Sourav Ganguly, more than anybody, has embodied the new India © Getty Images

So this is it. Forget Anil Kumble’s exit. Forget that this could conceivably be Rahul’s final Test. To know that Nagpur is currently staging Sourav Ganguly’s five-day farewell is to know that an era is well and truly over.

He may not have captured imaginations like Sachin, nor won as many games as Anil, nor enchanted as many purists as VVS, not erected as many walls as Rahul, but Sourav, more than anybody, has embodied the new India.

Skill, commitment and ambition are all very well and good, but what a team needs to take that quantum leap from promise to fulfilment is someone who detests giving an inch, much less losing. If that person happens to be able to toss a coin with reasonable efficiency and give a lively press conference, so much the better.

Continue reading "All hail Lord Snooty"

	The “winner-takes-all” concept may make for riveting entertainment, but it is not one that bears even a passing resemblance to fairness © Getty Images

The question was posed with all the innocence of youth. “Looking forward to tomorrow night, are you Rob?” wondered one of my students yesterday. What followed was the often contradictory sound of a middle-aged boy grappling with snobbery, conscience and the dilemmas thrown up by a world changing rather too rapidly.

“No” was the short, unhesitating answer. The prospect of tuning in to this evening’s $20m showdown in Antigua, of watching a match whose individual feats will only ever appear in one edition of Wisden, one in which the slightest human frailty can only prove costly in the most literal sense, is not one that fills me with any pleasurable anticipation.

Elaboration, though, was called for. Journalism students demand no less. No, I emphasised, there is not a single morsel of me that begrudges the players their potential wealth. Given that cricketers’ earnings have long lagged behind those of footballers, baseballers and basketballers, let alone golfers and tennis players, I’m both proud and chuffed that the biggest prize in the history of team sport should be destined for practitioners of flannelled folly.

Continue reading "A one-sided coin"

	Kevin Pietersen said he will not tolerate any excessively jubilant celebrations should England beat the Stanford Superstars in next Saturday’s $20m winner-takes-all finale © Sportcel/ Pierre Karadia

In 1735, an advert proclaimed that a London XI, selected by the Prince of Wales, would meet one from Kent, chosen by the Earl of Middlesex, for a prize of £1000. In 1751, Eton Past & Present challenged the Gentlemen of England for the even princelier sum of £1500. We have almost come full circle.

The Stanford Series has attracted scorn ever since Sir Allen helicoptered to Lord’s carrying a briefcase stuffed with more dollars than Elvis Presley’s estate earns in, ooh, a month. With the credit crunch biting and recession dawning, that scorn has been augmented by distaste, hence Kevin Pietersen’s insistence that he will not tolerate any excessively jubilant celebrations should England beat the Stanford Superstars in next Saturday’s $20m winner-takes-all finale. Oh, that John Terry were so sensitive towards his fellow man every time he haggles over whether he should be paid £135,000 a week or £140,000.

Then there is the sheer fear Twenty20 tournaments of this ilk incite: for the future of Test cricket, yes, but also for the unity of the game. The ECB and the BCCI may at least be on speaking terms but to describe their relationship as warm would be akin to characterising Paris Hilton as a demure young lady. Sure, the Antigua showpiece is the ECB’s way of compensating KP and company for their misfortune in playing for a country whose season clashes with the IPL, but it is also a broadside aimed at what it perceives as the BCCI’s temerity in using its vast revenues to take over the game. Accepting that the boot has swapped feet never comes easy.

Continue reading "Play it again, Allen"

	The priorities seem plain: revamp the Future Tours Progamme, fix a four- to six-week window in the calendar for the IPL and another for a credible annual World Test Championship © Getty Images

So it has come to this. Just as the United Nations stamped its feet and shouted itself hoarse but was unable to prevent the United States and Britain from invading Iraq, so the ICC, for all the harrumphing and tub-thumping of David Morgan and Haroon Lorgat, is proving entirely impotent in preventing the BCCI from jackbooting the primacy of international cricket for six. To scream or to cry: that is the question. Laughter certainly doesn’t come into it.

The trouble with an Englishman portraying Lalit Modi as the devil incarnate, or lamenting even the teeniest aspect of this Indian-led revolution, is that it leaves him wide open to charges of racism, or jealousy, or both. As someone who has spent a goodly chunk of his journalistic career lamenting the Anglo-Antipodean duopoly, befriending south Asians, bemoaning the patronising treatment of Sri Lanka, advocating the ICC relocate from Lord’s to Kolkata and expressing undying gratitude for the way India’s obsession with all things flannelled and foolish has kept the planet’s most anachronistic ballgame alive and kicking, I reject the first charge with every bone, fibre and cell in my body. But am I envious of the fact that cricket means so much more on the subcontinent than it does here? You bet.

That the game is at a crossroads cannot be doubted. Anyone who cares for its long-term future can only observe the Acronym Era with fear and trepidation. Of course it is about time the old world tasted what it is like to be dictated to by the new. Of course the desire to avenge decades of disrespect, however carefully concealed and repeatedly denied, is completely understandable. But with power comes responsibility, and the BCCI seems so utterly, so wilfully, oblivious to this.

Continue reading "In search of wisdom"