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Tuesday 15 April 2014

You can't control talent, only channel it


Jon Hotten in Cricinfo
Will we increasingly see players prefer private guidance over their team's coaching system?  © PA Photos
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Bubba Watson won the Masters golf tournament on Sunday, taking his second green jacket in three years. While he isn't quite in the league of Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, Watson is - as those two did before him - playing a game with which the rest of golf is unfamiliar; at least at the Augusta National. The distance he hits the ball (with a pink driver) and the extraordinary spins that he applies in order to shape his shots through the air, mean that he attacks the famous course entirely differently to everyone else. He has never had a coach, and what's more he's never had a lesson, which makes him rare among high-end golfers (and most hackers) - it is after all the sport that authored the phrase "paralysis by analysis".
Nicklaus himself was reflecting on this during a commentary stint, and he recalled his own coach, a man named Jack Grout, who would speak to him twice a year, usually in a couple of clipped sentences. "His whole philosophy," Nicklaus said, "was to enable me to correct my own mistakes on the golf course." 
One of sport's great archetypes is the aged and taciturn coach, the kind of man who will watch silently for half an hour and then impart, often via a single and devastating sentence, a thought that changes not just how you play the game, but how you see it. When John Jacobs, a golf coach who has been working for 60 years and who is possibly the most influential instructor in the sport, sat down to write his first book, he said: "I remember that the first thing I wrote down on paper was, 'Golf is what the ball does.' That was my breakthrough as a teacher. I look at what the ball's doing, and then I ask, 'Why?'"
Jacobs had distilled his philosophy down to one thought: you can learn everything you need to know about a player's swing by watching what the ball does once it has been struck. It's fantastically obvious and wonderfully true, and it applies equally well to cricket. All that matters is that moment when bat meets ball. You could discover how to coach anything by talking to John Jacobs.
He came to mind this weekend not just during the Masters, but when I read Neil Burns' angry and telling excoriation of cricket coaching in England on this site (and a somewhat terrifying first-person account from Rupert Williams, the father of a county triallist subjected to some sort of intensive PE course reinforced with nonsensical slogans and punishment press-ups).
Burns' piece should be taken as a whole, but there were some key threads. One was: The "teach yourself about yourself" philosophy still speaks loudly to all who aspire to become top performers - or as Nicklaus' coach had it all of those years ago, "being able to correct your own mistakes". Then there was a wider notion of: "More art, less science" - or as Jacobs put it, "Golf is what the ball does."
Burns likens the expansion of sports science and the growth of the "support systems" around international teams, counties and franchises to the cult of the manager in football, a valid comparison. There is one worth drawing with golf too. David Leadbetter's success with Nick Faldo, and Butch Harmon's with Woods, led indirectly to the development of a mini-industry of swing gurus, mind coaches, short-game experts and other potential saviours, an ecosystem that feeds on itself, producing endless ways to reframe old knowledge in new language.
From there it is a short step to the cycling coach Dave Brailsford's school of "marginal gains", where everything from the quality of bikes to the togs on the cyclists' duvets are micro-managed. None of these things are intrinsically wrong, but they depend on an ever-increasing complexity to survive. And then along comes a Usain Bolt or a Bubba Watson or a Virender Sehwag and the goalposts move again…
Golf, like any other sport, has its manufactured players. Faldo's partnership with Leadbetter made legends of them both, and Woods has undergone three major swing overhauls (in truth as much to lessen the damage to his body as to change his method), the most important of those with Harmon. It's easy to see a future in which superstar freelance batsmen discard the wider team coaching systems and use similar relationships - indeed, they already exist: Kevin Pietersen and Graham Ford, Alastair Cook and Graham Gooch; even Sachin Tendulkar and his brother Ajit, with whom he'd discuss each innings (and according to Sachin, sometimes each shot…).
Ultimately, sports like golf and cricket are games of skill. They are as much about art as science. Talent will out, and it cannot be controlled, only channelled. Any idiot can get fit. Not many people can bowl like Murali. That may not be an entirely appetising lesson for the coaching industry but it's one that must be absorbed, as Neil Burns points out.

Monday 14 April 2014

The Tendulkar Prism



In the 90s, Pakistan were just vastly better at cricket than India, and Pakistanis assumed it had always been so. They viewed Sachin Tendulkar as the leader of a group of wannabes and never-will-bes, not a match-winner. © AFP
In the 90s, Pakistan were just vastly better at cricket than India, and Pakistanis assumed it had always been so. They viewed Sachin Tendulkar as the leader of a group of wannabes and never-will-bes, not a match-winner. © AFP


Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from limited-overs cricket in December 2012 brought them out in full force. By the time he said goodbye to Test cricket, nearly a year later, they were tired and outnumbered, but clung desperately to their self-created bubble. Beyond the plethora of heartfelt eulogies was a world – mostly confined to the privacy of living rooms and online message boards – where Tendulkar wasn’t the God worshipped by a billion. Here, where contrarians and trolls live, he was far from the match-winner he was made out to be. Inevitably, this universe consisted overwhelmingly of Pakistanis. For a generation of them, Tendulkar’s career wasn’t just the story of arguably the greatest batsman of his era, and unarguably the biggest star in modern cricket, but the story of the prism through which Pakistanis saw their place in the world – though they’d be loathe to admit it.
It seems odd to argue that a foreign sportsman could have such a far-reaching influence on a country’s youth, but the view that Pakistanis had of India – and by extension of Tendulkar – is unique. Their attitude towards the Indian team was how Pakistanis proved they were Pakistani, as the post-Zia nation over the last three decades went from isolation, and in search of recognition, to a place the world knows about – not necessarily for the right reasons. It’s no coincidence that at the time the rest of the cricketing firmament prostrated before Tendulkar, a major Pakistani news channel ran a segment about how Javed Miandad, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf were each his equal.
The rejection of the Hindu – and by definition of India – was how you became Pakistani. From Pakistan’s first tour in 1952-53, when Test captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar took his team only to “monuments and museums that reflected Muslim glories in India, while ignoring the rest” – as described in Shashi Tharoor’s Shadows Across the Playing Fields – to their acceptance of Imran Khan’s opinion that Inzamam-ul-Haq was a better player of pace than Tendulkar, this view of India as the other is hardly restricted to cricket. Ayub Khan (the President of Pakistan 1958 to 1969) was a Sandhurst-trained army officer who said a Muslim soldier was equal to ten Hindu soldiers. He worried about how much of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was under “Hindu culture and influence.” Pakistani academic Aasim Sajjad Akhtar believes the country’s ideology “is an anti-Indian ideology. It’s a negation, rather than something that stands up on its own.” Defined by what one is not, rather than what one is.
I grew up in the 1990s, when everyone, barring elite Pakistanis, had access to only one source of news (beyond the dailies): the 9pm TV bulletin Khabarnama. Every day it began with the headlines, followed by the latest from around the country. Ten minutes in, we had the Kashmir update – this was our war, but it wasn’t being fought by us or in our cities (unlike the wars in the 2000s, which aren’t our wars – supposedly – but are being fought by us, in our streets). Popular Urdu literature for children at the time focused on the constant state of war Pakistan found themselves in – Afghanistan in the ’80s, Kashmir in the ’90s, and the whole world in the 2000s, if you read author Ishtiaq Ahmed. The only thing the children of the ’90s, regardless of class and economics, could agree on was that Pakistan was in danger and India was the enemy.
It is in this context that one has to consider Pakistan’s view of Tendulkar. Omar Kureishi, the late Pakistani journalist, once said the only two things that could unite his country were war and cricket – incidentally the only two areas in which Pakistan was directly pitted against its neighbour. For all the mistrust and animosity of India cultivated in us, there were no avenues to release it. The only interaction a Pakistani had then with anything Indian was cricket or Bollywood. The latter was overwhelmingly popular and could never be shunned by the majority; it was, and still is, a guilty pleasure. Uncles and aunties may complain all day about India’s soft power eroding Pakistani culture, and yet, the same uncles and aunties watch every Shah Rukh Khan film that hits the theatres. Thus, the cricket team was how one became Pakistani. As the world changed, the opinions shifted but never the ideologies – until 2004, when India toured Pakistan for the Friendship Series and we were struck by the realisation that those two decades of fostering hostility may have been for naught. History seemed irrelevant during that 40-day tour and India’s Lakshmipathy Balaji became an ironic icon.
But I digress. The Indian cricket team of the ’90s wasn’t even worthy of our revulsion; condescension was more apt. Ayub Khan may have been wrong about the inequality of soldiers but the inequality of the cricketers was obvious. From Javed Miandad hitting the six at Sharjah in 1986 until the 2003 World Cup, Pakistan’s ODI record against India read 44 wins and 21 losses – this is what we saw growing up. Pakistan were just better at cricket than India – and we assumed this had always been so. It was through this barometer that Tendulkar was judged – he was the leader of a group of wannabes and never-will-bes and, therefore, not a match-winner.
As if to lend credence to this hypothesis, Tendulkar didn’t exactly prove us wrong when India played Pakistan. Until that 2003 World Cup, he had scored just two centuries in 41 ODI innings against Pakistan – both in the space of a fortnight in 1996, hence lessening their impact, and one of them in a losing cause. He averaged in the mid-30s. Even more significant for the casual Pakistani fan was that both those hundreds came in the first innings of day games, a time when viewership is much lower than usual. Pakistanis had a simple formula by which they judged India: batting second in day/night matches. This scenario saw Pakistan play to their strength and viewership was at its maximum as well (add Friday in Sharjah to the picture and it would be the most stereotypical of Pakistan-India face-offs in the ’90s). It was here that Tendulkar struggled most. During this phase, he averaged under 30 in 21 innings – batting second against Pakistan – with no hundreds. India won only seven of these 21 matches, with Tendulkar scoring just three fifties. His role in this narrative served only to reinforce biases: India were hopeless at chasing and Tendulkar was not a match-winner.
Pakistan cricketers were macho; they were in-your-face, aggressive and only borderline legal. Tendulkar, on the contrary, was cherubic, slightly effeminate (in voice) and squeaky clean. © Getty Images
Pakistan cricketers were macho; they were in-your-face, aggressive and only borderline legal. Tendulkar, on the contrary, was cherubic, slightly effeminate (in voice) and squeaky clean. © Getty Images
By comparison, his greatest contemporary Brian Lara punished Pakistan like few others. Lara averaged over 50 batting second, and over 70 in games West Indies won – they won more games than they lost against Pakistan during this time. To a Pakistani, the Lara-Tendulkar debate was never a debate.
But why judge Tendulkar only on his record against Pakistan? For a parallel to this story, you have to look no further than Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s career (until 2012). During the 2006 football World Cup, the English-based Northern Irish manager Martin O’Neill called him the most overrated player in the world and this was accepted as the establishment line. Zlatan dominated the Italian game like few before him, yet the English believed he was far from world class because he never did it against them; a brace against Arsenal for Barcelona did not count, nor did winners in the Milan derby or the El Clásico have any affect. But then he scored four goals in 90 minutes against England (including that overhead kick) in 2012 and the English begrudgingly acknowledged his genius.
It was this line of thinking that Pakistani fans indulged in too. Our bowling attack was the best in the world – until you did it against them you weren’t worthy. The decade saw Pakistan boast probably the most complete generation of bowlers a country has ever had. Thus while the attitude smacked of superiority, unlike that of English football fans, it felt well-earned.
But it’s not merely what he did, but who he was, that alienated Pakistanis. Social conditioning had taught us that the way to live your life was to go for what you believed you deserved rather than waiting for it to come to you. Our cricketers, like our image of Pakistan, were macho; they were in-your-face, aggressive and only borderline legal. Tendulkar, on the contrary, was cherubic, slightly effeminate (in voice) and squeaky clean. While our players were standing in Justice Qayyum’s court to answer allegations of match-fixing, everyone in India was sure Tendulkar would never do such a thing. And it is no surprise that Pakistanis never warmed to Tendulkar. The two great heroes of the post-Wasim generation were Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akhtar. They were ephemeral, inconsistent, unorthodox and over the top. He was not.
Yet Tendulkar was much more than a cricketer. He became the face of post-liberalisation India – the rise of the country’s middle class coinciding with his own. In cricket writer Ayaz Memon’s words, “Tendulkar became a metaphor of what is now called the new India… where achievement, and reward, and fate all go hand in hand.” He also became the cornerstone of India’s growth as a cricketing power – on and off the field.
Lest we forget, Australia played only three series against India between 1981 and 1996 (and only one of them in India), while England visited India once between 1985 and 2000. The turn of the century saw an extraordinary rise in these match-ups, not only because India were now the cash cow, but because the Indian team with its newfound confidence – led by Tendulkar – had earned the respect of the cricketing world, except Pakistan perhaps. His debut series, the seventh between Pakistan and India in 11 years, was followed by a nine-year hiatus. At the peak of his career, India played only one Test series against Pakistan, and that series crystallised how Pakistanis saw him.
I refer, of course, to the three-Test series in 1999 (Pakistanis regard the first Test of the Asian Test Championship in February 1999 as the third of the series against India since it came immediately after the Kolkata and Chennai Tests earlier in the year – taking that result into account means Pakistan won the series 2-1 rather than drawing it 1-1). This series featured one of Tendulkar’s greatest Test innings. A fourth-innings masterpiece on a fifth-day pitch while batting with the lower order against Wasim, Waqar and Saqlain – that was how the world saw it. But across the border it was Tendulkar being the gallant batsman he always was and failing to win the match as he always did. The fact that this was his only 30-plus score in six innings of the series merely confirmed the bias: when India won Tendulkar didn’t play a part; India lost despite what he could offer.
***
Until the late 1990s, PTV (Pakistan Television), ruled the roost – except for those who could afford a satellite dish, or an array of similar but cheaper options which were almost always exclusive to Karachi. But the turn of the millennium saw the rise of cable television, providing a whole host of Indian channels. Within five years we went from watching whatever was available on one channel to complaining about not having anything to watch on 80. Among them were a pair of Indian sports networks which brought us the other perspective on Tendulkar and the Indian team. It didn’t take long for the Pakistani attitude towards India to become the same as the Irish attitude towards the English. The average Irishman can support any English football club he likes, but their national team is to be reviled – a dislike fuelled by the irritation with the one-eyed, jingoistic and hypocritical English media.
Cable television in Pakistan only took off after the turn of the millennia. Most of the nation never watched Tendulkar at his peak, when he took apart Shane Warne during the 1997-98 Border-Gavaskar Trophy and Operation Desert Storm soon after. © AFP
Cable television in Pakistan only took off after the turn of the millennium. Most of the nation never watched Tendulkar at his peak, when he took apart Shane Warne during the 1997-98 Border-Gavaskar Trophy and Operation Desert Storm soon after. © AFP
Much the same happened in Pakistan. Most of us never watched Tendulkar at his peak since those matches were never broadcast to the overwhelming majority of the country. We did not get to watch Tendulkar take apart Warne during the 1997-98 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, and Operation Desert Storm soon after was a performance most Pakistanis only read about. In Indian Cricket 2000, Raja Mukherjee described Tendulkar as someone who was “No Indian in his method.” He goes on to say, “His batsmanship was of the West Indian mould. Never before did an Indian treat the ball as he did. His method was aggression, his weapon, power. The niceties of grace and classic conventional technique were not for this valiant kid of the Nineties generation. He was born in independent India… he knew not the uncertainties, nor the enforced servility of the pre-independence era. He was born free, to chart his own course.” This was the Tendulkar that Pakistanis missed. All they saw was a man who struggled against one of the great attacks in limited-overs history, and then the run-machine he became in the second half of his career. But as the cablewalas multiplied, Pakistanis became acquainted with the Indian perception of Tendulkar.
Now, you could watch Indian matches, and you did: India’s failure was a victory in itself, and the greatest possible introduction to Schadenfreude. Every time Pakistan beat India, it tasted sweeter. Between the Sharjah series win in 1998 and the tri-nation series victory in 2008, India played 21 finals, of which they won one. One! Tendulkar averaged 26. Your argument, previously based on just matches against Pakistan, only gained strength as you watched Tendulkar fail in crucial games.
Except, right in the middle of this decade, came Centurion – the day most Indians would think Tendulkar settled the debate. But his performance was easily tossed aside as an aberration, against an ageing team that had been in inexorable decline for three years.
More than Tendulkar, it was Sehwag and his generation who frightened Pakistan. Tendulkar was just the same as he had been for the previous decade – to be respected and admired, but not feared. Which explains why, even after Centurion, the Pakistani view of Tendulkar hardly changed. Instead, the anomalies in his record became more important than the bigger picture. From that innings in 2003 to Mohali in 2011, Tendulkar had seven 50-plus scores against Pakistan – only two of those came in wins. He only scored one 100 in 11 Tests against Pakistan after 1999. Pakistanis have grown up with the idea that if a batsman scores a hundred the team was guaranteed a win. Tendulkar’s four great Pakistani contemporaries – Saeed Anwar, Inzamam, Yousuf and Younis – combined to score 51 ODI 100s, only seven of which resulted in losses. Three of Tendulkar’s five ODI 100s against Pakistan were in a losing cause. Of course, the one-eyed ignored the fact that Pakistan always had a better bowling attack than India did. Flip that stat to see the bigger picture and you realise that the four great Pakistanis combined to score two more ODI hundreds than Tendulkar did on his own. But for the non-believers, even this wouldn’t change their minds.
As Tendulkar retired, Pakistanis biases against him disappeared, at least on the surface. Beyond a couple of exceptions, the reaction to his retirement in Pakistan was overwhelmingly positive, almost sycophantic. © BCCI
As Tendulkar retired, Pakistanis biases against him disappeared, at least on the surface. Beyond a couple of exceptions, the reaction to his retirement in Pakistan was overwhelmingly positive, almost sycophantic. © BCCI
But as Tendulkar retired, those biases disappeared, at least on the surface. Beyond a couple of exceptions, the reaction to his retirement in Pakistan was overwhelmingly positive, almost sycophantic. It made sense too. Pakistan is no longer the country it was in the ’90s. No longer is it a paranoid local miscreant, some of whose citizens feel victimised: it is now a paranoid worldwide miscreant, all of whose citizens feel victimised. Since 9/11, and the beginning of the Afghan war, the anger is reserved for the United States rather than India. For the 2013 national elections, the two most popular centre-right parties in Pakistan called for peace and love towards India – a fact that went unnoticed outside war-mongering circles because of how small a deal it was.
It is no surprise that, despite the attacks in Mumbai, the past 12 years have been a relatively peaceful era in the countries’ histories. The media and technology boom may have provided platforms for hate-mongers on both sides, but it has also ensured a level of interaction that never existed before. Perhaps peace is impossible, but coexistence seems achievable.
These developments may have resulted in the Tendulkar of 2013 being respected far more than the Tendulkar of 1998 – though he was now a lesser player. In the end, he played for so long that he was still around by the time the Pakistani attitude towards India changed – well, almost. There can be no greater proof of Tendulkar’s longevity and greatness than that.

Sunday 13 April 2014

Gujarat is India’s top state in economic freedom

S A Aiyer in the Times of India

Does Narendra Modi actually have a great Gujarat model, or just wellpackaged hype? Critics say that Gujarat has grown fast, but some others have grown faster. 

The Raghuram Rajan Committee on development indicators says Gujarat’s social indicators are just middling. Looking at children of class 3-5 who can do subtraction, Gujarat has declined from 22nd among 28 states in 2006 to 23rd in 2012. However, economist Arvind Panagariya argues that Gujarat has made substantial social progress under Modi, starting from a low base. 

Forget this debate. Neither growth nor social indicators are accurate measures of Modi’s main election plank — good governance. Measuring governance is difficult, and hence neglected by statisticians. Yet it’s all-important. One annual report has long provided indicators of governance. This is Economic Freedom of the States of India (EFSI), written by Bibek Debroy, Laveesh Bhandari and me. The 2013 EFSI report shows Gujarat has been No. 1 in economic freedom for the last three years, widening its lead over others. On a scale from 0 to 1, its overall freedom score has improved from 0.46 to 0.65. Tamil Nadu comes a distant second with 0.54. Economic freedom is not identical to good governance. But lack of economic freedom typically means poor governance — a jungle of rules and obfuscating bureaucrats that promote corruption, delay and harassment. This hits everybody from farmers and consumers to industrialists and transporters. 

What exactly is economic freedom? EFSI uses a methodology adapted from Economic Freedom of the World, an annual publication of the Fraser Institute. Data for Indian states is not available on many issues. So, EFSI limits itself to 20 indicators of the size and efficiency of state governments, their legal structure and property rights, and regulation of labour and business. 

Many of these indicators directly measure governance — the proportion of stolen property recovered; proportion of judicial vacancies; proportion of violent crimes; proportion of investigations completed by police and of cases completed by the courts; and the pendency rate of corruption cases. The list is by no means comprehensive, but provides strong clues

Gujarat is the best state in pendency of corruption cases, and in the proportion of non-violent crime. It is close to the top in completion of police investigations. It scores poorly in judicial vacancies and recovery of stolen property. 

Its quality of government spending is high: it has the lowest ratio of administrative GDP to total GDP. Spending is focused on infrastructure rather than staff. Modi’s repeated state election victories show that his approach produces high voter satisfaction. Gujarat is not a classical free-market state. It has large, expanding public sector companies, and substantial taxes on capital and commodities. It has many subsidies, though fewer than in other states. Still, business thrives in its business-friendly climate. One businessman told me that in Tamil Nadu, it took six months and several visits (and payments) to ministries for industrial approval. But in Gujarat, the ministry concerned called him the day before his appointment, asking for details of his proposal. Next day, he found the bureaucracy had in advance prepared plans of possible locations for his project, and settled the matter on the spot. This was unthinkable elsewhere, and showed both efficiency and honesty. Corruption has not disappeared in Gujarat, but is muted. 

Modi’s Jyotigram scheme provides 24/7 electricity for rural households, plus reliable power at fixed times for tubewells. This explains why Gujarat has India’s fastest agricultural growth (10%/year for a decade, say economists Gulati and Shah). Indian agriculture is crippled by regulations, but Gulati shows that Gujarat has the highest agricultural freedom among states. Modi charges farmers for power, and so all his three state power companies are profitable. By contrast, power companies in other states with free rural power have accumulated losses of almost Rs 200,000 crore. 

Critics accuse him of giving cheap land to favoured industrialists. But state and national governments the world over use such sops to attract industries. Unlike most politicians, Modi has clearly not enriched himself. 

Good governance includes communal peace. So, the 2002 Muslim killings reflect terribly on Modi. For some, it puts him beyond the pale. But since 2002 the state has been peaceful. In 2011-12 , Gujarat had the lowest Muslim rural poverty rate among all states. Its overall poverty rate for Muslims (11.4%) was far lower than for Hindus (17.6%). This was also true of six other states, so Gujarat is not unique in this. 
In sum, EFSI and other studies show that Gujarat has good governance. It has social and communal flaws. But it is India’s top state in economic and agricultural freedom. That’s not hype.

Adultery is good for your marriage – if you don’t get caught, says infidelity website boss


As global membership to the world’s biggest infidelity site soars to over 24 million, its founder explains the international appeal of adultery

Noel Biderman is the Canadian founder of Ashley Madison, a controversial but globally popular adultery website that connects married men and women and discretely enables them to have affairs
Noel Biderman is the Canadian founder of Ashley Madison, a controversial but globally popular adultery website that connects married men and women and discretely enables them to have affairs Photo: Rex
He receives regular death threats, websites are devoted to his demise, the Vatican has sent letters of complaint and the Queen of Spain has sued him.
The man in question is not a criminal, a terrorist or a dictator. Instead, he is the businessman behind the world’s biggest website for extramarital affairs.
Noel Biderman is the Canadian founder of Ashley Madison, a controversial but globally popular adultery website that connects married men and women and discretely enables them to have affairs.
Famed for its catchy motto – “Life is short. Have an affair” – the dating service is free for women but paying for men. Its array of features include virtual “winks”, instant messaging and “travelling” services for members seeking an affair during business trips.
Its mobile app uses GPS technology to track down the nearest available potential lover.  
The website is currently in the throes of a rapid global expansion: since launching in Canada on Valentine’s Day in 2002, it has attracted more than 24 million members in 37 countries, with South Korea launched last week.
Mr Biderman, 42, is a man clearly used to defending his business. In an interview with The Telegraph last week during a visit to Japan – the fastest growing country in terms of membership – he reeled out a string of polished reasons as to why infidelity is the way of the modern world.
“Infidelity exists in every culture in the world,” said Mr Biderman, who refers to himself as the “Emperor of Infidelity”. “There’s no place you can point to on the planet where there is no unfaithfulness.
“In the lifetime of a relationship, on the male side, close to 70 or 80 per cent of men are going to be unfaithful at some point or another in their marriages. And the female side is incredibly on the rise – it’s well past 40 per cent.”
This appears to be the case in Britain in particular. Since the UK launch four years ago, more than 825,000 members have joined – in particular, married women aged between 38 and 42.
The computer screen displays the 'online personals and casual encounters' website of Asley Madison (Getty)
“Our brand really resonates well with a married woman, 15 plus years into her marriage who doesn’t feel that celibacy should slip into the marriage at this time,” he said.
Japan is another success story, with one million members joining within nine months of its launch last summer.
“It seems to me that culturally, this region does the best at separating sex and marriage,” added Mr Biderman. “You can do sex outside marriage much more liberally here. That’s not to say that they don’t present a traditional face, as most societies do. But I think that if we had to measure the infidelity economy in Japan, it’s incredibly sizeable.”
The reasons for soaring infidelity around the world are multiple, according to Mr Biderman.
The site is particularly popular in recession-hit nations such as Spain, while affluent communities with large disposable incomes are also major players in the “infidelity economy”.
But Mr Biderman ultimately believes that the human race is simply not biologically programmed to remain faithful – and that this can be good for a marriage.
“People have affairs because we’re not engineered for monogamy,” he said. “Monogamy didn’t come about from some great scientific research. If anything, the current social science tells us the opposite.
“That the longer the couple is together, invariably, after six months, their sexual encounters decrease, two years, they decrease even further. Twenty years into a relationship, we’re no longer sexually attracted.”
Needless to say, the company is rarely far from controversy. Mr Biderman has incurred the wrath of the Pope, with the Vatican sending a disapproving letter to Ashley Madison in opposition to its sponsorship of Rome’s basketball club Virtue Roma.
More recently, Singapore’s government banned the site, following a public outcry against its “flagrant disregard” for public morality. Mr Biderman plans to challenge the ban in court.
In response to claims of amorality, he believes that precise act of having an affair – without getting caught – can actually help save a marriage, the only other option normally being divorce.
“There was tons of infidelity before I got here,” he said. “The only encouragement I give is to say to people, there is a way to have the perfect affair.
“So the perfect affair is not only meeting someone like-minded, it’s also not being discovered. That’s what I’ve built: a platform where everybody here has put up their hand and said I’m interested in an affair, and the technology to keep it discrete.”
Perhaps most surprising are Mr Biderman’s revelations about his own private life: monogamously married for 10 years with two children, he describes his wife as unwaveringly supportive.
However, he candidly admits she does not share his views on infidelity: “If in the next decade, my sex life evaporates, I have no interest in being celibate.
“Because I have these wonderful children, an extended family I cherish, great economic success and homes – I have not worked for all of that just for sex. I wouldn’t get a divorce, therefore, if that happened, I’d try to have an affair."