The Failure of Champions League

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When you think of Champions League, you think of football don't you? If someone says, 'the Champions League is a big failure', you'd call him foolish won't you? And if Champions League is such a big affair in football, why couldn't Lalit Modi & Co. think of a better name for the cricket version of it?

Whatever the name, it was indeed a failure. If you are a cricket fanatic, and were expecting something as good as, say, the Liverpool-AC Milan (3-3) final of 2005 or the Barcelona-Arsenal (2-1) final of 2006, then you were asking for too much.

Not much was gained from this league. T&T showed a lot of potential, and some guidance to the WI team, some stadia might have become marginally better and some ground workers might have become a little better off. But much more was lost than how much was gained. The most recent one being, Brett Lee being sent back home only the first ODI in the 7-match series in India. What were the chances of Lee not getting injured if there had been no CL? Surely, the chances would have been far less. Does Lee regret it? Even if he does, will he still play in every season of IPL and CL? Only time will tell...

Both IPL and CL were plagiarised brainchildren of Modi. With just one motive: EARN as MUCH as you can. The two seasons of IPL certainly earned him a few crores but not every league will turn out to be as successful in India. People in India are not that crazy about cricket that you'll get a full house for a match between two Aussie teams about whom Indian fans have never even heard! For me, it was a pleasure to see empty chairs and stands. It was a slap on Modi's face. I wanted CL to be a disaster. As a cricket fan I should have loved it, but don't we have enough cricket already? Isn't there an overload of cricket matches these days? Specially T20s? What would you prefer? Injury free Ashes, Champions Trophy or several leagues throughout the year and then match-winners like Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaks, Pietersen, Lee not able to represent their countries when they want to? The choice is yours..you will ultimately get what you want to see and not what you are made to see by millionaires just because they want to become billionaires.

The greed for money certainly attracts the players. From that point of view, I think it's fine till IPL because it gives a platform to tier II and III Indian players to play with players like Hayden, Gilchirst, Warne etc. and some money as well. But greed will kill the game. Numerous cricket lovers have already started disliking 50over matches. What will they do when they are bored of T20s? Hopefully, Tests will not get affected. I hope they are not. If the essence of the game dies, the game will not live long too.

I hope Modi gets picked up by aliens or gets raided by the income tax team so that we can get back to what we had before his dominance over Indian cricket and T20s. Or, I hope he thinks about the game for a change and not about his bank balance...

Jumbo’s Last Flight

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‘It is the end of an era’. How many times have you read or heard this statement when a legendary player retires from any sport? I ask this question because India’s former test skipper announced his retirement on the last day of the third test match in Delhi between India and Australia in October 2008.

Sachin Tendulkar says Kumble is the best bowler India has had; Ian Chappell says it will be hard for India to produce another Kumble and some of the Pakistani players praised the commitment, grit and determination ‘Jumbo’ has shown for the past 19 years. The way he came back to the field after fracturing his jaw against West Indies at Antigua in 2002 is a perfect example of that.

However, I would like to say that no doubt whatever is written above is true but Kumble was never a ‘very’ talented player. One of the reasons is that he was not a big turner of the ball and the other being he got a big chunk of his 600 plus wickets from the lower order. If you carefully look at the way he takes wickets, he often used to beat the batsmen by pace by pitching the ball in line with the stumps and had the batsmen LBW or bowled in case of not very good batsmen. He hardly got batsmen beaten by turn or flight (which was never there). The fact that he was almost always in the team (except for the two year period around 1990-1992), was true because we never had any other spinner who could bowl really well or could even take wickets on a regular basis. So, at least we had some one who could clear the tail away sooner or later. We had Venkatapathy Raju, Ashish Kapoor, Sairaj Bahutule, Sarandeep Singh and a few other spinners as well who could never establish themselves in the team for more than a few months. And since Indian pitches have been favouring spinners since time immemorial, we had to keep at least one spinner who was taking wickets by beating batsmen by pace or by turn. Then came Harbhajan Singh in 1998 but even he did not stay for long. But, it was in 2001 when he made his comeback against Australia and took 32 wickets (including a hat-trick) in a three test series and threatened Kumble’s place as an established spinner in the team. Since then they both have been in and out of the playing eleven (but almost always in the team of 16) because now we had a bowler who could turn, flight and spin the ball. Of course ‘bhajji’ has not been consistently consistent but he certainly has been the best of the lot we have had for the past 10-15 years.
It was only when Rahul Dravid stepped down as the skipper almost a year ago, Mahi was too young to lead a test team and Sachin said it was time for someone younger than him to take over as the captain, that the selection committee made Kumble as the makeshift captain of the test team. Unfortunately, after that his performance got worse which probably made him think of retirement. And as he discovered during the Test series against Australia that he was not getting wickets, he decided to hang up his boots.

It might be the end of an era but it certainly is the beginning of another for the other spinners to take over and take the team to a higher level.