Cricket: From the Far End

I have heard a lot of people say in the last few week that may be this whole Twenty20 World tournament was rigged to let India and Pakistan get back into limelight after their early exits in the world cup. Whenever India and Pakistan are involved in cricket there is always talk of some fixing going on. I had heard it about all the recent India-Pakistan series, despite the fact that the results were different each time.

Overall, I don’t think the whole thing was a staged play to let India win. I think individual test or ODI series between teams-that-are-always-suspect might be easier to manipulate as the number of parties to manage are less and the visibility of the overall results is less. One or two players throw their wickets, the rival captains make unusual declarations, the batting captain orders a go-slow, you just need those couple of players to be “in” on that. But to manipulate a tournament of this size, when so many cricketing organizations are involved and moreover to do that without no journalist getting a slightest hint is quite tough. Yes there might be people in influential positions who could attempt such a thing, but it’s unlikely that something won’t sneak out to the press. Nowadays with news hungry press and bloggers, Tendulkar can’t even discuss the thought of his retirement with his close friends or India’s coach can’t write a confidential mail about the captain, or Shane Warne can’t do anything off the field without the press and the bloggers getting it almost even before they did it. Some sensational news of this magnitude can not remain a secret for too long. Some player who gets dropped, some official who didn’t get the role he wanted, some journalist who overheard something or just somebody wanting to create a sensation could always be there to spoil it.

Moreover, let’s see what all needs to have been orchestrated to get India and Pakistan into the final and make India win it: First the cricket boards and players of England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka would have to be complicit to the scheme. Of these, South Africa were the home team and if one of the reasons of all this was revenue then it didn’t make sense to shut them out even before the semi-finals. Even Pakistan would have to be convinced that their losing the final was- in a weird sense- in cricket’s best interests. This makes it even more unlikely - the guys who fight with their own team mates on a tour, who sign-up for other interests and then do an about-turn to do “anything for Pakistan”, and in general come in the news for reasons other than on-field performances - can they keep quiet despite taking flak for losing to their arch-rivals twice? There could always be some disgruntled person in all this who could leak it.

In addition, the entire set of matches have to be stage-managed to follow a certain path that convinces the public there was a match going on, gives enough entertainment to keep them interested and influence the outcome of certain balls (deliveries) to make the chosen team win. Some could say Misbah’s shot was like that. But there were several other in that and the earlier matches that could be very difficult to achieve. Australia didn’t lose to India in a shot-that-went-wrong miracle, whoever watched that game felt India played the game much better than the Aussies that day.

I think some of these rumors got further fueled because there seemed to be a give-and-take about recent series India played in: Against Pakistan in 2006 they lost the tests but won the ODIs, against the West Indies and England they did the opposite. Even otherwise these rumors start the moment there is some positive outcome for India in any series. Two of India’s biggest series of recent times were the drawn test series against Australia in 2003-04 and the first-time series win in Pakistan in 2004. Were these fixed? People said that about Pakistan because India won both the test and ODI series, “India went there to revive their cricket after it was in trouble as no other country was visiting due to the security risks, and in turn they let India win it”. In fact these questions were asked to Inzamam and Dravid in the post-series press conference also. So it looks like only if India loses badly the bashing is so hard that nobody thinks about whether it was fixed. The moment India manages to win either test or ODI or both series, it’s all fixed.

How about the Australia series of 2003-04 then? The test series was drawn but India had the upper hand, and India lost the triangular ODI tournament after reaching the finals. Were those fixed? How about the one that India lost later in 2004? Following the skeptics’ theory may be only the one in Australia was fixed. Now Steve Waugh, the player who never lost a series against anybody at home and didn’t lose abroad to England, South Africa, West Indies etc, would he agree to fix his last series? Even if he did why would he declare the first match at Brisbane so late that India could make nothing out of it? Wasn’t losing to India easier in Brisbane than in Adelaide? Since it was to be his last series anyway (he had announced it so before), what would he have to gain by fixing and spoiling his record and also risk spoiling his reputation? Certainly he hasn’t done anything after that which would raise such doubts.

No, the Aussies are unbreakable, the skeptic would continue to argue. Okay, then how did they lose the semis against India in Twenty20? All the experts said India played their best cricket in that game and in terms of the cricket quality it was better than the final. Now for a team who played so well to beat the Aussies, would there be a need of fixing the games against England, Pakistan etc? Something doesn’t add up.

How about the ODI world cup then? When India lost to Bangladesh, there were still two opportunities to “bring them back in” - Bangladesh could have lost to Bermuda or Sri Lanka could have lost to India. Wasn’t that much easier? Their corresponding boards would have got a big windfall by letting India go ahead as compared to what they would get by going into the super-8s. A lot of people were saying either of these two could happen because it was all fixed. It didn’t.

I am not saying there are no evil forces in the cricket world, I just think with the tremendous exposure cricket gets, especially in the subcontinent, it is extremely hard to influence the outcome of such big visibility tournaments. For a general cricket fan, it’s natural to have such doubts when there are surprising results. But you would miss a lot of fun if you continue to look at every such result in suspicion.

What an unusual series for India! 3 tests and 7 ODIs, or 12 if you count the three against RSA and one each against Ireland and Scotland (there was one more, against Pakistan, that got washed out) and the only century came from a tail ender (Kumble) in the tests. So many 90’s, no hundred even in ODIs from Tendulkar, Dravid or Ganguly.

This is also one of the rare series where Tendulkar kept scoring consistently and not had his usual 1 century and small scores pattern. At least three times he was given out wrongly, the most crucial was the last ODI game which India lost. It’s almost as if the umpires now should consider the fact when deciding the next time - that it’s Tendulkar and if there is a small doubt may be he should be spared just because of all these decisions in this series. He missed a few hundreds in this series and some of them were due to these decisions.

Yet India won so many of these matches. Although they lost the series against England 3-4, it was very close anyway. If, against a side who performed very well above their usual level, India can make it so close despite extremely poor fielding and not so great bowling, I just wonder what they can do if those things are addressed. Some people say India kept struggling in a series they should have won easily just because England were ranked so low in the ODI rankings before the series. What we miss is how England played - they raised their game to many more levels in this series and if India’s batting had not been in form, India would have lost this series heavily. Anyway, the rankings are at best the indicator of how you have been playing in the recent past and not about how you are expected to play at any time.

But the most important outcome has to be the test series win. There also, India did not lose the next test after having won one before. That’s another pattern they broke.

Overall, lot of fun! The next cricket is the Twenty-20 World Cup in South Africa starting Tuesday, followed by a 7 match ODI series at home against Australia.