One-days have seen new captains take over in Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa. New coaches are being considered. Associate nations don?t know whether they will make it to the 2015 World Cup. There is IPL, lopping many a headache at many a cricket board. There are the corruption scandals. So, drama is the other name of the game.
Sri Lanka?s adrift
In the face of a protracted civil war, a tsunami and other national misfortunes, cricket has often been called the panacea that heals all in Sri Lanka. So, for some, the fact that their team has made it to two World Cup finals in a row is uplifting. But the country was playing host this time around. It had built two new stadiums and extensively renovated a third. Losing the 2011 Cup hurt in a deeper way. Suddenly, said critics, all the cricketing castles appeared to have been built on sand. Then the captain, vice-captain and selectors resigned in concert, apparently taking everyone by surprise (given that the team?s overall performance was not less than laudable).
Selectors vs Murali & Malinga
Those who claim not to be surprised say that the resignations only make manifest the turmoil that grips Sri Lankan cricket?s inner sanctum today, with the concerned personnel being forced to defend themselves against an unsympathetic board, and even ministers. One of these, the sports minister, dubbed cricket the country?s third most corrupt institution last year. Media has even suggested that bankruptcy is looming. Indeed, the World Cup work has left Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) in debt to a tune of around $25 million (which it hopes to settle by way of hosting fees from ICC). This is the number Muttiah Muralitharan quoted when SLC asked its players to leave IPL early to prepare for their England tour: ?We have $25 million of debt after the World Cup. You don?t have to antagonise India because only when India comes (to Sri Lanka) we make money and survive.?
Lasith Malinga got out of the England tour by announcing his retirement from test cricket. That IPL would cause friction between players and their boards has been predicted since its birth. Still, it is interesting that both of Sri Lanka?s last two captains Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene have voiced support for Malinga while the new chairman of selectors Duleep Mendis finds it ?a bit awkward? that Malinga says he is injured but continues to play cricket instead of entering a rehabilitation programme.
South Africa?s in shambles
Proteas fans think that theirs was the only team good enough to beat India to the 2011 World Cup! Even those who don?t think precisely this would agree that this is a team that has made the title Chokers all their own in a special way. When one starts looking for a reason, boardroom politics emerges as a tempting explanation?questionable insofar as India is a case study for how such politics can?t keep cricketing success at bay, whether in the business or sports sense. Captain Graeme Smith has seen coaches come and go. Like Sangakkara, the 2011 Cup has seen Smith departing as captain. Like Sri Lanka, South Africa is still looking for a permanent head coach.
IPL hangover
In 2009, Lalit Modi moved IPL to South Africa when the Mumbai attacks made it difficult to host the tournament in India. Cricket South Africa (CSA) is now enmeshed in a scandal over the event that had been declared a smash hit at the time. CSA president Mtutuzeli Nyoka has been dismissed from the CSA board for challenging how $10 million had ?disappeared? from CSA funds. CSA claims the funds had not been included in its income statement as, in this instance, CSA was only acting as a conduit for BCCI. Nyoka charges that CSA chief executive Gerald Majola had collected an inappropriate ?bonus?as well. This is an ongoing saga, and a reminder of how IPL is impacting the cricket business far and wide. Today, BCCI acts like heaping all the blame on Modi will suffice as an anti-corruption stratagem. But this is too glib and deceptive. There is, as Gideon Haigh has called the phenomenon, a disturbing inattention among cricket?s governing classes to the matter of corruption within their own ranks. Haigh reminds us that even in the case of match-fixing among Pakistani cricketers, it wasn?t ICC but a tabloid newspaper that brought the charges to a head. Even while CSA is moving too slowly on rooting out administrative corruption that appears endemic to cricket today, David Williams points to another, peculiarly South African challenge: ?Cricket remains a sport of minorities and there remains an uneasy gap between the coverage (and sponsorship) it gets at the highest level and its acceptance in the country. This is not something that the hiring of a new coach can fix.?
West Indies is askew too
Chris Gayle has done to the West Indies Cricket board (WICB) what Malinga has done to SLC, effectively saying he will play in IPL instead of playing for the country. Except, there is some confusion about who ditched whom first. Gayle says he has been working on a rehabilitative programme without any support from WICB?from paying for his accommodation to his doctor and taxi bills. Because he wasn?t invited to the Barbados training camp ahead of the Pakistan series and because he didn?t get any encouraging signs from WICB, he was ?forced? to decide to come to India and play in IPL. WICB says it was because Gayle indicated he was recovering from injury that he was not selected for the series.
In Viv & Lloyd?s footsteps
West Indies also has also acquired a new captain after the World Cup. The media has leaked old WICB minutes to suggest that Darren Sammy has been lined up for captaincy since 2009, when Gayle was advised that his board would not ?tolerate any disruption of the team by any player?. Plus, Vaneisa Baksh points out, cricketers don?t venerate Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards in the West Indies in quite the same way as they do in India and elsewhere: ?West Indian boys look away when those praise songs are sung. Why? Those stories have been administered as hard slaps, reminders of how pathetic they stand in comparison, and so the heroes invoke shame, not pride.?
In Kirsten?s footsteps
New Zealand came out of the World Cup smelling like roses, making for an enterprising semi-final finish. It?s got a new director of cricket now, John Buchanan. This was the man who spent eight years helming Australia, taking it to three World Cup titles. The Sri Lankans also considered Buchanan, but found that they couldn?t afford him. Just goes to show how incestuous the cricket coaching universe looks today. But nobody exemplifies this as much as Gary Kirsten.
South Africans want him back home. They are also unhappy about how homeboy Allan Donald has given his services as bowling coach to lead New Zealand to World Cup glory, knocking South Africa out of the World Cup quarter finals. But there is plenty of competition for Kirsten out there. The Australians want him too. And they are willing to settle for him coaching one of their Big Bash League (BBL) teams. If national cricket boards find IPL disturbing their agendas, imagine how much harder their life will be if BBL also takes off. And the ?boldness? of IPL is precisely what BBL is emulating.