Published: May 02, 2011, 11:36 AM (IST)
Edited: Sep 04, 2014, 10:55 PM (IST)
By Akash Kaware
I have never been to Australia. But if I were to plan a vacation there sometime, the timing of the visit would be a no-brainer. It would have to coincide with at least one Test match of the Australian cricket season, preferably the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne. As a cricket fan, not much can beat the experience of being a part of that 90,000-strong throng on December 26 at the modern-day coliseum that is the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Similarly, a trip to South Africa or New Zealand would have to be around the same time. And the best time to visit the Ole Blighty for a cricket fan would doubtlessly be from May to August.
Now think of an Englishman, or an Australian or a South African who wants to experience something similar at the Eden Gardens. For starters he wouldn’t know when the next Test match will be played at the ground. Forget about fans from other countries, even I have no idea. The BCCI’s haphazard approach to scheduling India’s matches, particularly Test matches, ensures that no such thing as a cricket season exists in India.
Countries in the Southern Hemisphere and England have always had a season. That they continue to have them is probably down to only one factor, the weather. In this age where greed outweighs common sense by a comfortable margin, if the weather in these countries had allowed, the respective boards would probably ground their teams into dust by playing all year too. Whether by design or by accident, a particular time of the year is synonymous with cricket in these countries.
For time immemorial now, the Test match schedules in Australia and England have been roughly the same. Both of them always have either two short series every summer, or one long series if it happens to be an Ashes summer. Australia usually welcomes the visiting teams at the Gabba, followed by Perth and Adelaide. Boxing Day always means a Test at Melbourne and the New Year brings a Test in Sydney, with Hobart being the sixth venue if needed. Similarly, teams visiting England are usually greeted by Lord’s unusual slope or pacy Edgbaston, followed by Old Trafford, Headingley with the season usually culminating at the Oval. Over the years, these matches and the grounds have become fixtures in the international calendar and have acquired an aura of their own.
Contrast that with India. In 2010, with India having recently ascended to No. 1 in the Test rankings, a previously unscheduled two-Test series against South Africa was squeezed in around February. Similarly what was meant to be a seven-match one-day series against Australia in October 2010 was turned into a three-match one to accommodate two Test matches. While two Test matches are better than no Test matches, seeing a two-Test series between competent sides is like reading through a gripping novel, only to find out that the last chapter is missing!
The less said about venues, the better. The BCCI needs to keep state associations happy and therefore there is a rotation policy in place for Tests, which means that at last count, there were as many as ten grounds in India that host Test matches. Worse still, the random scheduling ensures that no one knows for sure when the next Test will be played at a particular ground.
How good would it be to know that every year a particular time will mean a Test match being played at the Wankhede Stadium, followed by Eden Gardens, Chepauk, the Chinnaswamy Stadium and the Kotla? I say these venues, because cities like Nagpur, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Ahmedabad and Mohali, excellent grounds though they have, have time and again greeted Test matches with deafening silences. The BCCI can keep them happy by allotting them one-dayers and IPL games for which they are packed to the rafters. It would be a tragedy, for example, if Sachin Tendulkar was to score his 100th international century in a Test match in India at say, Ahmedabad, being watched by 100 policemen and their sniffer dogs, as was the case in Mohali the day he went past Brian Lara’s record for most runs in Test cricket.
It would be wonderful to have a semblance of tradition associated with Indian cricket. Two three-match Test series (or one five-match Test series) followed by a short one-day series, followed by the IPL, doesn’t it have a nice ring to it? One might argue that that would mean scheduling conflicts with other nations in an already cramped international calendar. But then, isn’t the BCCI used to arm-twisting boards around the world? For once, they would have the opportunity to use their financial clout for the right reasons!
Of course, I realize that this is probably nothing more than wishful thinking of a hopeless romantic. Right now, the only fixture in the Indian cricket calendar is the IPL, and it seems the Indian ‘season’ is destined to be identified with it!
(Akash Kaware is an Indian IT professional, who would’ve been a successful international cricketer if it hadn’t been for an annoying tendency to run towards square-leg while facing tennis, rubber or leather cricket balls hurled at anything at little more than genuine medium-pace! Watching Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid convinced him that breaking into the Indian team was not going to happen anytime soon and hence he settled to become an engineer and MBA, who occasionally wrote about cricket. A few months ago, sensing his uselessness and constant use of cricket websites at work, his company banished him to Canada. His hopes of playing international cricket have, thus, been renewed!)
