Dons still pull the strings in Bollywood

• JOSY JOSEPH, SHARAD VYAS, GAUTAM S MENGLE in The hindu

Two decades after the cold-blooded murder of “Cassette King” Gulshan Kumar, the underworld still enjoys considerable access to the Mumbai film industry. Beneath the glitz, the fabric of the underworld-Bollywood nexus has not changed much even in 2015 — actors, producers and distributors not only pay obeisance to the ‘bhais’ at offshore locations such as Dubai but also help them establish a toehold in the film business by collaborating with production houses directly funded by fugitive gangster Chhota Shakeel, show investigations by The Hindu.

Indian agencies listened in on several conversations between Chhota Shakeel, a leading organiser of Bollywood events in the UAE, and other underworld operatives that showed that arrangements were under way in full swing to welcome a Bollywood superstar at the popular Meydan Hotel in Nad Al Sheba in Dubai from May 27 to 30. The fugitive don booked a double-room in the hotel for Dawood Ibrahim’s son Moin and daughter-in-law who were keen on a photo-op with the star. One intercept reveals an aide telling Shakeel in Dubai that he and others were with one Karim Bhai and the film star had gone out. The aide assures Shakeel that he will take Dawood’s son and daughter-in-law to the star. After a few minutes, Shakeel calls the aide to ask him to give his reference to the Bollywood event organiser, and that “children” must be arranged a good photo-op.

The meeting concluded on the same day as planned by Shakeel.

Dawood’s family was introduced to the actor as “Haji Saheb’s” children. It could well be the code name for Dawood among those in the film fraternity who continues to deal with him, or a way to mislead the superstar into meeting Dawood’s family members. Sources in the security establishment said the Shakeel contact in Dubai, who arranged the meeting for Dawood’s son with the star, was closely involved in Bollywood film promotions in Dubai and was a close acquaintance of top actors and production houses in Mumbai. Close proximity of actors, or cricketers, with the criminal world during their UAE tours has been a matter of concern for intelligence agencies. The Hindu’s investigation completes an important missing link of this puzzle since the 1993 blasts: a clear synergy between Bollywood and the underworld during tours abroad continues to date.

In March, a popular Pakistani television actor, desperately in need of a visa to visit India and find work in Mumbai, approached Shakeel for arranging a meeting with top television channels. The don immediately set up meetings for the newbie with several popular production houses.

In another intercept, the same actor called up Shakeel to push for his launch in Bollywood with a leading production house. Subsequently, Shakeel called up the CEO of a movie production house that is a major player in the Indian TV world and arranged a meeting. The intercepts do not reveal if the meeting ever took place, but prove the phone call was made.

Several intercepts show Shakeel attempting to reach out on February 26 to a Bollywood director who had just finished a film on Dawood Ibrahim’s life. In 2013, the fugitive don had planned a hit on the same director. When an associate in Mumbai asked Shakeel if he found time to threaten another superstar of Bollywood, Shakeel replied that he no longer called up actors with extortion calls.

Cricket is losing the popularity contest

George Dobell in Cricinfo


The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream


Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty Images



There are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.

So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.

That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.

But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.

The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.

When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.

Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.

It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.

They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.

They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.

Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.

It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.

That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.

The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.

But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.

The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.

Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.

Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.

Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.

Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.

And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.

The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline -  The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.

This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.

20 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Human Decisions

Why blame culture is toxic for sport

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

Is ranting at players during team talks like bloodletting in the age of quack doctors?


Shouting at players: Satisfying? Yes. Effective? No © AFP



The subversive in me would love to whitewash over the usual clichés and catchphrases that are splashed on dressing-room walls and replace them with a more cynical message:

The six phases of a project:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved

Not very cheering, I admit, but a salutary warning about our obsession with blame - a preoccupation sustained by dodgy narratives about "causes" that leads not to institutional improvement but to self-serving politics. Having pinned the blame on someone - rightly or, more likely, wrongly - the next task is "moving on". Sound familiar?

The "six phases" were attached to an office wall by an employee at the Republic Bank of New York. The story appears in Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed's new book. Syed (a leading sports columnist and double Olympian) argues that our preoccupation with convenient blame - rather than openness to learning from failure - is a central factor holding teams and individuals back from improving. I think he is right.

Syed expresses admiration for the airline industry and its commitment to learning from failure - especially from "black boxes", the explosion-proof devices that record the conversations of pilots and other data. If the plane's wreckage is found, lessons - no matter how painful - must be learned. In the jargon, learning inside the aviation industry is an "open loop". (An "open loop" leads to progress because the feedback is rationally acted on; a "closed loop" is where failure doesn't lead to progress because weaknesses are ignored or errors are misinterpreted.) Syed presents harrowing examples from hospital operating theatres, of "closed loops" costing lives. Indeed, with its recurrent plane crashes and botched operations, the book takes the search for transferrable lessons to harrowing extremes.

One question prompted by Black Box Thinking is why is sport is not instinctively enthusiastic about evidence-based discussion. You might think that sports teams would be so keen to improve that they would rush to expose their ideas to rational and reflective scrutiny. But that's not always the case. As a player I often felt that insecure teams shrank from critical thinking, where more confident teams encouraged it.

The first problem sport has with critical thinking is the "narrative fallacy" (a concept popularised by Nassim Taleb). Consider this statement, thrown at me by a coach as I left the dressing room and walked onto the field after winning the toss and deciding to bowl first: "We need to have them five wickets down at lunch to justify the decision."

Hmm. First, even thinking about "justifying" a decision is an unnecessary distraction. Secondly, it's also irrational to think that the fact of taking five wickets, even if it happens, proves the decision was right. I might have misread the wicket, which actually suited batting first, but the opposition might have suffered a bad morning - five wickets could fall and yet the decision could still easily be wrong.

Alternatively, the wicket might suit bowling - and hence "justify" my decision - but we might bowl improbably badly and drop our catches. In other words, it could be the right decision even if they are no wickets down at lunch. What happened after the decision (especially when the sample of evidence is small or, as in this instance, solitary) does not automatically prove the rightness or wrongness of the decision.

Fancy theorising? Prefer practical realities? This kind of theorising, in fact, is bound up with very practical realities. Consider this example.

For much of medical history, bloodletting was a common and highly respected procedure. When a patient was suffering from a serious ailment and went to a leading doctor, the medical guru promptly drained significant amounts of blood from an already weak body. Madness? It happened for centuries.

And sometimes, if we don't think critically, it "works". As Syed points out, in a group of ten patients treated with bloodletting, five might die and five get better. So it worked for the five who survived, right?

Only, it didn't, of course. The five who were healed would have got better anyway (the body has great powers of self-recuperation). And some among the five who died were pushed from survival into death. Proving this fact, however, was more difficult - especially in a medical culture dominated by doctors who advocated and profited materially from bloodletting.

The challenge of demonstrating the real usefulness (or otherwise) of a procedure led to the concept of the "control group". Now imagine a group of 20 patients with serious illnesses - and split them into two groups, ten in each group. One group of ten patients gets a course of bloodletting, the other group of ten (the control group) does not. If we discover that five out of ten died in the bloodletting group and only three out of ten among the non-bloodletting group, then, at last, we have the beginnings of a proper evidence-based approach. The intervention (bloodletting) did more harm than simply doing nothing. It was iatrogenic.

Iatrogenic interventions are common in sport, too - such as when the coach tells a batsman to change his lifelong grip before making his Test debut. (Impossible? Exactly that happened to a friend of mine.) The angry team meeting is a classic iatrogenic intervention. Shouting at the team and vindictively blaming individual players, like bloodletting, provides the coach with the satisfying illusion that it works well sometimes. By "it works", we imply that the team in question played better after half-time or the following morning. Even having suffered an iatrogenic intervention, however, some teams - like some patients enduring bloodletting - inevitably play better afterwards. But on average, all taken together, teams would have playedbetter still without the distraction of a raging coach. (This insight helped win Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize, as I learned when I interviewed him.)

The great difficulty of sport, of course, is the challenge of conducting a proper control group experiment - because the game situation, pressures and circumstances are seldom exactly the same twice over. However, merely being open to the logic of these ideas, constantly exposing judgements and intuitions to critical thinking, takes decision-makers a good step in the direction of avoiding huge errors of conventional thinking.

That is why much of what Syed calls "black box thinking" could, I think, be filed under "critical thinking" - the desire to refine and improve one's system of thought as you are exposed to new experiences and ideas. Here is a personal rule of thumb: critical thinkers are also the best company over the long term. Critical thinkers are not only better bets professionally, they are also more interesting friends. Who wants to listen to the same set of unexamined views and sacrosanct opinions for decades? If you believe that your ideas don't ever need to evolve and adapt, can we at least skip dinner?

It is hard to imagine how anyone who is interested in leadership, innovation or self-improvement could fail to find something new and challenging in this book. Rather than presenting a simplistic catch-all solution, Syed takes us on a modern and personal walk through the scientific method. The book makes an interesting contrast with Syed's first book,Bounce, which proposed that talent is a myth - an argument that can be summed up in a single, seductive phrase: genius is a question of practice.

Rather than presenting a single idea, Black Box Thinking circles around a main theme - illustrating and illuminating it by drawing on a dizzyingly wide and eclectic series of ideas, case studies and lines of philosophical enquiry. The reader finishes the book with a deeper understanding of how he might improve and grow over the long term, rather than the transient feeling of having all his problems solved. The author, we sense, has experienced a similar journey while writing the book. Syed doesn't just preach black-box thinking, he practises it.