In defence of home advantage: don't rob cricket of its intrigue

During England’s recent series in India, nothing occupied column inches or filled air time quite like the state of the pitches. Whether it was the non-spinning practice tracks, the slow Ahmedabad surface, or the pace and bounce on show at later venues, the pitches were never far from the news. Even MS Dhoni was compelled to comment. The subtext, rarely explicitly stated but regularly implied, concerned fairness. Was it in the spirit of cricket, really, to prepare such ‘biased’ tracks?

Leaving aside the fact that bias is of course subjective, it should be noted that this is not a question posed only to India. Conditions around the world vary, and pitches are prepared to suit the home team on a regular basis. Can English fans look at the green, seaming tracks of Trent Bridge or Headingley and claim the pitch conditions are inconsequential? Can Australians in Brisbane, or West Indians at Sabina Park? Such ‘home bias’ is not rare in international cricket, and it often comes in for a slating. It is derided as insular, as short-sighted, as regressive. The game is seen as fragmenting, as the skill sets required to succeed in each scenario drift further and further apart.

This fragmentation is accused of obscuring the true ability of each team – if each of the top teams wins at home, who can be said to be best? There is some truth to this accusation: India’s recent loss was their first at home since 2004, South Africa have only lost twice at home since 2005, Australia have lost three times after 1993, and England went undefeated for 11 home series in the middle of the last decade. I would challenge, however, whether this is such a great price to pay. There is some value to a slightly blurry ranking system; where would pub chatter be if we knew, without a doubt, which was the best team or who the greatest player was? Cricket is a sport obsessed with statistics, and it is in these fuzzy, unknowable, and inherently subjective considerations that its heart lies.

In the same vein, the diversity of the game as it is played across the world is a strength, not a weakness. It would be boring indeed if every pitch were similar and identical techniques succeeded everywhere. Not only would such a world stifle innovation (can anyone imagine the doosra or the carom ball being invented in English conditions?) but it would lose a certain vitality. There is something exotic about the regal, wristy play of maestros from the subcontinent; something visceral about the lean, southern-hemisphere quick charging in from fifty paces.

Most of all, the game would lose its greatest challenges. As Dhoni commented, “You want to face challenges in Test cricket. These are the kinds of wickets that push you.” What is a tour to the subcontinent, or to Australia, if the conditions are negated? Half the challenge is gone. Home bias allows the game its greatest stories: its heroic series and its magisterial innings. Without it, cricket would be all the poorer.

The Stories of Test Cricket

Test cricket, at the heart of the game, is about narratives. We who love this form of the game tend to romanticise it, and this leads to incredible stories and epic tales. The plot of a Test twists and turns, much like a good book, and at the end of a good match, the story is resolved in a satisfying manner.

Context is important too. A Test match can be a continuation of a theme or a turning point. Over the last few weeks, there have been multiple Tests which fans will be talking about for years: Classic matches where the advantage swung back and forth, where dreams were realised and shattered, where commentators didn’t have to grasp at superlatives to hype up the games.

The significance of a period of cricket like this, even a brief one, is important. It is times like these that will bring fans back to the purist’s game. Those with an understanding of Test cricket know that the result is not always the most important outcome of a match. It is how the teams got to the result that matters.

Take for example the draw between South Africa and Australia. Nothing to write home about there – on paper it was just a match that ended in a stalemate. But what if you consider that South Africa had to bat an entire day, with only six wickets in hand, to save the match? The name Faf du Plessis was not widely known before this match. In fact, it was his debut Test match. He has now become a legend. South Africa, to an extent, owe their defence of the No. 1 spot to him. Every good story needs a hero, even one with an unlikely name like Faf. 

A triumph against the odds is a template that many great stories are based on. That could easily be applied to England’s recent win in India. Make no mistake, England have been terrible in the subcontinent over the past few years. After being predictably thrashed in the first Test, hopes were not high for the second. It tookredemptive performances from two players who have been ridiculed and mocked throughout their careers - Kevin Pietersen and Monty Panesar - for England to score an upset in Mumbai.

Sometimes characters off the field will appear in stories about Test cricket. Martin Crowe made his return recently, not with the bat, but with the pen. He wrote a fierce call to arms to the New Zealand team, in the wake of arguably their worst run of form in recent years. His intervention, like a ghostly Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, seemed to provide the impetus for the Kiwis to start believing in themselves.

Like England, New Zealand are rubbish on the subcontinent. But who will ever be able to forget Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson grinding out the first day at the P Sara Oval, followed by Tim Southee and Trent Boult tearing into the aging Sri Lankan batting order? It was a triumph of youth over experience, and about as unlikely as David defeating Goliath. Kiwi fans, so often starved of good news, have compared this win with not only Hobart last year, but other memorable Test wins across history.

Sometimes the story is one we’ve heard before. Bangladesh are adept at turning good positions into defeats, and they managed this in spectacular style against the West Indies. After doing absolutely everything to get the upper-hand in Dhaka, they somehow managed to let it slip away. Another debutant, Sohag Gazi, bowled the match of his life to set up a chance to win. As is so often the case with Bangladesh, the batsmen were the villains of this tale. The target was 245, tough, but considering how hard they had to work to get there, it was heartbreaking not to reach. Let’s hope this story doesn’t keep repeating itself.

Finally, every tale ends with an epilogue. We witnessed the end of one of the great Test players, Ricky Ponting. How fitting that his career, which has had so many challenges, should end against the best team in the world.

Ponting, in cricketing terms, has lived his life to the fullest. From fighting personal demons in his youth, to regaining the Ashes in the later years of his career, he has been the archetypal Aussie battler. He is also the last survivor from the great Australian team which conquered all. His retirement brings to an end the epic saga of one of the greatest team ever.

The nature of Test cricket lends itself perfectly to narratives like this. How else can we understand a game that takes a week to complete? After matches like what we have recently seen, it is clear test cricket doesn’t need to be revived. It already is alive and well. Here’s to many more great tales, yet to be told.

A story about Sachin

No one knows Sachin Tendulkar better than Sachin Tendulkar. If he thinks he can score international fifties and hundreds again, then he probably can, and right now among what must be a mind-ridden with doubt, there will be some semblance of confidence that he can come good again. If there wasn't he would've retired already. Now, I'm not for a minute going to tell Sachin Tendulkar what to do. He is arguably the greatest cricketer of the modern age and I'm an 18-year-old gap-year student.

But what I am going to do is tell you a story, a life story, and a story that relates to Tendulkar and what must be one of the most talked about retirements in the history of sport. When I was seven years old, my Dad returned from England's tour of India in 2001 with a BAS cricket bat. He'd got the bat from a factory where some of Tendulkar's bats are made, he'd even asked for Tendulkar's trademark red, blue and white grip to be applied to the little size four bat, and on the back, in a black ball point pen was Tendulkar's autograph.

For any cricket fan to possess such an item, it would mean the world to them, and to me, even at the age of seven, it did too. About three weeks after being given the bat, I sheepishly asked my Dad if he would be offended if I never used the bat in matches or at practice, as I didn't want the autograph to ever fade or for the bat to ever get damaged. In not using that bat I was looking to preserve the life of that autograph, my little piece of 'Sachin'.

Fans can actually do the same to players’ careers. Arguably Tendulkar's last two years have been driven by a reluctance to let his millions of fans down. But this reluctance to not let down, and desire to satisfy the masses, can only last so long. The preservation of something that is dying often only serves to tarnish or ruin - I learnt this bitter lesson a year after receiving my autographed bat... I was now eight and the bat was a year old. Only a year.

But one day I discovered the autograph to be fading - even despite my disinclination to use it. In my naive, clumsy, eight-year-old kind of way, I took the radical decision of pulling my black gel pen out of my pencil case and re-drawing over the signature on the back of the bat. To my horror my Dad told me later that day that the autograph was now worthless - completely ruined.

I'd tried to preserve my little bit of Sachin by not using the bat, and that had worked. But such things only work for so long, and in seeking to revitalise my precious possession, by taking my own pen to the bat, I'd ruined it. Again, I won't claim to know more about Tendulkar than Tendulkar himself, and if he thinks he's got runs left in him, he's probably got runs left in him. But it will be one of sports great tragedies if it gets to the stage where Tendulkar's attempted preservation of what he has left, is only acting as detriment to his legacy and impact on the game.

The curious case of Ravindra Jadeja

I read the news of Ravindra Jadeja scoring another triple-century, and chuckled to myself: "Another case of a giant at home at the first-class level, and a failure at the international level." Indeed, Jadeja has been the one thing worse than a failure - he has been India's favourite scapegoat.

For as long as he was in the team, every match we lost was somehow Jadeja's fault. His bowling appeared to be toothless, and his batting frankly didn't have enough power to clear the ropes - a pre-requisite for somebody coming in at No. 7. His batting is in the Mohammad Kaif mould - someone who can nudge the ball around, but someone who would not clear the ropes too often due to a limited technique.

And yet, despite all his shortcomings, his numbers reveal something different, and indicate that the Indian selectors may have missed a trick in handling his career. His profile tells me that even at List A level, he fails the basic pre-requisite for an allrounder - his batting average (28.96) is lower than his bowling average (30.85). On the other hand, consider his first-class statistics - a batting average of 53.12, with seven centuries (out of which a scarcely believable three were triples), and a bowling average of 27.49 with 10 five-wicket hauls.

Is it possible that the selectors pigeon-holed Jadeja as a bits-and-pieces limited-overs player, while his actual worth would be more in the longer format? His batting is certainly more suited to a No. 8 slot in the longer format, where he is under no pressure to go over the infield. His technique is limited, but that never stopped Dhoni. More importantly, he offers a decent spin option, especially in India. On unresponsive tracks, he can hold up one end, and on spinning tracks, he can be a wicket-taking bowler, as his first-class bowling average attests to.

Time will tell if Jadeja deserves a promotion in the batting order above Dhoni, and perhaps No. 6 might be too high for him, as it is for Dhoni. But as his first-class statistics attest to, Jadeja definitely deserves a shot at the highest level. I can scarcely believe I am writing these words. Give India's favourite scapegoat a chance. He might just take it.

How to build a cricketing superpower

Why do the Germans consistently produce world beating luxury cars? Why is it so hard to better Japanese air conditioners? What makes the Italian fashion industry an envy of the world? A couple of decades ago, Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter tried to provide some answers in his book, The Competitive Advantage of Nations. Not all agreed with his answers. For instance, some critics argued that nations, unlike firms within an industry, don’t compete with each other. They insisted that international trade was not a zero-sum game. Be that as it may. In the sporting context, nations do compete fiercely with each other. Therefore, it may make sense to apply Michael Porter’s framework, also described as the Diamond Framework, to cricket.

The Diamond Framework suggests a hypothesis: Cricketing supremacy will be enjoyed by a nation that has strengths in the following four areas: (i) Playing conditions; (ii) Demand conditions; (iii) Governance conditions; and (iv) Ecosystem conditions. Further, when fully developed, the four conditions will start interacting and reinforcing each other to drive innovation and make the nation in question almost unbeatable.

Playing conditions: These conditions are natural and man-made. Natural conditions include favourable climatic conditions that permit a long cricketing season; abundant real estate for grounds of acceptable sizes; and a potentially large talent pool. Man-made conditions mainly include good playing surfaces (i.e., pitches which encourage and test a range of batting and bowling skills) and an accessible expert knowledge base. That is, availability of formal and informal coaching which allows natural talent that gravitates to cricket to flower.

Nations such as China and the US may be endowed with natural cricket playing conditions, but currently they lack cricket specific man-made conditions. And one needs to recognize that it can take several decades for a new sport to capture a nation’s imagination and for man-made playing conditions to really take firm roots. Interestingly though, sometimes “poor” playing conditions can prove beneficial. New Zealand’s small talent pool has forced the nation to learn how to maximise its resource base. They have always tended to punch above their weight. Similarly, even as large lush grounds are fostering throwing and sliding skills, the cramped alleyways of Asian cities are teaching another Gavaskar to drive straight.

Demand conditions

These conditions pertain to spectator interest and cultural pressures. That the number of eyeballs on TV and bums in a stadium bring money to the game is obvious. What is not always appreciated is how a nation’s legacy, media pressures, and sophisticated viewership influence the way a nation plays its cricket. It is perhaps the demand from Pakistani public that has ensured a steady supply of fast bowlers. Similarly, the Australian culture demands of its cricketers to play a particular brand of in-your-face game. Thus demand determines not only how much cricket is played and what is played – T20, One-day, or Test cricket – but also how it is played.

Demand conditions extend to women’s cricket as well. Their game is important in its own right and also because anecdotal evidence suggests that mothers can have a greater influence on the choices that children make. Cricket Australia seems to understand this.

Governance conditions

Only a nation that excels in administering the game across all levels can maintain its competitive edge over an appreciable length of time. Excellent governance means: (i) instituting well supported, visible, and fair pathways for selection to play cricket at the highest level; (ii) developing highly effective officials and support staff including administrators, selectors, curators, coaches, umpires, physiotherapists, fitness trainers, computer analysts, psychologists, bio-mechanists, nutritionists, scorers, and so forth; (iii) making transparent and fair resource allocation decisions that reward players, ex-players, and officials; acknowledge spectators by enhancing their viewing experience; build the game’s support and talent base; and invest in the game’s future.

Good governance often ensures healthy and enduring rivalries among teams in a nation’s domestic circuit. This in turn produces cricketers who can handle pressure at the international level. For example, the Bombay school of risk-free “khadoos” batsmanship seems to have evolved in the manner that it did because the city believed in winning the Ranji Trophy at all costs.

Ecosystem conditions

The cricketing ecosystem would include all supporting and cricket-related industries. Quality R&D institutes devoted to sports psychology, sports injury, bio-mechanics, and nutrition; good all-weather coaching academies and stadia; cricket-related software expertise; cricket savvy media; and R&D in cricketing equipment can all combine to elevate a nation’s cricketing standard. Even academics could contribute by studying the aerodynamics of a cricket ball, pontificating on the sociology of cricket, analysing cricket-related metrics, and writing the kind of articles that you are reading.

The general sporting culture is an intangible that naturally rubs off on a nation’s cricketing ecosystem. In this regard, Australia, New Zealand, and England seem to have a head start over other nations. The school children in these developed nations, and in some pockets of South Africa, get the kind of access to sporting facilities that an average child in the developing world can only dream of. Moreover, the poorer South Asian nations, being primarily cricket only nations, are deprived of the spin-offs that other cricketing nations with a more broad-based sporting culture seem to enjoy. By and large, the ecosystem in South Asia and the West Indies is underdeveloped. It is not enough for world-class cricketing facilities to only be available at the elite level.

Interactions make the Cricketing Diamond sparkle

A cricketing nation need not enjoy supremacy in all the four factors to win a world championship every once in a while. But if a nation is to consistently remain at the top, the four factors within it must interact to form a self-reinforcing system. On the face of it, Demand Conditions appear to be the most important because they bring money to the game and ensure that the game continues to attract future generations. But Demand Conditions alone cannot convert a nation into a dominant force if the game is poorly governed. Recollect that good Governance Conditions lead to fierce domestic rivalry. But again, rivalry would not amount to much if the selectors did not have a sufficiently talented pool to select from. And only strong Playing Conditions backed by well-developed Ecosystem Conditions can ensure a consistent supply of an international-class talent pool. One can readily imagine other such self-reinforcing chains coming together to spur innovation and help a nation retain its ascendancy.

It is hardly surprising that most advances in cricket-related injury management, equipment design, coaching, statistical analysis, TV coverage, and so forth have come from Australia. This is because Australia’s ascent, unlike that of the West Indies in the 1970s and 80s, was a triumph of a system that worked. In recent times, England’s rise has also been accompanied by innovations. Their bowling simulator is a case in point. Indian bat manufacturers too have contributed with their unpressed bats. Of course, in a highly interconnected world, the entire cricketing fraternity has benefited from these innovations.

Lacking critical mass, the four factors may not be able to strongly interact with each other in the smaller nations. To solve this problem smaller nations could consider plugging into a geographical cluster. For example, domestic champions of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh could participate in India’s Duleep Trophy. Potentially, the cricketing world, especially the T-20 world, could see the emergence of five clusters: the African cluster (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya); the American cluster (the West Indies and the US); the Australasian cluster (Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and possibly China); the European cluster (England; Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands), and the South Asian cluster (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan).

The trend in Demand Conditions clearly indicates that Test cricket will survive only if T20 were to generate enough resources. And if the administrators worldwide, for romantic reasons, were to subsidize Test cricket. Test cricket does not deserve to die, for what is life without a bit of romance. But a commitment to romance alone will not do it. The administrators will need to display great skills in the years ahead.

Measuring the Cricket Sparkle Quotient

The Cricket Sparkle Quotient (CSQ) checklist contains 13 questions pertaining to key areas across the Diamond’s four conditions. The CSQ checklist is meant for use by all regions/states/counties that provide a first-class team. It could be suitably modified for use at lower levels and to cater for local realities.

Playing conditions

1. Are there a variety of pitches (at least three distinct surfaces) and all-weather facilities for team to practice?

2. Are there at least three serious contenders (including the incumbent) for each slot in the playing eleven?

3. Are there qualified coaches available at all times to support the three basic playing skills – batting, bowling, and fielding?

Demand Conditions

4. Has membership in the cricket clubs/association grown at least at the rate at which local population has grown?

5. Have the revenues increased annually to at least cover the opportunity cost of capital?

Governance Conditions

6. Are there metrics in place to ensure that selectors physically watch a minimum number of matches? 

7. Are the selectors trained and held accountable?

Selection is an exercise in decision making. The selectors need to be made aware of cognitive biases; the perils of group decision making; and patterns in player performance statistics. They could do with expert quantitative analysis support. Learning from baseball that has sabermetrcis, cricket should develop its own cricmetrics.

8. Are there annual training and refresher courses held across all levels for all officials? 

9. Are all the main feeder teams at a rung immediately lower serviced by qualified coaches and physical trainers?

10. In addition to professional coaching and physical conditioning facilities, does the first class team enjoy the services of a sport psychologist, nutritionist, and computer analyst?

11. Are there benchmarks in place to ensure that the bulk of the resources are spent directly on cricket and cricketing infrastructure? 

12. Are all the financial statements and minutes of various meetings publicly available on a website?

Ecosystem Conditions

13. Do all the members of the first-class team enjoy ready access to a world-class cricket academy, including its injury management and rehabilitation programmes?

As is to be expected, an ecosystem almost imperceptibly emerges around well-governed quality teams that are backed by passionate supporters. Hence, Ecosystem Conditions are not conditions that should pre-occupy administrators per se.

The CSQ questions represent a standard that all first-class administrators should aspire to. The first-class cricketing infrastructure ought to be made available to women cricketers as well if the Cricketing Diamond is to truly sparkle.

Cricket and the art of memory

Simonides of Ceos was attending a banquet; when he stepped outside, the hall collapsed. However, he was able to identify all the highly disfigured bodies by recalling where each person sat at the banquet. That, it is believed, was the beginning of mnemonics, the art of memory.

To anyone who has been following cricket, numbers conjure and evoke strange feelings, morphing into characters. A 158 suddenly brings Brendon McCullum to mind. Any student of mnemonics would vouch for the fact that memorising large chunks of data can be achieved by etching vivid visuals to each number. It’s a technique that can easily be utilised for purpose of memory pegs. I would probably brainstorm the following template of eidetic imagery if asked what comes to my mind when certain numbers are flashed on screen. (Although there are several gaps and some reveal my support for Bangladesh, I am sure any aficionado could easily fill in the details with their imagination.)

0: Don Bradman's final duck, a blemish to an otherwise perfect record. 1: The gazillion runs scored from a single ball stuck on the tree as written in lore books. 2: The Waugh brothers stand out, especially the square cuts and Mark Waugh's one-handed acrobatic catch at the boundary. 3:Any hat-trick will suffice. Vaas' comes to mind. 4: Shoaib Akhtar's match-winning spell in 2008 stands out for Kolkata Knight Riders against Delhi Daredevils, in which he took four wickets in three overs. 5: Five wickets in six balls that consisted of two run-outs and a cleanup of stumps by Mohammad Aamir in that Australia-Pakistan T20. 6: Imran Khan. When I was about five, I saw the first six by the allrounder. 7: Murali's seven wickets that were all catches in Sharjah in 2000.10: Anil Kumble’s match-winning spell against Pakistan.

11: The players in a team. 12: Twelve-ball fifty by Yuvraj in World Twenty20 2007. 17:Seventeen-ball fifty by Jayasuriya (fastest ever in ODIs). 19: Jim Laker’s match-haul against Australia in 1956. 20: 20 runs off 1 ball, as shown in the viral video floating around on YouTube.22: Twenty-two-yard pitch. 28: Most runs in an over in Tests (Lara). 42: Laws of cricket. 45:Australia beat England by 45 runs (1st Test, Melbourne, 1877). 32: Gayle scoring 666446 in an over. 36: The six sixers by either Garry Sobers, Ravi Shastri, Yuvraj or Herschelle Gibbs. 37:Thirty-seven-ball 100 by Yusuf Pathan. 50: Shahid Afridi's fastest fifty. 56: Balls faced for fastest Test century by Viv Richards. 58: Bangladesh's lowest total in World Cup 2011. 61: Oh the joy of seeing my team bowl West Indies out for this paltry score!

78: Yet another low total by Bangladesh in World Cup 2011. 87: Considered unlucky by the Australians. 93: A favourite T20 innings of mine, in which Tamim Iqbal remained not out playing for Wayamba against Uthura in the Sri Lanka Premier League. 94: Ashraful scored 94 off 52 balls against England. 100: Fastest century by Shahid Afridi, off 37 balls. 101: Chris Gayle's innings in just 44 balls. 106: Viv Richards and Michael Holding's tenth-wicket stand in Manchester (1984).117: Richard Levi's T20 ton. 123: Being a Bangladesh fan, that haunting McCullum innings, when he took apart Bangladesh’s bowlers in recent T20 World Cup (2012). 130: Highest seventh-wicket partnership in ODIs (Andy Flower- Heath Streak 2001).

151: Tamim Iqbal's highest score in Tests. 152: Gayle v South Africa in 2003-04. 154: Tamim Iqbal's highest score in ODIs. 158: Ashraful’s highest score in Tests (against India), or Brendon McCullum's ton for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL opener. 175: Sehwag’s blitzkrieg against Bangladesh in the opening match of World Cup 2011. 165: Bannerman's century - the first in Tests. 183: A Virat Kohli classic from the 2012 Asia Cup, v Pakistan, or MS Dhoni v Sri Lanka, 2005. 185: Shane Watson mauling of Bangladesh, during which he hit the most of number of sixes in an ODI innings. 189: Viv Richards’ highest score in an ODI. 194: Saeed Anwar's innings.

200: Sachin Tendulkar’s innings against South Africa, the first ODI double-century. 201: Jason Gillespie's highest Test score, against Bangladesh. 209: Bangladesh's Soumya Sarkar scored 209 against Qatar in the Under-19 Asia Cup this year. 211: The first double-century in Tests - Billy Murdoch's innings against England in 1884 at The Oval. 219: Highest score in an ODI, courtesy Virender Sehwag. 254: Garry Sobers’ innings against Australia in 1971-72. 260: Sri Lanka's record T20 total v Kenya. 268: Ali Brown's highest individual score in List A. 275: Mohammad Azharuddin-Ajay Jadeja fourth-wicket stand in ODIs. 286: Highest first-wicket stand by Upul Tharanga and Sanath Jayasuriya.

300: Don Bradman with the most number of triple hundreds, with Lara, Sehwag, Gayle. 318:Sourav Ganguly-Rahul Dravid’s partnership in Taunton against Sri Lanka (1999). 319: Sehwag's fastest triple-century, which is incidentally 100 runs more than his ODI record. 329: Michael Clarke’s innings against India in early 2012. 331: The highest partnership in an ODI. 365: Garry Sobers’ innings against Pakistan. 375: Brian Lara's long held highest Test score record. 374:Mahela Jayawardena v South Africa. 380: Matthew Hayden beating Lara's record in Tests. 400:Brian Lara.

And there we have the rough blueprint to build a mind map that could help commit to memory say a modest 400-page tome. Of course this is a subjective list, but whatever memory one associates with each number, it can help construct concepts for each page of the book. Mentally glue the information within to your favorite cricket memories as per page number, and voilà …

Alas! Is this the reward for painstakingly staying up all night to buffering streams of matches? That ultimately all these years of memories could actually can be (ab)used to create a palatial system of memory? Is this the stigma of being a cricket fan? Oh well, as they say, cricket can be an education in itself.

The science of batsmanship: from CB Fry to Chris Gayle

CB Fry was an unusual man. He scored over 30,000 first-class runs at the turn of the 20th century including 94 hundreds at an average of over 50 on uncovered pitches, with primitive bats and almost no protective equipment.

His sporting achievements didn't stop there. He played football for England and Southampton. He also equalled the world record for long jump in 1893, and his jump remained a University record for a small matter of 21 years. His batting, we are told, was rooted in the purest technique. Not one to invent shots or bother with entertaining a crowd, Fry is known to have been an almost self-absorbed batsman, putting patience and safety ahead of everything else. He was the yin to Ranji's yang. But the two of them together are said to have put in place the golden rule of batting, from which all the traditional responses to a ball could be derived - when facing a ball, drive or play back. It is almost fitting, then, that Fry should write a monumental meditative monograph grandly, yet simply, titledBatsmanship (1912).

Fry's writing is marked by the power of his analysis and an ultra-scientific approach to batting. If you wanted to find a response to CLR James' claim that batsmanship was an art, you couldn't do much better than to point him to this book. Sir Neville Cardus wrote that Batsmanship "might conceivably have come from the pen of Aristotle, had Aristotle lived nowadays and played cricket". Fry's prose is so sparklingly clean that you could see your reflection in it. His vision is crystal clear, his scholarship almost unequalled. Batsmanship covers every aspect of its subject, from the foundational principles to specific strokes to batting in various conditions to plotting an innings. He even has a section devoted to conserving energy.

Fry writes, in an early chapter, that "mechanism" and "timing" are the two pillars on which all batting stands. Mechanism is the way you make a shot - the position of your feet, your hands, your arms, your elbow, your head, the way you transfer your weight, the force you apply, your backlift, your placement, your follow through. Timing is connecting the middle of the bat to the ball at the optimal time. You might get every aspect of your mechanism right, he writes, but if you don't time it well, it is of no use. On the other hand, he says, your bat might come down all wrong, your feet might be in no position, your balance may be completely off, and you might execute the ugliest of hoicks, but if you time it correctly, it might still sail over the ropes. He scoffs at this. He reminds the reader that while this might occasionally work, more often than not, without the right mechanism, you are going to be found out.

Funnily enough, I read this book when the World T20 was on. Every few pages, I would wonder what Fry would make of T20 batting - the reverse sweeps, the dilscoops, switch-hits, and then less egregious but still unpardonable shots like the pick-up over midwicket, the dab past the keeper, and the paddle-sweep. This book, written in 1912, exactly a century ago, is obviously dated. One can't expect batting to have stagnated for so long - even the classical arts don't. Better pitches, better bats, and better protection allow batsmen to do things unthinkable in Fry's time. Still, the pace at which the science of batting evolves today is surprising - even two decades ago, significantly more of Batsmanship would be relevant. In the early 90s, the reverse sweep was almost unheard of. Today, there is almost no top-order batsman who cannot play it. When the switch-hit was conceived, it was decried as illegal before the bigwigs confirmed that the shot was legitimate. The variety of high-risk shots through fine-leg that batsmen play - the scoops, the shovels, the flicks, the sweeps off fast-bowlers - have all garnered serious attention only post-T20. Ten years ago, when Dougie Marillier shocked Zaheer Khan in an ODI by lifting him over the keeper repeatedly and snatching an unlikely win, people thought of him as a one-off freak.

But the World T20 has also shown us how much of Fry's thesis holds good even today. The best T20 players are not those who blindly throw their bats at the ball, hoping to overcome technical deficiencies with power and timing. They are those who combine power with technique - in other words, those who combine "timing" and "mechanism". The West Indies' best batsmen are Samuels and Gayle, not Pollard and Sammy. Sri Lanka's best are Jayawardene and Sangakkara, Australia's are Watson, Warner and Hussey, India's is Kohli, England's is (I hope, one can never be sure) Pietersen, South Africa's are Kallis and de Villiers, and New Zealand's best are McCullum and Taylor. All these players walk in to their respective Test sides as well. When the first T20 international was played five years ago, the New Zealand team landed up like it was a party, in outrageous hairdos and retro beige outfits. Billy Bowden* showed McGrath a red card for bowling underarm. Amid all this, Ricky Ponting smacked a sublime 98 before declaring he couldn't take this sort of game seriously. In the first two or three years, batsmen approached the game like they were doing something frivolous. The game is a lottery, they said.

Today, a muscle over midwicket might connect and find itself in the stands. Tomorrow, the same shot might just take the top edge and find a fielder on the ropes. But that attitude is being wiped out by the top T20 batsmen, who are discovering the ideal mechanism for this variety of the game. The late cut, Jayawardene has realised, is a more effective shot in a game where there are hardly any slip fielders than the full-bodied cut. Virat Kohli shows with every innings that you can score as fast as the most brutal hitters by minimising the dot balls, pushing singles and finding relatively risk-free boundaries every now and then. Gayle has discovered that it is more fruitful to stay as still as possible at the crease, cut out any trigger movements, watch the ball, make one decisive movement and tonk. The best T20 batsmen have done just what Fry and his peers, Grace and Ranji, and Hobbs after them, did as pioneers of long-form batting - approach batting like a science, understand the risks, know what is effective and what is not, and maximise results. They have changed their mechanism faster than the generation or two before them because they have been confronted with a game so different from its predecessors that it has required them to. If Fry were playing today, I'm sure he wouldn't approve of the mindless slog over midwicket. He would argue that there is a scientific way to do it. He would write, in his book, 50 carefully crafted pages about the exact mechanism of the slog-sweep and remind you to time it perfectly.