Farce Follows Fiasco (Again)

The scenes from Chester-le-Street yesterday were just the kind the English game didn’t need, especially in what has become its flagship event. Fans being turned away at the gate, told that they’d be seeing no cricket today (in fact, told nothing at all until around five of the clock); players milling about the ground with nothing much to do, bemused and somewhat confused; television coverage of a quarter-final all of a sudden sans live entertainment apart from the unique comedy stylings of Colville and Co. Surely the last thing the game needs to be doing is alienating its Twenty20 fan-base. It was, let’s face it, another of cricket’s great farces.

The complex ramifications the affair could have for the future of this year’s tournament have been analysed and discussed. The madness of thousands of fans being inexcusably robbed of their time and entertainment by an administrative error and overzealous application of regulations has been exposed. But spare a thought for the central figure in this little drama, seventeen year-old Azeem Rafiq.

To me at least it seems somewhat ridiculous that a young man who, along with his family, has decided to make England home is deemed ineligible to be considered an England qualified cricketer whilst at the same time professional cricketers from around the world can become non-overseas players in English domestic sides at ten minutes notice. Over forty South Africans are free to play wherever and whenever they like in England and yet Yorkshire would have had to de-register their overseas player Rana Naved in order to be able to play Rafiq? The situation is manifestly absurd. For that matter, as Rafiq has apparently been residing in the country for seven years, one would have thought that he has easily fulfilled the minimal residential qualifications criteria of five years. Were this simply a case of clerical error it would be understandable if not excusable. But the questions surrounding nationality and such make it much more disturbing. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but so what if Rafiq doesn’t have an English passport? One would have thought that now would be the perfect time to furnish him with one. The guy has captained England for god’s sake and now there is speculation that he might be deported?

The ECB’s attempts to pinpoint the blame for this farce solely upon Yorkshire must ring somewhat hollow when one recalls that Rafiq did in fact captain England at under-15 level. Surely it would have been incumbent upon them as the game’s governing body to ensure that the young man was eligible to play for, let alone captain, the national side? Furthermore the organisation’s handling of the current issue has also come under scrutiny. Yorkshire’s coach Martyn Moxon has claimed that the ECB knew of the problem surrounding Rafiq’s registration shortly after his debut against Nottinghamshire and neglected or forgot to do anything about it until the morning of the quarter-final. David Collier on the other hand asserted that this was the first the ECB knew of it. The whole thing reeks of mismanagement and must bring into question the competency of the board. As pointed out over at Reverse Swing Manifesto, the game should have been played regardless of the administrative black-hole and the issue resolved could be resolved afterwards, thus not dissapointing 6000 paying spectators. In any case the postponement of the game was shockingly ill-thought-out and makes one wonder about the ability of the ECB to effectively handle crises. For all Giles Clarke’s positive talk of restructuring the game and taking it to the next level, one gets the feeling that crisis management skills are going to be in seriously high demand in cricket administration circles in the coming months.

The most important question now must be what happens to Rafiq rather than what happens to the twenty20 championship. What must have looked like being the biggest day of his life turned all too suddenly into a nightmare. One can only hope that rumours of his status in the country coming under question are greatly exaggerated. Let’s hope that common sense ultimately prevails and that this doesn’t materially affect the future of this young man in the sport. If it does, it is a poor reflection on how the game of cricket treats its most important commodity, the players themselves. It is they, not high-flying administrators, not billionaire businessmen, not gimmicky franchises, that keep cricket alive and well.

The Art of (Bad) Captaincy

Captaincy: The ultimate honour, the peak of ambition. Yesterday I captained my team for the first time in a twenty20 game. Surely there can be nothing better than leading one’s men into battle ? The pride in seeing your side perform above themselves because of your inspiring example. The newly forged bonds of camaraderie and respect between captain and side. Well, not quite. The truth is, it wasn’t much fun. Perhaps KP didn’t realise what he was getting himself into last week. I certainly didn’t. We, like Pietersen’s merry British band, got marmelised.

Once the dust had settled and the casualties had been swept away from the field of battle, I couldn’t help wondering just how culpable I was. For answers I turned to the guru of captaincy himself, Mike Brearley. For war there’s Sun Tzu; for cricket skippership there’s Brearley. On the opening page of The Art of Captaincy he summed up my quandry rather nicely: ‘(the captain) tends to feel responsible when things go badly. He may of course be right. But there may also have been nothing more that he could have done.’ I began my quest for answers in chapter four.

Chapter four: my god, look what they’ve sent me: the captain and selection. Not much blame could be attached to any selectorial foibles on my part. This is intra-club twenty20, not a Test series touring party. You take what you get and run with it. We couldn’t even field eleven, so there weren’t exactly too many selection headaches. There were no protesting fans brandishing no Cummins no goings placards. Whoever showed up was thrust into the action. No scope for gaffes in this regard, so chapter 4 sees me in the clear.

Chapter Five: The morning of the match: reading the entrails. Well firstly the match didn’t start till a quarter to seven in the evening, so I was hardly there in the morning. Regardless, Brearley notes that a captain’s main focus before the game must be on the pitch. As we play on a mat, I could hardly be faulted for failing to note the density of grass covering, frequency of cracking or relative moisture content. Next is the toss. The undeniably sound advice here is to win it. Did that. There follows a treatise on when to bat and when to bowl. My logic was simpler and rested on the assumption that batting in the pitch-dark is trickier than bowling in it. Good old fashioned common sense!

Chapter Six: Batting Orders. Unfortunately Brearley lacked the foresight to mention twenty20. Nonetheless he surely would have appreciated the fact that the batting order was painstakingly formulated. Left/right hand combinations were put into place to frustrate the fielders and put the bowlers off their stride. Pinch-hitters alternated with proper batsmen. A defensive batsman opened with a hitter. Unhappily the former lasted two balls before leaving a straight one. The hitter hit one straight up in the air. The captain, steering his team from the engine-room of number five, lasted fully four balls before losing his off peg. The lower order slogged and slapped despite my most fervent appeals for them to consolidate and rebuild. Fourteen overs and we were history. Sorry Mike, but in all honesty I would’ve been as well off to determine the order by means of a hat and ten bits of paper. In fact, we probably would have done better had I inverted it.

Chapter Seven: Taking the field. Brearley’s pulling no punches here. ‘The art of captaincy culminates in the team fielding’ he declares. That’s what I thought too. Here I felt I was sure to be able to show off my innate tactical nous, my ability to astutely read the game and plan accordingly. The author outlines for the captain four basic requirements: 1. Getting the team on the field. Not the most arduous of tasks perhaps, but I managed that all right. Despite our dismal batting the boys were in bellicose and bullish mood. 2. He moves them around on it. I must confess, there weren’t too many mid-over field alterations, but it was getting dark… 3. He runs a brisk ship. Hmm, perhaps I shouldn’t have had the same man field at deep midwicket for both the left and right handers. In fairness I’m sure the exercise did him, if not the overall pace of play, untold good. 4. He must think ahead. Probably easier done in a 4 day match than when you’re trying to defend 77 runs in 20 overs. I was stuck very much in the present.

Chapter Eight: Placing the field. Brearley’s theories on field placings are comprehensive and instructive, but he fails to discuss what turned out to be fundamental issues. How does one set a field to bad bowling? What do you do when a bowler feeds the opener’s savage cut? ‘Pitch it up!’ I said. Bowl it short they did. Six. Four Six. 'Keep it outside the off,' I pleaded. On the legs they put it. Four. Six. Four. What then Brears? Furthermore, no amount of fielders will do much good if the batsman keeps smashing it over them.

Chapter Nine: Strategy, tactics and unusual plots. It must be said, I rather failed in the imagination department. I employed no leg slip, nor did I advise my bowlers to attempt the in-vogue slow bouncer. My fields stuck slavishly to convention and my advice was steeped in tradition rather than brimming with ingenuity. Definitely an area that could do with improvement. Brearley recalls how once he had a helmet put at short square leg in an effort to get the batsman playing against the spin hoping to gain the five penalty runs on offer. Maybe I’ll give that a go next time.

Brearley’s seminal tome has unfortunately solved few of my problems and answered few of my questions. If only he had written a follow-up, The Art of Intra-club Twenty20 Captaincy, I would be on more solid ground. When it comes down to it, the captain can’t bat 1 to 11, bowl from both ends and field in every position. Ultimately getting bowled for a duck did more harm than any tactical blunders. Derek Underwood once pondered ‘why do so many players want to be captain?’ After my first taste of it, I am inclined to agree.

photo by IanL, taken from Flickr. Reproduced under Creative Commons license.

ICL? EPL? StanfordPL? Tread carefully, Giles...

An English Premier League, three day cricket, fewer first-class games and three conferences (not divisions); it didn’t take long. Giles Clarke’s proposals to dramatically alter the structure of the English domestic game were a somewhat inevitable response to IPL mania, Stanford’s money-bags and an overall obsession with the cash potential of Twenty20. It is however something of a change of heart from the man who claimed that "tradition and history rather than Bollywood stars and glitz are the binding which persuade supporters to return week in week out to our grounds...” Certainly it begs the question whether cricket administrators are in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Of the suggestions mooted, that of an EPL is the least surprising. Everyone wants a twenty20 league of their own these days, from Pakistan to India to the West Indies to England. Quite how different such a league in England would be from the competition already in place is not altogether clear. Despite his proposals for sweeping changes, Clarke dismissed the idea of a city based franchise structure ala the IPL as ‘ludicrous’ only a couple of months ago. More teams, including some from overseas, and a draft system controlled by the ECB for recruiting foreign players seem to be the major differences proposed from the Twenty20 championship.

The proposal for a three conference county championship appears outwardly more bewildering. Such a move would abolish the current system of promotion and relegation and involve teams competing in one of three randomly drawn divisions each year. Of course that is basically the way one-day tournaments are presently organised (though the conferences are more rationally determined based upon region), ultimately coalescing into a knockout stage for those enjoying divisional success. The idea of determining the first-class County Champions via a play-off is a rather unsatisfactory situation however. Simon Briggs points out that such a change would allow the ECB to reduce the time spent playing four-day cricket and allow the middle of the summer to be exclusively devoted to that grail of marketing, the English Premier League.

Predictably, support amongst the counties is split between the bigger and smaller clubs. The former are wary of any changes to a system that has seen their status as the forces to be reckoned with in English cricket solidify, whilst the latter are unsurprisingly enough keen on any opportunity to extricate themselves from the dead-end of division two cricket. Both sides have a point. Two-tier cricket in England has done its job of creating a more professional and competitive structure since its inception in 2000 and it would be something of a retrograde step to abolish it. On the other hand, the position of counties who have struggled with divisional cricket such as Worcestershire is understandable. According to their chief executive, "the major positive [with conferences] would be that every team starts even and has a chance of winning the Championship. It would also give you the chance to play more counties regularly, rather than missing out on facing some of the big teams." However, the implementation of another of Clarke’s proposals, the salary cap, would go a long way to solve the widening gap between the have and have-nots without involving the need to abolish the incentivised nature of promotion and relegation.

The idea of a salary cap is one that surely needs to be implemented in all sports in the era of the billionaire owner. It was the saving grace of American football, meaning fans rarely have to endure watching their side propping up the bottom of the league year after year as teams are prevented from using superior financial muscle to become invincible. If the administrators of football in England and indeed Europe had any courage they too would implement such a system, ending the farce of a perennial ‘Big Four’ and laying the foundation for a new era of competitiveness. Nor would such a move be without precedent in British sport. Those in charge of running both codes of rugby on the island long ago had the foresight to put salary caps in place: the Guinness Premiership has operated under the system for fully nine years.

Though the problem may not be as acute in cricket, salary-caps would be a welcome compensation for perennial second division domestic sides keen on the idea of shaking up the current domestic structure. The arbitrary threefold conference division, something these same counties are keen on for this very reason, would then be rendered largely unnecessary. If counties were on a largely even footing then the elite group of consistently successful counties would eventually be dispersed. Some counties may complain about the breaking up of their settled units, but in the long run it would be a small price to pay for a healthier national structure. The big boys will no doubt moan bitterly about tradition and the like in an effort to retain their burgeoning monopolies on the domestic game, but it will certainly be easier to stand up to the likes of Surrey and Sussex as opposed to tycoons such as Glazer and Abramovich. Other sports have been able to adapt, and there is no good reason why cricket cannot do likewise.

That all the changes put forward by Clarke are devoted primarily to increasing the primacy of money-spinning twenty20 in the domestic calendar is yet one more crystal clear indicator of where the game is heading. Many naysayers and doom-merchants have predicted that Lalit Modi and his twenty-twenty vision will inevitably sound the death knell for longer forms of the game, but few could have imagined it being given such momentum so soon by the ECB itself.

Nonetheless, change is not a bad thing. Just as Twenty20 has changed the way we play cricket, it will inevitably change the way it is run. It is the task of administrators like Giles Clarke to integrate such changes into current models without completely destroying them. Cricket cannot nor should not now survive without Twenty20 as a fundamental component. Neither however can it survive with Twenty20 alone.