The Playbook By The Core

Cricket's Teen Revolution

Fri, 09 May 2025 10:29:00 +0000

Not Old Enough To Vote, But Bold Enough To Reshape Future Of Cricket

Yashavi Jaiswal is 23 years old, as is B Sai Sudarshan. Prabhsimran Singh is 24, and Shubman Gill is 25. All four are in the list of top ten run-getters in the ongoing 18th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and, by any yardstick, you would mark this quartet out as the future of India's batting.

Except, something extraordinary is happening this year: the league is being stormed by teenagers, by players not yet old enough to vote, yet bold enough to rewrite record books and rattle seasoned international stars. The IPL is witnessing a youth revolution that is not only providing thrills for the fans but potentially reshaping the future of cricket.

Picture this: Jaipur, April 28, 2025. The Sawai Mansingh Stadium is buzzing. The Gujarat Titans bowling unit is warming up. The batter striding to the crease is Vaibhav Suryavanshi, a 14-year-old playing his debut series for the Rajasthan Royals.

What follows is pure chaos. Suryavanshi unleashes a 17-ball fifty, the fastest in IPL history — and he doesn’t stop there. He bludgeons a 35-ball century, becoming the youngest player to achieve the feat, and notching the second-fastest ton in the league’s history. Cricketing royalty, from Sachin Tendulkar on down, run out of superlatives to describe his power-hitting and his audacity.

If Suryavanshi’s performance were a one-off, it would still be remarkable. At 14, you are likely playing for your school team, honing your skills, shedding your puppy fat and building the musculature you need to step up to the next level. Whatever else, you are not — except in your dreams — striding out to open the innings, to the roar of a packed stadium, against a bowling unit with over 1000 international wickets between them. That Suryavanshi did just that isn't, as I mentioned, a one-off — it is a marker of the IPL’s new reality. Young players are no longer content to warm the bench or play supporting roles. They’re grabbing the spotlight, backed by fearless mindsets and by skills honed in the age of T20 cricket.

A Perfect Storm

The rise of young stars in IPL 2025 is no accident, but rather the result of a perfect storm of factors. First, the T20 format itself is tailor-made for youth. Its fast-paced, high-risk nature rewards aggression over caution, levelling the playing field for players with raw talent. Unlike Test cricket, where experience often trumps potential, T20 thrives on instinct and flair — qualities teenagers like Suryavanshi have in spades. The IPL’s three-hour matches demand explosive batting and versatile bowling, areas where young players, unburdened by conventional thinking, excel. A data point comes apropos: India, as I write this, stands first in the ICC T20 and ODI rankings -- but is just fourth in the Test rankings.

Second, India’s cricketing ecosystem has evolved dramatically. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has for some years now invested heavily in grassroots programmes, with a sharp focus on preparing teams for the Under-19 World Cup. It is no coincidence that the likes of Jaiswal, Gill, Sudarshan and Prabhsimran all made their bones at successive U-19 World Cups before stepping onto the senior stage.

While the BCCI has focused on creating an assembly line of U-19, IPL franchises armed with AI-driven analytics and an increased awareness of biomechanics are spotting and nurturing prodigies earlier than ever. Suryavanshi, for instance, was scouted at age 12 through a Rajasthan Royals talent programme, the speed of his bat swing and the power and range of his ball-striking analysed by data models before he’d even played a senior match.

Third, coaches are shedding old dogmas to teach a new gospel: range hitting over wicket preservation. Gone are the days of batting anchors grinding out innings. Mentors like Rahul Dravid, who has coached U-19 teams (Gill is an alum) and is now Suryavanshi's coach at Rajasthan Royals; VVS Laxman who, as head of the National Cricket Academy oversees the development of young talent for the U-19 program; and Ravi Shastri who works with the Mumbai Ranji team, are training teens to dominate 360 degrees of the playing field.

Shastri’s proteges, like the 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre, practice hitting sixes over extra cover, a far cry from traditional shot selection. At the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on May 3 Mhatre, wearing the CSK yellow, stunned a partisan home crowd into silence with a knock of 94 off 48 balls, including a sequence of 4, 4, 4, 6,4, 4 in a 26-run over off Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a veteran international player more than twice his age.

Mhatre had five sixes in his barnstorming knock; one more, and he would have become the second youngest IPL centurion behind Suryavanshi. And it is no coincidence that Mhatre and Suryavanshi were India's opening partners, and standout performers, at the ACC U-19 Asia Cup's 2024 edition.

Changing Game

T20 has evolved rapidly in the last couple of years — where, not so long ago, scores in excess of 200 were outliers, such totals are now considered par. Scoring in excess of 200 requires audacity, not caution — and the likes of Hrishikesh Kanitkar, who coached the 2024 U-19 team, and Amol Muzumdar, responsible for shaping talents like Musheer Khan, have been instrumental in creating a mindset where teen prodigies are confident enough to take on any bowler, irrespective of reputation, on any stage.

The digital age has supercharged exposure. Social media platforms amplify standout performances, turning local heroes into viral sensations overnight. When Suryavanshi smashed a 28-run over against Ishant Sharma, clips flooded X, racking up millions of views. This visibility not only boosts players’ confidence but also pressures franchises to fast-track young talent, knowing that fans crave the next big thing.

And finally, the IPL’s meritocratic structure plays a role. With franchises backed by billionaire owners and global coaches, the league is a high-stakes arena where performance trumps pedigree. Teenagers like Suryavanshi and Mhatre are now proving, to the relief of the franchises who have bet on their talent, that age is irrelevant when it comes to delivering under pressure.

If it were just a Suryavanshi or a Mhatre, you could argue that they are outliers. But there is Musheer Khan, a veritable greybeard at 20 who bats right-handed and bowls slow left-arm orthodox in Punjab Kings colours. Noor Ahmad, also 20, has been baffling reputed international stars with his googlies and who is currently tied with Arshdeep Singh in fourth place on the list of top wicket-takers in the ongoing IPL.

These players share a common trait: fearlessness. They are the IPL generation, born just before, or after, the league began; for them, IPL and by extension the T20 format is the form of cricket they have been weaned on -- they have grown up watching highlights, practising reverse scoops and switch-hits rather than the forward defence.

The numbers tell the story. In IPL 2025, players under 20 have thus far contributed over 15% of total runs scored, up from just 8% in 2023. This isn’t just a statistical blip—it is the marker of a generational shift, with implications for the league and for Indian cricket itself.

The Flip Side

The emergence of young talent is a boon for the IPL, which thrives on spectacle and innovation. Teen prodigies bring fresh energy, drawing younger audiences and boosting viewership. The league’s global appeal, already massive with $6 billion in annual revenue, grows stronger as fans in the US, Australia, and beyond tune in for a first glimpse of the next big star. Brands are taking notice, too. Suryavanshi’s century landed him endorsement deals with local sports brands, while Mhatre’s Mumbai Indians jersey is a top seller among Gen Z fans.

But there’s a flip side. The pressure on young players is immense. The IPL’s high-octane environment, with its packed stadiums and relentless media scrutiny, can overwhelm even seasoned veterans. Suryavanshi's twin failures after his record-breaking century have already sparked critical comments about his consistency, and that kind of pressure can be hard on kids in their teens. This raises the issue of mental health, and franchises are responding, with teams like Rajasthan Royals hiring psychologists to guide young players through the spotlight.

There’s also the risk of burnout. The IPL’s gruelling schedule, combined with domestic and international commitments, can strain young bodies. AI-driven injury prevention programs, like those trialled in IPL 2025, aim to monitor workloads, but the long-term impact on teen stars like Suryavanshi remains a concern.

The IPL’s youth revolution isn’t just a cricket story — it’s a blueprint for sports worldwide. Leagues like the NBA and EPL, which have seen young stars like Victor Wembanyama and Cole Palmer shine, are watching closely. The IPL shows how to balance tradition with innovation: nurture talent early, leverage technology, and create a platform where boldness is rewarded. As cricket expands globally — think Major League Cricket in the US, the Big Bash League in Australia, or The Hundred in England — the IPL’s model of empowering young players could inspire new leagues to take risks on untested talent.

All indications are that the IPL's teen revolution is just getting started. For fans, the rise of the teens is a reminder of why we love sports: the unpredictability, the raw passion, the moments that make you leap off the couch. Every six he hits isn’t just a shot — it’s a statement that the future is now. For organisers, it’s a call to invest in grassroots programmes and protect young stars from the pitfalls of fame. And for brands, it’s a chance to back the next icon before they become household names.

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BCCI’s Slight To Women’s Cricket

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 10:29:00 +0000

BCCI’s Apathy For Women’s Cricket Isn’t Just Unfair, It’s Unwise

Source: ICC

A Google search for "Mullanpur" throws up, in the "people also ask" section, questions such as "Is Mullanpur in Chandigarh or Punjab?" and "Are Mullanpur and Mohali the same?"

There is more, but you get the point: Mullanpur Garibdass, a town in the Mohali district of Punjab, is a little speck on the map that takes some finding.

The town, with a total population of 6,165 (2011 census), boasts the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium and has been the home base to the Punjab Kings franchise since 2024.

When the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced Mullanpur — a nondescript town with a population smaller than that of a state university (16,674 students are enrolled in Punjab University, for instance) — as the venue for the final of the Women's ODI World Cup 2025 it felt, at least to me, less like a celebration and more like a carefully calibrated slight to the women's game.

The Yadavindra Singh Stadium, a 38,000-seater colossus in a region struggling with basic connectivity, now symbolises Indian women’s cricket: ambitious in theory, half-hearted in practice. While the BCCI claims this is a “rotation policy” to promote smaller venues, the decision reeks of a deeper malaise — the systemic sidelining of women’s cricket in a country obsessed with the men’s game.

A Litmus Test

Mullanpur’s selection isn’t just about geography — it is a litmus test for the BCCI’s commitment to women's cricket. The stadium, built primarily for the Punjab Kings men’s IPL franchise, lacks the infrastructure to host a global event. Unlike Mumbai’s Wankhede or Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy, Mullanpur has no metro links, limited hotels, and patchy media facilities. Contrast this with the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where 86,174 fans witnessed India’s title clash with Australia.

The BCCI’s current logic — that marquee venues need “rest” before the 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup — is laughable. A November 2025 ODI in Mumbai would leave three months to prepare for a February 2026 T20, ample time even by the board's slow-moving standards.

The subtext is clear: the BCCI believes women’s cricket isn’t worth the “wear and tear” of prime stadiums.

This is not to suggest that the BCCI is wrong in wanting to popularise women's cricket outside of the main centres, but if that is the goal, the BCCI could well have staged Women's Premier League games in such centres, rather than give short shrift to a prestigious multi-lateral event.

This could be brushed off as much ado about very little, except that the choice of venues for a prestigious women's tournament is in keeping with the short shrift the women's game has been getting from the BCCI.

Bluntly put, women's cricket in India is in limbo. While the men’s team hops continents for back-to-back series, India’s women cricketers face a famine. In 2024, they played just three Tests, six ODIs, and 12 T20Is, including the T20 World Cup. Compare this to England’s 18 ODIs and 18 T20Is or Australia’s year-round calendar of bilaterals, WBBL, and World Cups.

The last time we saw the women in international action was during the October 2024 T20 World Cup. Then came three ODIs against Ireland at the start of this year. Their next outing is a tri-series in Sri Lanka, with South Africa as the third participant, from April 27. Then nothing, till late June when they played England in five T20s and three ODIs, as preparation for the World Cup.

Captain Harmanpreet Kaur summed it up in 2023: “We play one series, then sit idle for months. How do you build rhythm?”

Even when the BCCI had an opportunity to host a marquee women's event — the 2024 T20 World Cup, after Bangladesh pulled out — it bailed, citing the monsoon, in a decision that further highlighted the board's skewed priorities.

The Wage Gap

For all that, the BCCI seeks to convey an illusion of equality. In 2023, BCCI secretary Jay Shah proudly declared pay parity: Women would earn the same match fees as men, he said. But as the excellent Sharda Ugra noted, this is a “statistical sleight of hand.” A male cricketer earns Rs 15 lakh per Test, Rs 6 lakh per ODI — but with 40+ matches annually, his yearly income dwarfs a woman’s Rs 3-6 lakh per game in a sparse calendar.

The BCCI’s 2023-24 budget allocation tells the same story: 58% for men’s cricket, 7% for women’s. The Women’s Premier League (WPL), while revolutionary, remains a standalone event. Its Rs 951 crore media rights windfall hasn’t trickled down to the domestic circuit. India’s Senior Women’s One-Day League had just 20 matches in 2023; Australia’s Women’s National Cricket League clocks 60+ annually.

Another indicator of how the BCCI views women's cricket is this: When Harmanpreet Kaur’s team reached the 2023 T20 World Cup final, their matches aired on niche sports channels. Men’s bilaterals, even against minnows, dominate prime time on national networks. In England, Sky Sports broadcasts 100% of women’s internationals; in India, fans still hunt for grainy YouTube streams. Invisibility stifles growth.

Such institutional neglect is par for the course. Back in 2011, Diana Eduljee, a former women's cricket star turned administrator, went up to the then BCCI president N Srinivasan, congratulated him on his recent election, and said she hoped that women's cricket in India would grow under his leadership. Srinivasan's reply was a shocker: "If I had my way, I wouldn't let women's cricket happen. Women have no business playing cricket. We are only doing this because it is an ICC rule."

Even after the team captured the public imagination in the 2017 World Cup (where Harmanpreet Kaur in the semifinal played one of the great ODI innings of all time, against Australia), the BCCI remained reluctant to cash in on the growing interest and resolutely set its face against a women's version of the IPL. It was only six years later, in 2023, that the board finally succumbed and launched the WPL -- whose instant success, marked by packed stadiums, viral moments, a haul of Rs 4670 crore from the sale of five teams, Rs 570 crore media deals — proved that the market exists.

Yet, the league risks becoming a smokescreen. Unlike the men’s IPL, which fuels domestic talent pipelines, the WPL relies on a threadbare feeder system. Most state associations lack women’s age-group leagues; schools rarely have girls’ teams. Australia’s “Cricket Blast” program engages 30,000+ young girls annually. India has no equivalent.

As the legendary Australian all-rounder Ellyse Perry said, “You can’t have a strong national team without a strong grassroots. It’s that simple.”

Mullanpur Is A Metaphor

The BCCI’s Mullanpur move isn’t just about a stadium — it is a metaphor. To salvage credibility and, more importantly, to give women's cricket the fillip it both needs and deserves, the board needs to reorient its priorities.

For starters, it could leverage WPL revenues, allocating, say, 25% of WPL profits to grassroots programs, school leagues, and updated facilities for women's cricket.

Then, fix the calendar so that the women play 15+ ODIs and 20+ T20s annually, against the best teams. Incorporate Tests, particularly against England and Australia. (India does not play a single Test this year.)

Give the game a prime-time push. Mandate DD Sports, or Star, to broadcast women's games nationally. Visibility generates interest and gives aspiring girls heroes to look up to and something to aim for.

And in the immediate future, honor the stage. Revise the World Cup schedule, host at least the knockout games in marquee venues like the Eden Gardens or the Wankhede, where history inspires the future.

In 2017, Mithali Raj’s team lost the ODI World Cup final at Lord’s, but won 24 million Indian hearts. Seven years later, their successors are handed a World Cup in a town that Google struggles to locate. The BCCI’s apathy isn’t just unfair — it’s unwise. The question is, does the board see the women as cricketers or as collateral?

Women’s cricket isn’t a charity; it’s a goldmine of talent, fandom, and legacy waiting to be tapped.

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The Sorry Mess Of Indian Sports

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:29:00 +0000

Malaise In Indian Sports: Administrative Failures Stifle Athletes And Ambition

Given that the sports media is wallpapered with IPL coverage, you could be forgiven for missing this bombshell report The Indian Express dropped on March 17.

The key takeaway: there are over 770 sports-related lawsuits making their way through our courts, and that is just in the last decade. Of these, 200-plus cases are tied to governance mess-ups.

That’s not a headline — it’s a symptom.

India has of late been dreaming dreams of Olympic glory; its leaders beginning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have been talking of hosting Olympics 2036 in Ahmedabad — but India's sports administration is a rancid mess of factionalism, corruption, and inefficiency, some of it directly impacting on any chance India might have of being picked to host the Games.

The Governance Quagmire

Indian sports bodies are drowning in a swamp of their own making. Take the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI): suspended by the Sports Ministry in 2023 for flouting rules, reinstated in March 2025 after legal ping-pong, yet still struggling to break free of the stranglehold of former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s continuing clout.

As recently as January 2025, the WFI admitted, after it was caught out, that it was continuing to operate from Brij Bhushan's home. When questions were asked, the WFI said it would be shifting its office to Connaught Place in February. Here we are in end-March and according to the WFI website, it is now operating out of the home of its president Sanjay Kumar Singh — the same Sanjay Singh who, as a Brij Bhushan crony, had won elections to the WFI in December 2023, and who had then been banned by the sports ministry because, in the ministry's own words, "serious concerns have arisen about the governance and integrity of the WFI."

Who loses? The wrestlers who, as of February, had missed participation in two Ranking Series tournaments already. Participation is vital because points earned in these series determine qualification for world-level events.

Instead of finding a solution, though, the WFI and the sports ministry are busy blaming each other.

And it is not as if this happened only this year. Indian wrestlers missed global meets in 2023-24 because the WFI’s ad-hoc committee couldn’t sort itself out. That equals lost medals, lost chances. With the WFI now regaining its recognition, it decided to hold trials in the various categories, to which the sports ministry has said all trials have to be videotaped in order to avoid the possibility of athletes approaching courts.

Oh, the pity of it — wrestling tops the list of Indian sports in the number of medals won by our athletes. India's men's wrestlers have won seven Olympic and 14 World medals, while the women have won one Olympic and 10 World medals. It is this highly productive sport that has, for over three years now, been captive to the ambitions of a few, and the incompetence of the ministry that has oversight.

Grok, what does "shambolic" mean? Grok: Haha, check out the WFI.

Or take the Boxing Federation of India, which has oscillated between suspension and court orders over the last 12 months, because the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) can’t seem to get its act together.

Internal conflicts and legal battles have disrupted the BFI's functioning. The elections scheduled for March 28, 2025, were "paused" due to conflicting court orders from the Delhi and Himachal Pradesh High Courts. These courts intervened after the BFI excluded certain members, like former Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, from the electoral college, citing a controversial March 7 directive that only "duly elected" state unit members could participate. This has led to a standoff between factions, highlighting governance chaos.

Worse, the BFI has suspended its Secretary General, Hemanta Kumar Kalita, and Treasurer Digvijay Singh on March 18, 2025, following an investigation by retired Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain into financial irregularities and mismanagement of funds. Kalita’s subsequent disqualification from contesting the presidency, due to National Sports Code rules on term limits, has intensified the power struggle.

As is the case with the WFI, the administrative mess in the BFI directly harms the boxers. Assam boxers, including Olympian Lovlina Borgohain, were reportedly blocked from the Women’s National Championships by Kalita’s faction. Meanwhile, stars like Nikhat Zareen and Borgohain have voiced frustration over the lack of a roadmap since the Paris Olympics, with no national camps or international exposure due to the BFI-Indian Olympic Association (IOA) deadlock.

The IOA’s attempt to impose a five-member ad-hoc committee in February 2025 to oversee boxing was stayed by the Delhi High Court on March 4, after the BFI challenged it as “arbitrary.” This tug-of-war has left boxers clueless about whose authority to follow; it has also stalled competitions and selections at all levels.

As The Indian Express report pointed out, these administrative messes roiling various Indian sports bodies extract a price. In 2022 alone, the report said, the All India Football Federation spent Rs 3 crore in legal fees, fighting various court battles. Who loses? In this case, the footballers, because that is Rs 3 crore less that the AIFF can spend on facilities and on training -- and the same is the case with every single sports body that finds itself in the courts, which is basically all of them.

It's not just high-profile sports like wrestling and boxing that are suffering, note. Take yoga. This year, it was elevated as a medal sport at the National Games, and India is pitching for its inclusion in the 2036 Olympics. The problem? There is no officially recognised yoga federation today, with rival factions tying each other up in legal battles that are inching through our courts.

Or take golf. The Indian Olympic Association (of which more anon) unilaterally awarded recognition to one of two factions fighting for control of the Indian Golf Union — an action that no less than the sports ministry has warned will not stand judicial scrutiny.

In all of this, our athletes are roadkill. Middle distance runner PU Chitra won gold in the 1500 metres at the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneshwar. A week later, she was told that she would not be part of the Indian team for the World Athletics Championships in London. She went to court; the court ruled in her favour, but the International Association of Athletics Federations rejected her bid, and she is still fighting that case in various forums.

If that is the case with elite sport, how about grassroots development? In a word, starving, as federations sink money into lawyers, not talented kids. The talent is there, but the support isn't, because whatever funds aren't misappropriated are going into the bottomless sink of the Indian judicial system.

This sorry mess embarrasses India globally. India is currently bidding to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games — but who among the decision makers will trust this system to deliver?

Olympic dreams meet harsh realities

The Olympic dream is fading, too, because the apex Indian body, the Indian Olympic Association, is a clown car.

IOA President PT Usha is at odds with much of the Executive Committee (EC). The friction escalated in 2024-2025, with public disputes over decisions like the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) suspension in February 2025, which Usha imposed unilaterally but was later stayed by the Delhi High Court on March 4. It was Usha, again, who controversially pushed through recognition for one faction of the Indian Golf Union, mentioned earlier in this piece. The EC accuses her of autocratic governance, while Usha claims they obstruct progress.

Thanks to this endemic administrative dysfunction, the IOA is struggling with delayed decision-making and poor coordination. For instance, it failed to form a Bid Committee for the 2036 Olympics despite submitting a letter of intent, thus lagging behind international timelines. As a result, the International Olympic Committee has put the blame on the IOA and has frozen all funds to the IOA, and the whole sorry mess casts doubt on the country's 2036 Olympics bid.

The cutting off of funds hits hard. The IOA is under financial pressure, partly from unpaid loans like the one extended to the Indian Weightlifting Federation to cover a penalty. This, in turn, diverts resources from athlete development to administrative firefighting.

The IOA’s infighting has clearly dented its international standing. This is a red flag for the 2036 Olympic bid, because it is the IOA that must liaise with the IOC -- and clearly, the global body sees the IOA as an unreliable, dysfunctional entity.

Can The Augean Stables Be Cleaned?

Fixing all that is broken isn’t rocket science — what is required is the will. The will, first, to finalise, legalise, and enforce the Sports Code, still in draft form, and give it teeth — independent oversight, not ministry whims.

The graded funding plan the sports ministry is currently contemplating could work — if it is fair, and fairly administered.

While the sports ministry sorts out the administrative issues, the Khelo India programme could be ramped up to fast-track sports development. I know that the scheme has been greeted with the kind of skepticism attendant on most of this government's grandiose ideas — but for once, a scheme is showing some signs of traction.

According to a March 13, 2024, article from The Hindu written by Anurag Thakur, 495 Khelo India athletes won 312 medals across international events in 2022, with a 63% success rate among participants. This includes performances at the Olympics, World Championships, Asian Games, and Commonwealth Games.

At the 31st World University Games (2023), 71 Khelo India athletes secured 14 of India’s 23 medals.

As far as talent scouting goes, the KIRTI programme, launched in March 2024, assessed 51,000 athletes in its first phase across 28 states by July 2024, with plans for 20 lakh assessments in 2024-25.

Over 2,800 athletes across 21 disciplines (including para-sports) have been selected as Khelo India Athletes (KIAs) since 2018, receiving Rs 5 lakh annually for eight years.

Does all this translate to success? Not directly, but talent scouting and talent development are mandatory first steps towards sporting excellence, and such systematic efforts have never been undertaken before.

Success stories include athletes like Mirabai Chanu (weightlifting, Olympic medalist) and Antim Panghal (wrestling, World Championship bronze), who benefited from Khelo India’s infrastructure and support, though some predated the program and were later integrated.

A 2024 study in the International Journal of Research Pedagogy and Technology in Education and Movement Sciences (Vol. 13, No. 03) surveyed 300 Khelo India beneficiaries and found a “significant positive effect” on talent identification. While this supports the programme’s efficacy, it needs mentioning that it is based on a small sample and lacks longitudinal depth.

Not that there aren't limitations — for instance, since the scheme was only launched in 2018, comprehensive, long-term data linking Khelo India scouting directly to Olympic or World Championship medals is still emerging. The programme has only been active for seven years now, and elite success often takes a decade or more. Attribution can also be tricky — many athletes use multiple pathways (e.g., private academies, SAI centers), so their success cannot be entirely, or even directly, attributed to Khelo India.

Critics have also argued that the focus on U-17 athletes in the Khelo India Youth Games misses younger talent (e.g., 5-12 years), a gap KIRTI (ages 9-18) aims to address, but hasn’t fully proven yet.

The point is, Indian sports is a mess — but not an irredeemable one, given the desire to clean up the stables.

But to go back to the beginning: Over 770 lawsuits aren’t a quirk — they are a monumental crisis.

India’s sports administration is choking its athletes and its future. Want Olympic podiums? Fix the federations, prioritise the players. The clock is ticking.

Additional Reading

Indian Sports Federations Need Urgent Reform: Playbook, November 22, 2024 (with internal links)
A Dramatic January, Playbook, January 24, 2025 (Scroll down to the part about the cost of hosting an Olympics)

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Leave Politics Out Of Sports

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 10:29:00 +0000

Cricket Can’t Be The Only Avenue For Cross-Border Diplomacy

Australia's captain Pat Cummins, absent through injury from the ongoing edition of the ICC Champions Trophy, said what needed saying: The tournament is structured to give India the best chance of winning.

ICCCricket.com

As someone said on microblogging platform X, recently,

If that sounds over the top, consider the backstory. The International Cricket Council picked Pakistan to host this latest edition of a tournament last played in 2017.

These decisions — reviving the tournament and identifying the host nation — were not arrived at unilaterally. All the major cricket-playing nations were part of the discussions leading to these decisions — and that includes India.

India’s Tantrums

Despite having been a party to these decisions, the Board of Control for Cricket in India began throwing the toys out of the pram. First, it insisted that its team would not play in Pakistan. Why not? No one — not the board, nor the government — has categorically given a reason; it is left to social media and to bloviating TV anchors to talk of Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism. If that reason is legitimate, surely it is up to the government to make an official statement to that effect.

In October 2024, India's external affairs minister S Jaishankar travelled to Pakistan to participate in a multilateral meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. What happened between then and January 2025 for India — or its cricket board — to refuse to travel to Pakistan? Or, put differently, when the foreign minister can travel to events in Pakistan, why can't cricketers?

There is no official response.

So the ICC, which needs to stay in the good books of India, bent over backwards and permitted India to play all its games at the Dubai International Stadium. India is well within its rights to refuse to play in a particular country — but in such a case, its recourse is to pull out of the tournament. In this instance, it was being intransigent because it knew money power was on its side — India's participation means increased sponsorship, advertising revenue, and eyeballs; its absence, not.

India Being Petty?

Next up, India said its captain will not travel to Pakistan for the mandatory group photo that precedes every multilateral tournament, where the captains are pictured with the trophy. Then it said it would not have the name Pakistan on the logo of the team jersey — again, in contravention of a norm that says in every multilateral tournament, the participating teams will have on the right breast of the uniform sport a logo incorporating the trophy, the name of the tournament, and the name of the host nation. Mercifully, better counsel prevailed in the face of criticism.

Most recently, the name of the host nation somehow got erased from the branding on the TV feed for India's opening match against Bangladesh — yet another act of pettiness that the ICC has since tried to pass off as a "technical glitch". What glitch, though? The ICC makes one logo for the tournament, which features on the team jerseys and on the various broadcast feeds and passes it on to all concerned. What glitch accounts for the host nation's name being dropped from one feed alone? Don't ask, because no one will tell.

Unfair Advantages

Consider this: India entered the semifinal round and played the knockout game at the Dubai stadium where it is based. Its opponent, Australia, traveled to Dubai for the encounter and to play in unfamiliar conditions after having played all its group games in Pakistan. If that doesn't meet the criterion of unfair advantage, what does?

Consider this, too: New Zealand played the semifinal in Pakistan. The Kiwis have been preparing for this tournament for a long time, climaxing with a schedule that has seen the team spend a month in that country in the lead-up to the event. Now the team will have to travel to Dubai and play the final in conditions it has not prepared for — while India, again, has the advantage of playing in conditions it has thoroughly familiarised itself with.

New Zealand will play India in the finals on Sunday.

A tournament should be played according to the rules and conditions that have been laid down by the organising body and agreed to by all stakeholders. If for any reason you cannot comply, then the only course open is — or should be — to withdraw.

This leads to a larger question: Why is cricket, alone, the vehicle for international diplomacy? In the run-up to the ICC Champions Trophy, a group of 160 British Parliamentarians wrote to the England Cricket Board, saying that the England team should not play against Afghanistan, in response to the Taliban's violation of women's rights in that country. The ECB, mercifully, gave its team the go-ahead to play.

This is not to suggest that the Taliban's oppression of women in Afghanistan is not egregious — but if you want to sanction that country, then the way to do it is politically. Cut off political, diplomatic and trade ties, and isolate the country the way South Africa was isolated during the Apartheid. That is fair. But to carry on business as usual in all these spheres, but to draw a line when it comes to cricket is a cheap play to the gallery.

The same argument applies to India-Pakistan cricket contests. If India's hockey teams — both abled and visually impaired — can play Pakistan on Pakistan soil, if Pakistan's cricket team can travel to India to play the ICC ODI World Cup in 2023 if its women's team can come to India to play in the ICC Women's World Cup later this year, what was the point of the BCCI refusing to allow the men's team to play the ICC Champions Trophy in Pakistan?

To underline a point made earlier: None of this is to defend Pakistan's record in fostering cross-border terrorism. It is merely to raise a question:

The BCCI's — and by extension, India's — actions are a calculated play to a jingoistic gallery. The pity is, India has fielded an excellent all-round team, capable of winning the tournament on merit. Such acts of pettiness by the board will, unfortunately, taint such a victory, if and when it comes, for no fault of the cricketers themselves.

PostScript:

"It is the greatest rivalry in sport". "The atmosphere is electric". And so on, through the whole lexicon of cliches that were birthed at a time when India and Pakistan competed on the cricket field on near-equal terms. Here's the thing, though -- it's been well over a decade since Pakistan was anywhere close to being competitive, and not just against India either. The match between the two teams last Sunday in Dubai is an example of how flat, insipid, such match-ups have been in recent times. All this "excitement" is artificial, whipped up in television studios in an effort to increase sponsorship and get adrenalin-charged crowds thronging to the stadium — but I can't think of a single encounter in recent times that justified all this hype. Cease and desist, please? And still, on the cricket, the saddest sight I saw was not that of a once-great cricketing nation's continued implosion, but this — Pakistan fans wholeheartedly celebrating a match-winning century by Virat Kohli. We used to be like that; we used to be capable of celebrating good cricket, even by our opponents. When did we change?

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BCCI’s (Women’s Cricket) Blind Spot

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:29:00 +0000

BCCI Sleeping On Women’s Cricket Is A Lost Financial Opportunity

It is a facet of the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India's functioning that it has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing the right thing. Equally true is that given the sheer volume of money and muscle at its disposal, even the little things it does when forced into it yield inordinate dividends.

These thoughts played in a loop in my mind this Sunday while I watched the Indian women's U-19 team win the ICC World Cup, for the second edition in succession, defeating finalists South Africa by a whopping nine-wicket margin.

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That margin of victory, achieved with 52 balls to spare against a team that had till then been undefeated in the tournament, tells you about the quality of India's next generation of women players. The team composition struck the perfect balance: two openers in G Trisha and G Kamalini, who were so dominant that they ranked first and third respectively in the list of top run-getters; two quick bowlers in VJ Joshitha and Shabnam Shakil who were adept at both-ways swing and seam movement and who invariably struck early to put the opposition on the back foot; and a troika of slow left arm orthodox spinners who proved irresistible right through the tournament. Vaishnavi Sharma, Aayushi Shukla and Parunika Sisodia ranked first, second and fourth in the list of top wicket-takers.

Long Overdue

That is a story of dominance that will take some equaling, and taken in totality it tells you that the next generation is ready even as the previous generation, led by the likes of Smriti Mandhana and Jemima Rodrigues, is only just nearing its peak. The question is, why did it take us so long?

The year 2025 marks fifty years since the Indian women played their first international match (against the West Indies, in Mumbai). It invariably escapes our collective memory that the women participated in the World Cup, and finished runner-up, way back in 1978 — five years before the men's team had its breakout moment in 1983. And yet, the BCCI's attitude towards women's cricket, for the longest time, was to pretend it didn't exist. In fact, as relatively recently as 2011, then BCCI president N Srinivasan told former India star turned administrator Diana Eduljee:

A couple of years ago, I was chatting with Karunya Keshav, who co-authored The Fire Burns Blue, the definitive history of Indian women’s cricket, along with Sidhanta Patnaik. Karunya spoke of the progress of the women’s game as a series of accidents of fate, rather than the outcome of systematic planning. What if, for instance, Anurag Thakur had not run for the post of secretary in the BCCI elections of March 2015 and defeated incumbent Sanjay Patel—who, like Srinivasan before him, was no fan of women’s cricket—by a solitary vote?

Thakur, to his credit, had seen the possibilities that inhere in the women’s game and, in 2009 while serving as head of the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association, had set up the first-ever residential cricket academy for women in Kangra town. It was during his tenure, first as secretary and then as board president, that he pushed the BCCI into playing a more proactive role in women’s cricket.

Even so, progress was slow and came only in fits and starts. Annesha Ghosh, who leads a very short list of journalists who have made following women’s cricket their life’s work, sees the post-2017 period as a sorry tale of missed opportunities.

In that year's World Cup, the Indian women captured the public imagination. On July 20, captain Harmanpreet Kaur played one of the all-time great T20 innings, scoring 171 off 115 balls to power India to a semi-final win against a dominant Australian side, and though the team lost by a heart-breaking nine runs to England in the final, its stellar performances in the tournament saw the players elevated to rock star status.

“After that game, they were everywhere—on Vogue covers, in larger-than-life cutouts at Durga Puja pandals, in advertisements endorsing every conceivable product…,” Annesha reminded me, on a call a couple of years ago.

“That is where the BCCI missed a trick—instead of riding that wave to raise the profile of the women’s game, they went to sleep. What got our women onto those hoardings, into those stratospheric heights, was their cricket—the skill and the verve with which they played the game—and that was allowed to lapse. For six months after that final, the team vanished from the public eye—they played no cricket at all.”

Horse And Cart In Right Order

The BCCI’s argument, when the commentariat talked up the potential of a Women's Premier League, was that there is little or no spectator interest in women’s cricket – this, despite the fact that several hardnosed franchises had expressed interest in bidding for women’s teams. Annesha, who has been ringside at almost every single game the women’s team has played, shot down that argument with facts.

“The response in the lower-tier cities has been phenomenal,” she pointed out back then. “I was there at Vadodara for the 2018 series against Australia. The evening before the game, crowds were thronging the gate, hoping to see the players as they came back from practice — and the game itself was played to a packed house. For the Women’s T20 Challenge tournament in Jaipur in 2020, there was almost no signage, no marketing — but still, the series played out to full houses at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium." PS, the T20 World Cup final of the 2020 edition between India and Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground drew 86,174 spectators.

The crowds wanted more women's cricket; a half dozen franchises expressed their interest in buying teams in a potential WIPL, and yet the BCCI slumbered through six more years before it finally launched the women's franchise league in 2023.

The problem, all these years, was that the BCCI put the cart before the horse — the governing body refused to invest in women's cricket until it could see a clear financial reason. Now the horse and cart are finally in the right order.

For instance, to prepare for this World Cup, the BCCI organised a triangular tournament in Pune featuring two Indian sides and South Africa — who, as it turned out, met India in the Cup final. The U-19 team also travelled to the World Cup venue, Kuala Lumpur, in December of last year to play in — and win — a U-19 Asia Cup.

The team played the Asia Cup games at the Bayumeas Oval, the venue of its matches in the World Cup to follow. The upshot was that the team was well-prepared and familiar with both the potential opposition and the ground conditions.

The role of WIPL franchises in scouting and developing talent is equally worth pointing out. Three of the playing eleven in that final against South Africa are already part of various franchises -- G Kamalini plays for Mumbai Indians, captain Niki Prasad for Delhi Capitals, and Shabnam Shakil for the Gujarat Giants.

No Long-Term Plans

There has, clearly, been progress — and yet the cup remains half-full. The BCCI wants its teams to dominate, and so it plans well in the run-up to major tournaments, Karunya pointed out on that call. For instance, the BCCI had similarly prepared the U-19 women’s team for the inaugural World Cup in 2023. “That said, in terms of long-term vision the BCCI has none — there isn’t even a dedicated official within the board who is tasked with devising and implementing a five-year plan or a ten-year plan and held accountable for results. Long-term thinking is pretty much nonexistent.”

The BCCI, Karunya and Annesha agree, is a reactive rather than proactive body. An example is that in mid-December 2022, it instituted an under-15 tournament — a direct result of the ICC instituting an under-19 World Cup scheduled for the following year.

Prior to 2005, when the Women's Cricket Association of India ran the game, there was a clear pathway with tournaments at the under-16, under-19 and senior levels. Once the BCCI took over the administration of women's cricket in 2005, the under-16 tournament was scrapped, and so the post-2005 generation played only under-19s and then the senior level. The BCCI then brought in an under-23 tournament. It then added the under-15 but scrapped the under-23 — it is always give some, take some.

The problem with this is that match fitness, match awareness, the ability to withstand pressure, all comes from the number of competitive games you get to play. When there is no incremental age-group structure, you are left to the uncertain mercies of your own, or your coach’s, ability to organise games. Also, there is no defined school and collegiate cricket structure for women. So at age 17, for instance, there is a vast difference between the number of matches a girl has played versus how many a boy has played.

Lost Monetary Opportunities

Ironically, given how the BCCI is driven by money, it is the financial opportunities inherent in women's cricket that the governing body continues to largely miss out on.

“Promoting women’s sport is a box a lot of corporates want to tick right now because of the halo effect—companies want to be seen as caring for women and women’s sport, and the WIPL provides them with that opportunity," Karunya pointed out on that call. "Quite cynically, companies realise that they can get major brownie points by spending a fraction of the money it takes to advertise in the men’s game.”

All of this is relevant because the third edition of the WIPL begins next week — and it is the start of a runway that leads to the 2025 Women’s World Cup, to be played in India. With the snowballing interest this can generate, and with a marketing push by the BCCI, you could see houseful stadiums across the country for the 2025 Women’s WC.

Imagine 100,000 spectators — the largest crowd ever for any women’s sporting event in history — filling the Ahmedabad stadium for the final. It sounds like an impractical dream, but think of it as a series of incremental steps and you can see a clear path to making that happen — and if it does, women’s cricket could become as hot a commercial property as the men’s version.

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A Dramatic January

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:29:00 +0000

A Calculated Leak, Pigeon Poop And Smog: No End Of Drama For Indian Sports

If you are a multi-sport person, January has an abundance of riches.

The battle for top honours between newly-minted FIDE world champion D Gukesh and grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa is heating up at the halfway stage of the Tata Steel Masters 2025. (Round five produced piquant interest because Gukesh, needing a win to close the gap with tournament leader Pragg, went up against Vincent Keymer, who was his second during the recent world chess championship and who, thus, knows Gukesh's game inside out. PS: Gukesh won.)

In football, the UEFA Champions League is headlined by Manchester United's implosion, and the Indian Soccer League, both providing riches albeit at widely different levels of skill. The year's first Grand Slam, the Australian Open is into its last leg with Ben Shelton, Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev and the ageless Novak Djokovic about to square off in the semifinals. (The equally ageless Rohan Bopanna, now 44, and partner Shuai Zhang unfortunately fell at the quarterfinal stage.) In badminton, Lakshya Sen keeps the Indian flag flying at the Indonesian Masters, the year's first Grand Prix Gold event, with PV Sindhu crashing out in the first round. The Hockey India League is heading into its final stretch, in both the men's and women's segments.

What Were You Playing For?

Going strictly by column inches in the media, you would be forgiven for thinking, though, that there is only one sport being played in India just now — to wit, a random five-game T20 series between India and England, to be followed by three ODIs between the same sides.

Much of the coverage centres around the "new look" England under coach Brendan McCullum, who has just added white ball responsibilities to his ongoing stint as coach of England's red ball team. This is billed as a clash between an Indian team that played with "intent" to win the T20 World Cup last year versus an England under the "Bazball" coach that promises to play with even greater "intent".

Intent is within quotation marks for a reason — see, I don't get it.

Top players talk of the two mindsets that apply when playing Test cricket versus T20. In the former, the batsman's approach to each ball is "leave, defend, 1, 2, 3, 4" -- that is, leave all you can; if you must, defend; if you can, look for the single to turn the strike over, and if you can do it without risk, play the more aggressive shots that can get you twos, threes, fours. Against that, in T20, the thinking is each team gets only 120 deliveries to maximize runs. Given that, the dot ball is anathema -- the batsman's approach, particularly given the short boundaries in vogue in the format, is 6-4-3-2-1-defend-leave.

So when a team says it has decided to bat with "intent" — that it is looking to maximise run-scoring off every single ball, it begs the question somewhat: before this epiphany, just what were you playing for when you played T20s? A draw?

As you've probably guessed from my vehemence above, this is a pet peeve — this tendency to gush, to dress up the ordinary in column inches of hyperbole. This impacts negatively on the fan's understanding of the game and creates a coterie of adrenalin-fueled supporters whose reaction to victory is jingoism, and to defeat is vicious trolling. Or maybe I am feeling particularly dyspeptic today.

A Calculated Leak?

Moving on to more amusing matters, the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India continues to provide fodder for wry laughter. Remember the hoo-haa of recent times, centred on the BCCI's 10-point guidelines issued to the national team? Remember how this was supposed to be the board "cracking the whip" on the team's superstars, in a bid to end the star culture I'd written about in the previous episode of Playbook? Turns out it is no such thing — the board has not officially put out those guidelines under its imprimatur; what you see in the public domain is a calculated leak.

The intent is to make it appear as if the board was getting tough with the players contracted by it, without actually doing anything. Captain Rohit Sharma called this out during a press conference a week ago when asked about the new guidelines, he responded with: What new guidelines? Where did you see this? Has the board put it out officially? (The implicit answer, of course, is "no".)

In any case, Sharma said, the players were unhappy with the guidelines, always assuming they actually existed. And so it begins — the pushback by the stars, which will result eventually in the sub rosa rollback of all these "tough measures".

Nothing new to see here, move on folks. Oh, and before moving on, read this piece on the new guidelines by the excellent Sharda Ugra -- it is a closer look at the theatre of the absurd that is the Indian cricket administration.

Of Pigeon Poo And Smog

Anyway, there is no shortage of action and drama in the world of sport. And yet, in all of this, what caught my attention was the Indian Open badminton championship that ended on 19 January with the legendary Viktor Axelsen winning the men's finals and South Korean badminton star An Se-Young, winner of the gold at the 2024 Summer Olympics, taking the women's title.

Well as they played, my attention was captured by on-court incidents the day before the final. On her Instagram page, Denmark's badminton star Mia Blichfeldt wrote about why she was forced to pull out in the middle of a game, and abruptly exit from the tournament. "Finally home after a long and stressful week in India," she wrote, detailing how this is the second year in a row she has fallen ill while playing the India Open.

Blichfeldt was not the only one — one of the top-ranked doubles teams at the India Open paused in mid-game when pigeon poop came down on their side of the court.

India — or more accurately, the Indian establishment — has talked up its sporting ambitions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on record saying India intends to mount a serious bid for the 2036 Olympics and to host it in Ahmedabad.

Bidding for the Olympics is one thing, the final toll on the exchequer is something else again. A University of Oxford study from 2024 estimated that the average cost of hosting an Olympics is now around triple the bid price; cost escalation leading to mounting debt incurred by the host country has led to cities withdrawing their bids to host the Games.

The cost versus benefit calculus of hosting the games in India is a subject for a deeper dive another day — for now, the question that pigeon poop on badminton courts leaves us with is this: Should India even nurse ambitions to become a sports superpower (assuming that merely hosting the games, rather than placing high on the medals tally, does confer such superpower on the host nation) when it cannot even manage to maintain the infrastructure it already possesses?

A previous edition of Playbook looked at the development of chess in Tamil Nadu and made the age-old argument in favour of infrastructure creation: Build it, and they will come.

Pigeon poop reminds us that the converse is equally true: Neglect it, and they will go.

See you next fortnight — stay safe.

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Indian Cricket's Annus Horribilis 2.0

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:29:00 +0000

Will Last Year's Tragedies Play Out As Farce In 2025 For Indian Cricket?

2025 is a fecund year for sports lovers, with World Championships scheduled in table tennis (Doha, May), badminton (August, Paris), athletics (September, Tokyo) where Neeraj Chopra defends his world title, and shooting (November, Egypt) — all disciplines where India has medal hopes.

And then there is chess, where in various tournaments throughout the year, the top players will look to rack up wins and points to qualify for the Challengers, which will determine who gets to face reigning world champion D Gukesh in the world title bout next year. There is also the FIDE Chess World Cup and the Women's World Cup, in both of which the impressive array of Indian stars is expected to perform prodigiously.

In cricket, there is the ICC Champions Trophy (February-March, in Pakistan and the UAE), which affords an opportunity for the Indian team to seek salve for the psychic wounds following successive Test series defeats at the hands of New Zealand and Australia in the span of just three months.

More crucially, India hosts the ICC Women's ODI World Cup in August — for captain Harmanpreet Kaur, now 35, the final opportunity to cement a legacy that she and her team kickstarted with eye-catching performances in the 2017 edition of the tournament.

There is much to look forward to and to write about — but this first edition of Playbook in the new year looks back at what has been Indian cricket's annus horribilis.

This period, when Indian Test cricket hit rock bottom, threw up three issues worth discussing, since all three will ramify, to the detriment of the team, in the next World Test Championship cycle. In no particular order, then:

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Star Culture: Nothing new to see here — the Indian cricket team has always seen a clear division between its stars and the supporting cast of journeymen players, with the former getting preferential treatment at the expense of the latter.

The problem, however, came into stark relief during the period in review because the stars weren't performing, and this non-performance was the single quantifiable reason for India's run of defeats.

In three Tests (six innings) against New Zealand, captain Rohit Sharma managed a grand total of 91 runs at an average of 15.2 runs per innings while Kohli accumulated 93 runs at 15.5 — numbers that would have put boldface question marks against their continued tenure, but didn't.

The two carried their poor form to Australia, where Sharma in three Tests and five innings managed 31 runs at an average of 6.2 runs per innings, while Kohli scored 190 in nine innings at an average of 23.7. (Those numbers are even worse when you consider that Kohli scored a century in Perth, coming in against a tired attack and after the openers had put on a mammoth partnership. This means that in eight innings in Australia Kohli scored a mere 90 runs).

Everyone is entitled to a dip in form, is the rationale offered — an argument that ignores stark reality. Take the example of Kohli: in a five-year period beginning 2020, the Indian number four averages 30.7 across 39 Tests, with just three centuries in 69 innings; even that average is beefed up by three not-outs).

In the 2023-2025 World Test Championship cycle from which India has just been knocked out, Kohli ranks 24th among the list of top run-scorers, with just 751 runs across 14 Tests and 25 innings at an average of 32.6. Sharma ranks 18th — but that is only because he has played three more Tests; across 17 Tests and 31 innings, he aggregates 864 runs at an average of a mere 28.8 per innings.

In Kohli's case, it was not merely the extended run of indifferent form and poor returns with the bat — equally crucial was the manner of his dismissals. In Australia, he was out six times in eight innings fishing in the channel outside off — so much so, that Aussie quick Scott Boland told the media what the Australians had planned against the Indian number four, and then went out and got the wicket precisely as he had described.

The repetitive manner of his dismissals suggests that it is not a question of form as much as it is of declining faculties.

Success depends on how quickly a batsman picks up length and line -- and when the eyesight begins to go even fractionally, the result is that the player is late picking line and length, and that induces the kind of error Kohli is increasingly prone to.

Whatever the cause, his returns, and that of Sharma, over an extended period, do not justify the continued selection of the two "stars", and yet they are the first names pencilled into the team sheet. This cues the second point worth making:

Lopsided Team Selection: Bluntly put, the Australian team that defeated India 3-1 and wrested the Border Gavaskar Trophy after a gap of 11 years was the weakest batting side the country has fielded in recent memory. Three of its top four were woefully below par and delivered only sporadically while the fourth — Usman Khawaja's opening partner — was experimental, with first Nathan McSweeney and then Sam Konstas being tried out in that role.

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The key difference lay in the composition of the bowling — Australia fielded four frontline bowlers and one all-rounder. India fielded just two seasoned frontline bowlers in Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj, one-third seamer alternating between debutants Harshit Rana and Akash Deep (with Prasidh Krishna in the last Test), and three all-rounders in Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja and Nitish Kumar Reddy -- a selection that left room for only four specialist batsmen, two of whom were out of form stars.

Therein lay the difference — despite a shaky batting lineup, Australia's four bowlers were picked for their ability to take wickets and they lived up to their job description, bowling in partnerships and ensuring that the pressure was never released at either end.

In nine completed Test innings, Australia bowled India out for under 200 in six (India managed to bowl Australia out under 200 only twice). Parse the numbers and the results are sorrier: the top four Indian wickets yielded under 100 runs in six of nine completed innings.

That the Indian batting was shaky was no secret — everyone, including the selectors and coach, was aware of the reality. The solution the team management went with was to pick bowlers for their batting, and not for their ability to take wickets. Packing the side with "all-rounders" was done, we were repeatedly told, to "strengthen the batting" — which is akin to treating the lungs of a patient admitted to hospital with cardiac issues.

This cost India in two ways: the batting wasn't noticeably strengthened (note the earlier point about being bowled out under 200 in six of nine completed innings) and the bowling was immeasurably weakened.

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To underline the latter point, consider the case of Jasprit Bumrah — who, after performing prodigies in the first four Test matches, finally broke down in the crucial fifth Test in Sydney, which India had to win to retain the trophy.

His absence through a back spasm cost us the fifth Test, runs conventional wisdom. Really? India in Sydney, without Bumrah, still had five — count them, five — bowlers in Siraj, Krishna, Reddy, Jadeja and Sundar. Of these, Reddy bowled a mere nine overs across two innings; Jadeja bowled three; Sundar bowled one. (By way of contrast, the unfit Bumrah bowled 10 overs in just one innings in that game).

Clearly, the three all-rounders did not contribute with the ball. Did they strengthen the batting in Sydney? Reddy aggregated four runs in two innings; Jadeja 39 in two knocks; Sundar 26 in two innings, for an aggregate of 69 runs by three batsmen for six dismissals.

In Sydney, for instance, it was evident that the pitch was green, hard, and bouncy. The logical pick would have been one additional quick rather than two spinners (who, as it turned out, bowled a grand total of just four overs in the entire game); such a selection was even more urgent because the management knew, going in, that Bumrah was exhausted after his exertions in the fourth Test at Melbourne.

Absent that extra quick, India in the second innings, when defending a small target of 162, was forced to bowl Siraj and Krishna for 24 of the 27 overs Australia took to hunt down the target; after sharp first spells, both quicks ran out of gas and the home side ran away with the game.

Post-series analysis made much of Bumrah's workload. Statistics tell a story: Bumrah, in nine innings, bowled 151.2 overs for his 39 wickets. Against that, Aussie skipper Pat Cummins bowled 167.2 overs in ten innings for his 32 wickets. The difference? For Australia, Mitchell Starc bowled 153.2 overs, two more than Bumrah; third quick Scott Boland, who only played three Tests, bowled 101.4 overs, and lone spinner Nathan Lyon bowled 122.4 overs. In other words, the four frontline bowlers shared the workload.

Workload is analyzed not merely by the number of overs bowled by an individual, but by the support, or lack of it, at the other. India's three all-rounders bowled a combined total of 144 overs in 10 innings, seven overs less than Bumrah bowled in nine innings on his lonesome.

If such lop-sided selection was a one-time aberration, it could be ignored as just one of those things. But for the duration of this WTC cycle, Team India has struggled with the knowledge that its batting is under par and that the two stars are underperforming. This has resulted in misguided attempts to lengthen -- though not necessarily strengthen -- the batting lineup, and that in turn means India's attack is Bumrah and then daylight. You don't win Test matches that way.

In the next championship cycle, India will play 18 Tests, beginning with five away Tests against England beginning June. All indications are that India will carry its batting and bowling infirmities into the upcoming WTC cycle -- and that cues up the third, and last, point worth making:

Dyspepsia In The Dressing Room: The last time off-field issues made it to front page headlines was back in June 2017, when then captain Virat Kohli and a cabal of stars forced coach Anil Kumble to resign after just a year in office. Kohli cited irreconcilable differences, and said Kumble's style of discipline was "intimidating". In other words, a no-nonsense coach was anathema to India's pampered stars.

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The tenures of Kumble's successors, Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid, were marked not merely by success but by an absence of public squabbles. The tour of Australia signalled the end of that quiet period and brought endemic issues back into the public spotlight.

It began with the resignation of Ravichandran Ashwin, who at the time was ranked the number five bowler in Test cricket behind Bumrah, Cummins, Kagiso Rabada and Josh Hazelwood. For all that he attempted to put a polite face on it, it is an open secret -- as I wrote in the previous edition of this column -- that Ashwin felt unwanted, even slighted, by the coach and the team management, and that there was no clear communication about his future. And it is not just Ashwin -- reliable reports out of Australia indicate that the fringe players in the squad had spoken to reporters, asking if they had any indication from the captain or coach about their prospects.

It all came to a head before the fifth Test in Sydney. First, a series of planted stories suggested that coach Gautam Gambhir had, after India's collapse in the fourth Test in Melbourne, read the riot act in the dressing room. The stories were intended to undercut possible questioning of a tenure marked by successive failures and to show that the coach was fully in control.

On the eve of the fifth Test it was Gambhir, not captain Rohit Sharma, who addressed the pre-match media conference and claimed, in bizarre fashion, that a decision on whether Sharma would play or not depended on the pitch.

Since when is the captain's position dependent on the nature of the wicket?

In a tit-for-tat move, Rohit Sharma spoke to two anchors during the lunch hour on day two of the Sydney Test -- an interaction carefully crafted to drive home the message that he had "stepped down" voluntarily owing to his own bad form and that neither the coach nor the pitch had anything to do with the decision.

Sharma, in that interaction, also took a dig at his teammates when he said that too many batsmen were out of form and not producing runs.

The key, though, lies in Sharma's closing line: "I am not going anywhere," he said, indicating that he is not ready to quit the captaincy, and his position in the Test and one-day side, any time soon.

The India team to tour England for the five-Test series will be picked in early June. Chances are, both Sharma and Kohli will be in the squad. The arguments that will be advanced are predictable: In Sharma's case, "We need his experience", and in Kohli's case, "He is too good a batsman to remain out of form" — an argument that ignores that Kohli's lean patch has extended over four seasons now.

There is no red ball cricket between now and then for either player to return to a measure of form, which means that India will begin the next championship cycle with out-of-form stars, with supporting players uncertain of their place in the side, with an under-par batting lineup, with dissensions in the dressing room, and with a team carrying the same baggage that saw them knocked out of the final of this World Test Championship.

My best guess is that history will repeat. Having played out as tragedy in this championship cycle, it will play out as farce in the next.

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A Cricket Legend’s Abrupt Exit

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 22:29:00 +0000

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R Ashwin’s Sudden Retirement Points To A Bigger Problem In Indian Cricket

"Humiliation was going on," Mr Ravichandran said of his son's abrupt retirement from all forms of international cricket. "How long can he tolerate all this?"

His son, R Ashwin, made light of the statement. In a Tamil riff that colloquially translates into 'Oy, Pops, what's all this then?', Ashwin made the point that his father is not media trained.

The only way to read this is that his father committed the cardinal error of publicly airing private dinner table conversations; that whatever Ashwin's feelings are about how he was treated in the team dressing room, they were never meant to be part of the public discourse.

For the official record, Ashwin's 'truly emotional moment', when on December 18 he announced that 'This will be my last day as an India cricketer in all formats at the international level', stands — and so it should.

And yet, I wonder. I wonder whether the seeds of today's discomforts were sown way back in June 2023, when the 2021-23 World Test Championship (WTC) cycle climaxed at The Oval.

Years In The Making?

Since the inaugural WTC cycle, Ashwin has been India's most consistent performer with the ball. In the 2019-21 cycle, he was the leading wicket-taker worldwide, with 71 wickets in 14 Tests; the Indian bowler closest to him in the rankings was Mohammed Shami, at number 10, with 40 wickets in 11 Tests.

In the 2021-23 championship cycle, Ashwin with 61 wickets in 13 matches ranked third in the list of top wicket-takers behind Nathan Lyon and Kagiso Rabada. Jadeja, with 47 wickets in 13 Tests, ranked 10th — and yet it was Jadeja, not Ashwin, who got to play in that final at the Oval that saw India lose to Australia by 209 runs.

On the day Ashwin announced his retirement, he was ranked fifth in the ICC's list of top bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah was top-ranked; Ravindra Jadeja, who is deemed a better pick than Ashwin, was ranked 10th (a drop of three places, pointing to the all-rounder's diminishing marginal returns as a bowler).

But more to the point, in the ongoing WTC cycle, Ashwin is the second-highest wicket taker with 63 wickets in 14 Tests, shaded only by Bumrah with 66 wickets in 13 Tests. Despite this, team selections during the ongoing Border Gavaskar Trophy have clearly signaled that Ashwin is seen as superfluous to requirements.

As I write this on Christmas Day, the Indian team is prepping for the fourth Test of the ongoing Border Gavaskar Trophy, to be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between December 26-30. The team goes into this Test, and the final one at Sydney in the new year, knowing that it is still a chance to make the WTC final — and for this, Ashwin deserves a considerable part of the credit.

It is not just that he is the second-highest wicket-taker in this cycle. When India took on Bangladesh in a two-Test series in September-October of this year, the team needed to win both to keep its hopes alive. It did — and Ashwin played a leading role, with a century (his sixth and, as it turned out, last in Tests) and 6 for 88 in the second innings of the first Test that won him the Man of the Match award, and five wickets in the second Test to earn Player of the Series (his record-equaling 11th).

India has played three Tests in the ongoing BGT. Ashwin was picked for only one of those. More to the point, buzz is that he was — and he knew this — unlikely to be picked for the Melbourne and Sydney Tests. After this tour, India's next Test engagement is a tour of England — and again, Ashwin was unlikely to make the touring party.

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For a cricketer who has worn his pride in playing for India on his sleeve, the message that being the world's second most successful bowler over this championship cycle is not enough to earn him a permanent place in the XI could conceivably be 'humiliating' — the word his father used in that post-retirement press interaction.

There are two arguments that seek to explain Ashwin's plight. The first is that either Washington Sundar or Ravindra Jadeja are the more logical picks, particularly in away games, to "strengthen the batting".

God knows the batting could do with some strengthening — the well-documented travails of the top order in the ongoing series in Australia apart, recall that in that first Test against Bangladesh, India's top six of Yashasvi Jaiswal (56), Rohit Sharma (6), Shubman Gill (0), Virat Kohli (6), Rishabh Pant (39) and KL Rahul (16) cumulatively scored 123. Against that, it was Ashwin's 113 and his 199-run 7th wicket partnership with Jadeja (86) that saved India's blushes and put the team in a position to win.

The other argument commonly advanced is that Ashwin is increasingly ineffective when travelling, particularly in the SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia) countries. And the short answer to that is, well, which Indian spinner is consistently effective in those conditions?

The longer, more nuanced answer is that the numbers are not conclusive, one way or the other. Since he made his debut in November 2011, India has played 25 Tests in SENA countries where Ashwin was part of the mix, and won 4 (lost 17, drawn 4). Against that, India has played 23 Tests in SENA nations without Ashwin, winning 8 and losing 11. The numbers do not make a definitive case.

From the point of view of individual performance, Ashwin has 383 wickets in 65 home Tests and 150 wickets in 40 away Tests; he averages 21.57 at home and 30.55 away. Clearly, there is a substantive difference between his performance at home and away. Couple that with the fact that Ashwin is 38, and you can't quarrel too strenuously with the team management's view of his utility.

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Bad Management

The question is not so much whether the management call, that Ashwin is nearing his use-by date, is the right one. The question — and this is one that has long plagued Indian cricket — is whether the management handled the sunset years of an authentic Indian great with understanding and empathy.

No player, and certainly not one of Ashwin's proven abilities, deserves to live from match to match never knowing whether he will get to play. When he was included in the squad for the Australian tour, what was the management thinking? Did the team's think tank see a role for Ashwin in the five Tests -- and if so, what?

More importantly, did the management clearly communicate its thoughts with the player? All indications are that it did not — and that it is this uncertainty that prompted Ashwin to abruptly end his career in the middle of a tour he had signed up for.

The stars who powered India's purple patch in Test cricket — Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, even KL Rahul — are nearing their use-by dates, and their replacements are yet to find their feet. How gracefully they leave, and how empathetically the establishment handles this transition will tell us much — about the stars, but equally about Indian cricket itself.

Postscript: Ashwin's abrupt exit from centrestage triggered a flood of heartfelt tributes from greats past and present — but none as moving as this letter written by the player's wife, Prithi. Read.

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Gukesh’s World Title Win Validates Tamil Nadu’s Investment In Chess

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 10:29:00 +0000

As I write this, on the evening of 12 December, Dommaraju Gukesh has been crowned the new FIDE world chess champion – the youngest ever player to hold the title.

At Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore Liren, playing with white in the final game of the 14-game classical tournament, seemed to be on course for a draw that would push the title fight into tiebreakers. Gukesh refused a queen exchange and various other blandishments, kept pushing – and the reigning world champion’s nerve failed, leading to a blunder in the 55th move that gave Gukesh the win.

The win makes Gukesh the second world champion to come out of Tamil Nadu after Vishwanathan Anand and, for me, that — Tamil Nadu's ascendancy as a chess powerhouse — is the larger story.

Deeply Rooted In History

Tamil Nadu's rise in chess is a teachable case study of how cultural heritage, institutional architecture, and strategic policy interventions can coalesce to create a microclimate for excellence in a sporting discipline while turning an ancient game into a modern success story.

Consider the sheer improbability of it all. A southern Indian state, competing against nations with decades of systematic chess development, has positioned itself as a global chess hub. The question isn't just 'how' — it's why here, why now, and what lessons this holds for sports development in India.

The king was so enamoured of his daughter's prowess at the game that he announced that only a man who could beat her at chess would be deemed worthy to win her hand in marriage. Shiva, so the story goes, disguised himself, arrived at the palace, defeated the princess at chess, and reclaimed his wife.

This mythological tale is enshrined in stone at the Sathuranga Vallabhanathar Temple in Thiruvarur, some 300 km from Chennai, where chess is deified and Shiva enshrined in the avatar of a chess grandmaster. The much-visited temple, dating back approximately 1500 years, serves as a cultural timestamp, marking the integration of the game into the region's spiritual and intellectual DNA.

This story, and similar others — as for instance the story of how Ravana's wife Mandodari, seeking to find a less bloody outlet for her husband's thirst for battle, prayed to Ganesha for a solution and the god taught her chaturangam, the game of war, to beguile Ravana with — created a fertile cultural soil, which has been systematically cultivated to yield today's bumper crop of chess excellence. At the time of writing this, Tamil Nadu boasts 29 of the 83 grandmasters from India, with West Bengal and Maharashtra ranking second with 11 grandmasters each.

The Aaron effect

The first sowing of seeds of present success was in 1947 when the Madras Chess Club was founded. The club's evolution into the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association is an early example of the broader transformation of post-Independence Indian sport from amateur enthusiasm to professional rigour.

Where the story gets particularly interesting, and important lessons emerge for other sporting disciplines, is in the Soviet connection. The founding of the Tal Chess Club in 1972 by Manuel Aaron, who in 1961 became the first International Master from India, provided the foundation for the Madras school of chess — a place for the young to play, and access materials such as the Schachmatny Bulletin and Chess in USSR, sourced from the Soviet Union as it then was, translated, and made available for those looking to learn the game.

This was a critical milestone in the development of the game in Tamil Nadu. Back in those pre-internet days, the Tal Club and the secondhand bookstores of the famed, and now sadly defunct, Moore Market were the only access points for advanced chess theory. But in the larger context, the Tal Chess Club offered something more valuable than mere technical knowledge — it was an early glimpse of what systemic excellence could look like.

The chess club he founded became the hub for training and tournament play and was hugely instrumental in nurturing the nascent talent of Vishwanathan Anand, among others.

In his role as secretary of the Tamil Nadu Chess Association, Aaron was pivotal in organizing India's first-ever grandmaster-level tournament and the first woman grandmaster tournament. It was under him that district-level chess associations were established throughout the state, strengthening the infrastructure and creating a development ladder from the grassroots up.

Once the chess pipeline dried up with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Aaron founded Chess Mate magazine as a go-to resource for youngsters wanting to learn theory and to practice with the games of the masters. Aaron's tireless advocacy was also responsible for integrating chess into the school curriculum -- but more on that in a bit.

Vishy As Force Multiplier

Vishwanathan Anand was three years old when the Tal Chess Club was founded; by age six, Anand was a regular (In an Instagram post, the former world champion reminisced about playing against visiting Soviet grandmaster Vladimir Bagirov.)

The Tal Club was the hothouse where Anand's talent was honed, and it became the springboard for his meteoric rise: national sub-junior champion at age 14, Asian Junior Champion at age 15 (the championship was held in Coimbatore in 1984, another Manuel Aaron initiative), youngest Indian international master at age 15, first Indian to win the World Junior Chess Championship (in 1987), first-ever Indian grandmaster at age 18 (at a tournament held in Coimbatore, in an initiative led by Aaron)...

Even before his storied world championship bout against Garry Kasparov, 'Vishy' had become an Indian sports icon, his deeds covered extensively in the media, his posters joining those of India's cricket stars on bedroom walls.

While individual champions often emerge as symbols of sporting success, Anand's impact transcended personal achievement. His real contribution lies in the fact that he became a force multiplier for Indian chess -- someone whose success rippled throughout the system, inspiring not only players but also their parents, educators, administrators and even advertisers and sponsors to invest in chess development.

His presence on the global chess stage directly influenced the rise of Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi, who in 2001 became India's first woman grandmaster, as also the likes of grandmasters Krishnan Sasikaran, RB Ramesh (who went on to coach the Indian team at the Chess Olympiad, B Adhiban, and SP Sethuraman, through to the modern young masters R Praggnanandhaa, Gukesh et al.

Government As Facilitator

In the case of most Indian sports, governments at the state and central levels have been disinterested stakeholders, invested in institutionalized control but not in systematic sporting development. In contrast, the state government has been far more proactive in the development of chess in Tamil Nadu, providing a teachable case study of how targeted state intervention can catalyze sporting excellence.

The groundwork was laid during the tenure of AIADMK leader and chief minister the late J Jayalalithaa, who first created the framework that shifted the state's chess policy from passive encouragement to active institutional support.

The most consequential intervention came in 2011 when her government issued a landmark order integrating chess into the state's school curriculum. The move fundamentally altered the sport's accessibility, particularly among the young and relatively less privileged, and its social standing.

In 2013, when Chennai hosted the World Chess Championship bout between Anand and Magnus Carlsen, Jayalalithaa used the global spotlight to launch, and proselytize, the 'Seven to Seventeen program', wherein each state-run school would provide chess coaching to students in the 7 to 17 age group.

The real innovation though wasn't the introduction of chess into schools, but the multi-layered approach underpinning it -- including the establishment of dedicated positions of chess coach in government schools (which, among other things, provided employment to mid-level players), the earmarking of government funds to provide chess equipment to state-run schools, and the creation of a fund to provide financial incentives for international achievement.

One such island was Chennai's Velammal Vidyalaya, whose robust chess education program has midwifed talents of the order of D Gukesh, R R. Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali Rameshbabu and a dozen other players of international stature. Chennai Public School has emerged in recent years as another hothouse of young talent.

The incumbent government led by DMK chief MK Stalin built on the foundations laid by Jayalalithaa. Tamil Nadu's hosting of the 44th Chess Olympiad in 2022 was more than a sporting event — it hallmarked a strategic pivot in the state's approach to chess development.

The current administration's approach is characterised by increased budgetary allocation for chess development programs, enhanced support for rural chess initiatives, the establishment of chess academies in tier-two cities to break the sport out of the 'excellence archipelago' syndrome, and the integration of technology in chess training programs at the school level.

Most significantly, the incumbent government has introduced a talent identification program with a particular focus on rural and semi-urban areas, marking a crucial shift from the earlier urban-centric model and creating a pathway for talent to emerge from the less privileged centres.

These initiatives mark a clear progression from event-based support to systemic investment -- the early focus on tournaments and competitions, which was the USP of the Tal Chess Club and, since its demise, of the Tamil Nadu Chess Association, is now evolving into a more comprehensive development approach.

Both the Jayalalithaa and Stalin administrations demonstrated an understanding of the unique positioning of chess as a relatively low-cost, high-return sporting investment, and a recognition that the sport's minimal infrastructure requirement makes it an attractive option for broad-based development programs.

The effectiveness of such policy interventions can be measured through various metrics, such as the growing participation in school-level competitions, the rise in the number of international titled players emerging from the state, and the overall increase in registered chess players from approximately 40,000 in 2011 to over 100,000 in 2023 -- this last also a result of an ecosystem of over 60 chess academies statewide, including the Chess Gurukul run by Grandmaster RB Ramesh, where Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali trained.

These numbers tell part of the story, but the real, and potentially long-term, impact lies in how these policies have transformed chess from an elite pursuit into a legitimate career option for young talents across social strata.

Systemic challenges persist. The distribution of resources still shows an urban bias, and the integration of chess into school curricula, however well-intentioned, faces challenges of implementation in resource-constrained educational institutions.

The Tamil Nadu chess story ultimately demonstrates how sustained, systematic state support can transform sporting potential into sustained excellence. There are other examples, from other states where existing cultural affinity merged with governmental policy to create talent hothouses -- Haryana with wrestling, Odisha with hockey, and to a lesser extent Kerala with athletics merit mention.

The key question isn't whether Tamil Nadu can maintain its position in the chess world — it's whether this model of sporting excellence can be replicated in other contexts. The state's chess story suggests that while excellence can emerge from unexpected places, sustaining it requires a complex interplay of cultural affinity, institutional support, and strategic government intervention hand in hand with private participation.

"This is the future for him (Magnus Carlsen). The Indians are coming for him. It's going to be one Indian, after another, after another, after another -- all disciples of Vishy!"

In those words lies the story of the Indian surge in chess talent, powered to a large extent by Tamil Nadu’s systemic, systematic, investment in the game..

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India's Sports Federations Need Urgent Reform

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Gif by sunnyfxx on Giphy

Back in 2019, Indian archers won a gold, two silvers and four bronze medals at the Bangkok Asian Games – but those medals do not figure in India's tally. That year, World Archery, the sport's global governing body, had suspended the Archery Association of India after two rival groups held parallel elections to the AAFI's governing body.

In August 2022 the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) briefly banned the All India Football Federation citing "third-party influence". (The complex history of the AIFF ban is detailed in this piece I had written for The Morning Context back then, and Sportstar has a timeline of events that sheds more light.)

In August 2023 United World Wrestling, the sport's apex body, suspended the Wrestling Federation of India for failure to hold elections within the prescribed deadline. The Ministry for Sports and Youth Affairs had earlier dismissed then WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who faces charges of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, along with the rest of the governing body. An election was finally held in December but was promptly challenged in court, and the status of the WFI is currently sub judice. Even while the case was in court, the WFI attempted to hold selection trials for the World Wrestling Championships (and for the Under-23 Championships). Wrestlers challenged the trials on the grounds of contempt of court; the WFI promptly withdrew the Indian team from the Worlds, citing interference by the sports ministry.

These are just three examples of many. India has 56 National Sports Federations and over time, almost every major federation has been banned, or involved in some litigation or the other. The history of Indian sport is pockmarked with dozens of instances of malfeasance, often leading to suspensions of the federations concerned. And in each case, the proximate cause has been the same: entrenched vested interests, often politicians or strongmen with political backing, rigging elections to maintain their hold over their respective federations.

Back in 2010, activist sports lawyer Rahul Mehra filed an omnibus case in the Delhi High Court against the functioning of the various National Sports Federations (NSFs) which, he argued, were in blatant violation of the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011. In August 2022, a two-judge bench of the High Court handed down its judgment, the crux of which was that the composition of the governing body of the NSFs had to be radically changed, with eight sportspersons of eminence in each NSF. The court gave the sports ministry and the NSFs 90 days to implement the reforms.

The devil, as always, is in the details. Firstly, sport is a state subject -- and this is crucial when you consider that the sports pyramid is made up of district associations, which come under state associations, which are affiliated to the respective national associations. The high court's jurisdiction is confined to Delhi, and applicable to the NSFs -- but neither the sports ministry nor the NSFs can force the state and district associations to comply with a judgment that does not have the force of national law.

Equally, to the point, India has 787 districts and almost every single district has an association for individual sports -- so that is 787 associations multiplied by the number of sports. These fold into the state associations -- so that is a further 28 states plus eight Union Territories multiplied by the number of sports. Where, in each district and then in each state or UT, are you going to find eight "eminent sports personalities" per discipline to comply with the court mandate?

A classic example is the Indian Olympic Association, presided over by no less than PT Usha, who first put Indian women's athletics on the global map.

In just the recent past, Usha unilaterally pushed through the appointment of one Raghu Iyer as CEO, leading to protests from the executive council which rejected the appointment and asked for the hiring process to be restarted.

Usha and five members of the IOC executive committee have traded charges of egregious breaches of the Sports Code. Meanwhile, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has in a report pointed out that the IOA entered into a sponsorship agreement with Reliance Industries Limited wherein "undue favours" were granted to the company.

The report led to a public spat between Usha and IOA treasurer Sahdev Yadav, with the latter accusing Usha of having pushed the faulty agreement through with minimal or no consultation with the executive committee and Usha, in turn, issuing a show cause notice to Yadav. Fed up with the serial controversies the International Olympic Committee, the apex body, withheld the IOA's share of the Olympic Solidarity grants that are meant to fund development programmes for athletes, and has asked the IOA to resolve its internal differences forthwith. The "or else" is unstated, but clear -- the IOA could face a ban by the global body.

So how is the appointment of an "eminent sports personality" to run a sports body working out?

The administrative infrastructure of sports in India is corrupt to the core -- and sportspersons are very much a part of the system. As they climb the ladder from districts to states to the national level, favours are sought and received, there is give and take between sportspersons and administrators, and the Hotel California syndrome kicks in -- you can't, when it suits you, check out and don a crusading hat.

The sports ministry, and various stakeholders, have been aware of the issue; an attempt was made to redress it with a draft code, circa 2017, that looked to shift the focus from the development of sport to good governance of sporting bodies. Political pressures ensured that the draft bill died stillborn.

It is in this context that the government has now come up with the draft National Sports Governance Bill 2024 (PDF here), aimed at moving away from previous development-focused bills and establishing a robust regulatory framework for Indian sports. The draft bill, in its intent, seeks to ensure better management of NSFs, incorporates significant changes in eligibility of candidates for election to an NSF, and attempts to regulate the governance of sports federations and ensure accountability through an internal dispute resolution system -- which seeks to circumvent growing judicial activism in governance issues.

Key features of the draft bill include the establishment of an independent Sports Regulatory Body that will among other things manage the recognition and de-recognition of NSFs, the spelling out of clear criteria for NSFs including constitutional requirements, inclusivity in elections to NSFs via a clause that any Indian citizen over 25 years of age can contest elections to sports bodies (as opposed to the current system, where you have to be a member of the concerned NSF to contest elections), the creation of a Sports Election Panel which will ensure that experienced electoral officials oversee elections to the NSFs, and the formation of an athletes' commissions to ensure that athletes have an officially recognised voice in governance, and the creation of appellate sports tribunals to handle disputes.

If and when this bill, in whatever final form, becomes law, it will solve for several problems -- not least, judicial intervention and the mandate by apex sports bodies that NSFs should be autonomous and free of governmental control and interference.

Hold off on the toast to the dawn of a new era in sports administration, though. The bill is still in a nascent stage; it was opened for public comments with a cutoff date of 25 October. It will have to go through various consultative processes involving multiple drafts and re-drafts, and it then has to pass through the parliamentary process -- assuming it is not torpedoed by vested political interests -- before the bill, in final form, acquires the force of law.

Assuming it jumps through all those hoops the devil, as before, lies in the procedural details. For instance, it is one thing to state that the regulatory body will be "independent" -- but given that the members of the body will be appointed by the government, what price independence?

Or take the clause that permits any Indian citizen to stand for election to an NSF. If you are reading this, if you are interested in sport and vested in ensuring that Indian sport is well governed, you can put your hat in the electoral ring -- but how can you ensure that your chances are as good as those of another candidate with the backing of politicians and/or business interests? (Theoretically, you as Jane or Joe Citizen can contest elections to Parliament too -- but would you, and if you did, do you stand the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell? Same difference here.)

Again, the bill provides for elections to be overseen by experienced electoral officers. But elections to Parliament and to state assembles are overseen by an Election Commission comprised of experienced electoral officials -- but look at the serial controversies surrounding recent polls. Experience, clearly, is not synonymous with integrity.

The draft bill is well-intentioned, but you know what they say about the paving stones of the road to hell. In its current form, it is just a scaffold in the making -- the superstructure remains to be built, the various wrinkles need to be ironed out, and all of this will take a generation or more. Don't hold your breath waiting for the promised dawn.

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Dismissive Attitude, Half-Baked Thinking Hurt Team India

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 10:29:00 +0000

It was just the fifth ball of the first over of the fourth innings of the Test — the last one of the three-Test series versus New Zealand. India was down 2-0 — a scoreline that meant that India had, for the first time in 18 series across 12 years, lost a Test series at home. The final Test was an opportunity to earn points towards the World Test Championship, and also to save face.

Indian captain and opening batter Rohit Sharma charged down the pitch at New Zealand seam bowler Matt Henry and, despite not getting to the pitch of the ball, went ahead with a flailing pull that saw the ball balloon over the head of the mid-on fielder and roll away to the boundary for four.

“With Rohit V2, that is what you get,” gushed the on-air commentator. This rant is on point — superlatives are the stock-in-trade of commentators under the current cricketing dispensation.

Anyway. What we got was Sharma, off the last ball of the third over, again trying to pull to a ball. This one was not short enough for the stroke; the miscue was safely taken and Sharma was gone for 11 off 11 balls, in a chase of 147.

What was he thinking? And what, exactly, is this “Rohit V2” that commentators seem enamoured about?

Twitter tweet

Aggressive Cricket

No one has come right out and said it in so many words, but the informed consensus is that Sharma, now in the twilight of his career, and new coach Gautam Gambhir have decided that team India will play “aggressive cricket”, come what may.

This attitudinal reset – cricket’s equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade — appears to be an extension of the ethos Sharma has recently inculcated in India’s one-day squad. If yes, that is half-smart thinking. Unlike Tests, ODIs are rarely if ever played on bowler-friendly pitches. The boundaries are shorter than they are in Tests, with the result that a shot that easily clears the fence in an ODI is likely to get the batter caught in the deep in Test cricket.

Most importantly, India’s ODI squad has the personnel to operationalise Sharma’s attacking intent. Sharma’s own penchant for the pull is a strength on batting-friendly tracks; Yashaswi Jaiswal is the ideal left-handed foil for his right-handed captain; the instinctively ebullient play of Rishabh Pant is reinforced by the likes of Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel, all capable of scoring at scorching pace.

The Indian Test squad is not similarly geared. Imposing a one-day template on the Test squad as it stands today was a recipe for disaster. And that is compounded by the fact that the team’s two most experienced batsmen — Sharma himself, and Virat Kohli – are increasingly subjected to the law of diminishing returns, as Cricinfo’s Alagappan Muthu points out in this piece.

The best measure of “Rohit V2” lies in his own returns in the just-concluded series. Sharma had scores of 2 off 16 and 52 off 63 in the first Test in Bangalore; 0 off 9 and 8 off 16 in the second Test in Pune; and 18 off 18 and 11 off 11 in the third Test at the Wankhede. That is, in three of six innings he failed to get into double figures, and in five of six innings he didn’t last for even 20 balls.

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Kohli’s batting returns have also been steadily diminishing in recent months. In this calendar year, he has played six Tests for scores of 46 and 12 against South Africa in Cape Town; 6 and 17 against Bangladesh in Chennai; 47 and 29 not out against Bangladesh in Kanpur; 0 and 70 against New Zealand in Bangalore; 1 and 17 against the Kiwis in Pune; and 4 and 1 in Mumbai.

Class may be permanent and form temporary, as the oft-quoted cliché goes — but the fact is that form is what puts runs on the board on the day, and these numbers tell the story of a batter woefully out of form. And when your two most influential batsmen struggle, it tells on the rest of the team.

In post-match remarks, Rohit said he was trying to evolve as a batter and see what else he can do. “It is just that I need to spend more time to defend balls, which I haven’t done in this series.”

He could have been speaking for the whole team, not a single member of which consistently showed the application necessary to build an innings, to bat in partnerships — both pre-requisites of Test cricket.

India’s undefeated streak in home Tests was built on the back of a template: bat big in the first innings, using up both time and overs to build a sizeable score, and put the opposition under pressure against India’s spinners.

Courtesy: BCCI on X

Dig Deep, Bat Big

At the start of this year, India played a five-Test series against England, which it won 4-1. The team’s first innings scores in that series read: 420 in 121 overs in Hyderabad; 396 in 112 overs in Vishakhapatnam; 445 in 130 overs in Rajkot; 307 in 104.5 overs in Ranchi and 376 in 91.2 overs in Chennai.

Against that, in the three Tests against New Zealand, India batted for 31.2 overs in Bangalore; 45.3 overs in Pune; and 59.4 overs in Mumbai for first innings totals of 46, 156, and 263 respectively.

This was against an opposition that, immediately prior, had played a two-Test series in Sri Lanka and got rolled 0-2. In that series, Sri Lanka’s first innings scores were 602 for 5 declared in 163.4 overs in the first Test and 305 off 91.5 overs in the second Test, both at Galle.

With those platforms under them, Lankan off-spinner Nishan Peiris and left-arm orthodox bowler Prabath Jayasuriya bowled the home side to an innings win in the first Test and off-spinner Ramesh Mendis joined in, in the second Test, to bowl Lanka to a 63 run win.

In the subcontinent, turning tracks can be the underpinning of a winning strategy, but as they say about investing in the stock market, conditions apply. The most important is that the host team, playing in home conditions, has to dig deep, bat big, and give their bowlers the wherewithal to attack. Failing to do that across three Tests and six innings is the reason India was whitewashed in a home series – the first time in living memory.

Courtesy: Blackcaps on X

Home Advantage No More?

So what were they thinking?

That question kept recurring at various points during the recent series. In the first Test in Bangalore, India got rolled for a humiliating 46 all out after opting to bat first in overcast conditions suited for seam and swing bowling.

The decision to bat first was an egregious error — Sharma admitted as much after the game. But it is fair to say that India got the worst of the conditions throughout the game, and his thinking could have been that the weather conditions would be the same for both sides.

As it turned out, by the time the Kiwis batted, the weather had begun to ease off and batting conditions got relatively better. (When India batted in its second innings in far better conditions and with far more application, the team put up 462 all out in 99.3 overs – not enough to compensate for the first innings collapse, but indicative of what the team could do when it applied itself.)

That first Test defeat at the hands of a team the punditry had dismissed as being of no account apparently came as a shock. And in a knee-jerk reaction, team India did what it always does — asked for a pitch for the second Test that would turn from ball one.

Fair enough, it’s called home advantage — but what the think tank did not take into account is that these days, the Indian batters are as vulnerable to the turning ball as overseas teams are.

The think tank also did not account for another factor: the Indian Premier League.

Back in the day, visiting teams from England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — countries where the home conditions favour pace, bounce and swing — found themselves adrift when confronted by turning tracks. But with the advent of the IPL, players from these countries have acclimated to Indian conditions. As part of various franchises, they share dressing rooms with India’s spinners, they practice against them, they share tips and techniques. They have learned to bowl spin better and to play spin better; they are also more familiar with Indian batters and their weaknesses.

Of the Kiwi side that rolled India 3-0 in the just-concluded series Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Daryl Mitchell, Matt Henry and Glenn Phillips are part of various IPL franchises. Ravindra, Santner and Mitchell all play for Chennai Super Kings, where they share a dressing room with India’s frontline all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja and also benefit from training under the experienced eye of former India captain and CSK icon MS Dhoni.

Courtesy: Blackcaps on X

Analysis Is Essential

So — what was India thinking, when it opted for a dust bowl in Pune? And more to the point, what was the team thinking when, after losing the Pune Test by 113 runs, they asked for and got a viciously turning track at the Wankhede in Mumbai?

"Don't blame the batters,” former India coach Anil Kumble said in the aftermath of the Mumbai defeat. “You give a rank turner and expect them to chase 150 in the 4th innings — captain and coach should be asked why they gave rank turner when you know your batters are out of form."

The half-baked thinking ended up blunting some of team India’s key strengths. Take, for example, the second Test in Pune. That dustbowl took India’s talismanic new ball bowler Jasprit Bumrah out of the game. Across both innings, the team’s go-to wicket-taker bowled just 14 overs for 57 runs, without a single wicket to show for his efforts. Worse, in the second innings in Pune, Bumrah was only called on to bowl after Ravichandran Ashwin, Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja all had a go.

Similarly in the third Test at the Wankhede, India went in with two seam bowlers in Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep. Siraj bowled 6 ineffective overs in the first innings and did not bowl at all in the second; Deep bowled 10 overs across two innings, taking one wicket in each. If you asked for a track that you knew wouldn’t aid seamers, why pick two of them and thus waste at least one slot in the playing XI?

“But we have to back the team because we have a big tour ahead,” former India star turned commentator Sunil Gavaskar said after the Mumbai debacle. “We can’t start criticising the team. Yes, it’s very disappointing. We all know how good these players have been over so many years. So what I would say to them [fans] is ‘just forget it like it was a bad dream’.’

No. Don’t. In business school, there is an axiom repeated so often it has attained cliché status: To solve a problem, you first have to understand the problem. Saying ‘It happens, move on’ is okay if you are a fan. Not so much, if you are a former player of stature and an expert voice in matters of cricket.

External criticism is useful, and not just in cricket. Often, when our plans fail, when things go wrong in our lives, the instinctive reaction is to go into denial, to put it down to fate, to say “it happens”. That attitude is merely asking for an encore. Replace the word ‘criticism’ with ‘analysis’, and you are nearer the mark. Analysis is essential; it is how you understand what went wrong and why – and that understanding is key to course correction. To dismiss any and all analysis as stomping on a team when it is down is, ultimately, self-defeating.

Gavaskar is right enough on one point — the team has a big tour coming up. If India is to make the World Test Championship final on its own steam, it has to defeat Australia 4-0 Down Under.

The touring squad has been picked and it is, frankly, underwhelming, with a nucleus that is more or less unchanged. To make matters worse, word is that captain Rohit Sharma will not play in the first Test for personal reasons, and that he might miss the second Test as well — which begs the question, why then is he named captain of the squad for the series?

In his absence and with vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah leading the side, the batting lineup for the first Test is likely to read: Yashaswi Jaiswal, Shubhman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul (who was dropped for form during the recent home series), Rishabh Pant and Sarfaraz Khan. (Alternatively, the team could go with Jaiswal and Abhimanyu Easwaran opening and Gill at three to accommodate Kohli in his usual position slot at number four).

Whichever way the side chooses to go, the lineup doesn’t inspire confidence — and then there is the fact that the team will get little or no match practice before the first Test at the WACA in Perth.

I’ll watch, because I love Test cricket and because India-Australia encounters, in recent years, have begun building a gripping narrative of its own. But to be honest, I’ll watch with a fair degree of trepidation, as opposed to the anticipation I felt in the run-up to the last two Indian tours Down Under.

More on that series once it gets underway; I’ll see you back here in a fortnight’s time with another update from the world of sport.

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I, ‘Witness’: Getting Sakshi Malik To Speak Her Truth

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:29:00 +0000

Last weekend, Juggernaut Books launched Witness, the autobiography of ace Indian wrestler Sakshi Malik, the first Indian woman to medal in wrestling at the Olympics and whose more recent stint in the headlines owes to her lead role in the protests against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, former president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and now facing trial in a case of serial sexual abuse.

It is one of the best autobiographies by an Indian sportsperson I’ve read — honest, searing in parts and hugely insightful into the complexities of her sport. I read a pre-publication copy and reviewed it here.

The book was co-written — with a deft, delicate touch — by veteran sports journalist Jonathan Selvaraj of The Hindu. Curious to know how the book had come about, and for Jon’s insights into Sakshi as both champion and insurgent, I got on a Zoom call with the writer.

Edited excerpts from our chat:

To begin at the beginning, Jon, why did you and Sakshi decide to write the book?

That is the first question I asked her: Why do you want to write this book? I mean, it is one thing to do a book because it is the done thing – but why do you particularly want to write a book?

She told me she was interested in having her story told. She felt like, a lot of the time when her story is told by others, like the media, people like me, those stories capture a particular moment in time and we say, okay, this is what happened there. And it's usually our perspective of what happened. She wanted to tell her side of the story and tell it fully. Some people want to do it because they think they will get a movie out of it. I didn’t get the sense that was the deal for her — she just wanted to tell her story the way she saw it. At one point while discussing the book, she said she wanted to do it for her kids — she wanted them to know about her life the way she lived it, to know about the things that were important to her, without the filter of the media.

That actually cues my next question: One of the standout features of the book is the wealth of detail, and to gather all that must have taken time, effort; it must have involved conversations where you went back over the same ground multiple times. What was the process like?

We began working together in September 2023. Initially, I wanted to know how much time she could give — ideally, I would have liked to speak to her continuously. I knew it would be a physical burden on them (Malik and her husband Satyawart) because they're not used to speaking at length, they're not talkative people. So I knew I couldn't speak to her in one continuous stretch; I told her, fine, we'll speak once a week. And I was aware that there could be weeks when there will be other things on her mind — there is the case she is fighting, for one thing. I knew she wasn’t going to be able to give me all her time. So we agreed that we would speak once a week, provided she had the time.

Before I began, I asked Rohit Brijnath (sportswriter and co-author of Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra’s autobiography), how do you write a book? Because I had no idea how to do this. He told me that you have to spend time — a lot of time. I remember the first day, I think I spent three or four hours with her. Then there were other days when she would get tired after an hour and a half or so and when I sensed that, I’d stop, and pick up again in the next meeting.

You said she is not a talkative person, that she is not used to speaking. Co-writing an autobiography involves trust — the subject has to implicitly trust the writer. Was that hard for her to do?

That is what surprised me, actually. I thought she would find it hard to open up, to be totally frank and open — but as it turned out, she opened up even about things, parts of her private life, I didn’t know to ask about. The thing with her is, once she decides she wants to let you in, she lets you in all the way. There's almost nothing that she holds back — I mean, there was stuff which I had to hold back when writing because of legal and other issues, but outside of that she was all in.

These conversations — did you first prep a timeline of her life and career and walk her through each phase, or were the conversations organic, evolving and going wherever she wanted it to?

We were talking every week — except for those weeks when she had other things on her mind. She has a home in Delhi; I went there for our chats because it is not too far from where I live, and I thought that she would be more comfortable in her own home, her environment. When you are telling people things about your life, you want to feel secure, comfortable, so I figured this was best.

We didn’t work with a timeline — I didn’t start by asking her about her childhood. In fact, I started from the other end, the most recent events, the battle against Brij Bhushan (Sharan Singh, ex-president of the Wrestling Federation of India and accused serial abuser). This was because it was most recent for her, and I thought that would be the easiest for her to recall in detail. Also, because it was recent, she remembered everything with great clarity, and those conversations helped ease her into talking at length.

What were the parts she found hard to talk about?

She found it difficult when we got to the part about her career, her bouts — I think most athletes find that the hard part. I was asking her questions like, what was it like that day? What were you wearing? What did you smell that day? Those kinds of questions, meant to elicit granular details, threw her a bit. After a few such conversations she asked me, when are you going to get to the point of this book? I said, no, that is not how it works, I'm trying to get all of it and then we’ll figure out what we need to put in, what the point is.

It’s surprising that Sakshi, a champion wrestler, found wrestling the hardest thing to talk about…

I think that is down to both of us. See, take sports like cricket, or badminton, most of us have played it at some point, and we have a shorthand understanding of it. So if someone says “outswing”, we know what "outswing” is even if we have only played gully cricket. We have a cultural shortcut for it. Wrestling though, it is a weird sport, you can’t half-ass your way into wrestling. No one does gully wrestling — so we don’t even know the basics of the sport.

See in cricket, some things are simple to understand — like your stance, which is the most basic thing in cricket. Equally in wrestling, the stance is most important — but I had no idea of that, no sense of the intricacies of stance, of balance and what it means for a wrestler. For her, because it was muscle memory built from her earliest days, it was instinctive — and she found it difficult to put the mechanics of it into words. Luckily, Satya (Malik’s husband, Satyawart) was usually around — he is very well-read and articulate, he has the vocabulary for these things. So there were times when she just gave up trying to explain some nuance, and she would call Satya and tell him something in Haryanvi. He would be reading something or the other – I remember he was reading the autobiography of Satya Pal Malik, the former Jammu and Kashmir governor – and he would put his book down and explain things to me in Hindi. I think that helped her a lot, having him there, because while she knew what she wanted to say, she didn’t have the vocabulary to say it, to explain the intricacies of the sport.

It worked — my favourite parts of the book were the bits when she goes into technical detail about the intricacies of her sport.

Also the hardest parts to elicit. When she talks about wrestling, it's something that's very obvious for her. It's like asking a fish what water is like. Ask any sportsperson about their process, and they give you shorthand answers because they just don’t know how to explain the things they do from muscle memory. But for us, it's super interesting because these are the things that we don't know about.

For instance, in chapter ten she goes into great detail about weight-cutting. As journalists, we know broadly what it is and why wrestlers have to do it. But the kind of detail she gave me, like the bit about standing upside down in the sauna because she thought it would help – those bits where she talked of the intricate details of wrestling, they helped me better understand a sport I have been covering for years. But to get that, I had to keep probing, I had to keep asking her to explain more, and in more detail.

The thing is we come from different worlds. It is like if she asked me to describe my writing process, I wouldn’t know how to answer cogently. It’s the same thing for them when they talk about their sport. But after a bit, she sort of started getting it, she understood what I was going for. And then she started to enjoy talking about it, things like certain wrestling moves, she was happy to dig deep, go into details.

I think that is when the book became real, for me. See, she would say something like, oh that match, I won 10-0 — but for us, what does 10-0 even mean in wrestling? It’s not like football, where we all know what a goal is, and can read a scoreboard — with wrestling, most of us cheer when one of our athletes wins a bout, but we have no idea how the points were scored. We can discuss a cricket pitch, even those of us who have only played street cricket, in great detail, but we don’t even know the size of the mat, or how squishy it is to walk on, nothing. Once she got into it, once she understood my need for granular detail and began digging deep into her memory and learned to explain things to a layperson, that is when the process came alive for me.

Besides the detail, the other thing that struck me — startled me really — is her absolute openness, her honesty about everything she speaks of. Did you have to work for it?

Yes, she was honest, incredibly so. For instance, remember where she talks of her fear of confrontation? As a journalist, I know most sportspersons have that fear, but very few are willing to admit it, they think it might affect how the public sees them. She was remarkably open about it though. In fact, to your question, I didn’t ask her that — she brought that up herself, on the very first day we talked. I remember laughing when I heard that — you are in the wrong sport, I remember telling her. But after I left her home that day, I knew I had something good — that fear of confrontation that she spoke about, I had to connect it up with her life, which was entirely about confrontation, first in the wrestling ring, then in her fight against sexual abuse.

And it is not just that — the stuff about stealing money when she was a kid, again, it is not like I asked her, did you steal? I asked her to speak about her childhood, and she brought it up herself, that bit about stealing from her classmates. She was very candid about her insecurities — you know, coming from a small village, moving to Rohtak, finding herself in an English medium school, she mentioned that three or four times, the English medium thing, it clearly mattered to her, that feeling of being out of place, of not belonging.

It's like I said earlier – the thing about Sakshi is, she takes time to decide whether she wants to let you in, but once she decides, she goes all the way, there is no holding anything back, no matter how bad it may sound. Her insecurities, the bit about her family and money, she was totally open about every single thing.

Other than the openness and the honesty, a notable aspect of the book is the voice. I’ve followed your sports coverage for years, I know your writing voice. But though this book is in English, not Sakshi’s natural language, it is her voice I heard as I was reading, not yours. Was that difficult to pull off, subsuming your own writer’s voice and letting hers come through?

To be honest, I only realised that had happened just now, when you brought it up. I think it's because I was talking to her for as long as I did, I somehow internalised her voice, her speaking rhythms, and that came through in the writing.

Now that I think about it, the reason her voice comes through is not because of the bits about wrestling, but the things she recalls about herself as a person. For instance, her early fascination with planes, and how when she was returning from her first international tour, the airline upgraded her to business class, and she was so thrilled, she decided to stay awake and enjoy it all, but she ended up sleeping through all of it — one of her greatest regrets, she told me.

I’ve noticed this about other athletes as well — these small dreams, little disappointments, are where the human side of the star shines through. Like when Neeraj Chopra won his first Olympics, and when we talked, it was not so much about how that winning moment felt, but how happy he was that he could take his parents on a plane. You asked about voice — I think that comes once a sportsperson reveals the human being beneath the athlete, and if you can capture that, the person comes through, and so does the voice.

When the book hits the shelves, much of the curiosity among the reading public will be about her encounters with sexual abuse, her fight against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh — speaking of which, the impression I got was that she was, at least at first, a reluctant protestor even though she had some personal experience with sexual harassment.

Yes. To understand that, think about the sex abuse scandal in the US gymnastics team (the case of Larry Nassar) — and again, she was the one who brought it up. That case involved dozens of girls, including some very famous names. Sakshi told me, look, those girls who spoke out, they are well educated, some of them from well-off families, and they live in a country where you are encouraged to speak out. And yet the story did not come out for years. She also pointed out that in that case, it was just a doctor, not someone powerful or influential in the way an Indian politician can be — and yet, look how long it took for Nassar’s crimes to be outed.

India, she pointed out, is the complete opposite. Here, it is impossible, almost, for young girls from little villages to speak out. The abusers are invariably powerful, influential people and the system sides with them. The girls want to wrestle badly, so there is always the fear that if they speak out, that is the end of their career. They also fear that their parents will say ‘your safety and your good name is more important than any sport’, and keep them at home and get them married off.

Sakshi knows all this, she lived that life — so initially she was reluctant to come out openly. But like I said, it takes her time to make a decision but once it is made, she is all in, all the way — and with the protests also, it was no different.

You’ve spent enormous amounts of time with her — how would you sum her up as a person?

She's an absolute sweetheart – there is this innocence about her which seems really surprising considering all that she has achieved, all she has gone through.

She was so totally open and giving. I’ve covered wrestling, spoken to other wrestlers — it is very difficult to get anything out of them; most times, you have to speak to their parents, coaches. In her case, it wasn't that, she was doing all of it on her own — even going places I didn’t know about, like the problem she had with her family when she decided to marry Satyawart, she talked about it, just like that, with no prompting. So yeah, my overriding impression was of someone who wore her accomplishments lightly, someone who was comfortable in her own skin, who was fine with being who she was, with all her insecurities and her failings, all of that.

I remember that press conference where she quit the sport, when Brij Bhushan’s cronies were elected to the WFI. I was watching, and even through the medium of television, I could sense how much she was hurting when she placed her shoes on the table and announced that she was done with the sport. What is your sense – is she, finally, at peace with herself, with her decision?

She wants to wrestle. Whenever we talked, it was very obvious to me that the wrestling mat is her true home, the place where she is most herself, where she feels the most at ease about who she is. And I think she salvages some of that, assuages some of the hurt, by coaching – she is a coach now, in her father-in-law’s academy.

Actually, that was a chapter I wanted to write, but she felt that it was extending the book too long and it wasn’t really taking the story anywhere. I obviously disagreed with her about that, but it is her book, so yeah, I left that out though I did want that chapter on life after wrestling.

But to return to your question, see, her skills are still right up there. She would have been the favourite to qualify for her weight category for the Paris Olympics — and my sense is she would have medalled. So from a wrestling point of view, she was nowhere near done.

But at the same time, even though she knows that she could have been in Paris, I got the feeling that she is okay with how things have turned out, she is okay with the decision she took to quit when she did. That does not mean, though, that she is done with wrestling – like, even last year when we were speaking, she was going early mornings to the Karnail Singh Stadium where she would spar, sometimes with Satyawart, or with the kids she is coaching. And it is then, when she is kitted out and she steps onto the mat, that she feels most at home.

Is she at peace? The sense I got of her, through all those conversations, is that she knew the consequences of her decision — and she is at peace with those consequences, and with herself.

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ICYMI: India Team’s Quantum Shift In Attitude

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 22:29:00 +0000

Programming note: Dear reader, we’re happy to bring the Playbook back to your inbox after a short hiatus. Prem Panicker, a journalist and editor with 33 years of experience, will steer this new avatar. He will write the Playbook fortnightly.

“Are you watching the India-Bangladesh game?”

No.

“Do yourself a favour — watch. This is one for the gods.”

Seriously? Across the first three days of a Test ruined by a combination of rain and abysmal ground maintenance, 35 overs had been bowled out of a possible 270, and a mere three wickets had fallen in the first innings. Given a choice, I’d rather watch paint dry on a picket fence.

I tuned in, though, because the friend who called to give me the heads-up is not given to hyperbole. And though I was traveling at the time, in the midst of much, I found I could not look away — at one point I was driving, in Chennai’s peak-hour traffic, with the live feed on my phone attached to the dashboard.

Anyone who follows cricket knows what happened on day four of the Kanpur Test, the second of a two-Test series against the visiting Bangladesh team. After Bangladesh had used up 39 of a possible 100 overs, the Indian batsmen scored 285 for 9 declared in just 34.4 overs at a run rate of 8.22 — phenomenal if it was a one-day international, scarcely credible when you consider that it was a Test.

In the process, the team broke records for the fastest 50, the fastest 100, the fastest 150, the fastest 200 and the fastest 250 ever recorded in Test history. It felt like watching a T-20 highlights reel; how I managed to steer the car home without causing a monumental pileup on Chennai’s arterial road is a mystery.

And yet it wasn’t the frenetic batting that captured my imagination, nor the shattered records that will remain in my memory — what lingers in the mind is the attitude.

In theory, there was no way to make a game of this — too many overs had been lost, and too few remained to accommodate the four innings that make up a Test match. In such games, you can go two ways — treat what remains of play as an extended net session, or risk it all in a bid to make something happen. Nine times out of ten, teams will go with the first option; India chose the second.

“Risk” is the operative word. The kind of breakneck batting India showcased could have just as easily ended in disaster — the difference between hitting a ball clean off the middle of the bat and edging into the close cordon is about an inch and a half. The Indian team, in this game, embraced that risk— and that, rather than the eventual outcome, is what will remain etched in the collective memory.

The irony is that this quantum shift in attitude is being powered by a set of players in their sunset years. While it was Yashaswi Jaiswal, the left-handed opener, who outscored his more storied teammates in both innings, it was Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja who institutionalised this very un-Indian attitude, and made it pay off. The odds are high that by this time next year, most if not all of those five players will not be part of the Indian Test set-up. These are players who can see their use-by date writ large on their cricket kits — and they have consciously chosen, as their final act, to radically change how the team thinks, and plays.

Lasting legacies are made of these.

I BECAME a sportswriter by accident. It was 1996. Rediff.com was in its infancy. An ODI World Cup loomed, and we couldn’t get any established cricket writers to join what was then an experimental internet operation. I happened to be among the first few employees, and I got the job of covering Indian cricket by default.

For five years I covered, live, every single game the team played. I wrote match reports, analysis, even investigative pieces about the shenanigans of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

And then I fell out of love with the game. As a character in Ernest Hemingway’s first novel The Sun Also Rises said about how he went bankrupt, it happened first gradually, then suddenly.

It started with the realisation that the Board of Control for Cricket in India, having discovered a promising cash cow, was determined to milk it for all it was worth by organising cricket matches and tours that were devoid of context, of narrative, of backstory. Test cricket was given short shrift; one day hit-abouts were slotted into every available space in the calendar. Every day, every game, felt like every other day, every other game — and it became progressively more difficult to summon up the enthusiasm and the focus to write.

Then came the implosion. In 2000, match-fixing — or more accurately, spot fixing — hit the headlines with seismic impact. I covered the developments, as did pretty much every single sportswriter — and then, once the dust settled somewhat, I gave up writing about cricket altogether.

As a writer, you watch closely the ebbs and flows of the game; you analyse what you observe through the lens of cricketing logic, and you try to write an honest report of the proceedings, both the good and the bad. Thus, if for instance a captain makes a sudden bowling change that ends up relieving the pressure on the batting side, you call it for what it is — an error of judgment that proved costly.

But once spot-fixing became an integral part of the cricket lexicon, that changed. Now, when you saw a captain make such a change, you couldn’t be sure whether it was an error of judgment in the heat of the moment, or a deliberate act fueled by money and favors that had changed hands behind the scenes. Suddenly, I as a writer was no longer sure of what I was seeing – so what was the point of all that close observation, those thousands of words of suddenly pointed prose?

It wasn’t all bad, though. Once I stopped writing, I realised I could get back to following cricket as a fan — watching those games that seemed to have meaning, and context, and a larger narrative, and ignoring the pointless fixtures shoveled into the calendar for the sake of TV revenues. And, two, I found myself with time on my hands to follow other sports I love, and for which I had no time to spare during my tenure as a cricket reporter.

Bonus: I got to reset my attitude to sports writing. The scoreboard became incidental — sport became, for me, about the narrative, about the internal life of the sportsperson, the unseen pulls and pressures playing on her psyche. I can’t quite explain it, but then I don’t have to: Gary Smith, one of the greatest sportswriters of all time, said what I am trying to find words for with trademark eloquence when, in the preface to a collection of his best writing, he wrote:

“Sport comes to us in boxes — the perimeters of our TV screens or the boundary lines of fields and courts. As much as I enjoy what goes on inside those boxes, I’ve always had the urge to bust out of them. I’ve always had the feeling that the most compelling and significant story was the one occurring beyond the game — before it, after it, above it or under it, deep in the furnace of the psyche.”

That is the mission statement for this newsletter: to look past the scoreboard, and to look at what happens before the game and after it, above it or under it, and to try and understand what it all means.

I’ll be doing two long newsletter editions each month along those lines. And at periodic intervals in-between, I’ll do the odd short piece pegged to some contemporary, newsworthy event from the wider world of sport and sports administration.

Postscript: Writing is two things in one. On the one hand, it is a solitary exercise. Right now, there is me in front of an open Word document, with blues — specifically, a September 2023 Madison Square Garden concert by the Tedeschi-Trucks Band — playing in the background.

But writing is also an ongoing dialogue between writer and reader — and that is why we have a feedback email (feedback@thecore.in) and a reply feature to this email : for you to contribute thoughts, criticism, and even ideas about things you think are worth writing about.

I look forward to this dialogue.

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India Team’s Quantum Shift In Attitude

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 10:29:00 +0000

Programming note: Dear reader, we’re happy to bring the Playbook back to your inbox after a short hiatus. Prem Panicker, a journalist and editor with 33 years of experience, will steer this new avatar. He will write the Playbook fortnightly.

“Are you watching the India-Bangladesh game?”

No.

“Do yourself a favour — watch. This is one for the gods.”

And yet it wasn’t the frenetic batting that captured my imagination, nor the shattered records that will remain in my memory — what lingers in the mind is the attitude.

Lasting legacies are made of these.

For five years I covered, live, every single game the team played. I wrote match reports, analysis, even investigative pieces about the shenanigans of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

And then I fell out of love with the game. As a character in Ernest Hemingway’s first novel The Sun Also Rises said about how he went bankrupt, it happened first gradually, then suddenly.

I look forward to this dialogue.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe

Inside the surge in India's state cricket leagues

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 12:31:00 +0000

Good evening,

Last Saturday, the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 final in Barbados produced what can only be described as a “classic.” The last five overs came down to hunger, nerves, and stone-cold execution, and India’s pacemen — Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, and Hardik Pandya scripted a clutch performance for the ages. Not to forget Surya Kumar Yadav’s trophy-grabbing catch of David Miller, or Virat Kohli’s masterful 76 (RIP the strike rate debate!), which helped India’s push towards a respectable total.

As an aside, if you were at the Wankhede to witness the open bus parade last evening, I envy you for being there and hope you made it home safely. Do let me know your experience!

This also brings us to today’s story, where I take a closer look at the rapid proliferation of state T20 cricket leagues.

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A day before India’s spectacular Bumrah-led heist at the Kensington Oval, the iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata hosted two finals of its own, one of which was rain-hit. The inaugural edition of the Bengal Pro T20 league, a state franchise-based T20 tournament, was at its conclusion. While the men’s edition had joint winners in Sobisco Smashers Malda and Murshidabad Kings, the women’s edition saw the Kolkata Tigers prevail over the Murshidabad Kueens by 5 runs in a tense final.

While the monsoon had its say in Kolkata, two state T20 leagues saw their finals the weekend prior. The Madhya Pradesh League (MPL), also one of the two MPLs we’ll encounter in this story, concluded its inaugural nine-day tournament in the newly-constructed Shrimant Madhavrao Scindia Stadium, 15 km off Gwalior. Gahunje (a village on the Mumbai-Pune expressway), the home of the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium, hosted the Maharashtra Premier League final, which saw an estimated crowd of 28000 to 30000, according to Ajinkya Joshi, its chief operating officer.

If that's not enough, as we publish this story, the third edition of the Andhra Premier League is in its initial stages, and the eighth edition of the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) is set to kick off this evening. The Delhi and Districts Cricket Association, the Kerala Cricket Association, and the Baroda Cricket Association are slated to launch their respective leagues in September. They won't be the last, especially given India’s vast, post-Lodha Committee expanse of domestic teams–34 in number.

A big draw is the sheer dominance of cricket in terms of sports industry spending, contributing to a whopping 87% of the share in 2023, per a recent GroupM-ESP report. In terms of sponsorships alone, cricket grew by 32% year on year, accounting for over $700 million (Rs 5817 crore). So even if potential sponsors miss out on the big ticket events such as the Indian Premier League or international cricket hosted by the BCCI due to cost, they have an opportunity to reach similar, more local viewers via these state leagues.

The pull

India’s first state T20 tournaments were hosted a year after the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). While Maharashtra and Karnataka pioneered the concept in the 2009/10 season, it was the TNPL which launched in 2016, that gave states the much-needed catalyst to build these IPL-style state-level leagues. That too happened because Star Sports, the BCCI’s official broadcaster at the time, needed inventory and content for a freshly launched Tamil channel.

“The TNPL was born out of the need for Tamil content on Star. People were moving away from English, and in the South, the Hindi feed had little or no value. And Tamil, they realised, was a key ratings-puller in the IPL,” says Prasanna Kannan, CEO of the TNPL. “Even today, if you see the IPL, Tamil is the second highest language in rating and viewership, below Hindi and above English,” he adds. Unsurprisingly, Star bagged the television rights for the inaugural edition of the tournament and has been broadcasting every season since.

While inventory is an important factor for a broadcaster, for state associations, it is growing the cricket ecosystem that is a major reason. Prasoon Kanmadikar, a governing council member of the recently concluded Madhya Pradesh League says, “We wanted to tick three key boxes: responses of franchises, quality of cricket, and crowds and viewership, and it went well.” The league also managed to attract investment from prominent local businesses such as Moira Sariya, Jagran Lake City University, and Swara Baby Products. Bigger corporations such as JK Cement and APL Apollo Pipes also participated. “The good part (about these franchises) was that they weren’t mere investors, but were also fully involved. One of our franchise owners was a cricketer himself,” adds Kanmadikar.

These leagues also promise additional opportunities (and income) for players to impress potential recruiters—be it their state T20 or team or IPL franchises, especially with the growing scouting infrastructure that these teams have invested in. “At a players level, it is about giving opportunities to our state players who could perhaps tomorrow go and play for IPL teams,” says Kannan of TNPL. Depending on the systems these leagues use (drafts or auctions), players stand to earn a significantly higher sum than they would in typical state-level tournaments. The Kerala Cricket Association, for instance, has pegged a base price of Rs 1 lakh for its upcoming league. Madhya Pradesh opted for a draft system where its marquee player (often an Indian international or IPL player) received Rs 1 lakh for the tournament.

While that is a no-brainer, the real opportunity, to quote him, lies elsewhere: taking the game to other venues beyond Chennai (or traditional cricket centres). “These places (such as Dindigul, Tirunelveli, Salem) have been starved of live events, let alone sports except for Coimbatore. It also allows us to expand our infrastructure,” he adds. The TNPL uses what is commonly referred to as a “caravan model”, where different venues host matches, before the league reaches Chennai for the last leg, including the final.

Ditto for Gwalior. The city’s government-built Captain Roop Singh Stadium hosted its last international match in 2010 when Sachin Tendulkar scored an unbeaten 200. The Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association (MPCA), led by current Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in 2011, announced a new 30,000-seater stadium on the city’s outskirts. The MPL was held entirely in the newly inaugurated venue. His son, Mahanaaryaman Scindia, also an MPCA member, spearheaded the tournament as the chairman of the governing council.

The cricket-starved Gwalior turned up in the thousands. To quote Kanmadikar, the first day saw crowds of around 14,000, while the rest of the tournament had an average of 11,000-12,000 per game. “During the final, the stadium was full and after we closed the gates, over 10,000 people were waiting outside,” he adds.

That also meant braving the heat, with peak temperatures in Central India soaring to highs of 47 degrees. “What amazed us was that people came in busloads from nearby districts such as Shivpuri. They’d never witnessed this kind of entertainment before. Fireworks, DMX shows in the closing ceremony. It’s what people expect after what they see in the IPL.”

The economics

In a typical IPL-style cricket league, the interested parties pay a franchise fee—either fixed or by auction, which directly accounts for revenue for the state association.

For instance, when the TNPL auctioned its franchises, it set a base price of Rs 1.25 crore for 10 years, before selling the rights to eight teams for Rs 33.51 crore. Since 2021, the league stopped collecting franchise fees, and while also cancelling the disbursement of revenue earned via the central pool. Now, it is looking to gate receipts and ticketing for revenue generation, also a sign of a “matured product.” The Madhya Pradesh League, however, opted for a fixed franchise fee of Rs 1.5 crore. And unlike other leagues, where franchises typically bear the player fees and logistics, the MPL decided to bear those costs. “Our idea was to not commercialise it. Our focus has been to build a cricket-centric product,” says Kanmadikar of the MPL.

Sponsorship is the other key revenue generator both at a franchise level and league level. These leagues have typically attracted real-money gaming brands, including those that offer betting via surrogate means such as sporting equipment or “news websites”. At least three leagues have some of these websites as partners, while some franchises in these leagues have onboarded them as official jersey partners. “There is no policy or ban yet, although the BCCI may enforce it in one year,” says a senior official in a state association. “If given a chance, we would like to completely avoid it. But if everyone is doing it, why should we miss out?” says another official from a state association.

Expenditure typically involves production costs, technology costs (DRS etc), broadcasting, and other services. Unlike the TNPL, where the broadcaster is paying the league, the newer leagues are going the other way around–paying broadcasters to feature it, while also aiding with other services such as marketing. FanCode, the Dream11-backed streaming platform, is a dominant player in the space, with leagues such as TNPL, Sher-e-Punjab T20 League, and the Andhra Premier League among its portfolio. JioCinema was the other broadcaster this year, airing the Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and the Bengal leagues over the last month.

Yannick Colaco, the co-founder of FanCode says, “Regional leagues have been around for some time. It’s just that now domestic boards have become more structured and have the resources, so the organisation has significantly improved,” he says.

This also means that most of them are profitable from year one, especially with franchise fees and the glut of sponsors that come in. “If these guys are looking to see if there’s an ROI in it, then the objective might be wrong. I would prefer them to use this as an opportunity to raise money for the game, improve their visibility, and increase their following,” says a person aware of how state leagues operate.

This is also where marketing–finding the right audience with affiliation, and great storytelling is where it boils down to, especially in the age of growing digital cricket consumption. The Maharashtra Premier League claimed to have 6 crore in digital viewership across the season. “The approach to market these leagues is quite different from something like the IPL because the target audience is primarily local. For example, a TNPL will be more popular in Tamil Nadu and the Southern states, so our marketing activities are more targeted towards that region,” adds Colaco.

The scramble

As a lay viewer, one can't help but feel that these leagues are crammed, one after the other. But there is a reason for it. The BCCI, in 2018, announced strict rules and regulations regarding the conduct of these leagues. While they had to adhere to the Board’s protocols, it also defined two small windows for these tournaments to protect its most coveted assets: the IPL and the Indian domestic season.

The rules said that these tournaments could only be held 15 days after the conclusion of the IPL and before September 14. This, unsurprisingly coincides with the Indian monsoon season, which impacts certain associations such as Mumbai, and some venues in Karnataka such as Hubli and Belgaum. The other, more narrow window, comes after the end of February, and up to 15 days before the start of the IPL (typically in April), which would be 3 weeks of March. This year, Saurashtra played its league during the second window.

“It's a blessing for us that we don't get rain in July in Tamil Nadu. There could be passing showers in Salem and Coimbatore because of the monsoon in Kerala, but that is all they are: passing showers,” says Kannan. Similarly, the MCA put in a special request this time around to commence the tournament, keeping the monsoons in mind. It is also the reason it prefers playing all its games in one venue. “While it is cost-effective, the drainage facilities at the MCA Stadium are excellent, because it is sand-based,” says Joshi, the MCA COO.

The weather is also why these associations are guarding against a hurried expansion of the tournament, either by franchises or number of matches, despite the monetary benefits of the same. “The weather is a factor. So we have to be realistic while also giving our advertisers and sponsors the value for their money,” says the first senior official quoted in the story.

⚡ Quick Singles

⚽💰👩: Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay will invest $50 million to take majority control of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) club Angel City FC. Iger and Bay’s investment will effectively value the club at $300 million, making the Los Angeles-based club the most valued women's sports franchise in the world. Following their purchase, Iger and Bay will replace Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as the club’s controlling shareholder.

🏀🏆 💵: The majority owners of the NBA team Boston Celtics will reportedly sell their shares by late 2024 or early 2025, a month after their franchise won the NBA Championship. The Celtics’ ownership group, led by Wyc Grousbeck, could expect to earn upwards of $4.7 billion, a number that Forbes values the franchise at. Grousbeck, however, will remain governor until 2028, while his managing partner Steve Pagliuca intends to be a part of the bidding process. The duo purchased the Celtics for $360 million in 2002.

🔴⚽💰: Erik Ten Hag will remain Manchester United’s manager till the 2026 season. Ten Hag’s position was a subject of constant speculation following a less-than-desirable season that saw the club finishing eighth in the 2023-24 Premier League season. Club legend Ruud van Nistelrooy, per reports, is also close to returning to the club as part of Ten Hag’s backroom staff, even as he elicits interest from Burnley over a managerial vacancy.

👟✔️📉: Sportswear giant Nike’s shares fell by 20% last Friday, erasing about $27 billion in market value after the company’s revenue slumped. The fall was Nike’s biggest fall since 2011. Nike’s struggles have been pegged to worsening demand and an increase in competition from running-focused startups such as On and Hoka.

📖 Weekend Reads

Johann Cruyff and the incredible wallpaper drawings that explain modern football [The Athletic]

Hitler’s Olympics [PocketCasts]

You can reach out to me at venkat@thecore.in with any feedback (good, bad, or ugly), tips, and ideas. I take my mailbag seriously, and would love to hear from you! You can also connect with me on X (@venkatananth) and LinkedIn. Thanks for reading, and see you again next Friday!

Why momentum is a big thing in sport

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 10:30:34 +0000

Dear reader,

As you know by now, the last three weeks have been tough for me. First, my pet gave up his incredible fight and passed away, and yesterday, The Signal witnessed the end of an era, with my erstwhile co-founder Dinesh Narayanan and former colleagues Roshni P Nair and Anup Semwal moving on from their respective roles.

Dinesh and I partnered with Patanjali Pahwa, Chinmay Bhogle and Rajneil Kamath to start The Signal in June 2021. The promise and the premise were simple: we inform you and make you smarter and equipped for the day ahead. Dinesh has already outlined the same in his farewell note.

The Playbook too was part of that promise – identifying a white space in the business of sport (and gaming), to build an eventual destination for what I felt was a growing industry. That promise remains and The Playbook, for the moment, will continue to deliver some of these stories that keep you updated with developments in sport.

Unfortunately, given these rapid changes and my personal loss, I have been unable to write a deeply-reported story for today’s edition. It’s been that kind of a month, with stops and starts and multiple distractions. I hope to fix that next week.

So, for today, we’re publishing a story from The Conversation, on the psychology of momentum in sport, and how teams script come-from-behind victories. It is well worth your time.

Warm regards,

Venkat

By Caitlin Fox-Harding

The unpredictability of sport is in many ways its greatest attraction, and unforgettable come-from-behind victories are especially captivating.

During these epic comebacks, one team or athlete is generally said to have captured or capitalised on one of sport’s great intangibles: momentum.

But what is momentum in a sporting sense?

Why ‘the zone’ and ‘flow state’ are key

Psychological momentum in sport refers to a functional overlap between two theoretical concepts: the individual zone of optimal functioning and flow.

In other words, these are known as athletes being “in the zone” and “in a flow state”.

Getting “in the zone” is where an athlete’s perceived level of effort and emotional intensity strike a perfect balance that leads the athlete to achieving optimal performance.

Similarly, achieving a “flow state” is where athletes experience an almost effortless performance with a strong sense of control over their movements.

Think of momentum as when an athlete or team is able to dominate an opponent with remarkable concentration and control, seemingly mastering a game or series of plays in an effortless manner.

This may seem like a random phenomenon, but developing momentum in sport can be understood through a few psychological concepts regularly applied in the heat of the moment by some of our top athletes.

Unsurprisingly, practice is also important

As with all sporting performance, practice indeed makes perfect.

So while the facets of momentum won’t happen overnight, it’s important to routinely embed psychological training within and around a sporting season – and this psychological edge is often what sets the experts apart from the novices.

For young and aspiring athletes, dominant reigns from our favourite athlete or sporting teams can be inspiring. But what we see is much like an iceberg – we don’t often see the preparation beneath the surface.

Learning to fail and coping with unexpected events, and applying those lessons to future improvements, is one of many strategies to develop mental and emotional resilience.

Arguably just as important is managing different sources of pressure within and beyond our control.

So as much as we’d like to think Roger Federer’s backhand is indeed effortless, the sporting statistics and accompanying research shows that achieving these “in the flow” or “in the zone” states are actually amassed over the course of a career – and some are fortunate enough to capitalise on that to build upon that momentum.

Momentum within games and across seasons

To clarify, this concept of psychological momentum isn’t a physics lesson providing an overview of Newton’s momentum.

While momentum indeed represents a driving force that carries motion and influence, in sports it is the combined effect of positive sporting performances and how athletes are able to control their mental state in those key sporting moments.

This can be altered by internal consistency or external disruptions, demonstrating the dynamic nature of momentum in sport.

What’s intriguing is that momentum in sports can be classified within a match or event – think Collingwood’s incredible recent history of comeback victories in the AFL – and across a season as a whole (such as the Australian men’s Test cricket team setting world records for consecutive wins in the late 1990s and early 2000s).

Across a season, you can consider momentum in sports to be an example of success breeding success – suggesting to athletes that they have the capacity to make the most of victories early in a season and leverage that motivation to do well in subsequent events.

This confidence can be seen in individuals and teams – doing well makes us think that since it’s been done before, we’re capable of doing it again.

And when you secure successive wins as a team, the athletes will start to rationalise that what they’re doing together is working. That will begin to develop further cohesion and provide an overall boost to morale.

Even within a single match, fans can see a team creating more situations that will lead to more scoring opportunities increases the likelihood of that team earning a victory.

Regularly creating these opportunities, especially early in the game, can be the difference between winning and losing. This could be due to the players on the losing team beginning to doubt themselves or struggle to deal with their own frustrations as they encounter more setbacks contributing to the loss.

Essentially when an athlete or team has momentum, it’s more than just being confident: athletes have to also manage their internal responses (for example, level of frustration) and how they respond outwardly to what happens during a live match while making clutch decisions at the right time.

How to halt an opponent’s momentum

As with all good things, there is indeed some risk with “riding the wave” of a winning streak – complacency and overconfidence can creep into the team or athlete’s preparedness and can make way for some remarkable stories of others infiltrating (and ultimately breaking through) that momentum.

If you’re in the thick of a losing streak or a game is slipping away, athletes and coaches must find ways of disrupting the momentum of the winning team.

This might be strategic discussions such as taking a timeout or, in cricket, switching the bowling line up.

These tactics can disrupt the opposing team’s flow.

Understanding the complex nature of momentum is crucial for helping athletes and teams refocus on what is actually within their control and how they can individually build their sporting confidence over time to perform well under pressure.

The ability to handle setbacks and the opposing team’s skill in capitalising on these moments can be the deciding factor between winning and losing.

Caitlin Fox-Harding is a lecturer/researcher at Edith Cowan University

The article is republished from https://theconversation.com under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article at https://theconversation.com/the-mystery-of-the-massive-sporting-comeback-whats-the-psychology-of-momentum-in-sports-232598

⚡ Quick Singles

🇦🇷🆕⚽: The Argentina Football Association has extended its partnership with official kit partner Adidas till 2038. Adidas has been Argentina’s official kit supplier since 2001 and also sponsors Lionel Messi, having signed him first in 2006. The deal will come as a consolation for Adidas, having recently lost the German national team’s kit contract to Nike. The latter signed a €100 million, seven-year deal starting in 2027. Also read: How Puma is taking on Adidas and Nike at Copa America

🏈💲❌: The NFL has been ordered to pay $4.7 billion by a jury in an antitrust lawsuit filed nine years ago. The class action suit filed by subscribers accused the league of selling Sunday Ticket, an “out-of-market sports package” at an inflated price, and in doing so, restricting competition. If the verdict is upheld, the NFL could be paying close to thrice the fine amount because of the suit’s antitrust nature. The NFL is appealing the verdict.

🔴⚽💰: Manchester United are reportedly considering selling naming rights to their stadium Old Trafford, The Athletic reported. The sale of naming rights could be among the potential measures to drum up its revenue numbers, besides increasing ticket prices, as part of financing the redevelopment of the iconic stadium. Barcelona (Spotify Nou Camp) and Arsenal (The Emirates) are among top European clubs to sell naming rights to their stadiums.

🏏6️⃣4️⃣: Sri Lanka’s T20 competition, the Lanka Premier League (LPL) will introduce two additional powerplay overs in the latter half of the innings. Termed ‘power blast’, only four fielders will be allowed outside the inner ring (30-yard circle) the 16th and the 17th over of each innings. The LPL will also feature a new Dambulla franchise in the Dambulla Sixers after a change of ownership.

🇳🇱⚽❌: Dutch football club Vitesse Arnhem will be barred from competing in the 2024-25 season after the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) stripped their professional licence. The club, per the KNVB, failed to

meet key financial and regulatory requirements, despite multiple extensions from the association. Vitesse was famously known as Chelsea B, after Valeriy Oyf, an oligarch close to Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2018. Last month, a trove of leaked documents revealed that Oyf funded Vitesse with loans from Abramovich.

📖 Weekend Reads

Cricket can't move stock markets [FT Alphaville]

How Cornhole Went Pro [The New York Times Magazine]

How Qatar bought a slice of Euro 2024 – and what’s next in its sights? [The Athletic]

No edition

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 10:46:40 +0000

Dear reader,

We are not publishing an edition today. As an update, my pet Apple couldn't make it and passed away on Saturday evening. He was 13 and a half years old.

As you can imagine, it has been a tough week, and I am still processing his loss. I hope to be back with an original story in next week’s edition.

Venkat

Football has a referee abuse crisis

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:30:30 +0000

Dear reader,

The last two days have been immensely challenging for me. On Wednesday, I woke up to find out that my pet Apple, a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Beagle I’d adopted in 2012, had been severely dehydrated and was struggling to orient himself with his surroundings. Since that morning, he's been admitted to a pet hospital in Bengaluru and I haven't been able to focus on a story I was chasing.

The good news: He is showing small signs of improvement on a 24-hour basis. I am hoping for a discharge tomorrow.

All of this means that I am unable to publish a full story today. My apologies for yet another stop-start week.

So for today, we are featuring an interesting story from The Conversation, besides the top sports business stories and long reads for the weekend. Also, do check out some of our previous stories including this from last week, where I took a detailed look at cricket’s American project, and how that is working out (notwithstanding the dream run of its national team in the T20 World Cup). Plus, how the world’s fastest-growing sport, padel, is finding its feet in India.

Warm regards,Venkat

Football’s referee crisis: we asked thousands of refs about the abuse and violence that’s driving them out of the game

By Tom Webb and Harjit Sekhon

I had to abandon a game last season because of threats made by a spectator. This wasn’t a snap decision for me – I am a police officer and deal with abuse on a daily basis. The difference here was that I referee to enjoy football, and no one has the right to put my safety at risk when I expect to go home to my children. Players, coaches and spectators appear to believe it is a right to abuse the referee. (Grassroots referee, England)

The Uefa European Football Championship – commonly known as the Euros – is one of the world’s most valuable sporting events. This summer’s 17th staging, which kicks off in Germany on June 14, is expected to generate commercial revenues of at least €2.4 billion euros (£2bn). Upwards of 5 billion TV viewers will watch the 51 matches, culminating in the final in Berlin’s Olympiastadion on 14 July.

At the heart of this global spectacle are the 19 men whose job it is to keep order on the pitch. Their split-second decisions can decide the outcome of games – and infuriate legions of fans. They are regarded as the best referees in European football (plus one from Argentina) – but, like officials at all levels of the game, have endured abuse from players, coaches and spectators on their journey to the pinnacle of the sport.

One of the two English referees at this year’s Euros, Michael Oliver, was subjected to particularly shocking abuse, including death threats, after awarding a last-minute penalty in a Champions League quarter-final in April 2018. And it wasn’t only him: Oliver’s wife Lucy, also a referee, was sent abusive text messages after her mobile phone number was posted on social media.

Referees of past Euros have had to put up with similar treatment. After the Swiss referee Urs Meier disallowed a goal for England against Portugal in the 2004 quarter-final, he was given police protection and advised to go into hiding after receiving more than 16,000 emails from angry English fans. Stoking the abuse, the Sun newspaper printed his email address and laid out a giant England flag outside Meier’s office in Switzerland.

Our recent survey of nearly 1,300 football referees across Europe, Oceania and North America suggests abuse of officials is now endemic at all levels of the game. In another study, more than 93% of football referees told us they had been verbally abused, while almost one in five reported physical abuse. Around half the referees we have contacted say they are considering quitting the game.

As a result, football is lurching towards a crisis as it struggles to recruit and, in particular, retain referees at grassroots levels. While the game is booming across Europe, with girls’ and women’s leagues growing especially rapidly, it’s estimated that one in seven match officials quit every year, with the abuse they face a major cause. Uefa’s head of referees, Roberto Rosetti, calls it “a vocational crisis” that is also putting increased pressure on efforts to bring referees through to elite levels of the sport.

In August 2023, Uefa launched its first ever recruitment campaign for referees – featuring Oliver in the promotional material. Uefa says it aims to enlist around 40,000 new referees each season throughout Europe.

But unless there is a dramatic shift in the behaviour of players, coaches and spectators, Europe’s grassroot leagues will struggle to retain many of these recruits. While money continues to flood into elite football, volunteer referees of all ages will continue to turn their backs on “the beautiful game” for fear of the abuse they may face when they step on to a pitch.

‘The referee pool is almost dry’

In England, aggressive behaviour towards referees has become such a concern that in February 2023 the Football Association (FA) became the first governing body to trial the use of body cameras to reduce abuse towards referees at grassroots levels.

Notices hang on the walls of dressing rooms and the fences of grounds asking players, officials and spectators to show more respect during games. Yet according to another referee we interviewed, these signs are “merely displayed as lip service”:

I’d say county-level, Saturday football is probably the worst example of players using every conceivable way to win, whatever it takes. Abuse, cheap comments towards officials, and a general want to shout foul for almost every contact … Red and yellow cards have not thwarted the wall of abuse and unsporting action that is seen week in, week out.

From 2016, 10,000 referees left English football in five seasons, with the COVID pandemic adding to the difficulty of recruiting replacements – leaving a major shortfall up and down the country.

Bans of up to eight years have been imposed in recent seasons for the physical abuse of male and female referees, who have been kicked, headbutted, punched and spat on. In one local cup final, the BBC reported that the referee had been knocked to the ground and punched by “up to 20 people”.

Even child referees making their first steps in the game are not immune from this treatment. In November 2021, all 13 and 14-year-old referees in Northumberland went on strike one weekend in protest at the levels of abuse they were receiving from parents and coaches. Martin Cassidy, chief-executive of the charity Ref Support, has warned that young officials are being turned off the game by the abuse they see and experience, to the extent that “the pool of new referees coming into the game is almost dry”.

Such abuse is not a new phenomenon. The abuse of referees dates back before the formation of the English FA in 1863, when gamblers verbally and sometimes physically assaulted referees after blaming them for making decisions that affected the bets they had placed. But there are particular reasons for today’s worsening levels of abuse.

We have been researching referee abuse in football and other sports around the world for the past two decades, and in 2020 published a ten-point plan for how to tackle this abuse. One of the problems frequently highlighted is that referees are seen as “outsiders” who players and spectators find it difficult to empathise with. As one interviewee in our Uefa-funded research of referee abuse in France and the Netherlands explained:

I play football and am also a referee. From my experience, players, supporters and coaching staff don’t see refs as people, and tend to regard them as outsiders. I don’t think they realise how integral they are to allowing games to go ahead.

Whether commenting on social media or shouting abuse from a crowded stand, the failure of people to recognise referees as “real human beings” is a recurring theme of our research. There is little understanding of the impact that abuse can have on an official’s mental wellbeing. As one grassroots referee told us:

In football, it is culturally acceptable to question referees’ decisions and to shout and swear at them. Players do it, and so do spectators at all levels of the game I have observed and worked in. Abusing the ref is standard at the highest levels in football and is even common in youth football. It is a short step from questioning a decision to shouting abuse.

The growth of social media and presence of online communities has compounded the sense that referees are “fair game” for criticism – without fear of any comeback. For spectators both virtual and real, abuse of officials can become infectious, as this experienced referee told us:

Where there are larger groups of people, the herd mentality sets in. There are people that in my mind would not normally make any abusive gestures towards anyone – yet it is often deemed as acceptable [when they] attend games … because, in all likelihood, they would never get caught. As they have no personal connection to the official in charge, they feel no or little remorse.

The (bad) influence of the professional game

The frequent abuse of referees in the professional game is seen as a major contributory factor to problems lower down the football pyramid, as players and spectators take their lead from the behaviour they see in stadiums and on TV.

In one shocking recent example, Turkish referee Halil Umut Meler was punched to the ground after the final whistle of a game in Turkey’s top professional league, putting him in hospital treatment with injuries including a small fracture under his eye. His attacker, the president of one of the clubs contesting the game, was subsequently arrested and banned from football for life.

The eye-watering increases in television and sponsorship income, as well as prize money, means the pressure on professional football clubs to be successful has perhaps never been greater. As such, decisions made by referees over the course of a season, and particularly in the final stages of league and cup competitions, are increasingly being identified by clubs as a reason for falling short.

Near the end of the most recent Premier League season, Nottingham Forest claimed on X after one defeat that the game’s video assistant referee (VAR) was a fan of rival club Luton Town – insinuating that this was a reason for their loss, and inflaming the anger of Forest supporters towards this official.

Ironically, the introduction of VAR technology was seen as a way of protecting referees from making “clear and obvious errors” – yet many argue it has, in fact, only increased the pressure on referees and pushed them further into the spotlight.

In a press conference after a victory for his Tottenham Hotspur team that was decided by a VAR error, Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou highlighted the need to remember the humans at the heart of every match decision – even those made many miles away by VAR officials:

The game is littered with historical refereeing decisions that weren’t right, but we all accepted it was part of the game because we’re dealing with human beings … But now I think that people are under the misconception that VAR is going to be errorless. I don’t think there’s any technology that can do that because so much of our game isn’t factual. It’s down to interpretation, and they’re still human beings.

What can be done to stop the abuse?

Changing this culture of abuse is key. Coaches have an important role in setting an example and enforcing codes of behaviour for their players. I strongly believe the vast majority of officials are doing a difficult job as well as they can – and they deserve our respect accordingly. (Grassroots football coach)

Many referees would like to see more education of players, fans and club officials – to remind them that, far from being a hindrance, grassroots referees are people who give up their time to enable everyone to enjoy the game. As this amateur referee explained:

It’s important to remind everyone that sports at levels below professional competition are refereed by part-timers. They are, by and large, refereeing on their own and do not have the luxury of a linesperson to help monitor for offside. They have no VAR to give them an opportunity to review an incident. They will not and cannot see every infringement. Too often spectators and players forget this.

But many referees also want more of a “stick” to eradicate abuse. Our research found that only a third of football referees surveyed across Europe, North America and Oceania were satisfied with the sanctions handed out after they had reported being abused:

I think football needs a whole culture change so it’s like rugby, where you are not allowed to argue with officials. But maybe refs also need to be stricter with punishments for dissent … In basketball, if you argue with referees, you are given a technical foul and fine, and that may be something that would limit arguing in football. (Grassroots football referee)

In 2017-18, English amateur football piloted use of the “sin bin”, whereby players were temporarily removed from play for up to ten minutes if they abused a referee or their assistants. This trial was then extended to 31 amateur leagues across England, with suggestions that sin bins could be introduced in professional football along with a blue card to denote a player being temporarily sent off.

One grassroots woman referee explained how she uses sin bins to de-escalate potentially difficult situations:

I think having sin bins is quite helpful. When I referee men, I find the captains are quite good – you can talk to them and they will usually sort their team out. You can kind of deal with it that way [without actually having to send players to the sin bin].

However, the International Football Association Board, which determines the laws of the game, has completely rejected the blue card proposal, demanding further evidence on the effectiveness of sin bins while trialling other ideas to improve the behaviour of professional players. These include proposed “cooling-off periods” which would see referees send teams to their respective penalty areas if behaviour is judged to be becoming too heated.

Football is not alone

When it comes to referee abuse, football is far from alone in having a problem. Over half of the officials we surveyed across rugby union, rugby league and cricket reported being subjected to abuse and aggression. This account of refereeing abuse comes from grassroots rugby league:

When I was refereeing, I was confronted by a coach from an away team. The coach entered the field of play and aggressively shouted in my face about a decision I’d made, calling me an ‘inconsistent fuck’. Given the situation, I had to dismiss the coach, which led to the game being abandoned since they didn’t have another coach. Following the abandonment, I faced a barrage of insults and gestures from the majority of the away team’s players, who chanted ‘cheating wanker’ and gestured the ‘wanker’ sign towards me.

This referee, who was 18 at the time, said the experience “took a massive toll” on his confidence and mental wellbeing:

During a subsequent academy match I was touch-judging, the anxiety from the previous incident impacted my performance, culminating in a panic attack that prevented me from continuing in the second half.

While this referee has since restarted their career and is aiming to reach the top of the professional game, many others do not restart after such experiences.

Rates of verbal and physical abuse reported by referees at all levels of four sports, England:

Even rugby union, which is traditionally associated with players calling officials “sir” and accepting decisions without question, is wrestling with how to eradicate growing levels of abuse at all levels of the game.

After rugby union’s 2023 world cup final between New Zealand and South Africa, the match referee, Wayne Barnes, and his family were subjected to death threats including that their house would be burned down. Barnes subsequently retired from refereeing, a decision he said was influenced by the “threats that have become far too regular for all of those involved in the game”.

In both rugby codes, the behaviour of spectators and players is a growing concern at all levels. To help recruit and support young referees in rugby league, for example, head cameras known as RefCam have been introduced to monitor the abuse they receive.

Abuse of young referees

Young referees in any sport are learning, just as players are learning. Yet according to some club officials we have spoken to, abuse is often worse towards these young officials than adult referees:

I coach youth [rugby league] with regularly young referees. I believe they are more at risk of verbal abuse due to their age and experience, and find parents are less abusive towards older referees. These young referees need protecting more to reduce the damage to their self-esteem, ability and desire to come back to referee the sport.

There are, first and foremost, child protection considerations with young referees if they are receiving abuse from adults. I (co-author Tom Webb) have coached in youth sport myself, and seen referee abuse first-hand from coaches, players and spectators. When the behaviour is challenged, invariably the coaches don’t see what they have done as wrong, or they do not care.

This abuse is often adults behaving negatively towards young referees who have recently qualified and are under 18. This presents a clear safeguarding issue, yet in the context of football, abuse towards child referees appears to be widely considered “part of the game”.

Parents of young referees complain that safeguarding rules are not being followed by sports’ governing bodies, and that the processes of complaint – in particular, children having to attend personal hearings with the adult coaches or spectators they have complained about – make it much harder for them to report abuse.

At the same time, we have also heard positive accounts of the value of mentorship schemes, such as from this young female football referee:

As soon as I turned 16, I had a men’s game and I’ve never received so much abuse in my entire life. But because I had a mentor, I’d sort of built myself up to it, so that’s why I continued. I spoke to them about it, and my county [association] was really good as well. If I have any issues, it goes straight to the county and they sort it out and help you. I’m fortunate that I’ve had that stability.

What can be done to halt the abuse?

Our recent research into the recruitment and retention of female sports officials across Europe shows they believe they receive less abuse than their male counterparts. However, the abuse that female officials face is still evident and, like their male counterparts, makes them much more likely to quit their chosen sport.

Abuse is threatening the very structure of organised, competitive sport. As the number of fixtures without neutral referees increases, so grassroots sport becomes ever harder to administrate and operate effectively.

The aim of reducing or eradicating the abuse towards referees should be a primary focus for sports organisations around the world. Supporters’, players’ and coaches’ better understanding the laws of a sport could help acceptance around why a decision is made by a referee during a fixture. But this alone will not reverse the recruitment and retention issues in refereeing.

Based on our research, we believe the focus needs to be two-fold: reduce the abuse levels by changing the culture towards referees in sport; and ensure the systems are in place to support referees and punish offenders adequately when abuse occurs.

We cannot be naive enough to think that abuse towards referees can be removed entirely from competitive sport. The question is, do sports organisations have the sufficient will to affect change and significantly reduce abuse?

From our two decades studying this issue, we can say that most sports have been far too slow to address this endemic issue. There are, though, finally signs of a willingness to confront the problem – driven in part by growing awareness of the problems of recruiting and retaining referees that these organisations face.

But for any recruitment drives to succeed, there must be a cultural change that raises the profile and importance of sports officials – and above all, addresses the shocking treatment of our young referees. Without this, we believe many sports – not only football – could face a severe shortage of grassroots officials, and subsequently elite-level referees. As one rugby union touch judge reflected to us:

Near the end of one game, I was subjected to a torrent of abuse from a handful of drunken adult male home supporters. The statements made towards me on repeat for that 20-minute period were: ‘You’re a fucking cheat, touch judge! You cheating cunt, touch judge!’ After almost 30 years of officiating, I have pretty tough skin. But it did make me wonder why I bothered doing this when I could be with my family. Instead, I had a bunch of drunken men abusing me.

Tom Webb and Harjit Sekhon are assistant professors at the Centre for Business in Society, Coventry University.

The article is republished from https://theconversation.com under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article at https://theconversation.com/footballs-referee-crisis-we-asked-thousands-of-refs-about-the-abuse-and-violence-thats-driving-them-out-of-the-game-231886

⚡️ Quick Singles

🥊🇸🇦💰: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is reportedly looking to create a boxing league via a $4-5 billion joint venture with the sport’s leading promoters, Reuters reported. The report added that PIF was in discussions with Matchroom Boxing and Golden Boy Promotions for the venture, where it will have a minority stake. Last year, a PIF-owned vehicle SURJ Sports Investment acquired a stake in the US’ Professional Fighters League.

🔴⚽👍🏼: Dutchman Erik Ten Hag will remain as Manchester United manager following the club’s end-of-season review. Ten Hag’s future was uncertain after INEOS’ minority investment into United, which gave Sir Jim Ratcliffe control over football operations. United had one of their worst seasons in the Premier League since its inception, finishing eighth. However, they managed to win the FA Cup last month, defeating rivals Manchester City.

😱💵🚨: M Selvakumar, owner of the Tamil Nadu Premier League franchise Salem Spartans, was reportedly duped of Rs 6.1 crore under the pretext of buying shares in a Caribbean Premier League (CPL) team. Selvakumar registered a first information report last month while naming domestic cricketers Robin Bist and Akash Sumra in the report. Now, the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s anti-corruption unit has taken cognizance of the case and could launch an inquiry.

🎾💰🏆: The All England Lawn Tennis Club, which organises Wimbledon, has announced a record prize money worth £50 million ($64 million) for the 2024 edition, an 11.9% (£5.3 million) increase from last year. Both the men’s and women’s singles champions will receive £2.7 million each while losing finalists will haul £1.4 million each.

RIP 🙏🏽: Amol Kale, president of the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), passed away in New York following a cardiac arrest. Kale was in the city to attend the T20 World Cup clash between India and Pakistan, along with a host of dignitaries. Kale had been helming the MCA since October 2022, after defeating former Indian cricketer Sandeep Patil to the post. Kale was considered close to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, going back to their Nagpur days. Kale also co-promoted the Indian Street Premier League, a franchise-based tennis ball cricket tournament.

📖 Weekend Reads

The Richest League On Earth Is Tearing Itself Apart [Wall Street Journal]

Inside USA Cricket’s Incredibly Unlikely, Maximally Joyful World Cup Run [GQ]

Hungary, Viktor Orban and the weaponisation of a national football team [The Athletic]

Cricket's American Dream

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 11:30:07 +0000

As Saurabh Netravalkar charged in to bowl the final ball of the Super Over, the roar of “USA! USA!” bellowed across the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas. Netravalkar, a software engineer at Oracle, was on the verge of scripting the biggest upset in international cricket. With seven needed off one ball, the left-armer kept it simple, pushed it wide as he’d done throughout, and all Pakistan’s Shadab Khan could manage was a single.

The US defeated Pakistan in the T20 World Cup. In doing so, to quote an X user, it had achieved “the equivalent of Prime Mike Tyson being knocked out by your cashier at Wal-Mart [sic].” This was the “moment that met the market” in a country where the sight of locals donning the US dark blue jersey, Uncle Sam hats on their heads, and plastic leis around their neck must have come as a pleasant surprise for the powers that be.

The win also came at a venue that represents abundant opportunities and challenges of building and growing the sport in a new market. Four years ago, the Grand Prairie Stadium was a “ballpark” which, in US-speak, is a sports venue where baseball is played. In 2020, private company and USA Cricket’s commercial partner American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) signed a long-term lease with the City of Grand Prairie and redeveloped the facility into a $20 million international-grade cricket stadium.

This is a radical transformation from 1999, when as a cricket-obsessed nut, I’d watch the Moov-AXN America Challenge in September that year. The five-match, one-day series between the A teams of India and Australia at Woodley Park in Los Angeles was probably the first attempt by cricket boards to dipstick the US as a market, having successfully tested Canada with the Sahara Cup (1996-1998).

Cut to today, a rough estimate of cricket’s addressable “critical mass” audience in the US could be somewhere around 5-10 million (primarily those of South Asian descent). While that might sound small in a country of 335 million, it matters. “As per (US) Census data, Indians have a higher per capita income of any demographic — higher than Jewish and Japanese people, which has historically not been the case. You have a very elite audience that way,” says Satyan Gajwani, vice-chairman of Times Internet in a conversation with The Playbook. To this effect, the United States’ hosting of the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup and its inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics count as significant milestones.

But at the heart of the modern US cricket story is a one-year-old T20 league, the Major League Cricket (MLC), backed by prominent Indian-Americans such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, alongside IPL franchises such as CSK, Kolkata Knight Riders, and the Mumbai Indians, to name a few.

The big leagues

Vijay Srinivasan, co-founder of Willow TV (now acquired by Times Internet), still remembers the early days of cricket in the US. In the early 2000s, the sport was a hard sell with negligible interest. “Fortunately for us, technology stepped in at a great time. We took a punt on this new thing that very few people had experienced called streaming and decided to see if there was an alternate way to watch the sport in the US,” he tells The Playbook over a telephonic interview.

Having hooked millions of US-based cricket watchers to the sport through Willow, Srinivasan is now taking a second stab at commercialising cricket in the country, as co-founder of the MLC. “Our goal is to fit cricket into the model that existed for sport here,” he says. For good reason. The tournament that roped in Cognizant as its title sponsor, per San Francisco Unicorns co-owner Anand Rajaraman, posted revenues of about $8 million. And while Gajwani won’t confirm that number, he expects that to grow by 50-60% in its second year.

While the MLC’s successful debut and the ongoing T20 World Cup represent significant momentum, the sport’s growth will depend on infrastructure. Venues that are purpose-built for cricket aren’t readily available in the country, even if they are, the lack of ready turf pitches is also a concern. “Our challenge would be to convince cities across the country that “Hey, cricket is a sport on the upswing, with people in your communities that love the sport. You need to engage with us and dedicate some venues and land, and we’ll take it from there,” says MLC’s Srinivasan.

Having initiated the infrastructure push with two stadiums in Morrisville, North Carolina and Grand Prairie, the MLC, much like other American sports leagues, expects team owners to invest heavily in capital expenditures for stadiums for their respective franchises. This is quite a departure from countries such as India, England or even South Africa, where state associations or county boards build these fixed assets while allowing franchises to monetise during leagues.

The MLC also wants to buck the global trend of building a broadcast-friendly product by getting more butts in seats, which in relatively weaker economic markets is not a big revenue stream. The US sports events market is projected to reach $16.43 billion this year, and while broadcast can be significant, it is sold-out venues that provide a new sport with the validation it needs. To this effect, the MLC saw 70% of its matches sold out, with 80% of seats filled, 100% of the hospitality sold, and ticket sales contributing to a third of its first-year revenue, with broadcast and sponsorship contributing 30% each.

This is also why, unlike rivals such as the SAT20 and ILT20, the league is resisting the temptation to build for the lucrative Indian market. “Matches are played in the afternoons and evenings, which is not suitable for India. By and large, we are not building for India. In the short run, we’ll probably make less, but in the medium to long run, that’s where we think we should be investing,” says Gajwani, before adding, “The people who have invested in this are not interested in building this for India. They want to build it for America. It will take longer.”

“MLC can be a real success. (There’s) no problem attracting players to come and play in the US. And no problems with funding/investment. The only real challenge will be facilities, but money and time can solve that with the right intent,” says Rohan Chandran, chief product officer of San Francisco-based Guild and a founding member of ESPN Cricinfo. “Great facilities with the ability to build a home following equal a successful franchise league. The cricketing hotspots are dense enough. So fans armed with $$$ are very much there, and there’s every reason for it to succeed. The market can be cracked.”

The grassroots dilemma

Part of the push is also to create pathways for talent wanting to move to the US to become professional cricketers. Or let them pursue their full-time day jobs while also playing cricket, something Netravalkar did back home in Mumbai when he was climbing up the ranks. This is also because the domestic talent pool is not as big as it is in major cricket countries. That is the second and most important piece of the puzzle, as Srinivasan puts it. You can have fans and venues, but what use is it if there are no players? The gap is currently being bridged by the Minor League Cricket (or MiLC).

Venu Palaparthi, a Wall Street professional and cricket aficionado, has spent nearly 20 years cracking the grassroots code. Palaparthi’s adventure with cricket began in 2000 with DreamCricket, a fantasy cricket website that later morphed into an academy, and later, a MiLC franchise in New Jersey Stallions, which now boasts of a few US national team cricketers such as captain Monank Patel and Sai Teja Mukkamalla.

“Without proper pathways, cricketers, especially younger ones, can lose the initiative. The presence of top domestic players in the Minor League provides a development guardian and is the first step towards moving up the ladder, be it MLC or the US national team,” Palaparthi tells The Playbook. But the most important element is to have the right kind of stakeholder/owner.

For instance, each team has up to 12-16 players from the US, with 2-3 priority domestic players and also, one wild card pick per franchise. Typically, these are international players with experience in their respective domestic cricket setups. Stallions, Palaparthi says, got West Indies T20 captain Rovman Powell as a wild card. “Earlier, our local talent didn’t have access to these players. They come in with a very competitive mindset and that rubs off on our players as well. The development secret sauce has to be both top-down and bottom-up.”

To this effect, ACE has been sponsoring cricketers such as Harmeet Singh and Corey Anderson (both US international players) to find coaching opportunities on P1 visas, while they pursue their cricket careers in these minor league franchises as the sole overseas players. According to sources, they’ve sponsored around 30-40 such cricketers from around the world to make the switch to the US, including the likes of the former India U19 World Cup-winning captain Unmukt Chand, the highest profile of them all.

“A lot of our players come here. They make a home here and have families here. They took a leap of faith in what we are building. It is not easy as a sportsman at the prime of your career. Many came during the pandemic, and it was not the best time for any of us. But they showed faith,” says Srinivasan of MLC. “Now what we are doing out there is the real deal. And I guess Pat Cummins signing up is a culmination of the Silicon Valley mindset,” he adds.

Future perfect?

Achieving the real deal has an administrative problem in the form of controversy-ridden USA Cricket. At the end of April, the cricket board avoided suspension from the ICC and per Forbes, has been put on “controlled funding” given its status as the T20 World Cup co-host. A dysfunctional board could potentially pose a challenge to the growing promise of the MLC.

The problem had reared its head in March 2023, when a dispute between USA Cricket and ACE (the organisers of MLC and MiLC) over foreign players wishing to participate in both leagues blew up and the ICC withheld no-objection certificates to member boards whose players wanted to participate in the leagues. The standoff eased in April last year, when the ICC again greenlit the tournament and ensured players’ participation. “It is up to USA Cricket to figure out the right way to partner with ACE/MLC on either side of MLC. The MLC doesn’t need USA Cricket, but USA Cricket may well need the MLC,” says Chandran of Guild.

The concern, however, is that USA Cricket’s issues are coming at a time when the MLC might well be on an expansion path. The MLC began with six franchises but now is looking to add four more teams to the mix over the next few years, with non-IPL franchise-owned teams seeking to raise further capital at a $80-100 million range, per industry insiders.

“It (USA Cricket) is less stable than you’d like. There’s a lot of politics on the governing body side, and there are different players. The USA Cricket board is dysfunctional, following past patterns when it was dysfunctional (too),” says a USA Cricket insider on condition of anonymity. “The ICC is now involved and taking a closer look and so is the US Olympic Committee, which has to now establish a governing body to run the sport during the Olympics. There’s pressure on them to shape up, but for now, let’s just focus on delivering this World Cup,” this person adds.

The post-mortem could involve a middle path, where both sides—ACE and USA Cricket—have an important role to play. This, per Chandran, could mean a split in responsibilities, with USA Cricket taking over the grassroots development, whereas ACE runs the private professional game, with both pathways integrating and feeding into each other. For that to work, it needs local talent to have aspirations and corresponding pathways. He adds, “If it’s built purely on temporary immigrant talent then it only takes one big pandemic or global downturn or anti-immigration government to crush the model.”

What Chandran says could be integral to what the MLC, per Gajwani, was primed to do: make the US one of the top five cricketing countries, whether in leagues, infrastructure, or talent pool.

“We’ve always believed that the success and failure of the league will correlate with the success of American cricket as the whole. The better the American national team is, the more relevant the local league is,” he signs off.

⚡️Quick Singles

⚽️💰🚪: American private investment fund 777 Partners bid to take over Premier League club Everton officially collapsed on June 1. The club has now received an offer from Advantage Capital Holdings, which, per Bloomberg, will see its owner Farhad Moshiri retain majority control. Elsewhere, the club’s lenders Andy Bell and George Downing are also rivalling American firm and fellow creditor MSP Sports Capital to speak to Moshiri, per Financial Times.

⚽️⚪️💲: French football star Kylian Mbappe finally departed Paris Saint Germain (PSG) to join Spanish giants and Champions League winners Real Madrid on a free transfer. PSG have reportedly held back the last two months of Mbappe’s pay and the bonus for February 2024, totalling around €80 million ($86 million), according to ESPN. Mbappe will sign a five-year contract with Madrid.

📺🏀💸: The NBA is closing in on a historic 11-year $76 billion media rights deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. NBC will pay close to $2.5 billion annually to broadcast 100 games per season, while Amazon is likely to cough up $1.8 billion for a package that includes a new tournament. Disney’s package, which includes the coverage of the NBA Finals, has increased to $2.6 billion per year from $1.5 billion in the existing deal.

🤝🏎️🤘: Formula One driver Sergio Perez has signed a two-year extension with Red Bull that will see the Mexican drive for the team through 2026. The announcement came before the Canada Grand Prix in Montreal, and his recent form, where he finished third once and second thrice, played a part in the renewal. Perez joined Red Bull in 2021. The move also ensured that Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who was hoping for a return to Red Bull, will have to look for a seat in another team.

⚽💰🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿: English championship club Watford FC are seeking to raise £17.5 million by selling 10% of the club to its fans and investors. The stake sale will value the club at £175 million. The club has been owned by Italian Gino Pozzo since 2014 and won promotion to the Premier League twice during this period. The club also famously reached the FA Cup final in 2019, before it dropped to the Championship in 2022 upon relegation.

📖 Weekend Reading

How Liverpool and Red Sox owner John Henry won it all [Financial Times]

🎧Broomgate: A Curling Scandal [Apple Podcasts, Spotify]

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed reading The Playbook, please share it with your friends, family, and colleagues. Please also subscribe to it (for free) if you haven’t already.

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Red Bull is heading to England

Fri, 31 May 2024 10:30:16 +0000

Dear reader,

Welcome to The Playbook, a weekly newsletter on the business of sports and gaming. If someone shared this newsletter with you or if you’ve found the online version, please hit the subscribe button below — it’s free! You can unsubscribe anytime.

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Unfortunately, I do not have a story for you this week. The story I’d been working on over the last few days hasn’t shaped up as per my expectations. I will be back with a detailed story next week.

Until then, I’ve put together a short curated edition featuring the top sports business news and long reads for the weekend.

Warm regards,

Venkat

⚡️Quick Singles

⚽️💰🚪: American investor John Textor is seeking to exit his 45% holding in Premier League club Crystal Palace FC. Textor, however, wants to remain involved in English football, and might be eyeing Everton FC, whose sale to 777 Partners is currently in limbo over the latter’s financing issues. Besides his co-ownership of Palace, Textor also owns majority stakes in French Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyonnais, Brazilian club Botafogo FC, and Belgium’s RWD Molenbeek.

⚽️⚪️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿:Energy drink giant Red Bull has purchased a minority stake in English football club Leeds United, which will also see its brand featured on the club’s shirts from next season. Red Bull is the latest addition to Leeds’ ownership group — the US-based 49ers Enterprise, following the inclusion of Hollywood star Will Ferrell. Red Bull has teams playing in various leagues including New York Red Bulls (MLS), RB Leipzig (Bundesliga/Germany), Red Bull Bragantino (Brazil), and Red Bull Salzburg (Bundesliga/Austria).

✋🏏🙅:The Board of Control for Cricket in India is reportedly leaning towards holding on to the existing 3+1 retention rule ahead of the Indian Premier League’s mega auctions, according to News18. The retention rule has been the subject of much speculation and discussion of late, with voices in favour of increasing the quota to 6-8 players to allow franchises to retain their core and build loyalty.

♟️🇮🇳🏆:Indian grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, 18, defeated five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen in a classical game for the first time in his career on Wednesday. Praggnanandhaa’s win over Carlsen came in the third round of the Norway Chess super tournament at Stavanger. However, Pragg lost to world number three Hikaru Nakamura a day later and relinquished his lead in the tournament. His grandmaster sister R Vaishali is also participating in the women’s edition, and is currently leading in the tournament after her win over Swede Pia Cramling.

📖 Weekend Reading

Reebok Isn’t A Hobby for Shaquille O’Neal [The New York Times]

How a bet on Everton engulfed a football investor and its financial backers [Financial Times]

Inter Milan Was A Billionaire Plaything, Then The Money Ran Out [Bloomberg]

The Playbook By The Core

Cricket's Teen Revolution

Not Old Enough To Vote, But Bold Enough To Reshape Future Of Cricket

A Perfect Storm

Changing Game

The Flip Side

BCCI’s Slight To Women’s Cricket

BCCI’s Apathy For Women’s Cricket Isn’t Just Unfair, It’s Unwise

A Litmus Test

The Wage Gap

Mullanpur Is A Metaphor

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The Sorry Mess Of Indian Sports

Malaise In Indian Sports: Administrative Failures Stifle Athletes And Ambition

The Governance Quagmire

Olympic dreams meet harsh realities

Can The Augean Stables Be Cleaned?

Additional Reading

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Leave Politics Out Of Sports

Cricket Can’t Be The Only Avenue For Cross-Border Diplomacy

India’s Tantrums

India Being Petty?

Unfair Advantages

PostScript:

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The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

BCCI’s (Women’s Cricket) Blind Spot

BCCI Sleeping On Women’s Cricket Is A Lost Financial Opportunity

Long Overdue

Horse And Cart In Right Order

No Long-Term Plans

Lost Monetary Opportunities

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A Dramatic January

A Calculated Leak, Pigeon Poop And Smog: No End Of Drama For Indian Sports

What Were You Playing For?

A Calculated Leak?

Of Pigeon Poo And Smog

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Indian Cricket's Annus Horribilis 2.0

Will Last Year's Tragedies Play Out As Farce In 2025 For Indian Cricket?

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A Cricket Legend’s Abrupt Exit

R Ashwin’s Sudden Retirement Points To A Bigger Problem In Indian Cricket

Years In The Making?

Bad Management

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Gukesh’s World Title Win Validates Tamil Nadu’s Investment In Chess

Deeply Rooted In History

The Aaron effect

Vishy As Force Multiplier

Government As Facilitator

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India's Sports Federations Need Urgent Reform

So how is the appointment of an "eminent sports personality" to run a sports body working out?

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Dismissive Attitude, Half-Baked Thinking Hurt Team India

Aggressive Cricket

Dig Deep, Bat Big

Home Advantage No More?

Analysis Is Essential

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I, ‘Witness’: Getting Sakshi Malik To Speak Her Truth

To begin at the beginning, Jon, why did you and Sakshi decide to write the book?

That actually cues my next question: One of the standout features of the book is the wealth of detail, and to gather all that must have taken time, effort; it must have involved conversations where you went back over the same ground multiple times. What was the process like?

You said she is not a talkative person, that she is not used to speaking. Co-writing an autobiography involves trust — the subject has to implicitly trust the writer. Was that hard for her to do?

These conversations — did you first prep a timeline of her life and career and walk her through each phase, or were the conversations organic, evolving and going wherever she wanted it to?

What were the parts she found hard to talk about?

It’s surprising that Sakshi, a champion wrestler, found wrestling the hardest thing to talk about…

It worked — my favourite parts of the book were the bits when she goes into technical detail about the intricacies of her sport.