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Time of India
14-06-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Pataudi was crucial for Indian cricket. Not in favour of trophy being renamed: Tim Wigmore
Tim Wigmore's 'Test Cricket: A History' — the journey of red-ball cricket since its inception in 1877 — has become a much talked-about book on the cricket circuit in recent times. And with the thrilling WTC final between Australia and South Africa at Lord's being followed by Shubman Gill's new-look team taking on England in a five-Test series, Dwaipayan Datta caught up with Wigmore, discussing the future of the purest format of the game, India's chances and a lot more. Excerpts: There is a lot of talk about T20 killing Test cricket. But after the format became popular, the number of long-winding draws have come down in Tests. What's your opinion — are T20s a boon or bane for Tests? I think Test cricket is more exciting than it's ever been. We're seeing higher run-rates, more games getting over in four days and very few draws nowadays. Scoops, ramps, and reverse ramps are all now quite standard shots in Test cricket. Defensive batting probably has got a little bit worse, but I think almost everything else has got better. Even on the bowling front, you can see Jasprit Bumrah taking wickets with slower balls, yorkers etc, which are T20 tools. So, yes, probably something has been lost, but a lot more has been gained which is actually adding to the spectacle. What is your take on the proposed two-tier system in Test cricket to make it more competitive? Won't it make Test cricket an exclusive club, which is essentially against the essence of sport? I think, firstly, we are forgetting that last year there were quite a few Test upsets — the biggest being West Indies beating Australia in Brisbane. Then Bangladesh beat Pakistan, we saw Sri Lanka winning in England and then New Zealand beating India 3-0. Having said that, I don't mind the two-tier idea itself, but the worry is that this specific proposal seemed to be about getting the big three (India, England and Australia) playing each other even more, which I do not think Test cricket needs. Rather, I do think four-day Tests are worth exploring now with the World Test Championship series having three games each per series — three points for a win, one point for a draw. Of course, when Australia, England and India play each other, they can just have extra matches outside the Test Championship structure. There has been a recent report saying the WTC Final will lose a lot of money because India aren't there. What is your take on India becoming the economic superpower in cricket and calling all the shots? If you look at the history of cricket, England and Australia had far too much power historically and they didn't use that power well. So, what you don't want to see is a bad system of England and Australia having too much power replaced by a system of India having too much power. You need to have a balance. Clearly, the Indian market is at the heart of cricket, but we also need to diversify the sport. Recently, the Pataudi Trophy for the India- England Test series was renamed the Tendulkar -Anderson Trophy. How do you see the development and given the fact that a chapter of your book is devoted to Pataudi, how important do you think he was in the context of Indian cricket? I am not particularly in favour of the name change and I think he was crucial for Indian cricket. The fact that he was quite a good Test match player playing with one eye is in itself a remarkable story. His decision to play with the famous spin quartet, the importance that he gave to fielding and making India a very difficult team to beat at home were all significant. There's a kind of irony that he was deposed as captain before India got their twin successes in West Indies and England in 1971 — the ultimate triumph for a team that he developed. Do you see shades of Pataudi in Virat Kohli's captaincy? The way he brought in the four-spinner theory to Indian cricket, Kohli showed the courage to play with four pacers which in a way changed the course of Indian Test cricket. It's a very interesting question — when Pataudi chose four spinners for the first time (Edgbaston 1967), he knew that wasn't the best option, but he did that because those were the best bowlers he had. But he was always clear that the most important thing was to get more fast bowlers and develop them — so his strategy was more pragmatic than ideological. By the time of Kohli, actually there's been this revolution in fast bowling in India, which has a lot of factors behind it, including the Board's initiative to make pitches for domestic cricket conducive for pacemen. Who do you think has been the most influential figure in Indian cricket? Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Kohli...? No, if you ask me to pick one, I'll go for Kapil Dev. You zoom all the way back and here is Kapil Dev, all of 15-16, in an Indian camp. And he's just been given some chapati for lunch. And he says, 'You know, that's not enough to bowl fast', and the Board official just laughs at him saying, 'We don't have any fast bowlers in India'. That was the kind of Indian fast-bowling culture then. Within 18 months of his Test debut in 1978, Kapil became the first Indian fast bowler to get 100 Test wickets. He made batters across the world acknowledge that India can produce fast bowlers and more importantly, he changed the character of Indian cricket. Bazball has been a gamechanger for English cricket and it's going to be the topic of discussion through the summer with India touring. Can it stand up to the skill of the Indian bowling attack led by Bumrah? Bazball is a real phenomenon; it has helped England go from No. 8 to No. 3-4 in the world, which is quite an improvement, but it isn't a revolutionary record like the Australians of early 2000s had. I think England have slightly refined their method in the last 18 months or so. During this India series, it will be interesting to see how England batters deal with wrist-spin. I think Kuldeep Yadav can be a very big factor for India. I hope Bumrah will play at least four Tests, but my prediction is 3-2 in favour of England. And finally, if you have to make an all-time best Test XI, from 1877 to now, what would it look like? Well, this isn't exactly going by records, it's what I feel is the best. I will open with Jack Hobbs and Sunil Gavaskar, followed by Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Garry Sobers, Imran Khan, Adam Gilchrist, Wasim Akram , Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Muralitharan. In your book, you have written about how in the early 20th century, the ICC (then Imperial Cricket Council), didn't include the US and Argentina. Was that a chance missed and how do you see the recent efforts of promoting cricket in the US? At that point, if you weren't part of the British Empire, you were not eligible to be part of ICC. Cricket was very strong in the Philadelphia area and they had some of the best cricketers of that period. So that was a real chance to grow that was missed and we see that quite often in Test cricket because administrators are more focused on excluding teams — something that has happened with Kenya in the recent there's a new push to promote cricket in America, but they are not going to play Test cricket, that's pretty clear. However, there is quite a big market there and cricket can get quite a lot of money from the US without it being one of the top four or five sports there. As a Test historian, how painful is it to see the decline of the long-format game in the West Indies? It is very sad. We obviously think of their great team from the 1970s onwards, but they were probably the best team in the '60s as well. Even from 1980-95, they were actually very strong. There are a lot of factors behind the decline — money being the most important. It's a high-cost, low-income region, it costs so much to travel between the different islands. And they're not able to generate a huge amount from local sponsors. It is important to share the money from broadcasting rights with West Indies cricket. Cricket has still not died there, but it's getting there.
The Hindu
12-06-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Anatomy of an IPL fan: cricketers, experts and fans examine why the game matters to them
In the beginning of May, the Indian Premier League (IPL) juggernaut, with more than two-thirds of the fixtures completed, came to an abrupt halt. Stadium lights dimmed. Commentary boxes fell silent. With military tensions mounting between India and Pakistan, the fate of the 18th edition of the franchise-based cricket league hung in the balance. Then a few days later, just as suddenly, the switch was flipped back on. Players flew out, others flew in. Some teams rose. Others faltered. But the pulse of the IPL? Steady. Loud. Unrelenting. Last week, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) clinched their first-ever IPL title. With tears in his eyes, Virat Kohli lifted the elusive trophy, in a culmination of years of relentless pursuit, near misses, and unyielding passion. With that, an electrifying season came to an emotional close. According to Ormax Media's 2024 sports report, cricket commands 612 million viewers in India. Of these, 86 million are urban IPL franchise loyalists. Google Trends show IPL-related searches topping charts for eight consecutive weeks, barring the brief pause mid-May. In the final week alone, 'PBKS vs RCB' clocked over 10 million searches; 'MI vs GT' had a search volume of 5 million. This isn't just consumption, it's commitment. This is what it means when a game becomes something more than just a game. The gulf between domestic cricket and the IPL isn't as wide as it seems. The skill, the level of competition, even the pressure, it's all there. What changes is the spotlight. 'There's not much of a difference in the game itself,' says Abhishek Desai of the Gujarat Cricket Association. 'It's all about the exposure — playing alongside the world's best. And the IPL is louder, flashier, and that makes everything feel bigger.' In India, where even silence can be political, the noise around cricket matters. And the IPL, more than any other format of cricket, understands how to dial it up. Test vs. T20 Tim Wigmore's Test Cricket: A History offers a sweeping chronicle of a format long seen as cricket's ultimate test — of skill, temperament, and endurance. But while Wigmore looks back at the grandeur and grit of the red-ball format, the sport has surged ahead. If Test cricket is its pinnacle, then T20, especially in its most commercial, glamorous avatar as the Indian Premier League, has redefined its base. T20 has reshaped cricket's priorities, drawing new audiences with its three-hour bursts of action. The IPL, as an extension of this format, has amplified that shift, injecting staggering money, youthful energy, and mass entertainment into the game's bloodstream. Wigmore portrays Test cricket as both archaic and alluring. He raises a pressing question: can this demanding, five-day format coexist with the electric thrill of T20, especially in its glossy franchise form? The IPL hasn't killed Test cricket, it has, in fact, made its survival more urgent. In challenging Test cricket to prove its worth, the IPL has become an unlikely mirror: a rival that paradoxically keeps the older format alive. Today's aggressive, fast-paced batsmen may light up the IPL, but it's Test cricket that teaches them the true grammar of the game. The IPL may be where they shine, but Test cricket is where they are forged, say experts. Sport as story 'The IPL is a McDonaldisation of sport, which is a concept frequently spoken of by sports sociologists,' says Aman Misra, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Tennessee. He studies sports communication and the sociology of sports, particularly public memory and media perception of disability. 'It's tightly packaged, highly produced, and modelled on western templates. To make it work, they have to start creating rivalries, they have to manufacture narratives around wins and losses.' There is a conscious effort to build parasocial relationships, thinks Misra. 'The best way to understand it is that even if the league is 'constructed', the emotions it sparks are real. Sports reflects society,' he says. This emotional mirroring touches fans and players alike. Gujarat Titans' spinner Sai Kishore understands it. 'It's not bizarre to me. It means the team is theirs, too. They feel the wins, and they feel the losses,' he says. For comedian Danish Sait, who plays RCB's irreverent mascot Mr. Nags, defeat feels personal. 'You travel with the team, spend time with the players. When they lose, it hurts. But the business side still rolls on, so you keep the performance on. Even my valet tells me, 'Sir, please come back with the trophy'. I don't even play! But that's the magic of sport. It makes you one of them,' he says. 'When I got the opportunity 11 years ago to be the bridge between fans and cricketers, the goal was to humanise the players — to bring them closer. Back then, cricket was all about hero worship, the constant David vs. Goliath narrative. But no one was showing them as real people, just like us, who love the game and have a sense of humour. I really enjoyed speaking the language fans speak and creating something they could connect with.'Danish SaitComedian and RCB mascot RCB remained among the league's great enigmas — hugely popular despite never winning the title until this season. The 2024 Ormax report pegs it at 13.3 million fans, just behind five-time winners Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. 'Everybody loves an underdog,' says screenwriter Navjot Gulati. 'RCB's arc is full of drama, chaos, and heartbreak,' he adds. For years, they came agonisingly close — losing the final in 2009, 2011 and 2016, and pulling off a dramatic comeback in 2024 only to stumble in the playoffs. One of the most consistent teams, RCB made the playoffs five times in the last six seasons. It's a cruel irony. A team that boasted T20 swashbucklers such as Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers somehow never managed to translate their talent into silverware. Having won nearly every other cricketing honour, Kohli bore the weight of this one for years. Which is why, Gulati says, 'It won't just be their core fans who'll celebrate. I think a lot of people will celebrate just because there's a story there.' For Mumbai Indians fan Dhruv Shah, co-founder of Funcho Entertainment, a comedy content channel, the appeal lies in sport as an outlet. 'Most of us have aggressive, competitive sides, but life gets in the way. The IPL lets us win by proxy. Cricket allows us to win.' Fandom and identity The emotion isn't superficial. It cuts deep. Therapist Meghna Singhal, a Ph.D in clinical psychology, maps fan grief to the DABDA model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. 'Fans genuinely grieve. At first, it's 'We didn't deserve to lose'; then, 'The umpiring was biased'; followed by 'If only we bowled that guy'; then comes a week of sadness; and finally, 'It was still a great season'.' Cricket is a life marker for actor Nakuul Mehta. His fandom is a dream deferred. 'Like most children in India, I once dreamt of playing for the country. But at some point, you realise your ambition outweighs your talent. So you live that dream through your heroes. When they win, you soar. When they lose, it stings, it feels personal.' He credits the IPL management with building a fandom few saw coming. 'When my team loses, it hurts because I lose the right to defend them. But when they win, it feels worth it, like all those years of standing by them finally paid off.' Singhal adds that team loyalty anchors personal identity. 'Sports fandom taps into a deeply human need to belong. When we support a Mumbai or Gujarat, we're anchoring ourselves to a shared identity,' she says. Psychology calls this the social identity theory, according to Singhal. 'Our sense of self is shaped by the group we belong to.' Meanwhile, veteran sports editor Suresh Menon believes fans are outsourcing emotion. 'You look at Kohli and think, 'Thank God I don't have to do all that.' You've nominated him to win on your behalf.' He calls it coquette psychology. 'Sport is fundamentally meaningless. So we impose meaning, glory, sacrifice, heartbreak. It's got a story. It's got memories.' 'When India beat England for the first time — whether at home in 1952 or away in 1971 — it felt like getting our own back on the colonisers. Cricket can mean many things: a way to assert nationhood, to express identity. During the Depression, Don Bradman became a towering figure in Australian cricket, someone the nation could rally around, just like we did with Tendulkar. He didn't just play for us; he stood in for us. That kind of identification with a sporting hero runs deep. And then there's the thrill, the unpredictability, the drama, the not knowing how it will end. That's what pulls fans in, even those who don't follow every match.'Suresh MenonEditor and columnist Media arms of franchises are happy to add to the storybuilding. 'International cricket doesn't need to build characters,' Menon notes. 'But IPL franchises have private players. So you get social media teams building emotional hooks. Personalities are amped up. Narratives are fed.' Misra agrees. 'Sport has always been likened to war to a certain extent. Journalists love conflicts, rivalries, storylines. We're not telling Indian audiences what to think, we're telling them how to think. We are creating meaning through media logic. So even if you're not playing, you start to carry this conflict emotionally, as though it's yours.' That is the aim with which comedian Sait began donning the role of RCB's mascot. 'When I got the opportunity 11 years ago to be the bridge between fans and cricketers, the goal was to humanise the players. Back then, cricket was all about hero worship. I really enjoyed speaking the language fans speak and creating something they could connect with,' he says. Winning by proxy That effort to humanise players, to bridge the gap between icon and individual, is echoed by players, too. Says Sai Kishore of the Gujarat Titans, 'People in Gujarat feel deeply connected to the Titans. Most of us players aren't even from here. But fans get that local flavour, just like Chennaiites do with Dhoni. That's love.' Kishore now calls Ahmedabad his second home. 'The connection is real. The IPL is emotionally intense. When we lose, it's not just about 'moving on to the next one'. We feel it.' In the end, only one team gets to lift the trophy. But millions more will feel like they lifted it, too. Because when the IPL rolls into town, the country doesn't just watch. It plays along, and for a little while, all they are going to be saying is, 'Ee Saala Cup Namdu' (this year, the trophy is ours). The writer is a culture, lifestyle and entertainment journalist. This article appeared in print in the June 8, 2025 edition of The Hindu-Magazine. It was written earlier and updated on June 4 after Royal Challengers Bengaluru won the IPL trophy the previous evening. The article could not include details of a tragic stampede that took place in Bengaluru on the evening of June 4 during the victory celebration.
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Captain Virat Kohli, the 'Tiger' that burnt bright
Virat Kohli Virat Kohli 's decision to rely on out-and-out pace was a leaf out of the young Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi's decision as captain in the early 1960s to bank on a magnificent battery of spinners "Let's give them 60 overs of hell!" Years down the line, when historians will revisit Indian Test cricket in the 21st century, Virat Kohli's war cry at the Lord's in 2021 will ring in their ears. That London summer afternoon defined the Kohli-way — a new era of self-belief when India refused to throw in the towel even when the chips were down. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW! The team, after a miraculous ninth-wicket partnership between Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami on the fifth morning, could have veered towards the safer confines of an honourable draw. But the captain didn't believe in settling for a draw, even while playing overseas. The 151-run win on that day was the highest point for Kohli the captain — arguably a more remarkable figure than Kohli the batter, at least in Test cricket. Who's that IPL player? That day, the basis of that confidence to push for a win at Lord's lay in the belief that Kohli had in his pace quartet of Bumrah, Shami, Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma. It was an attack that was meticulously curated by Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri, with the help of bowling coach Bharath Arun. In many ways, Kohli's decision to rely on out-and-out pace was a leaf out of a decision that the young Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi took as captain in the 1960s, to rely on a magnificent battery of spinners to churn out results. Poll Which aspect of Kohli's captaincy do you find most impressive? His ability to unify the team. His focus on fitness. His aggressive mindset. In Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and BS Chandrasekhar, Pataudi had a supremely gifted trio. S Venkataraghavan, who made his debut in 1965, was made a regular part of the spin attack as India played with four spinners for the first time at Edgbaston in 1967. Playing in tandem, the quartet restricted England to 298 and 203, only to be let down by the batters. But they laid a marker that was to define Indian cricket for the next decade, aptly summed up by Kapil Dev in Tim Wigmore's Test Cricket: A History: "Almost every Indian bowler in that era wanted to be a spinner." Virat Kohli retires from Test cricket after 14 years Half a century later, in 2018, Kohli took the call to play four pacers in Perth. Much like Pataudi's Edgbaston experience, India lost that Test despite the skipper scoring a magnificent century, but India had well and truly taken a step in a different direction. As Prasanna and Bedi have insisted that "playing under Tiger was no strain", the likes of Ishant Sharma and Shami flourished under Kohli. But the captain's biggest contribution will be the 'Kohinoor' he gifted to Indian Test cricket — Bumrah, the pace parallel of the maverick leggie Chandrasekhar. The slinger was superb in white-ball cricket, but no one believed he could last the rigours of Test cricket till Kohli and Shastri decided otherwise. The duo nurtured him and introduced him to Test cricket in South Africa in 2018. It would prove the birth of the 'Bradman of pace bowling' — termed by Adam Gilchrist — as India took their first step towards world domination in red-ball cricket, culminating in two back-to-back series wins in Australia. Explained: Why Rohit Sharma retired from Test cricket Unifying a team for a common cause Pataudi, as Indian captain, had brought in a unification code to a largely disjointed team. "Our side was dominated by players from the West and South and it was difficult for a Punjabi like myself to be accepted. But it was Tiger who gave us the feeling of Indian-ness," Bedi says in Wigmore's book. Fifty years down the line, Kohli, too, tried to unify the team through a common code — fitness. He learnt early that to excel in 21st century cricket, fitness had to be of a different level. He brought changes to his lifestyle and diet to himself become the lean, mean machine. He also tried to instill the same in his team, to follow a similar mantra. It meant that the envelope was pushed. If the pace bowlers, on the final session of the final day, were ready to bowl 140 km/hr, a lot to do with the culture of fitness that was brought in by Kohli. Bombay Sport Exchange Ep 5: Shane Watson on IPL, India-Australia rivalry | Part 1 A two-hour talkathon Kohli didn't mind the odd exchange of words with the opposition on the field, but there's one instance when his anger was channelized towards his own team. According to a member of the management, Kohli was livid with the way India capitulated in the first Test in Cape Town, chasing 208. "Vernon Philander destroyed us with his medium-pace in the second innings, Kohli couldn't take it anymore. We never heard him speaking as harshly as he did to the team members — for about two hours on that day. He made it clear that such a performance was just not acceptable. By the time we got into the team bus, we knew something had to be changed," a team member told TOI. Kohli walked the talk in the next Test in Centurion with a century, albeit in a losing cause. But India won the third Test on a minefield in Johannesburg. The first step towards world domination had been taken. Get IPL 2025 match schedules , squads , points table , and live scores for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Check the latest IPL Orange Cap and Purple Cap standings. Catch Lovlina's story unfold on Game On. Watch here!
Time of India
13-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Captain Kohli, the ‘Tiger' that burnt bright
STRIPES... (Above) India captain Pataudi (fourth from right) leads his team for a practice session ahead of the Lord's Test against England in 1967. Photo credit: Getty Images "Let's give them 60 overs of hell!' Years down the line, when historians will revisit Indian Test cricket in the 21st century, Virat Kohli 's war cry at the Lord's in 2021 will ring in their ears. That London summer afternoon defined the Kohli-way — a new era of self-belief when India refused to throw in the towel even when the chips were down. The team, after a miraculous ninth-wicket partnership between Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami on the fifth morning, could have veered towards the safer confines of an honourable draw. Kohli, Ishant and teammates celebrate an England wicket during the 2021 Lord's Test. (Photo credit: Getty Images) But the captain didn't believe in settling for a draw, even while playing overseas. The 151-run win on that day was the highest point for Kohli the captain — arguably a more remarkable figure than Kohli the batter, at least in Test cricket. That day, the basis of that confidence to push for a win at Lord's lay in the belief that Kohli had in his pace quartet of Bumrah, Shami, Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma . It was an attack that was meticulously curated by Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri, with the help of bowling coach Bharath Arun. In many ways, Kohli's decision to rely on out-and-out pace was a leaf out of a decision that the young Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi took as captain in the 1960s, to rely on a magnificent battery of spinners to churn out results. In Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and BS Chandrasekhar, Pataudi had a supremely gifted trio. S Venkataraghavan, who made his debut in 1965, was made a regular part of the spin attack as India played with four spinners for the first time at Edgbaston in 1967. Playing in tandem, the quartet restricted England to 298 and 203, only to be let down by the batters. But they laid a marker that was to define Indian cricket for the next decade, aptly summed up by Kapil Dev in Tim Wigmore's Test Cricket: A History: 'Almost every Indian bowler in that era wanted to be a spinner.' Half a century later, in 2018, Kohli took the call to play four pacers in Perth. Much like Pataudi's Edgbaston experience, India lost that Test despite the skipper scoring a magnificent century, but India had well and truly taken a step in a different direction. As Prasanna and Bedi have insisted that 'playing under Tiger was no strain', the likes of Ishant Sharma and Shami flourished under Kohli. But the captain's biggest contribution will be the 'Kohinoor' he gifted to Indian Test cricket — Bumrah, the pace parallel of the maverick leggie Chandrasekhar. The slinger was superb in white-ball cricket, but no one believed he could last the rigours of Test cricket till Kohli and Shastri decided otherwise. The duo nurtured him and introduced him to Test cricket in South Africa in 2018. It would prove the birth of the 'Bradman of pace bowling' — termed by Adam Gilchrist — as India took their first step towards world domination in red-ball cricket, culminating in two back-to-back series wins in Australia. Unifying a team for a common cause Pataudi, as Indian captain, had brought in a unification code to a largely disjointed team. 'Our side was dominated by players from the West and South and it was difficult for a Punjabi like myself to be accepted. But it was Tiger who gave us the feeling of Indian-ness,' Bedi says in Wigmore's book. Fifty years down the line, Kohli, too, tried to unify the team through a common code — fitness. He learnt early that to excel in 21st century cricket, fitness had to be of a different level. He brought changes to his lifestyle and diet to himself become the lean, mean machine. He also tried to instill the same in his team, to follow a similar mantra. It meant that the envelope was pushed. If the pace bowlers, on the final session of the final day, were ready to bowl 140 km/hr, a lot to do with the culture of fitness that was brought in by Kohli. A two-hour talkathon Kohli didn't mind the odd exchange of words with the opposition on the field, but there's one instance when his anger was channelized towards his own team. According to a member of the management, Kohli was livid with the way India capitulated in the first Test in Cape Town, chasing 208. 'Vernon Philander destroyed us with his medium-pace in the second innings, Kohli couldn't take it anymore. We never heard him speaking as harshly as he did to the team members — for about two hours on that day. He made it clear that such a performance was just not acceptable. By the time we got into the team bus, we knew something had to be changed,' a team member told TOI. Kohli walked the talk in the next Test in Centurion with a century, albeit in a losing cause. But India won the third Test on a minefield in Johannesburg. The first step towards world domination had been taken.
Telegraph
02-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Cricket authorities in England oblivious to horrors they are condoning
Reading my Telegraph Sport colleague Tim Wigmore's new and authoritative book Test Cricket: A History was an ideal psychological preparation for the new Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. He stresses that there have always been unsavoury aspects to what he several times calls the 'brutal' game of Test cricket. They were there right from the late Victorian period: cheating, gamesmanship, financial greed, racism, classism and, where some of the poor professionals were concerned, a philosophy of the devil taking the hindmost. A few Test cricketers became, and remain, legendary, and reaped the profits of that even in eras before the modern obsession with money: Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Bradman, Compton, Sobers and Gavaskar. Many others wound down their lives in obscurity, relentless toil and an overdose of memories, and some ends were tragic. These themes are all too visible in the 2025 Wisden, especially when one reads memories of poor Graham Thorpe; though the accusations of sharp practice these days are more focused on the people who run the game rather than those who play it. Wigmore refers candidly to the main commercial developments in world cricket that have pushed the once-dominant form of the game increasingly to the margins, but avoids extremes of optimism or pessimism. Lawrence Booth, Wisden 's editor, does not equivocate, and as such reminds us that someone trying to write a history of Test cricket in a quarter-century's time may merely have to write a sad concluding chapter to Wigmore's book. Booth refers to the recent translation of Jay Shah from running the BCCI – India's national governing body – to running the ICC as demonstrating that 'cricket gave up any claim to being properly administered' when it happened. Some of us have been highlighting cricket's moral decline for years, and it may be too late to reverse it now. Modern cricket, thanks to the dominant influence of T20 and its ruthless projection and promotion by commercial forces in India, now works relentlessly against the interests of Test cricket. This could not matter less to those to whom cricket is plainly and simply a means of generating wealth. And those people, as Booth points out, now run world cricket, and run it to serve their interests. And for the moment, that means responding to an insatiable demand for T20, whatever the side effects. Wigmore tells the story of a game that for most of its history was run by white men, many of them public school and Oxbridge-educated, and members of MCC. He sensibly avoids the absurdities of what twisted academics call 'decolonising' the subject of Test cricket. In the 1870s the societies in which first-class cricket – the natural breeding-ground for Test cricketers – had been developed were England and Australia, their cultural affinities taking them in lock-step. It was natural that they should lead the development of the game; and natural that another territory with a large community of people of British heritage, what became the Union of South Africa, should become the third partner in international contests. Along the way there was evidence of racism; indigenous Australians, however good they were, were not picked for their country; Lord Harris may or may not have been responsible for stopping Ranjitsinhji from playing for England sooner than he did; no black man captained the West Indies until Frank Worrell in 1960, more than 30 years after they joined the Test circuit; and of course much of world cricket, including MCC, tolerated the Apartheid policies of South Africa until the break finally came in the 1970s. Now, the boot is on the other foot: the old imperial masters are out, and those from the jewel in the crown of the former empire now dictate terms. Jay Shah's father, Booth notes, is 'the second most powerful politician in India', which helps explain much about the motive forces behind cricket not just in that country, but, now, around a world where India runs the game. Booth derides the ICC as having become merely 'an events company', with a 'craven' attitude to international fixtures arranged entirely to suit India. He calls the World Test Championship 'a shambles masquerading as a showpiece'. Its next final is to be played at Lord's in June, between South Africa and Australia, and the shambles element concerns the unequal paths the two sides have taken to Lord's. Australia have played tough opponents in long series; South Africa easier ones in shorter series, while many of its players have pursued the numerous T20 franchises around the world that are India's gift to the modern game. Wisden takes a remarkably charitable view of another franchise that, incomprehensibly, businessmen seem hungry to invest in: The Hundred. Has anyone outside Britain shown the slightest interest in buying a Hundred franchise for their country? No, because they already have T20, and dozens of them. Happily, it is nobody's problem but the England and Wales Cricket Board's. They are welcome to it. Booth is right to turn a fierce spotlight on Shah. He could redistribute money to poorer countries struggling to stay in Test cricket, but without a coherent international marketing plan, and the revival of first-class cricket in those countries, it will not work. But what will especially make it fail is those controlling international cricket allowing T20 to dominate schedules and have first call on the pool of top players. As some of us have written until we are blue in the face, this will never be resolved until T20 is entirely separated from first-class cricket, and Test cricket. If Shah does not grasp that problem there will be no need for any more histories of Test cricket, and the next few Wisdens will have plenty more to object to. Meanwhile, the main cricket authorities in this country seem oblivious to the horrors they are condoning. They will one day learn, the hard way, that in a business – as opposed to a game – the complicity of stupid people seldom brings rewards.
