Writing for Cricinfo, Ramachandra Guha asks of Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri:
Why have these two stalwarts of Indian cricket never spoken out about the damage the IPL has done to the country’s Test team?
Guha is one of my favorite writers on the subject, and is infinitely more knowledgeable, so I had expected to be enlightened by this article. Unfortunately though, Guha not only fails to answer his question, but also inexplicably tries (and fails) to construct a grand unified theory with the sole view of implicating Gavaskar and Shastri in the matter.
Allow me to reconstruct Guha’s argument here.
Statement #1: The IPL is the reason India is no longer the best Test team in the world.
Statement #2: Gavaskar and Shastri are in the BCCI’s pockets, which is why they do not voice opinions against the body. Also, they should have supported Dileep Vengsarkar in his bid to lead the Mumbai Cricket Association.
Statement #3: India’s drubbing this far in England is because some key players opted out due to exertion, or are playing despite it.
Guha would like us to believe that the last two statements together prove the first.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the second statement is completely irrelevant to the case. However, #3 is pertinent, but only goes halfway towards proving Guha’s point. The generally held view is that the Indian team has had to play too much cricket over the past six months, and this is the reason for the team’s poor performance in the first three Tests against England. I concur with this view. If this were indeed the case, and Guha himself implies this in his article, then his argument should have been that the most recent edition of the Indian Premier League has led to the national team’s slump in form; and not because of the nature of the tournament, but due to its poor timing; top-level cricketers are not machines, and they need proper rest in order to perform at their best. The Indian team would have performed just as poorly in England had the World Cup been followed by a five-test, seven-ODI, three T-20 series at home against South Africa, instead of by IPL 2011. Would Guha argue then that home series (in general) against the Springboks is the reason the Indian team is not the best in the world in Tests?
If, as he asserts, the IPL has wrecked India as a Test team, then how can one explain the fact that the Indian team rose steadily to the top of the Test rankings over the last couple of years, a period that coincides with the formation and growth in popularity of the IPL? I state this not to imply any causality; but Guha thinks he can get away with making the same point in reverse, and that is inexcusable coming from an expert like him.
The IPL per se does not cause exertion. It is this specific instance — IPL 2011 — that was poorly timed, at the end of a tiring World Cup. The BCCI was wrong in assuming that the players could handle the World Cup, IPL 2011, the West Indies tour and the England tour back to back and without much rest. If Guha had argued taken this line, I would have stood foursquare behind him. But Guha’s agenda in writing this article does not seem to be the fortunes of the national team, but the “fortunes” of the BCCI. For example, he wonders if “the ownership of the Chennai Super Kings by the board’s secretary is legally and morally indefensible.” A more impertinent line of argument is yet to be invented.
This is not a defense of the two ex-cricketers. Should Gavaskar and Shastri have spoken out about the timing of IPL 2011? As respected members of the Indian cricketing establishment, yes. Should they do more to develop young talent a la the Colonel? Maybe. Are they part of a deliberate attempt — a conspiracy, even — to forever destroy the Indian Test team’s standing? Are you kidding me?
I can only conclude that Ram Guha has a beef with Gavaskar and Shastri (or a bigger one against the board), one which might probably even be legitimate. But he has chosen the wrong topic to implicate the two, and has lost the plot as revealed by his article’s incoherence. Weaving Vengsarkar into the debate is a cunningly well-deployed straw man argument intended to establish a distraction in the reader’s mind to portray the duo in poor light.
Ram, I’m sorry, but you are wrong!
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Tags: cricket, Ram Guha, Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar
he is wrong in everything from the day he called himself a historian
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I would not deconstruct the article so much, but definitely agree with the point the man makes. I dont care if technically the article and its arguments stand good in a court of law or not. It is one thing if we play a home series with the springboks and then lose to england, but it is another thing altogether to play a tournament that is evidently milking the strength of the players, the money and enthusiasm of the audience in India, in order to fill coffers in one corner of Mumbai (and maybe some bank accounts in some remote islands of the world). The IPL is good, showcases our ability too to conduct very interesting tournaments of the caliber of what, maybe the EPL (I am not a football fan, so please do not find fault with this particular line of argument, am just trying to draw a parallel), but then let the international cricketing fraternity sit and decide what way we want to go – the slam bang way where I(replaceable by initials of the various boards of the world) PLs ever year interspersed by the odd international match or the other way around. I dont see a world where both these coexist the way it does right now (unless two different teams are devised one for each format)
As for your argument that we rose steadily to ascend the Test throne despite the IPL, it is one thing reaching the top, it is another to retain your position. You really think that if ZK had sat out the IPL, attended his personal training sessions at his local gym instead of bowling 4 useless overs and spending time in after match parties, he would not have been able teo do better? A friend gave me this silly piece that bowlers bowl only 4 overs…one need not even know about cricket to know that regardless of how much action you will be part of, your stint in a tournament like the IPL is for the total 2 month time frame – that includes matches, practice, travel, parties and so on.
Agree on the CSK red herring that Guha had thrown in. Have no idea why that had to come up at all. Guess some ppl are still jealous of a southie team being so successful.
We are debating different things here.
Ram Guha’s main argument is that the IPL is bad for Test cricket. But there is no proof for this. It reminds me of the gentlemen of yore who bored us to death trying to tell us how ODIs are bad for Test cricket. Is Gavaskar at fault for this? No.
Why is the Indian team playing badly in England right now? Over-exertion. Why over-exertion? A succession of tournaments. While you say that the fictitious Springbok tour I alluded to would not be bad, the IPL is. But I am yet to see a cricketing reason why you say this.
The BCCI becoming rich and filling their coffers in tax havens is not a cricketing problem per se. It is an administrative problem. Is Gavaskar at fault for this? No. If Ram Guha thinks that the BCCI is wrong in doing so, then he should file a PIL and let the judicial system handle this.
Getting to the top of Test cricket is good. Staying there is better. But not staying there is not a crime. Trying to draw a causal relationship between the IPL as a whole and India’s recent slump is unintelligent. IPL1 was not implicated when we did well in Tests. IPL2 was not implicated when we did well in Tests. IPL3 was not implicated when we did well in Tests. But when we suddenly do badly, the entire concept of IPL should be considered a conspiracy? Am I the only person who cannot see the logic in this argument?
Where was Ram Guha and his conspiracy theory when this effing team won an away Test series in the West Indies just a few weeks ago? If over-exertion is the reason, and we are all in agreement on this, then why not argue that the West Indies tour should have been called off? Oh well, but the IPL is a soft target, so let us attack it.
I also think Guha has missed the point slightly here.. Its not just IPL that has affected Indian Cricket team’s performance.. Its BCCI’s gluttony. Remember India’s tour of Aus in 2007-08.. There was no IPL then.. Still BCCI jam packed India’s schedule. With no match practice India lost the first test match and that set the tone for the series. If there is a proper evenly distributed Cricketing calendar every year, I believe no one would be critical of BCCI or the IPL…
So Guha is rightly upset about Gavaskar and Shastri’s lack of criticism of the BCCI’s way, but has muddled it up in this article!!