Sports Quotient

Gideon Haigh on N Srinivasan’s claim of having no conflict of interest issues

N Srinivasan, was more conflicted than Kashmir: BCCI secretary, IPL governing council member, president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, proprietor of the Chennai Super Kings, which employed India’s captain as its captain and India’s chairman of selectors as “brand ambassador”.

I am wondering what else is left ?

As in, who else can Mr Srinivasan hire or what other offices can he assume before he thinks that there is the remote possibility that his cricket interests are conflicting.

He could hire the match referees and the umpires as his team’s assistant coaches.

Or he could become the third umpire himself.

Or he could contract Chirayu Amin’s pharmaceutical company to supply vitamins and other health supplements to his various teams.

Or he could recruit Shashank Manohar as his legal counsel.

Or he could hire Rajeev Shukla as a media affairs consultant for the SuperKings.

Or he could recruit Prof Ratnakar Shetty ( a chemistry teacher at Wilson College when he is not serving Indian cricket) as head of R&D at India Cements.

Or he could become head of the BCCI’s stadiums committee and decide which cement to buy for the stadiums’ construction and repair.

Or he could become the head of the match allocation committee and decide how many matches should be hosted by Chepauk.

Or he could hire L Sivaramakrishnan to play the SuperKings mascot.

Or he could hire Sharad Pawar’s son in law as the SuperKings representative during player auctions. Supriya Sule will still feign ignorance about having anything to do with the IPL.

I give up.

I don’t think there is any way Mr Srinivasan will have a conflict of interest issue.

This is the Australian which played in the last Twenty-20 World Cup, where they were dominant and heavily favoured before England ambushed them in the finals.

David Warner, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke (capt), Cameron White, David Hussey, Michael Hussey, Tim Paine, Steven Smith, Daniel Christian, Brad Haddin (wk), Brett Lee, Dirk Nannes, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Hauritz, Shaun Tait

Now imagine for one moment, that some cricket hating terrorist organization kidnapped the entire squad to jeopardize Australia’s chances. This forced the Aussie selectors to call upon their reserves as well as some players who have retired from the international game – but are still going strong in first class cricket.

Then this is the back-up squad that the Aussies would be able to assemble.

Ricky Ponting, Mathew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh, Andrew Symonds, Callum Ferguson, Brad Hodge, Adam Voges ,Moises Henriques, James Hopes, Ryan Harris, Doug Bollinger, Shane Warne , Travis Birt, Andrew McDonald, Clint McKay, Nathan Bracken

Now consider another imaginary situation: suppose the ACB somehow got convinced by the BCCI’s absurd argument that players participating in the IPL would not be fresh for the World Cup and they decided to drop all such players.

Then this is the team of fresh players that could represent Australia

Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Phil Hughes, Tim Paine, Brad Haddin, Daniel Christian, Callum Ferguson,Travis Birt, Mitchell Johnson, James Hopes, Nathan Haurtiz, Steven Smith, Clint McKay, Nathan Bracken, Ben Hifenhaus

Now imagine the ACB decided to have some fun and also set the world record of having a team entirely made up of left-handers - No international team has ever had such a unique composition. Such a team would create a whole lot of problem for opposition batsmen and bowlers.

The Australian South Paw Eleven would look something like this

Shaun Marsh, David Warner, Mathew Hayden, Phil Hughes, Michael Hussey, Travis Birt, Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich, Mitchell Johnson, Doug Bollinger, Nathan Bracken, Dirk Nannes, Aaron Heal, Aaron O’Brien ( the last two were amongst the best bowlers in the KFC Twenty-20 Bash and if not for Australia’s plethora of top-class players would have made it to the national reckoning)

Any of these sides could have won the World Cup.

This embarrassment of riches makes me wonder – how difficult is the task of being an Aussie Twenty -20 selector?

On one hand you could simply draw lots to pick the team and still expect them to win – ensuring that nobody blames the selectors. And on the other, you always have to leave out a whole bunch of deserving players – ensuring that the media and the fans have a field day berating the selectors.

Viewers Choice Awards

Best Commentator – Ravi Shastri

Kudos to the Set Max team for correctly assessing that the cricket crazy fans of India love radio style commentary ( where you need to tell the viewers that the batsman has lofted the ball and its gone to the long on boundary for four); analysis which can numb your brain cells ( where the expert thinks it will be great if the team can get 40-45 runs in the last 5 overs and ignores that the batting team has already plundered 150+ runs in the first 15 overs) and will root for a champion of champions who can beat his fellow champions ( read commentators) in a battle of monotony ( reminding the viewers again and again that the MRF company is from Chennai and they make tyres and have been nurturing fast bowlers from India and abroad for the last 15 years. I have a feeling that even the MRF company is sick of hearing it).

Set Max had the best man ( Ravi Shastri ) to do the job and the cricket watching public of India has vindicated the channel’s faith in their star commentator. I sincerely hope that Shastri gets better at his craft and continues to enthral his fans with his various sightings of tracer bullets on the field.

Best Captain – Sachin Tendulkar

For some reason, the host, Karan Johar, asked Priety Zinta to list the nominees before announcing the winner. Was another lame attempt at creating some suspense. It was a waste of time going through the list of eight nominees. No ,wait, they left out Kumara Sangakkara. As if leading your team to the eighth position is bad but finishing seventh is clearly proof of inspired leadership.

The organizers could have handed over the best captain award to Sachin even before the tournament started. Because Indian fans will vote for him any which ways and irrespective of what he does on the field and how his team fares. Even harbouring thoughts about the great batsman having any flaws is tantamount to cricketing sacrilege.

This kind of voting explains the root cause of why India fails to produce great leaders on the sports field – because we first believe that the best players make the best captains and then continue to judge their captaincy by their performance on the field.

That no rabid Sachin fan has called for him to be made captain of the Indian Twenty-20 side ( especially after the Caribbean disaster) is actually a huge let down. Guess they were busy voting for the IPL awards !!!

Here are the rest of the IPL Awards

Dhoni and Mourinho are currently basking in the glory of their inspired leadership triumphs. One led the Chennai Super Kings to the IPL title and the other guided Inter to the UEFA Champions League final. There is an uncanny similarity in the radical tactics employed by the two men and the number which is representative of those tactics. It is the number ‘THREE’.

Conventional wisdom states that T-20 sides generally play with one specialist spinner. If the pitch is expected to spin then they might just play two. Dhoni broke the mould by going into the knock-out games with three spinners and in the end it proved to be a masterstroke.

In European club football, when teams are protecting a lead in an away game, they generally play with a lone striker upfront. In an off chance they might play a second one. Mourinho digressed from this beaten path and selected three forwards in away games. It proved to be a tour de force as Inter Milan stunned both Chelsea and CSKA in their away games.

You can never have ‘two’ much of a good thing.

Naah, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that most of them have been exploiting the slow tracks to stifle batsmen; thereby denying them the opportunity to hit sixes and commentators the chance to shout “DLF Maximums”.

It’s simply because spinners prevent broadcasters from plugging TV ads between two successive deliveries ( atleast most of the time). Thanks to their super short run-ups, the most ingenious of ad-makers cannot create ads which are short enough to be displayed between two consecutive deliveries from a spin bowler.

Having saved viewers from the torture of watching advertisements between consecutive deliveries, the spinning saviours are surely worthy of a lot of good cheer from the TV audience.

So could it be possible, that the poor form of the likes of Brett Lee and Ishant Sharma is simply owing to their long run-up ( and hence lots of ads and lots of groans from viewers) induced bad karma.