DRS and Indian Media's Deficient Role

See-Sawing Media

Indian media has failed to highlight both sides of the DRS

India’s stand against the DRS is interesting, to some, amusing. Not that the players or the establishment has made a U-turn. They have to be given ‘credit’ for consistently opposing it. It’s of course not fair to the DRS which deserves implementation.

What’s surprising is that our media, newspapers in particular, have started to speak for the DRS system whereas even some four months ago, there was hardly a column written in favour of the system. Was this part of our non-thinking tradition? Even if the ‘fourth estate’ failed to see its advantages and didn’t want it, it should have highlighted the other side of the judgement.

Best though not perfect
The DRS is never meant to be perfect. Theoretically, there will be occasions when the system will ‘by video footage’ deny a borderline decision. However, it will rarely tread the perilous path of awarding one where there is none. This itself is proof of having a state of the art system and worthy of adopting. It can evolve into something better based on the technology of the day anytime in the future. But we should not wait until then.

Is print media in India stuck in some colonial hangover? Can they not think for themselves, for that matter understand that their responsibility even in those early months of DRS should have been to show the other side of the story? Today, when they write in favour of the system, one wonders if newspaper correspondents have just accidentally found a new wise man, maybe a Sobers, or Thompson whose comments they can glibly recite.

Full Story
Therefore this article is more about our media whose obstinacy or non cerebral approach does not allow the Indian audiences to get a grasp of all the facts. The ‘true story,’ (read both sides of the story) is emerging now after an eon has passed, which means that a confused audience will hardly be convinced by the opinions or supposed facts.

To sum up, from the beginning a complete and fair view of the DRS’s pros and cons would have emerged if writers made an effort to either:
• Understand what ICC was actually saying e.g. about balls making an impact with the pad more than a certain distance in front of the stumps, or
• Be the devil’s advocate and present the other side of the opinion.

Gripes
The DRS is after all a worthy technology even given its non benefits. On thinks that maybe some officials in the establishment have been too preoccupied with biases against some countries or just trying to prove how much clout they have. Of course, it’s easy to criticise and perhaps justifiably they are taking the opinion of the players.

Who decides the common vote in India in respect of DRS?

However justifiability here is an oxymoron. One can’t expect players, especially in our country of crazed egos and traditional sentiments, not to mention being influenced by the events of a particular match day to present sound judgment. The matter has to be reviewed by those that have watched, maybe played and importantly thought of the larger good.

Viewers' Fatigue

By Vikram Afzulpurkar

Test cricket faces more challenges in viewer interest especially since the dawn of the T20 and Indian Premier League era.

"You’re kidding about watching 6-hours cricket daily, right?"

Who enjoys cricket in white clothing?

“No time to watch 5-day cricket, that too for 6 hours a day,” says the busy IT executive. In a way this is the foot solder of India’s burgeoning cricket economy because:
1. He’s contributed to a lot of software export business earning valuable foreign exchange for neo rich India
2. He switches on the TV to watch cricket at will. Ad revenue shoots up and the end benefit is for all


Watcher's Fatigue
The India-West Indies series displays adequately how much fatigue India’s cricket hungry public have experienced watching it since the World Cup and the IPL. There’s no doubt that if this was a Twenty20 or a 50-over, there may have been more takers.

No Short Highlights’ Packages
Another reason Indian viewers may virtually ‘miss this series’ is that there is no 30-minute, for that matter even an hour’s highlights package. This is possibly because of the surfeit of sports channels. There are so many of them that Ten Cricket for instance would find it hard to fit in any other program in the afterhours of the match, their entire focus being on this series. As a result, the shortest highlights package is 2 hours.

A 2-hour package is again a bit too long for today’s cricket viewer especially after he or she has seen so much exciting cricket in the recent past. It’s possible these citizens would have watched a 2-hour package featuring the highlights of two T20 matches!

Viewer Wants Fast Action
Welcome to the new green thumb Indian television viewer. Action has to be fast for him. The conclusion is that there is definitely a paucity of time to watch action that is not considered exciting by today’s standards and secondly, that an overload has been there.

Even the cricket analyst, except those professionally employed who need to watch the action does not find the inclination to catch this 2-hour highlights package. Mainly because of the shift in focus to championships and tournaments. Also, the news of Champions League (T20) dates being declared (September 23) prompts viewers into a lull, alerting them that there’s “better fare” to follow, so why not take a break from watching.

Mini World Cup and a Prodigy’s Irony
This development is such a contrast to about twenty years ago when a series against the West Indies was considered an equivalent of the World Cup. Especially attempting to beat them in their own backyard was a special thing. Remember in ’89, a young 15-year prodigy was held back from Indian team selection because the selectors did not want to expose him to the fire of the West Indies.

Sachin Tendulkar had had a successful debut Ranji Trophy season and at that tender age could have broken Pakistan’s Mushtaq Ahmed’s world record of being the youngest Test debutant. Instead he was made to play against the lesser fire of the Pakistan side in October ’89 when he’d already turned 16. It’s another story that the Pakistan side was developing fearsome bowlers at the time, something better appreciated by about ’92 in the ‘reverse swing’ series in England.

Innovations
Coming back to the current India-West Indies series, there is the aggressive marketing angle of someday choosing to have flood-lit Tests depending on the prime time viewing of the audiences concerned, no doubt India’s huge band of fans. This would not be practical in the West Indies because a match starting at 5 pm Indian time would instead start at 9:30 pm. That is ruled out although this model may work for India’s Tests in Australia.

Another reason for the anticipated failure of innovations like these even in Australia is “Who’d want to watch grinding innings or long bowling spells for five and a half hours a day? It’s a different audience who like a different ‘cuisine’ these days?

Enduring Cricket
However, Test cricket by its very definition and nature will continue. The players are for it because it allows them to test their real skills as they say. It’s too steeped in tradition to currently ignore. Who knows, a day may come that the consumer will just tire of watching formats like T20 and 50-overs. It may just become fashionable to watch Test cricket again.

Fun Observations

Carl Hooper

A point of side interest – the floppy hat which had disappeared even from Test cricket during the last ten years has made its reentry into Tests, why even one-day matches and T20s. Forerunners for this revival are probably Sehwag, among others. When one thinks of this hat, ebullient former West Indies all-rounder Carl Hooper comes to mind. Hardly ever wore a helmet when batting, always a floppy. Some co-incidence that Sehwag’s part-time off spin action currently resembles Carl Hooper’s as L Sivaramkrishnan pointed out!

Advance Planning for Ranji Trophy

Coach moves over
Sanath Kumar, no known name to India’s millions but a bulwark of the cricket coaching fraternity in Bengaluru will coach Baroda’s Ranji Trophy team in the coming season. Of course nobody frets when a master coach at this level or any other leaves his native land if only for a two-year term. It’s a professional world.

Some of the oldies are of course a little amused with this massive change in domestic cricket culture in India. Two decades ago, moves like this would have been frowned upon.

Stellar Coaches
Karnataka’s first iconic coach in recent times was K Raghunath who ensured his boys returned to winning ways after 13 long years and ushered in the golden age for Karnataka cricket. First Roger Binny successfully broke the drought in the championship of ’95-’96 when Karnataka beat the team they most love to in the finals, Tamil Nadu.

‘Raghu’ took over the following year, not successful for the side but during the next two years wrested superb championship wins, that is, ’97-’98 and ’98-’99. No doubt the boys deserved the kudos too, no less Vijay Bharadwaj who spun his side to victory in a game lost beyond all doubt!
Terminology

Raghu and Binny were styled ‘managers’ of course because the term coach had not become fashionable for cricket teams. To clarify, they were not administrative mangers. Of course in England the football team’s coach is still called the manager, a quintessential British quirk.

“From another state? That’s a joke, right?”
There was some ‘gossip’ during those mid nineties that managers aka coaches would be recruited from outside the state very soon. “How is that possible,” people used to ask. It seemed inappropriate that a coach would coach a side whose culture he didn’t share. After all domestic cricket represented ethnicity Vs ethnicity. But that omen was true and is visible today.

How times have changed. For the better or course. Sanath now goes on to coach a side that beat his native Karnataka in the last Ranji Trophy championship, but of course, it was a pitch that was highly unstable and if anybody, offered a chance for the lesser side, Baroda.

Early planning
Of note is that the appointment of Sanath to Baroda has come a good four months before the Ranji Trophy starts. Again a good change and showing how professional we’ve become in India. This gives the coach time to plan, understand the boys in his new team, talk to the concerned cricket Association about their aspirations and give it their best combined effort.

Sanath’s home side
In the year gone by, some journalists had slammed the Karnataka State Cricket Association for not appointing a captain well in advance, rather only about 15 days before the tournament. “Time is needed even for the captain to build himself into his role, even if he be a veteran” was the refrain. Of course, default captain Rahul Dravid would not be playing in all matches of the domestic championship because of international cricket commitments. Whether or not this had a bad effect, the Karnataka side was stopped in the semi finals.

Is Baroda’s advance planning a cue then that everbody’s getting professional and want “a plan” and that too well in advance? Good direction there.

Love of the game
Sanath is not just another busybody in coaching. The ex Karnataka Ranji Trophy fast bowler has been involved with coaching programs even in the early ‘90s when “none existed,” not monetarily at least. Anyway, steering away from metaphors, it’s noteworthy that Sanath coached when he had nothing to gain. A true blue cricket devotee and a fine coach today.

Early Domestic Migrants
Coaches emigrating for a season to another state is not a new event. Paras Mhambrey after coaching his native Mumbai was hired by Maharashtra in the early 2000 decade. Karnataka stumper Sadanand Vishwanath although an umpire at the domestic level was always an “early bird.” He ensured he coached for Vidarbha in the early 2000 decade but of course was content umpiring in his state of Karnataka.

Here comes the era of advance planning. The good part is, it involves India’s domestic cricket.

Succession Planning

By Vikram Afzulpurkar

Should MS Dhoni be cloned? Not in a science lab but by the BCCI. The star captain has done more to transform Indian cricket than arguably any player in its history. Do we simply wait for the future (and captains) to unfold? Is there anything to be passed on from Dhoni?


Best Captain Ever

MS Dhoni has been referred to as Captain Cool, Captain Fantastic and also acknowledged by former Test cricketers as the best Indian captain ever.

In the same era, India has developed another facet, of bench strength, that is, having a larger pool of active players. Of course, part of that has been because the Indian team plays more cricket than any other country.

Successful Succession Planning
Finally, looking back from the early part of the 2000 decade, India seems to have done succession planning. It continued blooding young players and re-trying discarded wonder boys instead of resting on the established one. But few can doubt down that beneath these systematic approaches, golden touch captain MS Dhoni has been responsible for India’s two major successes during his barely four-year term – the T20 World Cup 2007 and the World Cup 2011. Of course, India became a powerhouse in all formats of the game, leave these more coveted trophies.

As an Individual MS Dhoni’s captaincy record stretches to winning two IPL trophies and one Champions League T20 trophy , besides of course his team Chennai Super Kings figuring in the semi finals of all four editions of the former.

Future-captain camp
Is it a good time to table a meeting with Dhoni and ask him to train our ‘future captain?’ Be in Suresh Raina or Virat Kohli or anyone else. It’s a camp only metaphorically, because the effort would be to make the incumbent to observe the skipper’s style, changes and communication methods. For that matter, it’s even worth asking MS who he forsees as his kind of a captain.

Grey haired Dhoni captains on..
It’s easily possible that Dhoni will captain India at least until the next World Cup in 2015. Why, even if age catches up with him, the selectors may play him into relative ‘old age’ just like England did Mike Brearley in the early ‘80s. Brearley did not command his place in the side on his playing abilities but was a psychologist cricketer whose side subsequently beat the ‘old enemy’ Australia in the series titled ‘Botham’s Ashes.’

The Probables
There’s no doubt that Virat Kohli is a player and captain of good ability. Although everyone has their style, should not the BCCI ‘migrate’ the captaincy style of Jharkhand’s Dhoni to the Captain Elect of India.

Shelf Life
Well, it may be too early to take this approach if the selectors persist with Dhoni purely on captaincy abilities until the 2019 World Cup. But one never knows what developments sprout. Dhoni himself has said that he will play until he enjoys the game and has even jokingly rebutted questions of supposed retirement plans. Perhaps more as a testimony to Tendulkar’s undying passion for the game, he predicts that his retirement will probably come before the past master’s.