Gulu Ezekiel’s Weekly Column

More Injuries and Fatigue: Another IPL By-Product

By Gulu Ezekiel

Gulu Ezekiel

The biggest dilemma facing the national selectors when they sat down to pick the Indian team for the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies next month must have been the fitness of the players.

With the IPL not even at the halfway stage and the world event beginning just five days after the end of the cricket carnival, theirs was an unenviable task.

 Captain MS Dhoni and openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir as well as pace bowler Ashish Nehra all have been forced to skip matches for their franchises with injuries of varying seriousness.

Other national sides, notably South Africa are also having jitters over the availability of some of their top players, victims of the IPL.

Dhoni is back behind the stumps for CSK, but it has always been my contention that the team owners pressurize their star players to return even when they are not fully fit.

This view was endorsed by cricket commentator Charu Sharma on a recent TV discussion. As an insider he should know. Remember, he was CEO for the Bangalore franchise before being sacked by the star-owner weeks into the inaugural event when the side had made a disastrous start. It was also in 2008 when Sachin Tendulkar missed the first half of the first IPL due to a groin injury.

He came back to captain Mumbai Indians but was a pale shadow of himself and shortly after the tournament ended had to skip two ODI tournaments as he was unfit. There were murmurs back then that he was forced to rush his return due to pressure from the IPL bigwigs who could not reconcile with having the world’s most famous cricketer miss the first season on home soil.

The IPL’s cheerleaders (not the female variety) had condemned national coach Gary Kirsten last year when he cited the IPL for causing fatigue and injuries to his players so close to the World T-20 in England in which India fared disastrously. Kirsten had pleaded for more time between the IPL and major world tournaments to give players enough breathing space to recover from niggles and strains that are part and parcel of top-level sport. But obviously no-one in the BCCI was listening. Instead, a gag-order was placed on the coach who was ordered not to make any more negative comments about the IPL in public.

Talking about jitters, the entry of Sahara into the IPL mix has the rival owners nervously looking over their shoulders. Sahara boss Subrata Roy has let it be down that several star India players have expressed their interest in joining his Pune franchise next year. Mr. Roy says it is “emotion” that is behind this interest. But behind the scenes all that emotion is being translated into massive salaries to lure away some of the biggest names in the league.

The next player auction in September should really set the cat among the pigeons.

Somebody Stop Him

By Gulu Ezekiel

The Indian Premier League has become the latest chest-thumping vehicle for Indian Netizens both at home and abroad. Any non-Indian critic of the annual jamboree now into its third year is immediately dubbed a racist. Any Indian critic is dubbed a traitor. This is new-age jingoism at its worst.

How a domestic cricket league with a smattering of international players came to this pass is entirely due to the massive PR machine cranked out by Lalit Kumar Modi and his merry band of Bollywood stars, fat-cat businessmen, ex-players and journalists, all with a vested financial interest in singing from the sang hymn sheet.

The clamour for the ICC to create a ‘window’ free of international cricket for the six weeks of the IPL in summer and the two weeks of the Champions League in winter is growing ever louder. But assuming the ICC succumbs to such pressure and gives Modi what he wants, will he settle for that?

Make no mistake—Modi and the IPL’s ultimate target is not six or eight weeks in the calendar. World cricket domination is in his sights and it is the Indian cricket public who will decide whether he gets what he desires or has his ambitious plans thwarted.

But there are bumps on the superhighway and the biggest was revealed in Mumbai where the auction for two new franchises for IPL IV collapsed on Modi like a warm soufflé more due to his greed than anything else.

The Ravindra Jadeja scandal also proves that the players are helpless–albeit richly paid–pawns. For the owners, these players, many of them national icons, are the ultimate status symbols. They are flaunted much like the latest Gucci handbag or Manolo Blahnik shoes. In other words, they are trophy players for the owners.

While 60 matches will be played this year, next year the number jumps to 94. Will the Indian cricket-mad public continue to lap up this TV reality show or will they suffer from indigestion?

For senior cricketers the IPL is like a gilt-edged Voluntary Retirement Scheme. Why spend the year traveling the cricket world playing for your country when you can take home 10 times the money playing hit-and-giggle cricket for a few weeks?

For the new generation of cricketers, the temptations are irresistible. Why slog and sweat it out for the handful of places in the national or even state side when you can make a tidy packet bowling four overs or batting for a few more? The route to riches has never been easier.     

But one can hardly blame them. It is the authorities who have created this money-fuelled machine that has upturned a value system going back over a century in a matter of three years.  

So what if the IPL is creating a generation of half-baked cricketers who fail at the international level? If Modi has his way, such cricket will anyway be defunct. 

South Africa in 2008 was just the first step. Canada and the United States beckon. In five years time will international cricket be replaced by IPL-backed franchises traveling round the world with Modi the ringmaster cracking the whip?

It is the Indian fan alone who will ultimately decide cricket’s fate. Hang on for the ride.    

Does Sachin Tendulkar deserve the Bharat Ratna?

By Gulu Ezekiel 

Trust our politicians to jump on the bandwagon and bask in reflected glory after Sachin Tendulkar’s latest world record feat.

Bharat Ratna for Sachin Tendulkar?

With both the ruling Congress party in Maharashtra and the Shiv Sena endorsing awarding the Bharat Ratna to Tendulkar, we will no doubt see many more politicians adding their support to this movement. Now every Indian cricketer too is being asked his opinion on the subject. Dare even one of them disagree?

What is most amusing is that it is the same Shiv Sena who had roundly condemned Tendulkar just a few months back after the maestro had made the innocuous and obvious comment at a press conference that Mumbai is for all Indians.

At the outset let me state my opinion which is that Sachin is indeed a jewel of Indian cricket.

But these national awards have long since lost their lustre as the ruling party at the Centre invariably awards them to favourites of the party, irrespective of the individual’s achievements or merit.

Every party in the opposition will condemn such meaningless awards. But no politician is willing to start a campaign to scrap them altogether which is exactly what needs to be done.

As far as I am concerned, the Bharat Ratna lost is value back in the 80s when the Congress party in power granted it posthumously to late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MG Ramachandran simply because his party, the AIADMK was at the time supporting the Congress at the Centre.

Tendulkar has received every national and sporting award from the Arjuna to the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan. Only the Bharat Ratna remains, the highest civilian honour in the land.

But why only for a cricketer? What about hockey, badminton, chess, billiards, shooting and tennis which have brought us international laurels? And remember, cricket is played at the top level by just a handful of countries while the above mentioned sports are practiced worldwide. 

So the question will invariably crop up: if for Tendulkar, then why not posthumously for hockey wizard Dhyan Chand, former world badminton champion Prakash Padukone, Olympic gold medalist shooter Abhinav Bindra, world chess champion V. Anand and so many more, including former cricketers ranging from CK Nayudu to Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar?

Let us not fool ourselves. Just because cricket is the most popular sport in the country, it does not stand to reason that it should monopolise national honours. After all, football is Britain’s number one sport by far. But the Queen’s annual birthday honours list hands out gongs to sportspersons across the spectrum.

Giving Tendulkar the Bharat Ratna will only open the floodgates and drag him into an unseemly controversy. Let us treasure him for his contribution to Indian cricket and not distract him from the biggest prize that still awaits him, the World Cup. Just one year to go for that.

Sachin’s ODI Double Century: Was it that big an achievement?

By Gulu Ezekiel 

Perhaps the biggest surprise surrounding Sachin Tendulkar’s record 200 not out in the Gwalior ODI is that it was so long in coming.

The number of ODIs will cross the 3,000 mark this year which is a huge amount of matches considering the first was played 39 years ago at Melbourne.

Tendulkar is just behind Sanath Jayasuriya in the most matches played with close to 450 and on at least three previous occasions in his career he had come close to breaking the barrier.

One suspects now that it has fallen, there will be quite a few others—perhaps even Tendulkar—who will go past the mark.

Such sporting landmarks tend to be as much psychological as physical, the best example being the 4-minute mile.

Till Roger Bannister broke through in 1954, it was considered to be an impossible feat. And yet after Bannister, it has been surpassed over 1,000 times, including on 100-plus occasions by New Zealand’s John Walker and Steve Scott of the US.

The previous record of 194 was shared by Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar and Zimbabwe’s Charles Coventry who remained unbeaten just six months ago at Harare.

It should be recalled though that back in 1997 had Anwar used the fleet-footed Shahid Afridi as his ‘runner’ almost throughout as he was suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration due to the oppressive Chennai weather.

Ironically, it was Tendulkar as the rival captain who was criticized for being lenient on the Pakistanis and acceding to Anwar’s request when he was well within his rights to turn it down.

Coventry is the only one of the three who did not open the innings, coming in at the fall of the first wicket in the second over. But the bespectacled Zimbabwean would be the first to admit he is not in the same league as Anwar and Tendulkar. And the Bangladesh bowling is frankly cannon fodder by international standards.

The big surprise over why it took so long for the 200-barrier to be breached is mainly due to the conditions and laws of the game which have been rapidly altered to suit the batsman.

The umpire has already been reduced to a cap stand due to electronic aids (all the better for the game). Now the bowler is being reduced to a faceless entity whose sole task it appears is to be carted all over the field.

This is mainly due to the rise of the T-20 format and the ludicrous ‘free-hit’ front foot no-ball law and also the reduction in the size of boundaries. At Gwalior as Tendulkar and others cleared the ropes at will, it was beginning to look like the size of the ground was fit only for a school game. Fielding restrictions and power-plays add to the bowlers’ misery.

Add to that the restriction on bouncers and the calling of a no-ball for any delivery which is above waist high plus the advancements in bat design and you can see why bowlers around the world are throwing up their arms in despair.

The only question now is: will Tendulkar’s record be broken this year itself? No raised eyebrows if it is. 

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If you liked this article you may also like to check out the following:

• Sachin Tendulkar’s Highest Scores in One Day Cricket
• List of the top 50 ODI Innings
• The Sachin Tendulkar Quiz – 10 Interesting Questions and Trivia from Sachin’s Life