The Real

If someone had told me very early in my life that cricket (or any sport) had a finite life, would I have spent as much time living cricket? I doubt it. While there is no doubt I watched cricket for the pleasure of the lived experience, I am fairly certain that I wouldn't have organized my life around cricket if not for the posterity value of those experiences. But often I tried to encash the posterity value in early.

The easiest trap for a long time sports fan to fall into is the life of the past. Sunny’s straight drive. Sampras’ second serve. Maradona’s magic. It’s not that a fan stays fixed in the bygone. He follows every contemporary game, and quite passionately too. It’s easier to interpret it as the fan wishing for a replication of his peak sporting experience of the past. Maybe, that’s what keeps him going. But often it’s the contrary. He doesn’t want them to replicate. He wants to tell the contemporary fools that they haven't seen the real thing.

To live in the Sachin age is a blessing in many ways. He was the greatest hits collection of batsmanship. He scored runs by the heaps; scored them in different formats and variety of conditions; scored them in the most pristine way. The perfect marriage of outrageous talent and a maniacal devotion to his craft. Master and Student. Obsessor and the obsessed.

But Sachin is also an anti-gift for fans. He didn't let us willingly surrender ourselves to the past. Every time there was a temptation to indulge in wistfulness at the slightest hint of vulnerability, he pulled us out of it. He showed us a new world. It was therapeutic, but in a perverse way it wasn't.

My Dad talks about the precocity of Sandeep Patil taking on Bob Willis as if no other generation will witness anything remotely quite as thrilling. A friend of mine who belongs to the Sunny generation considers it blasphemous to believe any of the contemporary fast bowlers is capable of breaching his defence. Let's not even go near the Viswa and the Viv territory. While I take their claims with a pinch of salt, I am a willing sucker for such stories for they are narrated with utter conviction and a sense of possessive pride. I must have been a sinner not to have been part of that generation...

In a career that lasted nearly a quarter of a century and for the majority of it, offered a baseline of excellence not experienced before in this sport, where was the scope for reflections? The problem with Sachin isn't just that comparisons with the next generation had to wait for so long. It's also that different generations of fans have seen different peaks of Sachin. His fans are also competing with the next generation of his fans.

For someone who was privileged enough to have seen his WACA masterpiece as a teenager, his bragging rights window was too small.

"Kid, you haven't seen anything compared to that WACA innings?"

"Jeez, no way it could have been superior to Cape Town."

''Hmmm. Can't compare the two, you know….''

What is the point of being at Chepauk for his 155 and die a year later? A colossal waste of boasting rights.

Only difference is, being alive doesn't guarantee that either, for he plays another blinder, in fact an even better innings, on the same ground against Pakistan the very next year.

Damn, I can't even claim ''That 155 is peerless man'' without a counter question: ''which one?''

Purely from this perverse perspective, I was glad he had the lean phase towards the end. No more epic match-up against Steyn that put my nostalgia of his duel against the White Lightning at the Wanderers to pastures. Now, I can tell the Kohli generation that they ain't seen anything.

I went to Trent Bridge and was enthralled by a gorgeous cameo in a lost battle. Next stop was at Edgbaston, where an accidental run out brought a promising innings to an early end. I let it rip. When he played here in '96….

I went to Melbourne and watched a mini masterpiece. Bragging rights can go to hell. Sydney special followed. This wasn't going according to the script. He wasn't in cruise mode for sure, but there were sufficient hints of a redemption around the corner.

How much more do I have to wait to encash the posterity value?

Then he scratched around some more. And then Bombay happened. Personally for me, that was that. Monty Panesar outfoxing him twice in the same test was the end of the road.

He teased me one more time with a glorious 81 against Australia at Chepauk in what turned out to be the last time I saw him bat live at the ground.

I wouldn't have invested so heavily in Sachin if someone had told me at the beginning that his career will go on forever.

Finite Sachin. Infinite Cricket. Lifetime of memories of Sachin in Cricket.

Kids, you haven't seen the real thing.

Just maybe….

Cricket finds itself in a tangle. What is commercially good for the global ecosystem isn’t necessarily pursued by its commercial superpower. The latest edition of Champions Trophy seems to be a further proof to the hypothesis. Outside of the top four teams, the ecosystem isn’t quite self-sufficient. ICC has about three major tournaments to fund the game globally. And the fortunes of those tournaments are closely tied to India’s performance as well. While the recent tournaments have been nowhere near the disaster that 2007 World Cup was, they haven’t been runaway success either.

BCCI’s refusal to take hard decisions and let go of the ageing stars for fear of sponsors backing away has resulted in the game’s most saleable team consistently fielding a line up huge on reputation and wafer thin on form.  After an early exit in the ’11 world cup held at home there were talks of large scale changes in the team, but most of the players have retained their places since. The captaincy has changed hands from Sehwag to Gambhir and back to Sehwag in a span of 12 months. 12 of the 14 members who were part of the world cup were also part of the Champions Trophy. Indian cricket needs its stars to be able to sell itself. But at what cost? With every passing tournament, the failures of stars get more glaring. How long will sponsors continue to value star power over performance? Is BCCI too myopic to miss out on the larger picture?

Increasingly ODIs are looking dated. While a majority of the boards favour a shift towards greater T-20s, BCCI’s steadfast refusal to accept cricket’s new new format as anything more than a gimmick comes in the way of T-20s realizing their true commercial value.  It’s not just about commerce though.  Teams with greater exposure to T-20s have been able to better their skills which largely suit ODIs too. The way Australia, South Africa and England have clinched close games in the tournament provides ample testimony to the portability of skills between the two formats.

It’s no secret that BCCI can get their way in any agenda tabled in ICC. To pursue the shift towards T-20s, as favored by other boards, will cannibalize the golden goose of Indian cricket which is the ODI format says BCCI’s dynamic vice president Mr. Lalit Modi. When a private enterprise in India chose to sidestep BCCI and set up their T-20 league in India, it was clinically destroyed.  It serves BCCI’s interests to promote the ODI format for which there is still a huge market in India, but fast receding everywhere else. On top of it, there is pressure from sponsors on BCCI to retain the senior players in ODI squads which has stagnated the team. 

BCCI is the only board still making profits from bilateral ODIs, while for the other boards the T-20 revenues have comfortably overtaken the ODI revenues. ICC has three major revenue generators all of which are heavily reliant on India’s performances. BCCI hardly treats the World T-20 with the sort of importance it deserves. On the format it takes seriously, the team has been consistently found wanting in both the world cup and the champions trophy.

All the countries want BCCI on board in their T-20 ramp up mode. More than any other board BCCI wants to keep the ODIs at the top of the commercial pyramid. ICC wants both, and a performing Indian team in both formats as well.

But ICC has itself to blame largely. It had its best chance of taking BCCI along when it chose to take T-20s, which was primarily played in domestic cricket till then, into its international calendar and hosted the first World T-20 in South Africa. Nothing would have worked better than an Indian success in the inaugural tournament.

When the senior players, led by Rahul Dravid, volunteered themselves out of the tournament after a long tour of England, India chose to blood younger players under a young captain to play in cricket’s youngest format. Instead the pressure from sponsors meant ICC had to ask BCCI to persuade its unwilling superstars to play the World T-20. The decisions were turned overnight. India fielded its reluctant stars and had a disastrous tournament overall. T-20s never took off in India after that. 

What would have happened if a young Dhoni had captained the Indian team to a World T-20 title in the inaugural edition? What if India had caught on with the T-20 mania? Maybe, BCCI themselves could have organized a super successful domestic T-20 league. With greater exposure to T-20s, India may have rejuvenated their ODI team too. Imagine the commercial benefits of India winning the ODI world cup at home or the Champions Trophy, perhaps both.

Of course, I am stretching the point here, but stretching to make a point.

Maybe BCCI should have just let Dravid go. Maybe ICC shouldn’t have budged to the sponsors’ demands. Maybe Dhoni should have been made the captain in 2007.

Just maybe, things would have turned out as per my script.