Bowled out

By Aaron Kumar… Last week I looked at the money that is now coming into Cricket, because of Twenty20 Cricket. The sport has hit the big time, players are becoming millionaires over night! Cricket is finally being seen as a cool sport to play and watch and not some dull game from a previous century.

One thing I am not is a purist, however after seeing some of the recent events I have to ask myself is this really Cricket?

Canada is an emerging cricket nation, and in last weeks quadrangular Twenty20 series in Toronto, the hosts did well to give, cricketing giants, Pakistan and Sri Lanka both highly competitive matches. Nevertheless the Canadian’s would have had high hopes of derailing Zimbabwe, but to Zimbabwe’s credit they managed to pick up two runs off the last ball to secure a tie with Canada.
Scores level, so surely this means that both teams get equal points and move on to the next game? Well not quite! A Twenty20 game now has to have a result! And therefore the game was decided on a bowl out!

Each team had to nominate three players to run up and bowl to a set of stumps with no batsman in the way!
I can understand how in Soccer you would have a penalty shoot out to decide a game, because the skills of both parties are being tested but a bowl out in cricket? A quality bowler is often not the man a captain will nominate because he is least likely to hit the stumps! Not only does this make bowl outs a lottery, it makes them a sheer waste of time.

In the Twenty20 World Cup last year, arch rivals India and Pakistan were involved in a tied game in the group stages of the competition. While Pakistan’s captain Shoaib Malik nominated three specialist bowlers for the bowl out two of whom are capable of bowling at speeds of over 85 mph, India’s skipper MS Dhoni nominated three slow bowlers out of which only one was a specialist.
At the time people were wandering just what Dhoni was thinking but he got his tactics spot, on as India hit the stumps three times while Pakistan missed all three.

So why did a team which nominated specialist bowlers miss, while a team which had three slow bowlers, one of whom doesn’t even bowl for his country, hit the stumps, its quite simple really, Pakistan’s pace bowlers are used to taking long long run ups creating awesome pace and making batsman scared! But here all they needed to do was hit the stumps, not rough anyone up! But from habit the Pakistani bowlers still took the run up and tried to bowl at pace but as a result they didn’t have any accuracy! India’s “bowlers” by contrast just rolled their arm over slow as possible but aimed for and hit the bulls eye.

That’s my take on bowl outs they are fun to look at and something that gets us talking for a while after. But should we really be using these to decide games?
Next week I will look at other ways we can make the game interesting without making it farcical like the bowl out! In the mean time it would be great to hear your views on the bowl out or anything else that’s cricket!

Exclusive Interview with Umar Bhatti, Vice Captain of the Canadian National Cricket Team

by Aaron Kumar…

What is the proudest moment of your career so far?

Taking 10 wickets against Kenya in a four day game, and then getting Mohammed Yosuf out in a World Cup game against Pakistan, that was a warm up game, and I took a hat trick against Ireland in the intercontinental cup final in Greece last year.

Canada are starting to host a fare amount of International cricket, there was the recently concluded triangular series, and now there is a quadrangular Twenty20 series at the weekend, what is it like to play the top teams in front of your home crowd?

We don’t really get home advantage because all the supporters support the big teams! But it is good to place against the big guys because it gives us the opportunity to improve our game and see where we have to improve.

Twenty20 Cricket has become really big since its arrival in 2005, do you think that Twenty20 cricket can compete with other sports in North America? And have you found that since the introduction of Twenty20 cricket you are having more of a following?

has to be marketed properly, obviously there is a lot of interest, in people that are from other parts of the world, because Toronto is a multi cultural city, there are a lot of West Indians or South Asians, or British or Australians so to speak, that follow the game but the whole point is to get people that have grown up here or that are living here interested.
Certainly it is a format that can compete, with the likes of Baseball, or Ice Hockey or Football, so it has to be marketed the right way and you have to target the right sort of people and get their interest.

What are your long term goals in the sport, both on a personal level and with the Canadian team?
I would like to play for Canada for the next 10 years because I am so young and definitely achieve some of the goals that I have set for myself, I would love to play overseas because Cricket in Canada is not professional, I would love to play professional Cricket, so I am looking around to see where I can get a contract overseas.

Who was your biggest role model in the game?
That would be Wasim Akram, I grew up in Lahore watching him before I moved here, he is a left armer and so am I, and so I sort of emulated him, with my action and everything, so he is my role model.

What is your favourite sport outside of cricket?
I have played a few sports when I was in high school, I played volley ball, I played a bit of ball hockey, I definitely watch Basketball and I certainly like to watch Ice Hockey!

Do you have a team for Ice Hockey?
Yeah, the Toronto Maple leafs of course!

Who Wants to be a millionaire?

by Aaron Kumar… Cricket set to hit the big time

Antigua, November 1st will see the biggest pay out for a one off sporting event, (in the history of world sport). The sport in question, is not Basketball, nor NFL or Soccer, but indeed Cricket. Each member of the victorious team, in the final game of the Stanford Super series, stands to make $1 million.

Texan Billionaire, Alan Stanford is the man sponsoring this unprecedented event,  Stanford has sponsored
the Caribbean official domestic Twenty20 tournament for the last two years.

Twenty20 cricket is the newest version of the game, it is also the shortest form of the game and has so far proved to be a huge hit with fans and players alike, it has also seen many people take an interest in the game who previously wouldn’t have done so.

The purists love their Test Match cricket. This is the oldest form, of the game and lasts for five days but there is no guarantee of a result at the end of it. Whenever I have been in North America and talked to people about Test Cricket, they can’t see the point in a game which lasts five days that could well be a stalemate.

In truth, if Cricket is going to compete with some of the worlds major sports and get more exposure across the globe, then Twenty20 is the way forward. Stanford has recognised this, the American has stated, that he believes Twenty20 cricket has the potential to become the biggest sport in the world.

Earlier this year Twenty20 cricket prospered in India, with the Indian Premier League, (IPL). The six week league saw some of the worlds best players signed up to different franchises in what was a spectacular event. Of the major cricketing nations, the only country not to have its stars on display was England, as the England and Wales Cricket board did not want it’s players to take part, despite several England players publicly expressing an interest in the lucrative league.

It appears that the ECB therefore agreed to the Stanford Super series as a means of making sure the England players still earn good amounts of money and to stop them from playing in the IPL.Whether this is what materialises only time will tell.

There will be five warm up games in the Stanford Super series, culminating in the Twenty million dollar match, between England and the Stanford All stars.The All Stars squad has been chosen based on  the performances of the West Indian players in the Stanford Twenty20 domestic league.

The date is set, the squad has been named but is paying 11 members of a winning team (essentially three hours work) one million dollars each, really the way to go? Of course the players aren’t going to complain, if we are honest none of us would if presented with such an opportunity.

But what happens if a player spills a catch and costs his team the big prize?  What happens if a guy scores a record breaking hundred and is still on the losing side? But perhaps the point that should be of the biggest concern, what happens if a player scores zero and doesn’t bowl, therefore making no contribution to the game at all, but their team still wins? Has that player truthfully earned One million dollars?

These are exciting times for International cricket, the above questions plus many more should be answered when England face the Stanford All Stars in Antigua. The biggest question of all however is Who really wants to be a millionaire?

Transparency Is The Cornerstone Of The Oz Team’s Success

by Long John Silver…

Communicating a problem to the concerned individual and transparency in the process are the key to many potential solutions. It lets the individual know where exactly the problem is, and why he was dismissed temporarily. It helps him focus on addressing the issue from day one, without the need to wait eternally in determining the problem. Last but not the least, it sets an example in addressing similar cases in the future.

If you do the crime, you must do the time—t’s a rule that’s applied to ONE and ALL in the Aussie Team.

Quite Utopian, but it is one of the cornerstones of the Australian team’s success. It is a rule that has been applied consistently and quite indifferently for the last two decades, no one is exempt from it, and it applies to all from the skipper…down to the last substitute.

Roy (Andrew Symonds) went fishing instead of attending a team meeting in the midst of a tour, and the Australian team thought that was inexcusable. They spelled out very clearly why he was sent back—ruthless, remorseless, and fair. I highly commend the transparency of the process.

In a world where ‘Resting’ has become such a mundane euphemism for dropping key players, such transparency is what keeps the ‘Green and Gold’ at the top of the pack.

Not many teams would have sent back one of their most important players, back home for such a transgression, a more comfortable option would have been to slap a monetary fine and sweep it under the carpet.

Quite frankly, the loss of Roy could have cost them the series, but that’s precisely where one has to remember that with power comes responsibility. If Roy was such a key player to the team, the Aussies felt that he ought to have been more responsible.

He let himself, and even worse…his team mates down. One of Roy’s best friends and skipper Michael Clarke had no remorse in making such a decision. He would do the same thing a hundred times over, when faced with such a situation.

Some of the other cricket boards—Pakistan, India, and the Windies (and in many instances other boards too) can learn from such clear transparency. With despicable politics (Mr. Dalmiya? Seriously … the BCCI is not your fun-house) and the background theater, there have been many instances where no one knows why an individual has been treated shabbily or dropped, in any of these teams. It serves no good, for both sides.

Roy knew why he was dropped, Roy knows what he has to do to come back, and every other member of the team knew that no one was above the overall welfare of the team. It is simple—yet, efficient and a fair solution.

Transparency and fairness are the cornerstones of the success of the ‘Baggy-green’

Cheers!

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