A reluctant prince of the eighth ring of Hell

Some of the best pieces of writing have involved a narrator looking at the play of fate from an unconventional vantage point, and in recent times, anyone becomes such a narrator simply by becoming a coach of the Indian men's cricket team. In my opinion, the task alone is not exceptionally hard. In fact, just as Feynman once remarked that the best teacher is one who would explain concepts in physics to the first man he meets on the streets, the best coach - and therefore one who has surmounted the hardest times - is one who can make world-class players out of the first eleven men spotted on the roads.

Neither Duncan Fletcher nor Gary Kirsten find immediate qualification on that regard. They may have been good coaches, but neither of them joined the team when it was struggling with anything. Sure, Tendulkar may have been in poor form; sure, Harbhajan may not have been bowling on the right areas; sure, Nehra might be suffering too many injuries - in all these times, the team as a whole was never in danger.



So what is being expected of Fletcher? A maintenance of form is surely first on the list: no team would want to slip all that dramatically from occupying one of the top two spots of most ranking lists. More importantly, as is now evident with the team's tour of West Indies underway, the coach will also be expected to take charge of the fifteen young guns: crudely speaking, it doesn't look so much like a transition as a gladiatorial program, a survival-of-the-fittest arena that carbs out the best fit to a retiring veteran.

Fletcher will have to assuage the worries of the hard-workers, Fletcher will have to moderate the stupefactions of the smarter ones with his wisdom, Fletcher will have to suffer the novice stressed under both expectations and aspirations, and Fletcher will have to secure the cricketing future of a blood-lusting nation. The only manner in which he qualifies to differ from his predecessors is not because the expectations of him are monstrous - that is a familiar story - but because he now stands squarely between a group that has played good cricket and is now playing under almost no pressure and a group that has played for a much smaller duration and is now playing under quite a bit of pressure. Fletcher is the person the first frustrated finger will point at whensoever there is a failure to please.

Furthermore, it doesn't help that Fletcher has made a name for himself in the international arena as a man who specializes in revitalizing teams on the decline to teams that are decidedly formidable: England's reputation as a puny Test opponent was reversed almost as soon as he took charge in 1999, and despite a poor ODI showing in the eight years that followed, a inspectorial review of Fletcher's performance became necessary only in late 2007. In light of his latest appointment, all of those credentials become rarefied because his achievements to date have been accrued in less-charged and less-politically-embroiled environments, where his manoeuvrability has been unimpeded, where his long-term credentials found the sort of public understanding to overwhelm a temporary defect.

In India, all those things are beyond luxuries: they are impossibilities. Imagine being the head of an organization whose success finds you in good standing with the weakest section of the population - the audience - while failures find you in poor standing with the strongest section of the population - the infamous Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) - and now imagine the amount of political cushioning one might require to sustain such torture.

Essentially, there remains nothing to be said on any note that stands to be constructive: conflicts are essential in the gauging of compatibility, and even though the stated bigger picture will not deviate much from its truism in the games to come, a timid disciplinarian such as Fletcher has to find that uncommon clearing where the BCCI, the National XI and the Indian fans find common ground, where he can retreat to to effectively separate himself from the hoi polloi of criticism continuously flecking the team he will be fighting to build.

A reluctant prince of the eighth ring of Hell

Some of the best pieces of writing have involved a narrator looking at the play of fate from an unconventional vantage point, and in recent times, anyone becomes such a narrator simply by becoming a coach of the Indian men's cricket team. In my opinion, the task alone is not exceptionally hard. In fact, just as Feynman once remarked that the best teacher is one who would explain concepts in physics to the first man he meets on the streets, the best coach - and therefore one who has surmounted the hardest times - is one who can make world-class players out of the first eleven men spotted on the roads.

Neither Duncan Fletcher nor Gary Kirsten find immediate qualification on that regard. They may have been good coaches, but neither of them joined the team when it was struggling with anything. Sure, Tendulkar may have been in poor form; sure, Harbhajan may not have been bowling on the right areas; sure, Nehra might be suffering too many injuries - in all these times, the team as a whole was never in danger.



So what is being expected of Fletcher? A maintenance of form is surely first on the list: no team would want to slip all that dramatically from occupying one of the top two spots of most ranking lists. More importantly, as is now evident with the team's tour of West Indies underway, the coach will also be expected to take charge of the fifteen young guns: crudely speaking, it doesn't look so much like a transition as a gladiatorial program, a survival-of-the-fittest arena that carbs out the best fit to a retiring veteran.

Fletcher will have to assuage the worries of the hard-workers, Fletcher will have to moderate the stupefactions of the smarter ones with his wisdom, Fletcher will have to suffer the novice stressed under both expectations and aspirations, and Fletcher will have to secure the cricketing future of a blood-lusting nation. The only manner in which he qualifies to differ from his predecessors is not because the expectations of him are monstrous - that is a familiar story - but because he now stands squarely between a group that has played good cricket and is now playing under almost no pressure and a group that has played for a much smaller duration and is now playing under quite a bit of pressure. Fletcher is the person the first frustrated finger will point at whensoever there is a failure to please.

Furthermore, it doesn't help that Fletcher has made a name for himself in the international arena as a man who specializes in revitalizing teams on the decline to teams that are decidedly formidable: England's reputation as a puny Test opponent was reversed almost as soon as he took charge in 1999, and despite a poor ODI showing in the eight years that followed, a inspectorial review of Fletcher's performance became necessary only in late 2007. In light of his latest appointment, all of those credentials become rarefied because his achievements to date have been accrued in less-charged and less-politically-embroiled environments, where his manoeuvrability has been unimpeded, where his long-term credentials found the sort of public understanding to overwhelm a temporary defect.

In India, all those things are beyond luxuries: they are impossibilities. Imagine being the head of an organization whose success finds you in good standing with the weakest section of the population - the audience - while failures find you in poor standing with the strongest section of the population - the infamous Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) - and now imagine the amount of political cushioning one might require to sustain such torture.

Essentially, there remains nothing to be said on any note that stands to be constructive: conflicts are essential in the gauging of compatibility, and even though the stated bigger picture will not deviate much from its truism in the games to come, a timid disciplinarian such as Fletcher has to find that uncommon clearing where the BCCI, the National XI and the Indian fans find common ground, where he can retreat to to effectively separate himself from the hoi polloi of criticism continuously flecking the team he will be fighting to build.

The metaphysics of cricket

Watching cricket is such joy. It's a strange sort of team-play that the game necessitates, first in pairs by batsmen who score the runs and then as a unit of 11 men who attempt to defend their score by reinforcing the assaults of a series of bowlers in the form of a fielding unit. Unlike a game of football—whose example I invoke simply because it is the world's most watched sport—a game of cricket presents a theoretical number of infinite opportunities for an underdog to turn a losing game into a thumping victory. The gambit of procedures and regulations that sustain the adequation of each of the contending teams is necessitated by such numbers of chances, which are in turn actuated by how the game is, across any format, multi-faceted.

*

There have been many accusations directed toward the governing council (ICC) for letting what was once called a "gentleman's game" evolve to include sledging and 'not walking' as only issues of ambiguous morality and for not enforcing sterner measures against them. However, I believe that any civility that the game was envisioned to hold was intended only to address the social conventional requisites of the people who played the game centuries ago and that the inclusion of any moral dimensions into a system whose purposes are physical development and entertainment is, on the face of it, meaningless.

*

The world's most-watched sport lasts for roughly 90 minutes each time it is played between any two teams, has 11 players per team, and is very simple to understand given how it is nowhere close to being as macroscopically multidimensional as cricket is, although an emphasis on individual skills and talent have often made it an entertaining experience. The constant engagement of a whole team with the other team in its entirety, together with simplistic framework within which the game in its modern form functions, presents fewer opportunities for the cost of a mistake to be redeemed quickly or, for that matter, frequently. An important corollary of this argument is that, during a game of cricket, victory or defeat can be pinned on one man or a particular phase of the game, whereas in football, the same is not true: by way of providing for constant (or, at least, almost constant) engagement, the actions of each player depend on the actions of a few players at all points of time (except, of course, during a penalty shoot-out).

*

What do cricket and heavy metal music have in common? They are each a modality of group activity, one physical and one aesthetic, whose quality of performance has improved greatly since industrialization, and is even still dependent on industrial standards and how frequently they are not met. While the same can be said of football, it must be noted that, in the case of cricket, the improvement has been drastic and has also allowed cricketers to focus on the game instead of concerning themselves with issues of safety—concerns that have since been addressed against a threat of sanctions by said standards.

*

Did the Englishman really think he had infused civility into a sport simply by reducing physical contact with other players, requiring the wearing of full-sleeved clothing, and having stationary umpires arbiter disputes? If so, he will surely regret that he provided no other occupation for the mouth.

The metaphysics of cricket

Watching cricket is such joy. It's a strange sort of team-play that the game necessitates, first in pairs by batsmen who score the runs and then as a unit of 11 men who attempt to defend their score by reinforcing the assaults of a series of bowlers in the form of a fielding unit. Unlike a game of football—whose example I invoke simply because it is the world's most watched sport—a game of cricket presents a theoretical number of infinite opportunities for an underdog to turn a losing game into a thumping victory. The gambit of procedures and regulations that sustain the adequation of each of the contending teams is necessitated by such numbers of chances, which are in turn actuated by how the game is, across any format, multi-faceted.

*

There have been many accusations directed toward the governing council (ICC) for letting what was once called a "gentleman's game" evolve to include sledging and 'not walking' as only issues of ambiguous morality and for not enforcing sterner measures against them. However, I believe that any civility that the game was envisioned to hold was intended only to address the social conventional requisites of the people who played the game centuries ago and that the inclusion of any moral dimensions into a system whose purposes are physical development and entertainment is, on the face of it, meaningless.

*

The world's most-watched sport lasts for roughly 90 minutes each time it is played between any two teams, has 11 players per team, and is very simple to understand given how it is nowhere close to being as macroscopically multidimensional as cricket is, although an emphasis on individual skills and talent have often made it an entertaining experience. The constant engagement of a whole team with the other team in its entirety, together with simplistic framework within which the game in its modern form functions, presents fewer opportunities for the cost of a mistake to be redeemed quickly or, for that matter, frequently. An important corollary of this argument is that, during a game of cricket, victory or defeat can be pinned on one man or a particular phase of the game, whereas in football, the same is not true: by way of providing for constant (or, at least, almost constant) engagement, the actions of each player depend on the actions of a few players at all points of time (except, of course, during a penalty shoot-out).

*

What do cricket and heavy metal music have in common? They are each a modality of group activity, one physical and one aesthetic, whose quality of performance has improved greatly since industrialization, and is even still dependent on industrial standards and how frequently they are not met. While the same can be said of football, it must be noted that, in the case of cricket, the improvement has been drastic and has also allowed cricketers to focus on the game instead of concerning themselves with issues of safety—concerns that have since been addressed against a threat of sanctions by said standards.

*

Did the Englishman really think he had infused civility into a sport simply by reducing physical contact with other players, requiring the wearing of full-sleeved clothing, and having stationary umpires arbiter disputes? If so, he will surely regret that he provided no other occupation for the mouth.