Athers and Kapil are only partly right

On the occasion of Sachin Tendulkar completing 20 years in international cricket, Kapil Dev opined in 'The Asian Age' that Tendulkar had under-achieved.

It depends on how you look at it. For someone who started off playing so aggressively and making bowlers scared of bowling to him, Tendulkar most definitely doesn't strike fear in bowlers any more. But that's true for pretty much every player who has been around for any length of time. I'm sure that towards the late 80s and early 90s, bowlers were queueing up to bowl to Viv. Murali hasn't been too good over the past year or so and there are enough questions asked about his place in the side. Kapil himself was about as quick as Mohinder Amarnath (with Jimmy at his fastest) in the last 2-3 years of his career. Lara's magic only happened in spurts towards the end. Steve Waugh fared little better.

Besides, all players change their styles to suit the team's needs, their own physical & mental state of being, etc. Until around the mid-90s, Tendulkar played in a very aggressive manner a lot of the time. But he could do that because the likes of Azhar, Sidhu and Manjrekar were around. From after the mid-90s, Tendulkar became the mainstay, and the batting revolved around him. From around the start of this decade to around 2004/2005, Dravid took over the mantle as the 'go-to' guy. Over the last 3 years, it has been Sehwag. Even though these changes happened, Tendulkar's wicket would undoubtedly have been the #1 wicket as far as the opposition was concerned.

So he could never ever have gone back to thrashing the bowling around every game, like he used to. In just the same manner as Kapil himself transformed from being a quick (let's say 140 kph types) bowler to being a fast-medium (130-135 kph) swing bowler because he realized that he would never have a long career if he'd continued as a quick bowler. Did that mean batsmen feared him less? Perhaps yes. But given he had now added a dimension of swing to his ability, it made him even better and batsmen obviously respected his ability to "make the ball talk".

Mike Atherton, writing in 'The Times', felt that calling Tendulkar the best ever was not right, because he had the benefit of so much body armour (helmets, better pads, chest guards, etc.)

That's fair enough. Anyone who tries to compare across generations is obviously being stupid. At most, you can compare folks with peers and players who played within a 10 year time period, with sufficient overlap in careers. Only Dennis Lilee would be able to get away with claiming that Mitchell Johnson was a oiag player. Either Lillee's memory is poor, or Aussie define a generation as 5 years.

But the point Athers misses is that those who played in a different era did so when there were no (or very few) ODIs or T20 games, no IPL or Champions League, no talk of burnout, test series had at least 3 warm-up games, etc.

It's interesting to think of how Hobbs, Bradman, Hammond, Sobers, Hutton, Bill O'Reilly, Harvey, Hanif, Bedi, Miller, Sutcliffe, etc. would have coped with all the travel, playing with 'niggling' injuries, spending so much time away from home, playing back-to-back tests/ODIs, playing back-to-back series in the span of a couple of months, etc.

Labels: atherton, burnout, greats, kapil, tendulkar

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:21 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Double standards, Athers!

Mike Atherton argued for a one match ban for bowlers who bowl beamers. In a post on AOL blogs, I pointed out that England's bowlers and fielders were guilty of a similar offense - hurling the ball back to the keeper with every chance of it making contact with unsuspecting batsmen. And they've been doing this for 2-3 years now!

The reason I see double standards in Atherton's call for a ban is that he was very charitable to Brett Lee in 2005 when Lee bowled a beamer to Trescothick in the NatWest Series final. He wrote then:

The furore that has followed his rather too frequent use of the beamer is easier to justify. The beamer is the hardest ball for a batsman to pick up precisely because it pitches (or doesn't pitch) so far from where the batsman expects. If it is bowled on target, as Lee's invariably is, then it can be lethal. Lee was visibly sheepish after his latest beamer at Marcus Trescothick during the NatWest Series final. After taking Andrew Strauss's wicket shortly afterwards he remained head bowed rather than celebrating in his usual fist-pumping fashion.

His visible embarrassment and immediate fulsome apology convinces me that Lee's beamers are unintentional, although other international bowlers doubt that such a quality performer can be so far out of kilter. The other reason for giving Lee the benefit of the doubt is that he is such a demonstrably decent fellow. His popularity among team-mates, current and former, is legend. Michael Slater, one of the few Australian pundits prepared to speak frankly about former team-mates, says "he's just a champion".

So Brett Lee's popularity lets him get away with bowling a beamer ever now and then! If Lee kept having a 'bowed head', offering a 'fulsome apology' and looked 'visibly embarassed' every time he bowled a beamer, he'd never be able to turn his head, for he'd have a royal pain in the neck!

Update: Just realized that Mukul Kesavan has written on similar lines on Cricinfo!

Labels: atherton, australia, beamer, england, lee

Thus spake Jagadish @ 2:39 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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One leg-spinner on another

Murali is the 'leading cricketer in the world', while Shane Warne is on the cover of the 2007 edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.

The five cricketers of 2006 are Mahela Jayawardene, Mark Ramprakash, Mohammed Yousuf, Monty Panesar and Paul Collingwood.

Michael Atherton can always boast that while Shane Warne didn't get Dilip Vengsarkar out in a test match, while he did. Athers, whose writing is always as enjoyable to read as his batting was, praises Warne's respect for the game. The only jarring part in his piece is when he talks about batsmen who've played Warne well.

No right-hander, in my view, played him better than Kevin Pietersen, who had such exquisite balance that he was able to change direction — with the drift — while still advancing down the pitch.

Pietersen obviously did bat well in 2005 and 2006, but there's this other gent by the name VVS Laxman did so across four series, reducing Warne to a bit part most of the time. It was only in the 2004 series that Warne got Laxman out cheaply and often. Then again, its Athers' article. Maybe he didn't see Laxman bat against Warne.

Wisden 2006 had a section on cricket blogs, and this blog found a place on page 1570!

Labels: almanack, atherton, collingwood, jayawardene, mohammad yousuf, murali, panesar, ramprakash, warne, wisden

Thus spake Jagadish @ 7:58 pm | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
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