Mankad - Stop It!

Mankad - No other word evokes so much emotion amongst the players and spectators in Cricket as this one word. So much that one such incident has made me sit up and conceptualize this article in the middle of the night! Here is my take on it.. 

The Incident
For those who don't know cricket, this article is not for you, thanks for coming!

For those who follow cricket, but wonder what the fuss is about, Mankad is basically when the bowler starts running in, realises the batsman at the non-striker's end is out of the crease, and runs him out. Pretty simple, huh?

The Emotion
It's wrong, it's ridiculous, it's against the spirit of cricket...so many negative emotions usually accompany just a mere mention of this word..

Let's break it down - For people to feel emotion, there needs to be a protagonist and an antagonist, with a stronger antagonist evoking a stronger reaction. People have realized this a long time ago. Hence parents tell us stories as kids with "Good" and Bad" characters and the best movies have strong villains. In Cricket, why not pitch the principal participants one against the other? They are duelling as part of the game anyway, why not frame them "Good" and "Bad" to create a story to hook the audience to your product (or 5 different products to be precise - T10, The Hundred, T20, ODI and Tests)?

Emotions associated with the Batsman - Anger, Frustration, Disappointment, Righteousness...

Emotions associated with the Bowler - Guilt, Shame, Ridicule, Contempt...

The Protagonist and The Antagonist
Another important concept to understand is the notion of certainty. The audience should not be confused who is the "Good" and who is the "Bad". Depending on the maturity level of the audience, they should either realise at the beginning of the story (like the young kid), within a short time (like in masala movies), or at the maximum before the climax (like in thrillers). Otherwise the audience will get confused and the story will be consigned to the realms of an "art movie". For all practical purposes, Cricket falls under the masala movie category that needs to appeal to a wide ranging audience. It is also the reason people don't really get Philosophy, which is closer to reality, depicts people as both good and bad, and deals with greyish concepts.

Let us understand the key players, pun intended. It is very obvious from the beginning of the story that the Batsman is the Good Boy and the Bowler is the Bad Boy. [While people with higher maturity levels will start arguing at this point, heck you are just poking your nose into my script..] Good Boy is playing the game within the rules, minding his own business, when the Bad Boy comes along, does something naughty to create trouble for everyone including the Good Boy and when the Good Boy starts crying and the Teacher comes along, says he is playing within the rules! How dare you, Bad Boy Bowler!

The Line
That brings us to the concept of The Line, which is central to the rule.. "The Line" that everyone in cricket 'agrees' should not be crossed became the butt of all jokes after Australia started liberally using it, stretching it, manipulating it and what not and other teams started creating their own versions, as any self-respecting nation would do.. This concept reached its height at the infamous Cape Town ball tampering scandal. "The Line" is synonymous with "The Spirit of Cricket" and is analogous to the "Good and Bad" in Philosophy. You think you understand it, but you don't..  Gotcha!

The Laws
And finally the rule itself, that MCC the self proclaimed guardian of cricket, sits around a board room to decide how the game should be played in the maidans of Kolkata. Smart children create their own rules to play in the backyard, but I think we have already established that most of the people watching cricket are not inherently smart, especially with their time, especially those young fathers watching test cricket...

Anyway, coming back to the story, the MCC Laws state thus -

Stumped - which is essentially the same thing at the other end

Run Out - which is essentially the same thing at both ends

No Ball - which is essentially the same thing if done by the bowler

Mankad - bad, bad, you naughty boy, look away! (the law technically covers this under run out)

As you can see, the above is certified to be confusing by lawyers and challenges every single grey matter in your brain, so let me simplify for you..

The Rule
As with anything in this world, there are written and unwritten rules that needs to be adhered to.

Written rules
The Good Batsman at the striker's end can cross the line to whatever extent he thinks he can get away with, without getting Stumped.

The Good Batsman can run anywhere he likes inside or outside the Pitch or the Line or even the Boundary, without getting Run Out. Once he gets run out, the focus shifts to Good Fielding or his persona changes to Lazy Runner (Mind you, he is still not a Bad Batsman!).

The Bad Bowler can cross the line before delivering the ball, in which case:
1. The batting team gets 1 more run
2. The batting team gets 1 more ball
3. The batsman does not lose his wicket
4. The batsman gets a free hit to make fun of the bowler and swing his arms without worrying about losing his wicket the next ball - *&€*&*$@!!
5. The bowler gets a black mark - No balls are specifically recorded and tracked for shaming him long after his career is done (Remember that guy Ishant Sharma?)

The Bad Bowler can do naughty things, like Mankad a batsman at the non striker's end, when the batsman is innocently walking/ running the length of the pitch without paying attention to the bowler. How dare you Bad Boy!

Unwritten Rules
The Good Batsman can evolve into a Smart Batsman if he moves outside the line before/ after the ball has been delivered using the crease, stands outside the line to counter the swing or back up by stealing a few steps at the non strikers' end before the bowler has bowled the ball - To the extent he is admonished by the team and the commentators if he doesn't do that and gets run out! Which idiot will not exploit the freedom to the fullest?

If a few Good Batsmen do not score many runs, it's a Bad Pitch that warrants ICC attention. How dare they tilt the scales towards the Bad Bowler! What messages are they giving to the millions of impressionable young kids watching the game? Do they want them to become Bad Bowlers when they grow up?

The Good Batsman must be begged multiple times to stay within the lines, and if he doesn't listen, a decent guy should simply overlook his inadvertent act. IF YOU DO NOT LISTEN TO ME, YOU WILL BECOME A BAD BOWLER!!

The Result
Over the last 120 years, The Gentleman's game has morphed into a Batsman's Game. I cannot think of any other sport that is so heavily weighted towards one set of players. [Chess is slightly more advantageous with White, but that's adjusted by alternating the colour through a tournament]. The rules have been heavily tweaked to favour the batsman, increasingly so over the last few years. Even the terminology has biased connotations now that I think of it. You score a boundary or a century, but lose a wicket. Let's make it more even to enjoy the game more.

Incidentally, it was the second instance for the batsman in question to be Mankad-ed, and he reacted with the same fury and claimed moral high ground as with the first one, so clearly some people never learn their lessons, don't believe they have done anything wrong or are used to complaining about Bad Boys in school. This also shows that the current rules are inadequate and puts the onus squarely and unfairly on the bowler for identifying and penalising the batsman breaking the rules. Imagine what would happen if the batsman is responsible for telling the bowler each time he has overstepped?

Broadly, in the age of cutting edge technology, why should fielding teams even 'appeal' for an OUT like LBW, caught, run out or Mankad?

The Solution
Dear ICC, there is a simple solution. If you can use technology to deduct 1 run for each foray outside the crease before the ball is bowled, it will eliminate the problem and take the focus off the bowler and umpires in such situations, while the batsman might also be happier off not losing his wicket. Second instance in the same match might be worth 2 runs etc.. but that's my mind wandering way past the current reality. Don't you have a Code of Ethics that this should be part of?

At the very least, hope you realize soon that a good movie requires a good antagonist...

As for Mankad, let us STOP villifying the Bowler for holding the Batsman accountable to the same extent that he is!

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(Used to be an opening batsman)

An Ode to the 200

I have always considered Sachin a very good batsman, a very good selfish batsman who ensures that people talk about him 20 years after he has retired, much like his mentor and city-dweller Gavaskar. Famously, fierce foes from both sides of the border, Gavaskar and Javed Miandad, concurred on one thing, that this new kid on the block will re-write all batting records. Well, may not be everything, but definitely he replaced one yesterday. And what a knock that was!

Enough has been said by now in the surprisingly low 893 news articles in google news about the match and the context in which he achieved it, which I read through all morning. Having missed the live version yesterday until my passionate friends rang me up to tease me, I even caught the replay of the entire innings in my own 4*4inch tv, aka mosaic in this part of the world, as I wanted to write a proper account of it. What caught by attention was the quality of the innings, rather than the number of runs scored. Here was a guy timing his innings to perfection, he wanted to achieve the landmark and he knew exactly what he had to do to achieve that. Having gone to 191 in the 43rd over, he strolled to his 200 in the 50th over and left it till the very end, keeping the billions watching to the edge of their seats. No one knew whether he would make it, but for himself. He also was keen to ensure that he batted the whole 50 overs "to test himself", so that injects more sense into it. It was least surprising for me, who has watched almost all of his 46 hundreds, and his agonising and lengthyyyyyyyyy 90s.

That Sachin would be the first to the landmark was a bit surprising to me. I would have expected the dasher version of Sachin in the 90s to have done it, I would have expected the frenzy of Sehwag to have accomplished that, I would have to even think the 6 hitting chaos of Jayasuriya to have gone past it. But the Sachin of today is more focussed, he knows he doesnt have the time left in him and he has to make the most of what comes to him. With 10 hundreds in the last 12 months, and with 93 centuries to his name now, I am sure hes on the right track. Yesterday, he could not have asked for a better combination than a small ground, flat pitch that road contractors would be proud of, a number of able partners who took the pressure off him and a wayward attack that pours full tosses and full length balls. But still, the credit goes to him for making it stick, where a lesser player would have thrown his wicket away.

Although I do crib about the selfish attribute of Sachin's innings, there have been some classy innings by Sachin which I have admired along the way. The Perth genius of 1991, The Cape Town massacre of 1996 with Azhar, Desert Storm at his peak in 1998 and a lesser version of it in Australia 2009, the Chennai heartbreak of 1999 which I happened to watch live at the stadium and the equally poignant Hyderabad version of 2009, the World Cup classic against Pakistan in 2003 are the ones that have stuck to my mind. Being a critic of Sachin is never easy, but given only a handful of gems in 600+ innings doesnt make my feelings any better.

I always rate the quality of an innings by a few factors, the number of edges, the number of threes, the number of fours to name a few. The bowling attack is irrelevant as you are as likely if not more likely to get out to a poor shot than to a good ball. It is in this respect that the innings yesterday stands out for it was of an outstanding quality. Sachin had the discipline yesterday to rival his cover drive-cutting innings of Sydney 241 and Nagpur 100. He hardly had any edges, with every ball striking the middle cleanly. It was phenomenal that in 50 overs and 200 hard runs, there wasnt even one half chance. That the maximum consecutive dot ball count was 4 at the start of the innings is a glorious statistic. He even ran two 3s, and quite a few singles, which has characterised all his innings and shows that he doesnt mind working hard for his runs. He doesnt mind having to run unlike some of the lazy bums around in international cricket content with whacking the balls out of the ground. The 25 fours that he hit yesterday was another record I am proud of, cos it means he found the gaps to the boundary on a small field with 11 fielders on it. This is where the men are sorted out from the boys who whack 6s like in street cricket. His accumulation of runs were brilliant, his 50s taking 37, 53, 28 and 29 balls respectively. This is where most of the dashers like Sehwag, Jayasuriya and Afridi fail. Theirs is more likely to read 19-26-out. The beauty of the innings is the way the acceleration comes after reaching the primary 100. While the others done care if they get out at 0 or 99, Sachin doesnt care whether he gets out at 100 or 139. Definitely, he does care about 99, 149 or 199, where he wouldnt mind offering a perfect defensive stroke or two to the combined agony of a billion souls ;) And the way he takes a single to fine leg or square leg or third man to invariably reach his hundred off a single behind the wicket is testamount to his superior skills of eschewing risks while reaching landmarks.

Sachin is definitely the world's premier run machine whose consistency is outstanding. While there could be one off wonders like Zimbabwe's Coventry who will continue to threaten this record created yesterday, I am sure there will be some like his overall ODI run tally that will stand the test of time, similar to the first ODI 200 which took 39 years in the making. Records are meant to be broken, like he himself said it, but class is permanent. He is a class apart when it comes to run scoring and creating benchmarks for others. Hats off to Sachin on breaking the unbreakable. Like the famous Roger Bannister's mile under four minutes, I expect that many will follow suit now that the seemingly unbreakable has finally been broken. If there is a winner yesterday, its the spirit of sportsmen, which constantly breaks the barriers considered unbreakable.

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No frills cricket

Having unsuccessfully waded off my passion towards all things cricket, I subscribed to the IPL for the second year running. It comes with its own sort of entertainment that viewers back home sorely miss. So, I wanted to write a note on this. I have listed down the top three reasons why I am so glad to have subscribed outside India..

1. No advertisements
For the ordinary Indian in me, cant exphasise how pleased I am with this aspect! This is purely no-frills cricket. We get live feed all the time, without any advertisement (well, almost). This means that the overs still has 6 balls, and we can see which batsmen talk a lot, and which batsmen are content with just having a glove-smack.. And how the fielding captain arranges the field for the next over.

2. Camaraderie
We can get to see surprising camaraderie between players who are made out to be enemies by the media. Hayden-Flintoff focussing on the match at hand, Hayden-Harbajan having a laugh together.. Guys from various countries practicing and joking with each other.. It was encouraging that there is a sportsman at the heart of the increasingly commercial venture called cricket.

3. Inside stuff
We do get the inside story of the commentators and their thoughts and preparations. We get live audio feed too, which means a Richie Benaud pre-pitch report preparation, a Ravi Shastri banter, a Geoffery Boycott sigh, everything is spied on by the unsuspected mic left on. The other funny thing is that we can see every move of the umpires as they leisurely stroll the pitch and outfield in any rain delayed games, like the one today. Usually there is one Indian and one international umpire. The funny thing is that the Indian umpire behaves like a small kid who wouldnt go more than a foot away from the mother. This is in total contrast to the way they behave in local cricket leagues, as if they are God's representative, and everyone should comply to their whim and fancy.

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Sehwag - The Phenomenon !

A cricketer who is better described as a known unknown...

10 random things about this random guy...
1. Has an average of 30+ in ODIs, but has a maturity beyond what might come to mind with comparisons against Jayasuriya and Afridi
2. Has a strike rate of 100+ in over 200 ODI innings, and he did have 100+ strike rate in the recent test series..
3. Has crossed 150 the last 11 times he has crossed 100. He crosses 100 once in 7 innings, with an average of 50, comparable to his idol, Sachin Tendulkar.
4. Gets voted Wisden Leading Cricketer - 2009 and part of World XI
5. Gets voted #1 in The Confectionary Stall's unpredictable XI
6. Hits a 100 in his maiden test innings in South Africa on a bouncy track.
7. Hits a 201* out of team 302, playing the unplayable Ajantha Mendis in his maiden test series, which duly gets voted best innings of 2008.
8. Nobody knows what he will do next ball, including himself.
9. Has a simple philosophy - Hit every ball out of the ground.
10. The only guy to have brought up a 100 with a six, 200 with a six, and 300 with a six.
11. Looks like Inzi but he runs singles like a mad bull..
12. Amazing temperment for a guy whose instinct is to make every ball disappear
13. Has the audacity to feel pity for the bowlers bowling against him in a press conference..
14. Never plays without a helmet, just like his idol..
15. Has an amazing hand-eye coordination - while batting or slip-fielding. He has the best hands in slips after Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.
16. The only guy I have seen hit the first 3 balls he has faced into the stands.. never mind it was the first ball of the first match of a series.

Yeah, I said 10, but hes Sehwag, and the numbers shud be a bit unpredictable at the least...

This guy has just been everywhere where cricket has been mentioned this year.. Go viru go - for a six, what else! IPL is worth subscribing, just for this guy...

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Disgusting!

Is the word that first came to my mind when I saw cricinfo today. Being from a country where billion is a common number to calibrate fans, where fans break across barriers of sex, religion and race, the ads in this popular website makes me wonder whether I am searching for cricket news or software cracks.

Cultural context is very important in some stuff, and advertising is one of them.. There are much better ways to make money guys..

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