Bajrang Bali

His first hit to the fence, usually just a couple of deliveries after taking guard, signals a hectic activity ahead. Like a bell that clangs on a sleepy railway station to announce the arrival of an express train. The platform enlivens to the arriving locomotive, slumber gives way to alertness, anticipation sets in, and people perk up to hear the blast of a fog horn and the conjoined rumble of hundreds of wheels to follow.

By the time he is done, he usually leaves behind blood, gore and carcass, the remains of a furious hunt by a wild Tiger. The bystanders who just witnessed another gruesome murder of the bowling go back home dizzy headed and awed by the sheer ferocity of this soft-spoken man on the crease. Virender Sehwag is as feral a thing known to Cricket since Sir Vivian Richards. In the three decades that of watching (and understanding a bit of) Cricket, I have not seen a player so unrelentingly aggressive as Virender Sehwag.

His centuries are huge, yet there isn't any evidence of struggle or labor as he builds them. Not one of his big innings can be called an epic effort of clamber. They are not carved with the delicacy of an artisan, not engineered with the precision of a scientist, nor compiled brick by brick like a patient mason. Instead, he shells the poor scoreboard with booming runs coming off the turrets of his battle tank. Runs come at his mercy as the bowlers become almost secondary in the whole transaction of runs. Like an Alpha male Tiger, he takes his share of meat when and how he wishes, and nobody can do anything about it. 

About a decade ago he started off happy to be called a 'Tendulkar clone' but quickly grew out of it and developed an impressive resume of his own over the years. One of only three men to twice reach triple hundreds in Test cricket, rubbing shoulders with certified all-time greats Bradman and Lara. The fastest Triple century of all time…and perhaps the next fastest of all time too ! Three of the four fastest double centuries ever recorded in the history of Test cricket. The most double centuries by any opener (correct...not Gavaskar, not Hutton, not Boycott, not Hayden, not Greenidge, not Bobby Simpson). The most double centuries overall by an Indian.  Possibly the highest batting strike rate of all batsmen who have a balance of more than 5000 runs in Test cricket. 11 successive century scores of 150 or above, something even Bradman did not accomplish. No less than 13 of his 19 Test centuries have gone past the 150 mark, underlining the fact that he runs much deeper inside the enemy lines than one would expect for a purely aggressive player. In perspective, Bradman had 18 150+ scores among his 29 centuries, which is still a marginally less than Sehwag's conversion ratio of 13 in 19 ! No other batsman in the history of Test cricket has scored 64 of every 100 runs via hits to the fence. And only he and Bradman have scored a double century in  single day...on three occasions.

Sehwag plays in an Indian Test team that has had at least four-five world class batsmen other than himself in the roster at any given time. (The legendary "Fabulous-4" of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly; and Gautam Gambhir filling in as the 4th fabulous after Ganguly's departure, not to ignore M S Dhoni low down). Despite being surrounded by such a star studded line up of batsmen, Sehwag's uniqueness is evident in the fact that in 17 of his 19 century innings he has been the top scorer for his team…and on most occasions the top scorer by miles ahead of the next best score in the innings. Only Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir have outscored Sehwag the centurion, once each. 208, 115, 193, 126, 145, 147, 122, 91, 131…..this is how much ahead he was from the next highest scorer in the match, in some of his bigger innings. 

Sehwag is the explosion of a Kolhapuri Lavangi mirchi (a type of a fiery pepper) in the curry…you may have all the fabulous-4 ingredients in the recipe, but the fire in the dish comes from Sehwag.

Most opening batsmen will start off a Test match cautiously. Sehwag, on the contrary, will make even the best of the opening bowlers start their Test match cautiously. There won't be many opening batsmen around who would carry this kind of an aura (with the possible exception of Matthew Hayden of the recent past and Gordon Greenidge of the not so recent past).

In many ways he is very similar to another ballistic batsman from the past by the name of Sir Vivian Richards. Sehwag is as destructive a force as - if not more than - the legendary Vivian Richards. His intimidating strokeplay can make the best of bowlers look like infants in soiled diapers. His relentless aggression can inflict the same sorrow and despair upon the opposing captain as Vivian Richards did.

While the end result of both Sehwag and Richards remains the same - a hopelessly demoralized opposition - there is one subtle difference too between them.

Richards from what I saw and understood, played (toyed with, as some may put it) against bowlers. His desire to dominate and inflict humiliation was focused on the bowlers, and especially the best ones around. It seemed he wanted the most reputed of bowlers to go home crying to their mothers, and to give them nightmares of his smirking face for the rest of their lives.

Sehwag, unlike Richards, seems to direct his fury and power upon the poor ball, rather than upon the bowler. It doesn’t matter who the bowler is. If the ball is there to be hit, Sehwag has to hit it. His body lacks the reflex that would prevent him from doing anything otherwise. His bat lacks the mind game factor that Richards' bat possessed. Bowlers have a mind, the ball doesn’t, so how does one play mind games with the ball? :)  Sehwag's play is innocent in a way. He isn’t a bully, he isn’t like a mercenary set up on a planned destructive mission by someone. His batting is born of a simple and uni-functional mind which knows nothing else but to attack.

It is one of the heady experiences of cricket to watch the calm and detached Sehwag stand in the eye of the hurricane created by his very own rapacious bat, as hapless bowlers and fielders get torn and thrown around in a heap of debris.

Some may point out that despite Sehwag's animal aggression, only 6 of his 19 centuries have really resulted in wins for India. Agreed. But there is a possible explanation for it, which is that Sehwag is too fast to be effective. He blazes blindingly while he is at the crease and accumulates a lot of runs in the process. But his scoring density is so high compared to anyone else's that even though he scores a huge 150, it is still done in just 2 or 3 sessions flat. After his departure, there is still enough time left for the opponents to recover from the shambles he put them into. A Test match is worth 15 sessions. A good team can withstand 2-3 sessions of mayhem from Sehwag, wait for him to depart and then claw back. It is for this same reason that Rahul Dravid, Jaques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Inzamam Ul Haq, Mohammad Yousuf, and such great batsmen of our time have been more successful from a match-result perspective than Sehwag. An innings of a big score coming from them is spread over a much longer duration, which might lessen the scope for their opponents to spring back into the game.

I would say that if 'rampancy' was a profession, Sehwag would be the Warren Buffet of it. After all this is a man who once hit a six to get to a triple century !

Rambling...3 Idiots, Tanjavur and Bradman

If you haven't yet, you should at least once in your life visit the Southern states of India from an architectural perspective even if you do not have an interest in monuments and construction. You will come back with a sense of awe and pride at the engineering-art that our people achieved centuries ago. You will be humbled by what our people from the past managed to get done with barefooted men as resources, just hammers and chisels as tools, and elephants as earth moving equipment. The mega-temples of Rameshwaram, Thanjavur, Mahabalipuram, Kanchipuram, Chidambaram, the Meenakshi Temple, the Ekambareswar Temple, the Konark Sun Temple, Khajuraho temples stand testimony to the exceptional advancement and uniqueness of our culture and thought in those times, in comparison to the rest of the world. The sheer massiveness of these ancient projects will impress you, and at the same time the art, intricacy and detail in it will stun you; more so if you imagine the context, the time period, the (lack) of technology and resources when it was done.

Flash forward into the present day UAE, USA, England, Malaysia, China, or Canada, to the modern day engineering achievements such as the Burj-Khalifa tower, the CN Tower, the Petronas twin towers, (ex)World Trade Center, Hoover Dam, colossal bridges spanning not just rivers but even portions of the sea, etc. Engineering marvels, all. Built with the amalgamation of advanced material technology, research, experience, architectural know-how, global knowledge bases, global resources and of course aided by computers, machinery and robotics. Amazing achievements that testify the advancement of today's world.

Question is, which is the greater achievement ? Is it that of the medieval architect, who, without any scope for simulation and testing, designed and built the magnificent Tanjavur's Brihadishwara temple in stark granite; a piece of colossal but intricate architecture that when built, was reputed to be a staggering 40 times bigger and 5 times taller than any other Temple of its time ? Or, is it that of the architect who designed and created the ultramodern Burj-Khalifa tower, the tallest man-made structure in the world, a paradigm of construction-engineering built with no expenses spared in technology, material  and global resources ? I do not have an answer because in both the examples above the common theme is that they are the highest achievements of the art and science of construction architecture in their own respective time.

They have a method for adjusting gross box office sales for inflation, in order to come up with the current day Box Office value for a movie from the past. Vidhu Vinod Chopra's blockbuster "3 Idiots" grossed Rs 400 Crores (Rs 4 Billion) worldwide with simultaneous release in dozens of countries and thousands of outlets over the world. Ramesh Sippy's mega-hit "Sholay" was released (just) in India 33 years ago, in about 500 outlets. Yet, it's gross collections, adjusted for inflation, are Rs 768 Crore (Rs. 7.68 Billion) in today's parlance. So which is the bigger movie? The real current day highest grosser (3 Idiots), or the one from the past (Sholay) which if adjusted for the current day would gross twice as much as today's biggest ?

I often see and even get into debates whether a great cricket player from the past is greater or better than one from the present. To me, there is really no answer to this in most cases because no matter how much one tries to compare, the 'subjective context' factor takes the comparison into the gray area.

Was Sunil Gavaskar a better opener than Len Hutton ? Was Shoaib Akhtar more aggressive than Wes Hall ? Was Jeff Thomson more fiery than Harold Larwood ? If these debates were presented in a courtroom,  I'm sure that the plaintiff and the defendant, both, would be able to make plausible and weighty arguments for themselves. One may say Gavaskar scored 13 test centuries against a certified best and most fearsome bowling side of his time ("his time" is the important clause), to which Len Hutton's defendant may propose that Len was by miles the best opener of his time who too did better than most  against the best of his time - the likes of Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Alan Davidson, Bill Johnston, Vinoo Mankad, Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine - and that he had done nothing less in stature than this Gavaskar fellow of the 70's. Today's TV-dosed viewer may say that the thunderous Shoaib Akhtar gave away less than 10 runs for every Tendulkar, Waugh, Hayden and Ponting wicket in his entire career ! An oldie brought up on Radio broadcasts may point out that Wes Hall did the same to notable greats from his time like Neil Harvey, Vijay Manjrekar, Colin Cowdrey, Glenn Turner, Peter May, Dennis Amiss. Every player is mirrored by some other from another era in a contextually equalized frame of comparison. 

If only we had an 'inflation-adjustment' formula for cricket that allowed us to pick a Walter Hammond and a Rahul Dravid and pass them through a magic box of equations to find out which one would come out with a higher overall 'box office' rank, just like they do for movies :)

In 2007, Herschelle Gibbs went through 47 bats, in a total of 39 batted innings (14 in Tests, 21 in One-dayers, 4 in T20's). That is more than one bat per appearance at the crease, and nobody even noticed or thought much about it. In the 40's and 50's and 60's it was common for players to change bats only after a thousand or so runs were scored off it, which was about when the bat began to tatter at the edges and crack on the front face and became unusable in general. Modern day demigod Sachin Tendulkar has clocked over 30,000 international runs in 2 formats of cricket. If he were to use a bat just about 1/3rd the thickness and 2/3rd the weight (similar to what, say, Jack Hobbs or Dennis Compton used), would he still have had the punch to score those 30,000 runs, or would he have ended up with just, say, 18,000 ? Who knows. Conversely, if Bradman used the bats of the 2000's with computer contoured fat blades that have a sweet spot about the size of an entire thigh, on today's weather protected 'guaranteed-to-remain-dry' pitches, with helmets and all sorts of other body armor, against bowlers who were allowed only to bowl a maximum of just 1 bouncer every over, and with today's shorter boundaries, would he then have averaged 165 instead of 'just' 99.9 runs per innings ? Who knows. Point is, cricket is contextual Comparisons between players of different era's is a tough task.

Having said all of the above, let me pose a question about towering. About dominance. About being stupendously singular, across all parameters of time and achievement.

If there is an equivalent vintage player for almost every modern one, if there is indeed a counter avatar for each successful player in different era's, (Hall~Akhtar, Thomson~Larwood, Gavaskar~Hutton etc.), do we still have any cricketers who are exceptions to such comparison, who are so unique that they traverse all boundaries of time without an equal ?

I can think of a few, who were, and will probably remain untouchable forever. The most prominent among them is one whom I have never seen, or for that matter neither has even my father. But what this man did 3 generations prior to mine is still above and beyond anything that anyone has done to date.

Don Bradman is by far the most dominant cricketer in the history of Test cricket, in my opinion. Some even claim that this man is the single most dominant player of all time, across all sports…more dominant than Michael Jordan was to Basketball or Pele was to Soccer. Witnesses testified that this man was a freak of nature, his concentration and will were super-human, his desire to trump the bowlers was fanatic. I have not seen him play, I do not know if he was stylish, I do not know if he was a great human being or not. I only see what Bradman left behind on the cricket ground and I can only marvel at it, just like I see what the unknown architect of the magnificent Tanjavur Temple left behind….and as far as my limits of appreciation and understanding of cricket go, what Bradman built in the 30's and 40's with his thin bat still towers above and out of reach of any other cricketer that I have seen or read about before him or since him.

They say Sir Vivian Richards was one such player who always sought to wring the hearts out of the bowlers and squish them under his feet until they beat no more. In terms of ruthlessness (and actually ending up implementing the domination), Richards may well be a Bradman.

The other cricketer, who in my opinion, is unequaled for his feats across Cricket's time span is Muttiah Murulidharan. This is one bowler who is so far above the rest on almost any parameter, in any time context, under any circumstances, that one wonders if he will remain unique forever in the annals of Test cricket bowling. Here's a tidbit. The current-past decade of Test cricket (2000-2010) has been the best 10-year period for Test batsmen since the birth of cricket...conversely, the all-time worst decade for bowlers. Even in this most imbalanced state of equilibrium between bat and ball, Muruli has managed to take 565 Test wickets in just 84 Tests at 20 runs a piece, taking no less than 49 5-fors and 20 10-fors...something that is technically speaking better/bigger than Sir Richard Hadlee's entire career ! There is simply no comparison to how far up this man stands above the rest in his business, take a decade, or a career, or even the entire history of the game. This is exactly reminiscent of the way Bradman stands implausibly taller than the next best, during his time or whenever.

Mr. Cricket

What an unbelievable chase by Mike Hussey to get Australia into the finals of the T20 World Cup!
This guy can hustle like a hungry streetdog.

Scaled 53 runs in the last 16 balls of a semifinal, with Mithchell Johnson as partner...completely unreal stuff

Fluke Nation

There have been three distinct feathers in the hat of Indian cricket, ever since its chronicles began getting recorded starting with its journey 78 years ago as an International cricketing side. Thrice the Indian Cricket team has reached the highest pedestal, and each one of those involves a different type of cricket. Two of these three are blatant flukes

1983: 

The first of India's biggest moments of glory on the cricket field came in the Prudential World Cup of 1983. Kapil Dev's Indian squad succeeded in pulling off a sneaky and cheeky conquest. It was amazement time in India, and amusement elsewhere. Kapil's devils had laid an audacious claim to the World championship denying all odds in the regular round, and exceeding all expectations in the knockout stages. It was a story lit up with moments of individual brilliance as well as instances of true team effort that might make a true fan's eyes go misty. Mohinder Amarnath, Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Kapil Dev starred in the script in which the Indians went into the tournament rated about as the same as Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka and came out winners against all odds. It was as surreal and unlikely as a stereotypical plot of a typical Hindi movie. The team was like the bell-bottomed Bollywood hero of the late 70's who takes 7 bullets in the torso from point blank range, yet throws over 18 henchmen single handedly over the cliff, then rides a horse behind a speeding Beachcraft, clambers aboard the almost taken-off plane to take the villain out and claims his trophy - the darling doe eyed heroine with the elaborate hairdo. Too good to be true, and yet it was right there in front of your eyes. A true case of David v/s Goliath on the world stage of Cricket. A Cinderella story. 13 years later it would repeat with Sri Lanka at its center.

(It is another story that the West Indians toured India right after the 1983 World cup and showed the Indians their rightful place with a vengeful 5-0 mauling). 

2007: 

The second major achievement to go in India's cricketing journals would be the victorious campaign of the inaugural T20 World cup in 2007. T20 was an upcoming revolution in the cricketing context then. It was (still is IMO) a raunchy and grotesquely distorted format of the gentleman's game that was not welcomed by the puritans/conservatives in India and worldwide, including some of the prominent players themselves. India in general had a step-motherly outlook to this new child of cricket, but being the most (financially) powerful cricketing nation, it could not ignore it completely either. In September 2007, the Indian team flew to South Africa almost reluctantly. Like a first world nation that was morally obliged to have a presence in an inconsequential summit of second and third world nations (that it did not care about), on Green issues (that it did not care about either). It must be the least publicized boarding for a world cup of any kind by the Indian team in recent times. However once they set afoot, over a period of 13 days the Indian cricket team shed its inhibitions about the new format of the game and emerged its winners even perhaps to its own surprise. It went the way of a classical 'outsider'. One of the least favored big teams became the eventual champions of the world in cricket's virgin format. Captain Dhoni later validated that low expectations led to high determination among the ranks. How prophetic was he, because in the next T20 World Cup, India went in as the most touted, most favoured nation, only to crash out before anyone could blink an eyelid. The story seems to be repeating itself at the third T20 world cup in 2010 too, as I write this. 

2010: 

The third one came a few months ago when India, for the first time since they started counting, officially claimed the top spot in the Test format of the game. This pinnacle of all decorations has to be the more rigorous, more hard fought, and more applause worthy achievement among the three discussed here. The journey to the previous two glories was just one tournament in length, a few days or a few weeks of toil, climaxed by that one good day of cricket that coincided on the final day of the tournament. The journey to the top of the Test table started more than half a decade ago. Sourav Ganguly taught India to stand up and retaliate. Dhoni took it further by culminating a winning attitude and self belief in his Indians. What transpired under these two captains (with due credit to Anil Kumble too) over a period of the past 6 years is a weighty 14 series wins (against just 5 series losses). India is undefeated in a Test series 22 months now and counting. With Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, (ex-Anil Kumble), Gautam Gambhir and Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the control room, the Indian ship has finally become the flagship of the cricketing Armada. It is flanked rather uncomfortably on both sides by South Africa and Australia, but the momentum with which the Indians are sailing at this period will perhaps keep their ship in the lead for some more time. This, in my opinion has been India's greatest triumph since it began playing cricket.

Three formats, three triumphs. It is my firm notion that two of the three have been indubitable flukes. A fluke, by the dictionary means "an accidental advantage; a stroke of good luck". What would be your choice for the best one among them ?

Duracell Bunny

In case you haven't seen one, the commercials for Duracell batteries use an instantly recognizable icon/mascot called the Energizer Bunny , who is a cool toy rabbit that bangs a drum and runs around incessantly, thus symbolizing continuous energy, constant motion, indefinite operation (coming off of their batteries, of course).

Where am I going with this ? Longevity. Durability. Perpetuation. Thats where. Energizer Bunny debuted in 1989, and is still going and going and going and going.....

Sachin Tendulkar debuted for India in 1989. After 20 years he is still India's best batsman, still one of the premier players in World Cricket, and still going and going and going and going........  


1989....ever thought how far ago that was?

* This was the year of the Tienanmen Square massacre in Beijing.
* This was when George W Bush Senior was the President of the US. Mr Bush has since been succeeded twice by Clinton, twice by Bush Junior and now Obama. 6 American Presidential terms have come and gone but Sachin is still running between wickets just fine.
* This was when Saddam hadn't invaded Iraq even once yet.
* This was when V P Singh was the Prime Minister of India. India has since then seen 7 more Prime Ministers.  Our man is still standing strong despite all the falling PM's around him..
* This was when Pete Sampras had not won a single of his 14 Grand Slam titles yet.
* This was when Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner in South Africa.
* This was when Windows 2.11 was the most advanced OS in the world. We have since then seen 10 new flavors of Microsoft Operating Systems...want to count? Windows 3.X, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7...
* This was when East and West Germany were still separated by the Great Berlin Wall.
* This was when Salman Khan had just delivered his first hit, Aamir Khan was just 1 year old in the industry, Shah Rukh Khan was non existent, and Govinda had been around for 3 years.
* This was when Rani Mukherji and Bipasha Basu were 10 years old. Katrina Kaif was 5.
* This was when Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen were still a full 6 years away from winning their Miss World and Miss Universe pageants respectively.
* This was when the World Wide Web (www) was not yet available.
* This was when a DVD disc was still 6 years away from being invented.
* This was when Hindustan Motors' Ambassador Mark-IV, Maruti Suzuki 800 and Premier Padmini were the three top selling cars in India…and perhaps the only three available too.
* This was when I filled petrol in my scooter at the rate of Rs 14.50 per litre.
* This was when Kashmir was  still a peaceful state.
* This was when the TV serial Mahabharat had just ended.
* This was when the Babri Masjid was still intact and standing.
* This was when Harshad Mehta was still alive.
* This was when India's population was just 830 Million, 31% less than today's. 368 Million Indians have been born since Sachin took guard for the first time…..that is the entire population of today's USA and Canada put together.

Summer's here!

90 days of Summer....15 matches to fit in....Cricket is in the air.

My season starts on the coming weekend. Time to oil the bats (do they still do it nowadays?) and get ready to stand under the sun for 7 hours every weekend. If there is a Cricketing Viagra, I am a customer :)

Is it fun ? Yes...especially for someone who is to come out of retirement after 8 years ! The suspense is not if I can keep my inhibitions aside and play among people half my age, it is not the apprehension of whether I'd be able to perform...the suspense is in finding out for myself how much do I really like to play the game. 

My friend Praful asserts Pu La Deshpande's quote very often..."Cricket is more of a talker's and watcher's game than a player's one". 

We'll find out I'm still a player or just a talker after a sabbatical of 8 years :)

Would my artillery be enough you think ? From a statistical perspective I can use 0.666 of a different bat for every match in the season :)