on my brain. Nirvana came in the form of the blond bamboozler who announced himself to the world in the most dramatic manner, with his first Ashes ball, conferring honorary legendary status on Mike Gatting instantly.
As the second Test of the recently concluded Ashes series started at Lord's this summer, in the Sky Sports box was Shane Warne, fresh off the poker tables of Las Vegas, donning his latest role, of commentator. As he added a welcome Aussie angle and drawl to the mix, with his "Aww, look mate…" exclamations, he also provided an acute reminder, right through the rest of the series, as to what we were profusely missing this time around. Just the 2005 Ashes in themselves contained among his haul of 40 wickets a cornucopia of poster shots memorable to this day, of wide-eyed batsmen who had just been duped in grand larcenous style.
Two examples should suffice for now. Michael Vaughan at Trent Bridge, minutes after he had walked out to join Andrew Strauss in England's run-chase. Using his impeccable footwork, leaning towards the pitch of a ball outside leg to play it quietly towards midwicket. And then… picture this aftermath. A visibly mystified Vaughan scrambling back and searching for the ball at a non-existent short fine leg, looking quizzically towards Adam Gilchrist, then staring at a hooting Ricky Ponting at silly point, oblivious to the fact that the ball rested in Matthew Hayden's paws at first slip.
And Andrew Strauss in the second innings at Edgbaston. If there ever was a "ball of the century", one that would have startled Daryll Cullinan off his couch in amazement, here it was. The poster depicts Strauss standing upright, left foot in line with off stump, right foot all the way across to the edge of the pitch, head turned around in a voyage of discovery, in utter bewilderment that while he had been trying to pad up to a delivery apparently heading towards first slip, he had somehow managed to lose his leg stump. He had been conned and schemed into an absolutely improbable stance and dismissal (the set-up commenced, tellingly, when Warne castled him in the first innings). Michael Slater needed to be administered oxygen in the commentary box to recover from his bout of hysterical chortling.
Jim Laker, the great England spinner, once opined that his idea of paradise was being at Lord's, bathed in glorious sunshine, with Ray Lindwall bowling at one end and Bedi at the other. My idea of cricketing paradise may feature other dramatis personae, and the lunch break on the fourth day of the Oval Test of the 2009 Ashes provided a reminder of one. Out in the middle alongside Nasser Hussain was Shane Warne, executing a masterclass on legspin bowling with two teenaged tyros from the counties. Substantially more portly than two years ago, but sporting a warm and cheerful smile and demeanour, Warne went through the intricacies of his legendary repertoire with them. And then, as the wide-eyed aspirants watched, he twirled the ball in his hands, gamely walked over to the top of his run-up, turned… and for a brief, very brief, moment it turned magical again.
The casual walk from his mark, the handful of strides to the crease and that simple, glorious and uncomplicated action burst into view once again. The ball looped out perfectly, drifted innocuously away and then back, dipped and landed on a perfect length. It gripped on that practice wicket and spat furiously off it at a disconcerting height towards second slip. There was no batsman to be spooked by it, and the makeshift keeper jumped to collect it over his shoulder. Surely millions of English eyes watching this widened in terror for an instant, faces turning pale at the thought of Warne running rampant on the baklava-top yards away that the Test match was being played on. Warney, looking like a chubby frat-boy, drawled "Not too bad!" turned and walked back to his gawking students. He ended his class with an exhortation to them to work hard at their craft and to just enjoy bowling legspin because it was "a lot of fun". "And we get to make batsmen look foolish," he added with a huge grin.
I find myself constantly looking for the image of the batsman completely flummoxed, gobsmacked, hoodwinked and strung-on to a memorable demise. I blame Bedi and Warney for this quest more than any others. And the uncle who started it all.
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Terry Jenner played nine Tests for Australia in the 1970s but it is as a coach, and specifically as Shane Warne's mentor and the man Warne turned to in a crisis, that he is better known. Jenner said that his CV wouldn't be complete without a trip to India, the spiritual home of spin bowling, and this September he finally made it when he was invited by the MAC Spin Foundation to train youngsters in Chennai. Jenner spoke at length to Cricinfo on the art and craft of spin bowling in general and legspin in particular. What follows is the first in a two-part interview.
"Most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come"
How has the role of spin changed over the decades you've watched cricket?
The limited-overs game has made the major change to spin bowling. When I started playing, for example, you used to break partnerships in the first couple of the days of the match and then on the last couple of days you were expected to play more of a major role. But in recent years, with the entry of Shane Warne, who came on on the first day of the Test and completely dominated on good pitches, it has sort of changed the specs that way.
But the difficulty I'm reading at the moment is that captains and coaches seem to be of the opinion that spin bowlers are there either to rest the pace bowlers or to just keep it tight; they are not allowed to risk runs to gain rewards. That's the biggest change.
In the 1960s, when I first started, you were allowed to get hit around the park a bit, as long as you managed to get wickets - it was based more on your strike-rate than how many runs you went for. So limited-overs cricket has influenced bowlers to bowl a negative line and not the attacking line, and I don't know with the advent of Twenty20 how we'll advance. We will never go back, unfortunately, to the likes of Warne and the wrist-spinners before him who went for runs but the quality was more.
What are the challenges of being a spinner in modern cricket?
The huge challenge is just getting to bowl at club level through to first-class level. When you get to the first-class level they tend to you allow you to bowl, but once you get to bowl, instead of allowing you to be a free spirit, you are restricted to men around the bat - push it through, don't let the batsman play the stroke, don't free their arms up ... all those modern thoughts on how the spinner should bowl.
Do spinners spin the ball less these days?
The capacity to spin is still there, but to spin it you actually have to flight it up, and if you flight it up there's always that risk of over-pitching and the batsman getting you on the full, and therefore the risk of runs being scored. So if you consider the general mentality of a spinner trying to bowl dot balls and bowl defensive lines, then you can't spin it.
I'll give you an example of an offspin bowler bowling at middle and leg. How far does he want to spin it? If he needs to spin it, he needs to bowl a foot outside the off stump and spin it back, but if he has to bowl a defensive line then he sacrifices the spin, otherwise he'll be just bowling down the leg side.
It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries to attack
Legspinners bowling at leg stump or just outside - there's been so few over the years capable of spinning the ball from just outside leg past off, yet that's the line they tend to bowl. So I don't think they spin it any less; the capacity to spin is still wonderful. I still see little kids spinning the ball a long way. I take the little kids over to watch the big kids bowl and I say, "Have a look: the big kids are all running in off big, long runs, jumping high in the air and firing it down there, and more importantly going straight." And I say to the little kids, "They once were like you. And one of you who hangs on to the spin all the way through is the one that's gonna go forward."
Great spinners have always bowled at the batsman and not to the batsman. But the trend these days is that spinners are becoming increasingly defensive.
First of all they play him [the young spinner] out of his age group. Earlier the idea of finding a good, young talent, when people identified one, was that they didn't move him up and play him in the higher grade or in the higher age group. There was no different age-group cricket around back then, and if you were a youngster you went into the seniors and you played in the bottom grade and then you played there for a few years while you learned the craft and then they moved you to the next grade. So you kept going till you came out the other end and that could've been anywhere around age 19, 20, 21 or whatever. Now the expectation is that by the time you are 16 or 17 you are supposed to be mastering this craft.
It's a long apprenticeship. If you find a good 10- or 11-year-old, he needs to have a ten-year apprenticeship at least. There's a rule of thumb here that says that if the best there's ever been, which is Shane Warne - and there is every reason to believe he is - sort of started to strike his best at 23-24, what makes you think we can find 18- or 19-year-olds to do it today? I mean, he [Warne] has only been out of the game for half an hour and yet we're already expecting kids to step up to the plate much, much before they are ready.
It's a game of patience with spin bowlers and developing them. It's so important that we are patient in helping them, understanding their need for patience, at the same time understanding from outside the fence - as coach, captain etc. We need to understand them and allow them to be scored off, allow them to learn how to defend themselves, allow them to understand that there are times when you do need to defend. But most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come, that's where you spin it most.
Warne said you never imposed yourself as a coach.
With Warne, when I first met him he bowled me a legbreak which spun nearly two feet-plus, and I was just in awe. All I wanted to do was try and help that young man become the best he could be, just to help him understand his gift, understand what he had, and to that end I never tried to change him. That's what he meant by me never imposing myself. We established a good relationship based on the basics of bowling and his basics were always pretty good. Over the years whenever he wandered away from them, we worked it back to them. There were lot of times over his career where, having a bowled a lot of overs, some bad habits had come in. It was not a case of standing over him. I was just making him aware of where he was at the moment and how he could be back to where he was when he was spinning them and curving them. His trust was the most important gift that he gave me, and it's an important thing for a coach to understand not to breach that trust. That trust isn't about secrets, it's about the trust of the information you give him, that it won't harm him, and that was our relationship.
I don't think of myself as an authority on spin bowling. I see myself as a coach who's developed a solid learning by watching and working with the best that's been, and a lot of other developing spinners. So I'm in a terrific business-class seat because I get to see a lot of this stuff and learn from it, and of course I've spoken to Richie Benaud quite a lot over the years.
Shane would speak to Abdul Qadir and he would feed back to me what Abdul Qadir said. Most people relate your knowledge to how many wickets you took and I don't think that's relevant. I think it's your capacity to learn and deliver, to communicate that what you've learned back to people.
From the outside it seems like there is a problem of over-coaching these days.
There are so many coaches now. We have specialist coaches, general coaches, we've got sports science and psychology. Coaching has changed.
Shane, in his retirement speech, referred to me as his technical coach (by which he meant technique), as Dr Phil [the psychologist on the Oprah Winfrey Show]. That means when he wanted someone to talk to, I was the bouncing board. He said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call.
"Think high, spin up" was the first mantra you shared with Warne. What does it mean?
When I first met Shane his arm was quite low, and back then, given I had no genuine experience of coaching spin, I asked Richie Benaud and made him aware of this young Shane Warne fellow and asked him about the shoulder being low. Richie said, "As long as he spins it up from the hand, it'll be fine." But later, when we tried to introduce variations, we talked about the topspinner and I said to Shane, "You're gonna have to get your shoulder up to get that topspinner to spin over the top, otherwise it spins down low and it won't produce any shape." So when he got back to his mark the trigger in his mind was "think high, spin up", and when he did that he spun up over the ball and developed the topspinner. Quite often even in the case of the legbreak it was "think high, spin up" because his arm tended to get low, especially after his shoulder operation.
Can you explain the risk-for-reward theory that you teach youngsters about?
This is part of learning the art and craft. It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries in an over to attack. I called them the risk and reward balls in an over. In other words, you do risk runs off those deliveries but you can also gain rewards.
There's been no one in the time that I've been around who could theoretically bowl six wicket-taking balls an over other than SK Warne. The likes of [Anil] Kumble ... he's trying to keep the lines tight and keep you at home, keep you at home while he works on you, but he's not trying to get you out every ball, he's working a plan.
The thing about excellent or great bowlers is that they rarely go for a four or a six off the last delivery. That is the point I make to kids, explaining how a mug like me used to continually go for a four or six off the last ball of the over while trying to get a wicket so I could stay on. And when you do that, that's the last thing your captain remembers, that's the last thing your team-mates remember, it's the last thing the selectors remember. So to that end you are better off bowling a quicker ball in line with the stumps which limits the batsman's opportunities to attack. So what I'm saying is, there's always a time when you need to defend, but you've got to know how to attack and that's why you need such a long apprenticeship.
Warne said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call. Richie Benaud writes in his book that his dad told him to keep it simple and concentrate on perfecting the stock ball. Benaud says that you shouldn't even think about learning the flipper before you have mastered the legbreak, top spinner and wrong'un. Do you agree?
I totally agree with what Richie said. If you don't have a stock ball, what is the variation? You know what I'm saying? There are five different deliveries a legbreak bowler can bowl, but Warne said on more than one occasion that because of natural variation you can bowl six different legbreaks in an over; what's important is the line and length that you are bowling that encourages the batsman to get out of his comfort zone or intimidates him, and that's the key to it all. Richie spun his legbreak a small amount by comparison with Warne but because of that his use of the slider and the flipper were mostly effective because he bowled middle- and middle-and-off lines, whereas Warne was leg stump, outside leg stump.
Richie's a wise man and in the days he played there were eight-ball overs here in Australia. If you went for four an over, you were considered to be a pretty handy bowler. If you go for four an over now, it's expensive - that's because it's six-ball overs. But Richie was a great example of somebody who knew his strengths and worked on whatever weaknesses he might've had. He knew he wasn't a massive spinner of the ball, therefore his line and length had to be impeccable, and he worked around that.
In fact, in his autobiography Warne writes, "What matters is not always how many deliveries you possess, but how many the batsmen thinks you have."
That's the mystery of spin, isn't it? I remember, every Test series Warnie would come out with a mystery ball or something like that, but the truth is there are only so many balls that you can really bowl - you can't look like you're bowling a legbreak and bowl an offbreak.
Sonny Ramdhin was very difficult to read as he bowled with his sleeves down back in the 1950s; he had an unique grip and unique way of releasing the ball, as does Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan]. What they do with their wrists, it's very difficult to pick between the offbreak and the legbreak. Generally a legbreak bowler has to locate his wrist in a position to enhance the spin in the direction he wants the ball to go, which means the batsman should be able to see the relocation of the wrist.
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In part two of his interview on the art of spin bowling, Terry Jenner looks at the damage caused to young spinners by the curbs placed on their attacking instincts. He also surveys the current slow-bowling landscape and appraises the leading practitioners around.
"Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct, which gets suppressed by various captains and coaches" Nagraj Gollapudi
Bishan Bedi once said that a lot of bowling is done in the mind. Would you say that spin bowling requires the most mental energy of all the cricketing arts?
The thing about that is Bishan Bedi - who has, what, 260-odd Test wickets? - bowled against some of the very best players ever to go around the game. He had at his fingertips the control of spin and pace. Now, when you've got that, when you've developed that ability, then it's just about when to use them, how to use them, so therefore it becomes a matter of the brain. You can't have the brain dominating your game when you haven't got the capacity to bowl a legbreak or an offbreak where you want it to land. So that's why you have to practise those stock deliveries until it becomes just natural for you - almost like you can land them where you want them to land blindfolded, and then it just becomes mind over matter. Then the brain does take over.
There's nothing better than watching a quality spin bowler of any yolk - left-hand, right-hand - working on a quality batsman who knows he needs to break the bowler's rhythm or he might lose his wicket. That contest is a battle of minds then, because the quality batsman's got the technique and the quality bowler's got the capacity to bowl the balls where he wants to, within reason. So Bishan is exactly right.
What came naturally to someone like Bedi was flight. How important is flight in spin bowling?
When I was very young someone said to me, "You never beat a batsman off the pitch unless you first beat him in the air." Some people think that's an old-fashioned way of bowling. Once, at a conference in England, at Telford, Bishan said "Spin is in the air and break is off the pitch", which supported exactly what that guy told me 40 years ago. On top of that Bedi said stumping was his favourite dismissal because you had beaten the batsman in the air and then off the pitch. You wouldn't get too many coaches out there today who would endorse that remark because they don't necessarily understand what spin really is.
When you appraised the trainees in Chennai [at the MAC Spin Foundation], you said if they can separate the one-day cricket shown on TV and the one-day cricket played at school level, then there is a chance a good spinner will come along.
What I was telling them was: when you bowl a ball that's fairly flat and short of a length and the batsman goes back and pushes it to the off side, the whole team claps because no run was scored off it. Then you come in and toss the next one up and the batsman drives it to cover and it's still no run, but no one applauds it; they breathe a sigh of relief. That's the lack of understanding we have within teams about the role of the spin bowler. You should be applauding when he has invited the batsman to drive because that's what courage is, that's where the skill is, that's where the spin is, and that's where the wickets come. Bowling short of a length, that's the role of a medium pacer, part-timer. Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct which gets suppressed by various captains, coaches and ideological thoughts in clubs and teams.
You talked at the beginning of the interview about the importance of being patient with a spinner. But isn't it true that the spinner gets another chance even if he gets hit, but the batsman never does?
I don't think you can compare them that way. If the spinner gets hit, he gets taken off. If he goes for 10 or 12 off an over, they take him off. Batsmen have got lots of things in their favour.
What I mean by patience is that to develop the craft takes a lot of overs, lots of balls in the nets, lots of target bowling. And you don't always get a bowl. Even if you are doing all this week-in, week-out, you don't always get to bowl, so you need to be patient. And then one day you walk into the ground and finally they toss you the ball. It is very easy to behave in a hungry, desperate manner because you think, "At last, I've got the ball." And you forget all the good things you do and suddenly try to get a wicket every ball because it's your only hope of getting into the game and staying on. The result is, you don't actually stay on and you don't get more games. So the patience, which is what you learn as you go along, can only come about if the spinner is allowed to develop at his pace instead of us pushing him up the rung because we think we've found one at last.
How much of a role does attitude play?
Attitude is an interesting thing. Depends on how you refer to it - whether it's attitude to bowling, attitude to being hit, attitude to the game itself.
When Warne was asked what a legspin bowler needs more than anything else, he said, "Love". What he meant was love and understanding. They need someone to put their arm around them and say, "Mate, its okay, tomorrow is another day." Because you get thumped, mate. When you are trying to spin the ball from the back of your hand and land it in an area that's a very small target, that takes a lot of skill, and it also requires the patience to develop that skill. That's what I mean by patience, and the patience also needs to be with the coach, the captain, and whoever else is working with this young person, and the parents, who need to understand that he is not going to develop overnight.
And pushing him up the grade before he is ready isn't necessarily a great reward for him because that puts pressure on him all the time. Any person who plays under pressure all the time, ultimately the majority of them break. That's not what you want, you want them to come through feeling sure, scoring lots of wins, feeling good about themselves, recognising their role in the team, and having their team-mates recognise their role.
I don't think people - coaches, selectors - let the spin bowler know what his role actually is. He gets in the team and suddenly he gets to bowl and is told, "Here's the field, bowl to this", and in his mind he can't bowl.
Could you talk about contemporary spinners - Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Daniel Vettori, Monty Panesar, and Muttiah Muralitharan of course?
Of all the spinners today, the one I admire most of all is Vettori. He has come to Australia on two or three occasions and on each occasion he has troubled the Australian batsmen. He is a man who doesn't spin it a lot but he has an amazing ability to change the pace, to force the batsman into thinking he can drive it, but suddenly they have to check their stroke. And that's skill. If you haven't got lots of spin, then you've got to have the subtlety of change of pace.
And, of course, there is Kumble. I always marvel at the fact that he has worked his career around mainly containment and at the same time bowled enough wicket-taking balls to get to 566 wickets. That's a skill in itself. He is such a humble person as well and I admire him.
I marvel a little bit at Murali's wrist because it is very clever what he does with that, but to the naked eye I can't tell what is 15 degrees and what's not. I've just got to accept the word above us. All I know is that it would be very difficult to coach someone else to bowl like Murali. So we've got to put him in a significant list of one-offs - I hate to use the word "freak" - that probably won't be repeated.
I don't see enough of Harbhajan Singh - he is in and out of the Indian side. What I will say is that when I do see him bowl, I love the position of the seam. He has a beautiful seam position.
I love the way Stuart MacGill spins the ball. He is quite fearless in his capacity to spin the ball.
I love the energy that young [Piyush] Chawla displays in his bowling. The enthusiasm and the rawness, if you like. This is what I mean when I talk about pushing the boundaries. He is 18, playing limited-overs cricket, and at the moment he is bowling leggies and wrong'uns and I think that's terrific. But I hope the time doesn't come when he no longer has to spin the ball. When he tries to hold his place against Harbhajan Singh, for example. To do that he has to fire them in much quicker. He is already around the 80kph mark, which is quite healthy for a 18-year-old boy, but he still spins it at that pace, so it's fine. But ultimately if he is encouraged to bowl at a speed at which he doesn't spin the ball, that would be the sad part.
That's why I say this, there are lots of spinners around but it's the young, developing spinners who are probably suffering from all the stuff from television that encourages defence as a means to being successful as a spinner.
Monty is an outstanding prospect. You've got to look at how a guy can improve. He has done very, very well but how can he improve? He has got to have a change-up, a change of pace. At the moment, if you look at the speed gun in any given over from Monty, it's 56.2mph on average every ball. So he bowls the same ball; his line, his length, everything is impeccable, but then when it's time to knock over a tail, a couple of times he has been caught short because he has not been able to vary his pace. I think Monty is such an intelligent bowler and person that he will be in the nets working on that to try and make sure he can invite the lower order to have a go at him and not just try and bowl them out. That probably is his area of concern; the rest of it is outstanding.
What would you say are the attributes of a good spinner?
Courage, skill, patience, unpredictability, and spin. You get bits and pieces of all those, but if you have got spin then there is always a chance you can develop the other areas. For all the brilliant things that people saw Warne do, his greatest strength was the size of the heart, and that you couldn't see.
