Wisden India Almanack 2016

By Suresh Menon

Wisden has grown through the years to embrace innovation and maintain its status as the most revered and cherished brand in cricket. The 'Bible of Cricket', Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been published every year since 1864. Wisden's Cricketers of the Year Awards, one of the oldest honours in the sport, dates back to 1889. The Almanack, known for editorial excellence, has been a perennial bestseller in the UK. The fourth edition with India-specific content is even more engrossing.


Contributors include Ramachandra Guha, Ian Chappell, Ajit Wadekar, Amol Rajan, Osman Samiuddin, Dileep Premachandran, Prashant Kidambi, Ruchir Joshi, Rajdeep Sardesai, Akash Chopra, Jarrod Kimber, and Jack Hobbs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Feb 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9789384898281

Book preview

Reviews of the 2015 Edition

The Indian Almanack is truly a remarkable work of scholarship and full of interest. I shall take it with me to the Arctic, where we are bound next week, and spend many happy hours with it in the warmth (I hope) of the ship’s bar.

– Ian Plenderleith

Wisden India Almanack has, in a short time, become part of our cricketing landscape.

– Javagal Srinath

Read the Almanack for the features and the quirks, the oddities that give cricket – and Wisden – its character.

– ESPNcricinfo

Wisden India’s domestic coverage is phenomenal, people are aware of it.

– J Arun Kumar

Such a rich amalgamation of facts in one edition is a mind-boggling exercise. And to put it all in with such panache makes the edition special.

– Tehelka

I’ve thought for years that there should be an Indian Wisden.

– Frank Tyson

A mix of the scholarly and something for the common man.

– Deccan Chronicle

Balanced and refined analysis, opinions, perspectives, reflections and tributes are strung together with an unforced cadence.

– New Indian Express

There is romance, indulgence and mild cynicism but above all, the book is about the delicately placed phrase, the right word, the pithy observation and the wry humour.

– The Hindu

The book touches upon many sides of the sport through a smorgasbord of perceptive writers … those who enjoy a good read will savour the pages.

– Deccan Herald

EDITED BY SURESH MENON

4th Edition

John Wisden & Co.

JOHN WISDEN & CO.

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © John Wisden & Company Limited 2016

WISDEN INDIA ALMANACK

Editor Suresh Menon

Senior Copy Editor Karunya Keshav

Senior Staff Writer Sidhanta Patnaik

Lead Designer Ashish Mohanty

Reader feedback: [e-mail]

www.wisdenindia.com; www.wisden.com

Follow Wisden India on Twitter@wisdenindia and on Facebook at Wisden India

Wisden, Wisden India and the device/logo of two cricketers in top hats are

trademarks of John Wisden and Company Ltd, a fully owned subsidiary of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Published in India by Bloomsbury India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission

in writing from the publishers

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on or refraining

from action as result of the material in this publication can be accepted by

Bloomsbury India or the author/editor

General legal notice: Wisden India is a collaboration between

John Wisden and Company Ltd,

a fully owned subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and FW Sports and

Media India Private Limited, an affiliate of FidelisWorld, FZ LLC

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Ltd

Vishrut Building, DDA Complex, Building No. 3

Pocket C-6 & 7, Vasant Kunj

New Delhi 110 070

Hard cover ISBN 978 93 84898 30 4

Soft cover ISBN 978 93 84898 29 8

Leatherbound ISBN 978 93 84898 31 1

A Taste of Wisden India 2016

During my entire career, I was never able to make out the inswing from the outswing and the googly from the legbreak.

Vijay Merchant, Page 200

…

Risk changes gradually and slightly; what can change in a blink is our perception of it.

Gideon Haigh, Page 62

…

Sivaji Ganesan and Sowcar Janaki are inextricably entwined with cricket in my mind.

Naseeruddin Shah, Page 76

…

(To claim) a catch they haven’t made is like someone who enjoys a restaurant meal with friends but then sneaks off without paying.

David Papineau, Page 72

…

He loved his cattle and happily shared bovine trivia with his bemused team-mates.

Mike Coward, Page 58

…

India must learn to take care of their fast bowlers.

Michael Holding, Page 54

…

The financial rewards today are a bit different from the thirty dollars a week I got on my first tour of England.

Richard Hadlee, Page 52

…

One of the IPL’s core strengths is the very attribute that the traditionalist despises it for: that it is not cricket.

Sambit Bal, Page 43

Art of spin: India won the First Test against South Africa in Mohali by 108 runs.

Detailed reports of the series in the next edition of Wisden India Almanack. – BCCI

PREFACE

The Cricketer of the Year is an established Wisden tradition. Runs and wickets in the aggregate, impact on the game, influence on teams played for, longevity and much more go into the selection by the editor. Yet, the player is only one of the arms of the game, even if its most important. There are people off the pitch who sometimes cause a change in the way the game is played, or enhance its essential elements of fairplay, grace and spirit.

‘Beyond the Boundary’, a new feature this edition, recognises such contributions. It is not for players, or at least not current players, but might include officials, rule-changers, writers, umpires, pitch-makers and so on. Our first choice is Justice Mukul Mudgal, for his painstaking investigations that established owners of two teams in the IPL had bet on the outcome of matches. He thus opened the gates for reform in the BCCI. It took the Supreme Court of the country to bring about change in the moribund functioning of the national body and suggest for the first time in years that winds, or at least a gentle zephyr, of change might be around the corner.

Change is in the air on field too. This is the feeling I get with night Test cricket – in the future as I write this, but to have receded into the past by the time you read it – and the possibility of cricket viewership being turned on its head. The move will follow the path taken by cricket’s innovations: from opposition to criticism to acceptance to full-throated support. It will change the texture of the sport; we have seen enough night matches to know they are nothing like day matches.

In the midst of change, the Wisden India Almanack remains a constant, bringing you the range from the profound to the quirky, the statistical to the personal. My thanks to UAE Exchange, our principal sponsors, who are in our corner for the second year now.

My deep gratitude to Karunya Keshav and Sidhanta Patnaik for their mix of passion and professionalism, and to Ashish Mohanty who continues to breathe life into ideas. Thanks to P Jayapal for his contributions to the statistical sections and to Shivmeet Deol for her inputs. Thanks also to friends at Wisden India, in particular Dileep Premachandran, Anand Vasu, R Kaushik and Shamya Dasgupta.

Thanks to Rajiv Beri, Mahendra Lodha and Arvind Booni of Bloomsbury India and in the UK Richard Charkin, Charlotte Atyeo, Hugh Chevalier, Christopher Lane and Lawrence Booth. Thanks to Fidelis World in Dubai.

Special thanks, as always, to my wife Dimpy and son Tushar.

SURESH MENON

Bangalore, November 2015

CONTENTS

Part 1 – Comment

Wisden India Honours

Notes by the Editor

Great, greater, greatest by Simon Barnes

No limits to audacity by Rahul Bhattacharya

The game isn’t above the law by Sambit Bal

The good guys who win by Richard Hadlee

Pace of change by Michael Holding

A family wept by Mike Coward

Chance will have its say by Gideon Haigh

The philosopher’s calling by Samir Chopra

Code of the ‘cheaters’ by David Papineau

Collector’s edition by Naseeruddin Shah

WISDEN INDIA HALL OF FAME

Vijay Merchant by Madhav Apte

BS Chandrasekhar by Bishan Bedi

When Benaud spoke spin by R Mohan

SIX CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

R Ashwin by Sidharth Monga

R Vinay Kumar by Sidhanta Patnaik

Younis Khan by Ahmed Naqvi

Dhammika Prasad by R Kaushik

Mashrafe Mortaza by Mohammad Isam

Joe Root by Stephen Brenkley

BEYOND THE BOUNDARY

Justice Mukul Mudgal by Suresh Menon

The unorthodox and the unusual by Dileep Premachandran

Maverick solutions by Paddy Upton

The IPL copycats by Karunya Keshav

Little Master, Disco Dancer and Saheb by Tom Alter

FAREWELL

The Zak edge beyond left-arm seam by Sidhanta Patnaik

An Original by Suresh Menon

Exit, stage World Cup by Clayton Murzello

Second Mount Everest to climb by Tim Wigmore

Test of India’s T20 triumphalism by R Kaushik

Godfather in a safari suit by Shamya Dasgupta

Where are the Indian umpires? by Vijay Lokapally

Sign of a good book by VR Ferose

Part 2 – Recorded history

Accidents in cricket by KV Gopala Ratnam

My most memorable innings by Mushtaq Ali

‘Jamsu’ – the forgotten cricketer by Vasant Raiji

Havoc in the Caribbean by KN Prabhu

The Test grounds I know by NS Ramaswami

Vish fulfilment by Sunil Gavaskar

Cliques and caucuses by DB Deodhar

VIJAY MERCHANT ON THE GREATS

How Gavaskar differs from me

Bedi vis-a-vis Mankad

Part 3 – Domestic Review

INDIAN CRICKET

Karnataka repeat sweep; spin sidelined by Sidhanta Patnaik

Duleep Trophy

Vijay Hazare Trophy

Deodhar Trophy

Ranji Trophy

Karun fought inner demons for triple-ton by J Arun Kumar

Irani Cup by Sidhanta Patnaik

The team that cracked the formula by Vedam Jaishankar

Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy

Indian Premier League by Shamya Dasgupta

CK Nayudu Trophy (Under-23)

Vinoo Mankad Trophy (Under-19)

Avenues open for in-form Garhwal by Vijay Lokapally

Cooch Behar Trophy (Under-19)

Vinoo Mankad Inter-Zonal Tournament (Under-19)

Vijay Merchant Trophy (Under-16)

Vizzy Trophy (Inter-Zonal University)

WOMEN’S CRICKET

Raw and raring to go by Snehal Pradhan

Inter-State One-Day Competition

Inter-State Twenty20 Competition

Inter-Zonal Two-Day Competition

Challenger Trophy

Inter-State One-Day Competition (Under-19)

Inter-Zonal Two-Day Competition (Under-19)

BCCI Awards 2014-15 (Winners of 2013-14 Season)

Pakistan cricket by Mazher Arshad

Sri Lanka cricket by Andrew Fernando

Bangladesh cricket by Quazi Zulquarnain Islam

UAE cricket by Paul Radley

Rest of Asia by Paul Radley

Winners around the globe

Part 5 – Reviews and Records

Cricket Books by Zenodotus

Obituaries

Chronicles

RECORDS

Test matches

One-day internationals

T20 internationals

First-class

Ranji Trophy

Indian Test cricketers

Wisden India Honours Board

Selections from the website

SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

All statistics are valid through September 30, 2015.

FIRST-CLASS MATCHES

Men’s matches of three or more days’ duration are first-class unless otherwise stated. All other matches are not first-class, including one-day and Twenty20 internationals.

SCORECARDS AND RECORDS

Where full scorecards are not provided in this book, they can be found at Cricket Archive (cricketarchive.com), Wisden India (wisdenindia.com) or ESPNcricinfo (espncricinfo.com).

More records can be found at www.wisdenrecords.com. The online records database is regularly updated and, in many instances, more detailed than in Wisden India Almanack 2016.

Cover: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Getty Images); Back cover: Kumar Sangakkara after Sri Lanka’s win over India in the First Test at Galle, August 2015, in his penultimate Test. (AFP/Getty Images)

PART ONE

Comment

Wisden India Honours

WISDEN INDIA HALL OF FAME

---

We honour sportspersons in various ways; by naming streets, roundabouts and stadiums after them, by instituting trophies in their memory, by turning them into adjectives (‘Bradmansque’), by arguing, generation after generation, over the relative merits of our heroes. The most enduring and dignified method in recent years has been to induct the best into the Hall of Fame. It is the concept – often a virtual ‘hall’ – that is the honour, not the bricks-and-mortar building.

In its fourth year, Wisden India is happy to announce the names of two players inducted into the Wisden India Hall of Fame:

Vijay Merchant (Page 77)

BS Chandrasekhar (Page 80)

This, along with the Six Cricketers of the Year (see below) is a Wisden India annual feature.

---

SIX CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year – a tradition dating back to 1899 in the original Almanack – is given a subcontinental flavour in Wisden India Almanack. The six cricketers are picked by the editor, the selection based on the players’ positive impact on the season under review. It is necessary to highlight the distinction since in recent years, some players who have made an impact have done so for the wrong reasons. Negative impact does not count.

This year the list includes two Indians, and one player each from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The sixth player is from outside the subcontinent.

R Ashwin (Page 86)

R Vinay Kumar (Page 88)

Younis Khan (Page 91)

Dhammika Prasad (Page 94)

Mashrafe Mortaza (Page 113)

Joe Root (Page 115)

---

WISDEN INDIA BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket by Osman Samiuddin (Page 724)

The Book of the Year is selected by the reviewer. All cricket books published between October 1 and September 30 submitted to Wisden India for possible review are eligible. Of this year’s winner, our reviewer wrote: It is one of the most significant books to emerge from the subcontinent… There is passion here, knowledge, and a wonderful lightness of touch..

Notes by the Editor

Narayanswami Srinivasan is looking forward to improving his golf handicap, which, at the age of 70 is not a bad ambition to nurse. He was close to the single digits, but his other ambition – that of continuing as the most powerful man in cricket – kept coming in the way. In a move that was expected once the Supreme Court had initiated a clean-up, Srinivasan lost his job as president of the BCCI, and soon after, chairman of the ICC.

This may or may not be the end of the Srinivasan era in cricket – too many elements in the new dispensation are unhappy about how the code regarding the conflict of interest might bite them – but it might signal the start of a new phase of accountability and transparency. Or at least, that’s the hope.

Cricket owes India’s Supreme Court a debt of gratitude. First the Justice Mukul Mudgal Commission confirmed the BCCI was corrupt, then the Justice Lodha Committee suspended two IPL teams (Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals) and worked on the recommendations to streamline the Board’s functioning. At the time of going to press, this latter is still awaited, but considering the haste with which the BCCI rushed about second guessing the reforms-to-come, there is acknowledgement of problems where earlier there had been only denial.

Many of the initial decisions taken – annual contracts for women cricketers, the appointment of an ombudsman to adjudicate on ethical issues and the removal from their posts of some former players – might have been seen as what economists call green shoots were it not for the lack of consistency in the application of norms. Some animals continue to be more equal than others.

Conflict of interest is the phrase that has haunted the BCCI at least since 2008 when Srinivasan, with a cavalier disregard for propriety, got the rule changed to allow him to field a team in the IPL. New president Shashank Manohar’s energies were concentrated on handling this problem, but in applying the rule book selectively, he may have given rise to fresh doubts. The deadlines of this Almanack being far tighter than the BCCI’s, all we can say at this stage is, let’s hope things get sorted out quickly and clarity in the rules and their interpretation follow.

Board officials run private cricket clinics, some cricketers, past and present, have stakes in player management companies, some officials have business contracts with the BCCI, making the whole issue one of the biggest stimulators of corruption. It has benefited members for decades now, and the cosy arrangement might have continued but for the intervention of the Supreme Court.

Is it logical to expect a sports body that has dealt in opaqueness and secrecy traditionally to suddenly turn transparent? After all, the personnel are the same, and the tradition is ingrained. Even former players who come in with laudable ideas tend to adapt the flexibility necessary to fit in rather than attempt to fight what might be long and lonely battles.

There is cause for optimism, however. In October, the BCCI appointed Pricewaterhouse Coopers to look into how its member associations utilised the funds distributed. The fact that for years sums in the region of £4million-5million pounds were distributed annually without any mechanism to check how it was spent gives a hint to how the board functioned through a system of favour and patronage.

The annual report is now available on the board’s website as are some of its financials, with the balance sheet to follow.

But there’s more to be done, not all of it having to do with transparency. Two areas that cry out for reform are the election process at different centres and spectator comfort at match venues. Somehow in all the years that the game and its administration have evolved in India, the one complaint that has not gone away has been the state of the stadia and the often miserable conditions in which the paying spectator is forced to watch the game.

Prices of food and water are prohibitive, but many are forced to buy these at the stadia because for security reasons, spectators are often not allowed to bring anything in. Surely the BCCI can subsidise these. It demands and gets exorbitant amounts from the sellers who then pass on the burden to the spectators. The Indian fan has been putting up with terrible conditions for long simply for the love of the game. He deserves better.

Lack of uniformity in the election process means that in some associations, it is the clubs who vote in the administrators, in others it is the individual members who have the power. Sometimes it is the districts who matter. Then there is, as in Delhi, the loathsome proxy system which has effectively kept the deserving out consistently.

Manohar has a lot on his plate. Getting rid of Srinivasan might be seen as a triumph, but the former president did contribute to the growth of the game and its players. The one-time pension plan that made millionaires of former players and lifted many out of penury was commendable. As a Test cricket man, he ensured that despite the IPL and T20, India never missed out on Test cricket, even playing a five-Test series in England, a rarity these days outside the Ashes.

It wasn’t his administrative skills that let him down, but the attempts to cover up for his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan’s betting on his IPL team. The Supreme Court gave Srinivasan a clean chit on betting. Hubris led to his downfall. But then he had the support of most of the current dispensation.

The fall of Srinivasan can be seen as a morality tale. Or as the inevitable climax to a narrative where one man’s intransigence meant that a higher power had to be invoked.

Why more Test grounds?

At its first meeting under Manohar, the BCCI decided to grant Test status to half a dozen grounds, including the home turf of its secretary, Anurag Thakur. This is bizarre. Test cricket has been played on 21 grounds already; adding another six to that list owes more to BCCI politics than cricketing logic.

What India needs is fewer and better grounds, not more grounds that are equally unfriendly to the paying spectator. A family outing for an international in India is not the joyous occasion it is in many other parts of the world. The focus ought to be on making it so.

But more grounds mean more votes – if that is how the new BCCI continues to function, then it will soon be indistinguishable from the old BCCI.

One way to deal with it might be to have a promotion and relegation plan. Grounds that meet the standards – say, six or eight – should be given Test status with the understanding that if they fail to, then they will be replaced by others. That will mean no centre takes its status for granted and also that the spectator wins, and that’s the best victory of all.

Conflict of Interest

In April, Shyam Charan Gupta, a member of the Parliamentary Committee of Subordinate Legislation looking into the rules regarding tobacco sale in the country, told the Parliament that smoking was harmless and didn’t lead to any health problems. Gupta was known as the ‘beedi baron’, his beedi business being worth Rs 2500 million. To have a man in the tobacco trade sit on a committee to decide the future of tobacco sales in the country is an example of how Indians deal with conflict of interest. Mostly, they don’t recognise it. Four years earlier, a private member had introduced a Conflict of Interest Bill in Parliament, but it didn’t get anywhere.

When Regulation 6.2.4 (No administrators shall have directly or in-directly any commercial interest in the Board’s matches and events) was altered in 2008 to exclude IPL and Champions League T20 from its purview, it meant Srinivasan could become the BCCI president despite the conflict of interest while running his company India Cements and thus owning the Chennai Super Kings team.

It took six years and several court rulings before Srinivasan’s manipulation finally got its comeuppance. You cannot legislate away conflict of interest – it exists even if you create rules saying that it does not matter.

As Rajeev Dhawan, the Supreme Court lawyer, pointed out, Conflict of interest plagues Indian governance. Doctors are linked to pharma and equipment corporates, administrative officers with covert deals and contractors, judges with investment and so on. The point is that such conflicts of interest are bad not just because they lead to corruption or maladministration, but inherently bad and inimical to governance. It should not be necessary to show actual bias or consequential corruption.

Cricket India?

I concede I might have become a bit of a bore on the subject. But I think it is long past the time when the Indian cricket board dropped the ‘Control’ from its name. Other countries that had the word in their names have dropped it, opting for something shorter and sharper. New Zealand Cricket, for example, or Cricket South Africa. If the ‘Control’ has remained in order to tell the players who is in charge, then that’s all the more reason for dropping it. How about Indian Cricket? Or Cricket India? While Manohar wields the new broom, here’s another anachronism he could sweep away.

Batting full circle

Even in a tournament containing some of the biggest hitters in the game, Abraham Benjamin de Villiers stood out at the World Cup. He did not merely use the grammar of the game to compose its fastest innings; he altered the grammar itself.

De Villiers has gone beyond the manual and the manic. He is the game’s first 360-degree player, as capable of hitting a fast bowler over his head onto the sightscreen as of swinging him over the wicketkeeper’s head onto the other sightscreen.

To do what he does requires fitness, flexibility, eye, ball sense, lightness of foot and heaviness of bat. Against Sohail Khan in the Pakistan game, he got into position so quickly he actually played a straight drive to midwicket. His positional play is as rich and as varied as that of a Grandmaster’s in chess. The amazing footwork draws the bowler into following him with the ball, and thus falling into a trap since the ball is always within reach.

De Villiers ensures he is balanced at all times. Bradman must have moved thus in the Bodyline series, to hit the fast bowlers attacking his rib cage past point and cover. Bradman handled the predictable in an unpredictable way. De Villiers handles the unpredictable in an unpredictable way.

Rather like a smartphone fair or a car exhibition, the World Cup is the natural stage for exhibiting the latest in the game. This is the future, and AB de Villiers has brought us here.

The toss

The suggestion from Ricky Ponting, the former Australian skipper, to do away with the toss in cricket might sound like a practical solution for an uncomfortable problem, but it is misplaced.

The toss is a tribute to the element of luck that is at the base of cricket. Even those who are in control of their destiny – the great batsman, the successful bowler – know the role of chance in their performance. The toss merely acknowledges this.

Ponting’s suggestion: Forget the toss of a coin. Simply let the visiting team look at the pitch on every occasion and decide what they want to do, might inspire groundsmen to prepare sporting wickets (or alterna-tively, bland ones), but it takes away something from the game.

Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead begins with the protagonists tossing a coin, and teasing out a whole philosophy based on the fact that Rosencratz calls ‘heads’ and wins 92 times in a row. No cricket captain quite managed that rate of success, and however fondly players talk of the law of averages, the fact remains that the probability of a coin falling one way or the other is exactly 50-50 regardless of what went before.

There is a charm about the toss in cricket that moors it to a time when unpredictability was built in to the game. It is a reminder of what might have been, even if occasionally it merely tells us what will be.

Cricket at the Olympics

For some time now, there has been a real possibility of a split in the International Cricket Council, or at least the formation of a breakaway body for T20 comprising the Associate and Affiliate members. This is partly owing to the unintended consequences of the Big Three (India, England, Australia) dividing up world cricket to their benefit.

There are 38 Associate members and 57 Affiliate members. That’s 95 countries, which, as a bloc, might be assumed to have bargaining power. But this is the ICC. There are ten Full members, of whom the Big Three are in a higher category, supreme members, perhaps. They decide what’s good for the 95 others. The Associates don’t get enough opportunities.

An international T20 federation focused on getting the Associates more games, greater say and more money that would follow a place in the Olympics, has always sounded logical. Even inevitable, given the indifference exhibited by most of the Test-playing countries.

There have been whispers about some of the 95 forming their own international governing body specifically for T20. It might mean being banned by the ICC, but most would take that chance since playing Test cricket in the near future is not on the cards anyway. And if the Inter-national Olympic Committee accepts the T20 federation, then it would matter less.

All this is assuming, of course, that the International Olympic Committee is keen to have cricket in its fold. It will decide in 2017 if the game can be accommodated in 2024.

If the full national teams cannot be fielded for the Olympics, cricket could do with Under-23 teams representing the countries. This is not unheard of – soccer does it, for example, and there were no complaints about it interrupting anybody’s season. More significantly, the move will open up government funding for the lesser teams, for one. And for another, it will mean more international matches. In short, no skin off the ICC’s nose. Yet, it continues to demur.

Another look at the DRS

The ICC’s decision to get DRS tested by an independent body might be a case of putting the cart before the horse, since the system has been in place for some years now without proper testing. But better late than never, to continue our dip into the book of clichés.

Thakur, the BCCI secretary, has suggested that India might exclude the lbw decisions and adapt the DRS without it.

The BCCI’s uncompromising stand might have led to the first proper testing of the accuracy of DRS at the Massachussets Institute of Technology.

Anil Kumble, chairman of the ICC’s Cricket Committee, is happy things are now on track. He and Geoff Allardice, general manager, cricket, had discussions with the engineers at MIT. What we want to understand, as the system moves towards total reliability, is how it functions under extreme conditions, and what variables affect it, according to Kumble. MIT is focusing on ball-tracking and edge-detection.

Perfection was always an unrealistic ambition. To predict the accurate behaviour of a ball with its varying speed, spin, swing, torque, flight, changing shape, in different weather and pitch conditions is impossible, and maybe even unnecessary. The idea is to get as many decisions right as possible, and eliminate the howlers.

Uncertainty is built into cricket. When a portion of the cricket ball is shown clipping the leg stump, is the decision always right? Yet viewers accept it without reservation. Such is the power of television. Repetition has solidified our trust in the medium. This is the fallacy of authority that technology inspires in us. Repeat uncertainties often enough and they become certainties.

A physicist will tell you that any system that is predictive is inherently flawed because you cannot tell with precision where a free particle will go when unobstructed. Hawk-Eye tells you where the ball has pitched, the rest is statistics. The greater the amount of information fed into the system, greater will be the accuracy. In England and Australia, cameras take 250 pictures per second, so there is better orientation. Other countries sometimes use 50, lowering the reliability.

Accuracy also depends on factors, like ground condition, quality of the television made available to the third umpire (Daryl Harper once couldn’t make a decision because, as he said, he couldn’t see the ball on TV), efficiency of the technicians and umpires, height of cameras behind the bowler’s arm – some of these can be factored into the system; others fail with human fallibility.

South Africa’s Graeme Smith was once reprieved in a Test at the Wan-derers because the third umpire did not turn up the volume on his stump microphone! Australia’s Usman Khawaja was given out caught behind at Old Trafford even after the DRS showed he had not touched the ball.

As MIT fixes some of the kinks, it will be possible to understand how the system is to be tweaked. To know, for example, how often the machines need re-calibrating in different conditions, or when a decision by the system should be overruled.

The important thing to remember is that the elements that make up the DRS are tools of television coverage. Television is concerned with entertainment and providing drama to the viewers, not adjudication.

Taking care of bowlers

Despite the successes of R Ashwin, the off-spinner, India have evolved into a team of fast bowlers. Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron are capable of consistently bowling in the 140-km range. Ishant Sharma won a Test at Lord’s. Yet many talented bowlers are selected, play briefly, and then are either injured or lose something in their actions. Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are recent examples.

In an essay in these pages, the great Michael Holding makes a simple plea: India must learn to take care of their fast bowlers.

Where strategy is concerned, there is much to be said for learning from other countries. Most countries have in place a system of rotation aimed at extending the careers of their fast bowlers. The mechanism – despite what it looks like when fast bowlers come thundering down to bowl – is delicate. To come in running chest-on, then to suddenly go side-on and bowl puts strains on the back, the thighs and shoulders. Bowling is not a natural action, fast bowling even less so.

I am not sure if India understand the need for rotation, says Holding. Part of the problem may be the more-the-merrier attitude of some teams. Sometimes I think that some of the figures around a team, the so-called back-room boys, are too many, says Holding.

India have done well with their current combination, with Ravi Shastri as the team director. But, occasionally, apparently harsh decisions (from an individual point of view) have to be taken for the greater good of the team.

T20 internationals

In the year of the T20 World Cup, it might sound strange to make a case for abolishing the T20 international altogether. But I am not sure the T20I serves any purpose. Every bilateral series has at least one such competition, but it does precious little for the confidence or the tactics of the bowlers on either side. There is an element of a ritual associated with it – a bilateral series must have Tests, one-day internationals and T20Is. Once that was decided, no one seems to have reviewed the decision after a period.

There are enough domestic T20 leagues around the world, from the IPL downwards (or upwards, if you prefer). The best players in the format play for a variety of teams across the world. Somehow – and this was built into the system – a Mumbai Indians victory over Kolkata Knight Riders, for example, seems to have greater meaning than an Indian win over Australia in the same format.

At the very least, a decision to abolish T20I will cut the international calendar. But it will have greater benefits at an individual level too, keeping players focused on the internationals that really matter.

Night cricket

There is much to recommend Test cricket at night. There will be initial misgivings: the colour of the ball, the lighting over five days, the possibility of excessive dew giving one or the other team the advantage. Yet the chance of larger crowds at the stadium – one of the ICC’s aims has to be to bring in the crowds – alone might make it all worthwhile. Just because television might prefer night cricket does not automatically make it bad!

In a few years when night Test cricket, its early misgivings resolved, is finally established, we might look back and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Confronting death

We tell ourselves that randomness is built into our lives, that the only certainty is death, and yet when these concepts come together, we struggle to accept it. The former is frightening enough. In the days since Australian Phillip Hughes was killed on the cricket field, we have tried desperately to glimpse at meaning, and not succeeded very well. Randomness, meaninglessness, absurdity – the bedrock of our existence has merely shown up in greater focus.

We have needed props to help us forget the essential truths. Hence religion, hence sport. Hence sport as religion – one which has a larger constituency than those that worship one god or one million.

In competitive sport – except possibly in Formula 1 and boxing – no competitor confronts death every time he enters the arena. Juan Manuel Fangio, the five-time Argentine F1 world champion, once said, If there is one driver who hasn’t awoken in the middle of the night, fingers clutching a sweat-stained pillow, eardrums bursting with shrieking tyres, that man, I tell you, tumbled off another planet.

More poignant is the story of Madeleine Read, wife of motorcycle champion Phil Read, who attended every race carrying a large amount of money in her purse. According to her, You never know when your man will have an accident and you’ll need to pay cash for a specialist or a private plane to get him home.

There are professionals who court death: soldiers, stuntmen, pilots, firefighters. Then there are those at the other end of the scale: accountants, writers, university professors. No one expects to die of a badly chosen metaphor. International sportsmen (with exceptions) are closer to writers than to stuntmen. This is not because of something inherent in their sports (any sport can be dangerous), but because safety standards are high. Accidents are exactly that – accidents.

The cricketing community is taking baby steps towards reconciling the life-affirming nature of sport to its potential for tragedy. Why did Hughes’s death affect us so much, seem so personal? Hughes’s demise felt like a death in the family, writes Mike Coward here, in a tribute to the young batsman.

When the outside world abruptly breaks into the artificial construct that is sport, it leaves us confused and bereft. Suddenly sportsmen aren’t superheroes. They are like the rest of us, prey to vicissitudes, victims of chance. It is a knowledge available to us, but it is comforting to push that to the back of our minds while we watch them run, jump, score goals or hit that perfect cover-drive. Death on the sports field shatters a carefully built illusion, a collective fantasy all of us buy into.

Significant voice

Richie Benaud’s might well have been the most significant voice in cricket, both literally and metaphorically. As a television commentator, he used the pause to telling effect. It was a technique no one else has mastered to quite the same degree. The modern commentator is garrulous, self-important and often biased – three things Benaud was not. His philosophy was simple, and borrowed from the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s classic: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Among the many tributes after Benaud’s death was this lovely nugget, quoting his wife: What I loved about Richie right from the beginning was his dryness of wit. I didn’t fall hook, line and sinker, but our relationship grew gradually. We’d often sit there saying nothing, like when we went to the Bradmans to visit Don and Jessie, I never said a word. I’ve always been a better listener and that seemed to work well. We spent a lot of time in silence and we were both happy with that.

His later reputation as a television commentator might have overshadowed his enormous skill and success as a leg-spinner in the highest class, a quick-scoring batsman and one of the finest captains in the game. Taken together with his role in promoting the Packer revolution in cricket, and the mentoring role he played to generations of players, it put him on a pedestal few sportsmen can hope to reach.

Benaud was a remarkable contradiction as a hard-headed cricket ro-mantic. He loved the game, understood its idiosyncrasies and emphasised its essential philosophy while at the same time appreciating its commercial possibilities.

Of all former players, he was least given to harking back to the good old days. In an essay he wrote in the 1980s, he put in place players of his generation who tended to say that they enjoyed the game more than the ‘moderns’ did. Benaud was at the forefront of the commercial revolution in cricket; just as he had been at the forefront of the modernisation on the field of play when he and Frank Worrell of the West Indies led teams that played a brand of positive cricket that shook the dangerously moribund game by its neck and breathed life into it.

Some years ago, Wisden worked out that Benaud had probably seen more Test cricket than anyone in the history of the game. The figure was well above 500 Tests, including the 63 he played in while becoming the first all-rounder to the mark of 2000 runs and 200 wickets. With that experience, and given his own record as one of the game’s three or four best captains, it was no surprise that when Benaud spoke, the cricketing world listened. But Benaud was not one for making profound statements or jumping into controversies to have his say. There was a dignity about him in the 1950s when he began his playing career. That was always an essential part of him.

Having fun

Is Brendon McCullum changing the way Test cricket is played, and in doing so has he restored the primacy of the captain? The New Zealand team that did so well in England, having done exceptionally well at the World Cup earlier, is clearly McCullum’s team. The decisions taken are clearly his. He told the players after the team was dismissed for 45 in a Test in Cape Town that this would be a team different from all others. Enjoy the game, he told them. Have fun. Don’t sledge. Focus on the performance.

With the captain himself leading the way – McCullum had scores of 224, 302, 202 and 195 in 2014 – and the team enjoying the benefits of the changes, New Zealand have become the team most likely to combine the best of the three formats of the game, and bring the crowds back for the Test matches.

If the next step in the evolution of Test cricket is teams scoring consistently at five an over, then McCullum deserves the credit. Have fun, said the man who hit the first ball he faced in an innings for a six, play your natural game. There is something irresistible about that motto.

Resolute and able

Malcolm Speed, former CEO of the International Cricket Council, once spoke of (Jagmohan) Dalmiya’s manic determination to make In dia a world cricketing power, and described him as the most resolute, able, difficult, prickly and unpredictable man he had ever met.

Without Dalmiya there would have been no serious money in the game, no Indian superpowerdom, no Srinivasan, no Lalit Modi. Jaggu-da, as he was known, kept his friends close, and his enemies closer still. He had plenty of both. He influenced India’s approach to cricket and also the manner in which fans used it as a measure of self-worth. A match referee’s decision could become a national insult.

Dalmiya’s methods may have lacked universal appeal, his motives often put down to colonial resentment, but there is no denying that he changed the face of international cricket.

What Tiger Pataudi did on-field, leading the self-respect movement, Dalmiya did in the board rooms, forcing respect from countries long used to looking down upon Indian cricket.

Interestingly for an administrator, Dalmiya was also seen as a players’ man, standing by them in commercial battles (as during the player images row before the 2003 World Cup). Anil Kumble, the former captain, calls him a Players’ President, for always keeping the door open for dialogue. My generation was very comfortable dealing with the BCCI, says Kumble, because Mr Dalmiya was always receptive.

It took Dalmiya less than a decade to transform the world game. When he was elected secretary of the BCCI in 1990, the ICC was the International Cricket Conference, the two superpowers England and Australia had the right of veto, and there were just a few thousand pounds in the ICC bank account.

All that seems pre-historic now. Dalmiya brought the hidebound ICC kicking and screaming into the 20th century, opening its eyes to commercial possibilities. India, as the biggest market by far, benefited.

The BCCI had a deficit of Rs 85 lakh when he took over, and Doordarshan demanded Rs 5 lakh to telecast each Test, based on an obscure 1885 Act. There is money in cricket, said Dalmiya but none of it is coming to the BCCI.

The TV battle came to a head in 1993 when, following a Supreme Court ruling, the BCCI was able to sell the rights for the home series against England for $40,000. A little over a decade later, the rights fetched $612 million over four years. After he became president, he put in place the central contracts for players.

In his impeccable safari suit and brushed back hair, Jaggu-da presented the picture of a successful businessman, which is was what he was, as head of a leading cement company.

When doubts were expressed over financial shenanigans during the 1996 World Cup, he told people that the accusations were unfounded. He didn’t need the money. Blacklisted by the BCCI, he returned a decade later as its president, older, more frail and as the one acceptable candidate among its warring factions.

Social cricket

In his book Rain Men, Marcus Berkmann wrote: To be treated with the respect you aren’t due is the dream of every talentless sportsman. Which is why we salute a CEO in Derby for both returning to the game after a long lay off and then, unable to find a team that would take a chance on his talents, forming his own team to experience the reinvigoration of social cricket. But mostly we salute him for his new club’s motto: fervidus sed vacuus – keen but useless. Lest we forget, that’s the lot which helps the other lot make its millions.

Great, greater, greatest

SIMON BARNES

Great shot! Meaning a perfectly decent cover-drive. Great delivery! Meaning that it beat the bat. Great game! Meaning one that kept us interested to the end. Great victory! Meaning our boys won. We chuck around the word great with all kinds of abandon.

Until we get to individuals. Great cricketer? Hm. Maybe. A good player, certainly, very good indeed – but not great. We like to maintain a scarcity value when it comes to greatness in a single person. We like to look at a crowd of the very best cricketers – and then to see among them a few, a very few who stand even taller.

Even in India – even in a country where gods are uncountable – there is a reluctance to be too free with the idea of greatness in cricketers. We want to savour the notion that some achievements are beyond the reach of players who are equipped only with talent.

There is a painfully honest bit of self-appraisal in Opening Up, the biography of Mike Atherton, former England captain, in which he accepts that he fell short of greatness. He had a batting average in the mid-30s, he was too often the victim of Glenn McGrath. I’m inclined to disagree with this self-diagnosis. He ignores the context in which he played: when England were at their worst and Atherton was the one player who regularly made the team look respectable.

I also disagreed in print with Atherton on the subject of the greatness of Andrew Flintoff. I said that Flintoff was a great cricketer. Atherton said no. He lacked longevity, he lacked the numbers. I said that he was great for six weeks, when England won the Ashes in 2005, and that was enough.

After all, Bob Beamon was only great for about 3.5 seconds. That was when he won the long-jump at the Mexico City Olympic Games of 1968. In a single leap he set a record that lasted more than 20 years – and he is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest athletes that ever drew breath.

If you look only at the stats and the caps you get a false idea of greatness. Everyone would put Sachin Tendulkar down as a great cricketer. I don’t suppose it’s necessary to state his record here, though I would have considered him greater had he retired on 99 international centuries, showing a Bradmanesque fallibility, rather than dragging on until he got his 100th in a losing cause against Bangladesh – an unworthy finish.

But what about Madan Lal? I’d probably be on my own if I put him in the same company, but if it were not for Lal, I’m not sure India would have produced Tendulkar. Lal was the prime mover in the emergence of Indian cricket in the current century. True, Lal fails the test of longevity and of numbers. You could hardly call Test match averages of 22 and 40 great – at least, not in the order that Lal has them, with batting average first.

Madan Lal against West Indies in the 1983 World Cup final: That was greatness in a single day. – Getty Images

But I was there on the one afternoon in history when Lal was genuinely great, and it genuinely changed the direction of cricketing history. This was of course in 1983, at the World Cup final, when West Indies swaggered out to bat against India, needing to beat a miserable total of 183, with 60 overs to do it in.

Lal wouldn’t make the first rank of seam bowlers. You’d be hard pushed to squeeze him into the jostling and grimacing back row. But that afternoon, he got the ball to wobble – for he was a wobble-bowler through and through – and the combination of his skill and West Indian over-confidence worked the miracle.

He took 3 for 31 in 12 overs. His first victim was Desmond Haynes, as skilful an opener as ever held a bat. His third was Larry Gomes, whose calm and sensible method might otherwise have kept his team together. And in between he had Viv Richards, unforgettably caught by Kapil Dev running back to the boundary almost with his head on back to front.

That was greatness in a single day. You can place Lal where you like in your own list of greatest ever: but Indian cricket would not be where Indian cricket is now without Lal and his golden afternoon.

When top tens of anything are selected by popular vote, they are always skewed towards recent events and recent heroes, especially if the poll is conducted online and the bulk of respondents are young. English respondents would be likely to place Ben Stokes above WG Grace. It’s a journalistic stunt rather than a meaningful measure of greatness.

The legend of Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar: "We like to look at a crowd of

the very best cricketers – and then to see among them a few, a very few who stand

even taller." – Getty Images

But you can’t have a list of great Indian cricketers without CK Nayudu. His record doesn’t measure up to anything that the modern heroes of the game have stacked up; but for the first man to captain India in a Test match, it doesn’t have to. Nayudu led India against England at Lord’s in 1932, and was one of the great pre-Independence heroes of Indian cricket. You don’t expect an innings of 40 to stop the stars in their courses, but Nayudu’s defiance against the vastly superior resources of the colonial masters hinted at future glories with every haunted stroke.

Nayudu would be great if we counted only a single innings. His finest day was at the Bombay Gymkhana when playing for Hindus against MCC – and that’s a sentence that’s more like a long and complex history lesson all by itself. The match took place on the tour of 1926-27, and Nayudu scored 153 runs in 116 minutes, hitting 11 sixes as he did so. England’s finest were taken apart.

Here was an innings that changed sporting history and perhaps affected real history as well. Certainly it subverted the archetype of the Indian cricketer, at least as viewed by the English, as someone under-sized, meek and rather devious. Here was an innings that stood for extravagance, high spirits and flamboyance. Perhaps this was the world’s first day of tamasha cricket.

A sense of history and an ability to seize the moment are also aspects of greatness. Greatness is not only about victory and triumph: it is also about playing top-quality cricket at difficult times and in difficult circumstances. You have to count Vijay Hazare and Vinoo Mankad in the ranks of the great here. Perhaps Mankad especially.

Mankad was half of a Test match opening stand of 413, a record that stood for 52 years. Outside India, Mankad is only really remembered for running out a non-striker, Bill Brown of Australia on the 1947-48 tour, but even this is not without a touch of greatness. It showed the world that Indian cricketers prefer to see themselves as fierce competitors rather than meek brown natives.

Greatness is a more complex thing than we think. It’s based on rather more than a 50-plus batting average or 100 caps. Cricket is, still, based around international rivalries and, therefore, in all Test nations apart from England, cricket tells the story of a nation’s emergence from colonialism. (English cricket tells the same story from the opposite perspective.)

Thus Sir Donald Bradman is great not only because of his incomparable numbers, but because he was an essential part of the way that Australia established itself as a nation in its own right. Sir Frank Worrell played a similar role in the emergence of the West Indian nations.

Every member of India’s famous spin quartet of the 1960s and ’70s is great for the same reason. Here was an attempt to take on the world on purely Indian terms, by playing to Indian strengths. They weren’t great because any one individual was a world-beater: they were great because there were four of them and they were all fabulous Indian cricketers. They were great because they were many. Together they summed up an emerging nation, showing wit and talent and nerve and style, each individual empowered by the existence and the skills of the other three. Greatness is not just about individuals, it’s also about how individuals work together.

So who is the greatest Indian cricketer of all time?

No, no. Spare me that. Whoever I say is wrong, obviously. These things are not decided by stats or by historical facts. They tell us only things about the person making the choice … even though I’m half inclined to offer the prize to Sunil Gavaskar. He was the best in the world against fast bowling during the time of the greatest gathering of fast bowlers ever known in cricket, and he did most of his stuff in the era before helmets.

But no. I’ll leave the choice to you, dear reader; though I insist as I do so that you make your decision on grounds that go beyond a column of figures or a list of victories. Greatness is best understood in the eye of the beholder, but I think the beholder should educate that eye and understand things on a wide basis. In cricket, as in anything else, it is important to appreciate the marvellous in whatever form it comes.

Simon Barnes (@simonbarneswild) has written about cricket and wildlife in a career spanning over three decades.

No limits to audacity

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA

I am told the game was televised, but I only remember the shock of the number 268 from the Wisden Cricket Monthly. It was 2002 and receiving that magazine at work was a fine perk of working in the Wisden offices during its first foray into India. Two hundred and sixty-eight were the runs Alistair Brown had made for Surrey in a single innings of a 50-over match. Poor fellow was English, and it was not enough to win him back a place in the one-day team.

I had trouble imagining Ali Brown’s innings, in the same way I could not quite imagine Shahid Afridi’s (untelevised) 37-ball century. The latter Afridi clarified to a degree when, nine years later, he heave-hoed a century from 45 balls in Kanpur. It remained impossible, however, to imagine an innings like Brown’s, scored at a rate of 59 balls per hundred runs and which still kept going long past the tallest scores. Well,