Cricket 2.0
Page 31
While there is little reason to believe that doping is anything like as systematic as in sports like cycling, the fear is that the lack of cases uncovered, as was true of match-fixing until the late 1990s, says less about how clean the sport really is than about the lack of attention paid to doping.
‘I’d put my house on there being substantially more cricketers using drugs than you’d think from those figures,’ said Waddington. ‘The pressures are all in one direction, which is greater pressure for players to use drugs.
‘There is not a single sport in which the number of violations is an adequate indication of the number of players using drugs. In every single sport the drug-testing programme is really quite ineffective. The one thing you can be absolutely certain of is that those six violations will be a small proportion of the total number of players using performance-enhancing drugs.’
Indeed, the comparative neglect of doping, compared to match-fixing, reflects an underlying point: cheating to win seems far more forgivable than cheating to lose. One irony is that, as the economics of the game have been transformed, incentives to throw matches at the very top levels have been reduced because it is much harder to buy a player out. Yet if the explosion of money in cricket may have helped mitigate one form of corruption, it has also incentivised another.
TWELVE
WHY CSK WIN AND WHY RCB LOSE
‘Just because you are owned by a big businessman or a film star they don’t know cricket. You don’t teach them how to run a business. Cricket should be run by cricketing professionals’
Former RCB bowler Murali Kartik
You have £8.5 million to build a T20 team. You really shouldn’t end up with Corey Anderson bowling your death overs. But at Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2018 IPL, that is exactly what happened: not just once, but in three different matches.
RCB had only signed Anderson as a replacement player for the injured Nathan Coulter-Nile, who was expected to be their primary death bowler. When Coulter-Nile was ruled out weeks before the season, RCB’s squad was already loaded with powerful overseas batsmen. But rather than replace Coulter-Nile with another bowler, RCB plumped for Anderson instead. ‘Corey plays a bold game and has incredible potential,’ explained RCB’s head coach Daniel Vettori. The statement had corporate fingerprints all over it: that season Bangalore’s official hashtag was #PlayBold.
Anderson had played 100 T20 matches but he was a batting all-rounder who had only ever delivered 26 overs in the last phase of the innings. He had an eye-watering economy rate of 10.26 runs per over when doing so.
A month later the sagacity of RCB’s decision was about to be tested. Anderson had already bowled three overs in previous matches at the death that season and haemorrhaged 41 runs. But with Chennai Super Kings requiring 71 runs off 30 balls to chase down RCB’s imposing score of 205 at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Anderson stood at the top of his run-up once again.
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RCB’s captain Virat Kohli turned to Anderson at the death, despite his poor record, because his team was conspicuously lacking in alternatives. Umesh Yadav was RCB’s attack leader but he was a Powerplay specialist. The core of RCB’s attack was made up of spinners Yuzvendra Chahal, Pawan Negi and Washington Sundar, who all typically operated in the Powerplay or through the middle. That left just Anderson and the inexperienced Indian Mohammad Siraj to bowl with the match in the balance.
Earlier in the evening Umesh, Chahal and Negi had reduced CSK to 74 for 4 after nine overs to put RCB on top. Bangalore’s problem was that the fourth wicket brought Chennai’s captain, and one of the greatest T20 chasers, Mahendra Singh Dhoni to the crease.
Dhoni had a penchant for taking chases deep, choosing his target carefully and capitalising clinically. So when RCB’s best bowler Chahal returned for his final over, the 13th of the innings, Dhoni was content to play him cautiously and take no risks – settling for six runs from the over despite the asking rate nudging above 14. CSK had never scored that fast to win a match but Dhoni knew RCB’s weakness and was coiled to exploit it.
With seven overs remaining, the last threat was posed by left-arm spinner Negi. Turning the ball away from the bat, Negi represented a challenge for both Dhoni and his right-handed partner Ambati Rayudu. Against Negi, unlike against Chahal, Dhoni was prepared to take a risk. Dhoni knew if he could attack Negi’s third over he could hit him out of the attack, leaving RCB’s death over options exposed and Kohli with nowhere to turn.
A calculated attack, which included consecutive sixes from Dhoni down the ground, took 19 from Negi’s third over – meaning that Kohli would be loath to risk bowling him again. Dhoni had navigated his way through the middle overs. Just Siraj and Anderson stood in his way with five overs remaining.
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Facing Anderson was facile for a batsman of Dhoni’s quality, especially at the death. When he entered the attack, with five overs left to bowl, his first over was plundered for 16 runs; Anderson’s second was bludgeoned for 15. The left-arm angle from over the wicket delivered the ball right into Dhoni’s hitting arc, where his rapid hand speed and astonishing eye combined stunningly.
At the other end Siraj was exposed too, conceding ten from the 17th over and 14 from the 19th. In that penultimate over he was so determined to keep the ball away from Dhoni’s arc he delivered three consecutive wides in what became a nine-ball over.
Dhoni’s assault had reduced the equation, but with six balls remaining CSK still required 16. Kohli didn’t want to risk Washington’s off spin into the right-handed Dhoni or Negi’s left-arm spin after the earlier onslaught. Despite conceding 31 from his first two overs Anderson returned for his third consecutive over in an attempt to close out the match. It took CSK four balls to end it, Dhoni sealing a remarkable win with a seventh thunderous six. By the end of the season, Anderson had bowled 8.4 overs – and conceded 115 runs.
‘Coulter-Nile got injured and they replaced him with Corey Anderson,’ reflected Rahul Dravid a legendary Indian captain who played for three seasons for RCB between 2008 and 2010. ‘Corey Anderson bowling at the death . . . that’s not going to win you many matches.’
CSK’s heist propelled them to the top of the IPL table; defeat saw RCB rooted in the bottom half, from which they would not return. The result embodied the different traits of the two teams.
Chennai were the IPL’s most successful side – that season they would seal a record-equalling third IPL crown and in 2019 continued their perfect record of reaching the play-offs in every season. They were renowned for pulling off comeback victories like the win at the Chinnaswamy.
For RCB, the defeat was an all too familiar experience. After their fearsome batting order posting 205, their bowling was ‘just not acceptable’, as Kohli lamented after the defeat. Batting might and bowling weakness were RCB’s leitmotif: despite signing a coterie of the world’s most destructive batsmen, they had never lifted the IPL trophy.
The IPL, with its salary cap and resetting auction process, was designed to produce competitive balance. Yet after 12 seasons CSK had won 61% of their matches; RCB had won just 45%.
Their contrasting fortunes were a window into the strategic currents that shaped the T20 format.
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‘The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights,’ Muhammad Ali once said of boxing. And so it was in the IPL: in many ways the league was not won or lost on the field of play but in the air-conditioned function rooms of glitzy hotels where the annual player auction would be held.
The divergent fortunes of CSK and RCB started at the very first auction in 2008. Unbeknown at the time were how the rules on player retention would evolve, which allowed teams to maintain the core of their squad across a number of seasons. This placed a disproportionate influence on the first auctions, in which franchises formed the nucleus of their team which they then tweaked over the coming years. In contrast, franchises who misjudged their
strategy in early auctions were left scrabbling around for the remaining quality players, and forced to take more risks.
Dravid believed that Chennai’s owners gave them an advantage in the early years. ‘CSK’s owners India Cements have had a culture of cricket and cricket teams for 30 to 35 years. They’ve run club teams, they have a company team and they have always had people in the system,’ he explained.
‘When they got into the IPL, Chennai probably had an advantage over a lot of other franchises because they [India Cements] were already in the business of running cricket teams. CSK was just the most high-profile team that they ran. So in a sense they’ve always had people on the ground and their scouting system was probably better right at the start than any other team and I think that helped.’
The sagacity of India Cements contrasted with RCB’s owners. The United Breweries Group, headed by the multi-millionaire businessman Vijay Mallya, had no prior cricket experience. Despite Mallya’s naivety, he commanded great authority over RCB’s team and its selections. ‘Mallya used to sit in the meetings and had a veto on what could be done,’ explained Murali Kartik who played for four IPL teams, including RCB.
‘In the IPL the owners believe that they know cricket,’ said Kartik. ‘It doesn’t happen that way. It has to be left to the professionals. Just because you are owned by a big businessman or a film star they don’t know cricket. You don’t teach them how to run a business. Cricket should be run by cricketing professionals.
‘The CSK team is handled by professionals. By that I mean when it comes to the marketing and logistical side of things there are different sets of people who don’t stick their toes into the cricket.’ It was upon these contrasting foundations that both teams were built.
Arguably the most significant auction signing in IPL history was Chennai’s acquisition of Dhoni in 2008. Just months earlier Dhoni had led India to the inaugural T20 World Cup. He was the perfect cricketer for the T20 age: an explosive batsman, sharp wicketkeeper and very astute captain. Chennai paid £750,000 for Dhoni, making the 26-year-old the most expensive player in the first auction.
Alongside Dhoni, Chennai formed a strong Indian core, recognising the importance of local players who knew the conditions and whose availability would go unchallenged by clashes with international cricket or intrusive foreign boards. In the first auction CSK signed the dynamic batsman Suresh Raina and an upcoming off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, both of whom would have notable careers for India. CSK also targeted less-heralded players who played their state cricket in Chennai: the fast bowler Lakshmipathy Balaji and the batsman Subramaniam Badrinath were the two most prominent examples. In 2012, CSK completed the nucleus of their team when they signed the left-arm spinning all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, another Indian international. The Indian quintet of Raina, Dhoni, Ashwin, Badrinath and Jadeja would all play more than 100 matches for CSK by the end of the 2019 IPL.
‘Right from the word go CSK focused on having the best possible Indian players,’ observed the Australian batsman Mike Hussey, who played for Chennai in three stints between 2008 and 2015 before returning as a coach in 2018. ‘Obviously you might have the odd standout overseas player here or there but generally speaking over the course of a season the overseas players cancel each other out but the teams that are consistently good are the teams that have a really strong Indian contingent in their squads. And we’ve been quite lucky since the inception of the IPL in that we’ve had a really good core of top-quality Indian players.’
Targeting the best Indian players really amounted to shrewd economic logic: focusing on where the supply of elite talent was scarcest. ‘It’s a case of market resources,’ explained Dravid. ‘There a lot of foreign players available for four slots. But there are a limited number of quality Indian players available, and the fact that CSK have been able to get some of the best guys has meant that they have always had that core.’
Chennai supplemented this Indian core with overseas players in roles harder to fill with Indian players. In 2008 the powerful opening batsmen Matthew Hayden and Stephen Fleming and the middle order batsman Hussey were joined by the lower order aggressor Albie Morkel. Unlike the stable Indian core, the overseas players changed slightly over the years: Faf du Plessis, Shane Watson, Dwayne Bravo and Imran Tahir later became regulars. But while the characters evolved their place within the broader system did not. Overseas players were important but they were not defining, such was the strength of CSK’s Indians.
Chennai Super Kings: Players with 50 Caps or More (2008–19)
Player
Matches
Suresh Raina
188
Mahendra Singh Dhoni
184
Ravichandran Ashwin
121
Ravindra Jadeja
116
Subramaniam Badrinath
114
Dwayne Bravo
103
Albie Morkel
92
Murali Vijay
86
Faf du Plessis
71
Mike Hussey
64
Mohit Sharma
58
Shadab Jakati
55
‘The biggest reason we did well was our approach to the auction,’ Morkel told Cricket Monthly. ‘CSK invested heavily in our Indian players and made sure we had the best. Other teams went the other way, spending big money on one or two overseas players and then filling the team with lesser-known Indian guys. That didn’t work out so well because you just can’t rely on the big-name players to win you a competition like the IPL. It’s just too long and intense.’
This same local-heavy structure was later replicated by the only IPL team to win more titles than Chennai, although they were less consistent: Mumbai Indians, who built a squad around an Indian spine and added their overseas players around this.
The emphasis on a strong domestic core was a common strand of successful teams in other leagues too. In Australia, Perth Scorchers, who reached five finals in six years from 2012 to 2017, adopted a similar approach to squad building: in the 2017/18 BBL season they only filled one, rather than two, of their overseas spots, and still topped the group stage. In the Pakistan Super League, Islamabad United, champions in 2016 and 2018, also recognised the critical importance of strong local players. In the 2019 PSL draft, nine of the ten players retained by Islamabad were from Pakistan.
Bangalore’s approach to squad building was the antithesis of Chennai’s: they struggled to form a stable Indian core back in the early seasons and relied heavily on overseas players instead. By the end of the 2019 IPL, CSK had five Indian players with over 100 caps and eight with more than 50; RCB had just one Indian player with over 100 caps and five with more than 50.
This could partly be attributed to the original auction where RCB’s two most expensive Indian players – Dravid and Anil Kumble – were already approaching the end of their careers and retired soon after. At that auction Bangalore spent the majority of their purse on overseas players rather than Indian talent.
RCB had scope to change tack. Yet in the 2011 mega auction, when teams were forced to release the majority of their squads at the end of the first contract cycle, Bangalore doubled down on their previous folly. Instead of focusing on quality Indian players, RCB splurged money on overseas stars such as A.B. de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Chris Gayle. These were all terrific batsmen – but, when the amount spent on them was added together, they did not create a balanced and well-rounded side.
Gaurav Sundararaman, who worked as an analyst for CSK and RCB, believed that auction shortcomings were at the root of Bangalore’s struggles. ‘RCB’s problem comes more at the auction than on the day of the game because I’ve seen them make numerous mistakes in the auction. Every year we can pinpoint numerous mistakes. Every single season it is the same thing. The kind of money they spend is very disproportionate.’
Dravid – who played for RCB for three seasons before joining Rajasthan Roy
als – saw similar failings. ‘Bangalore have never balanced their team very well. I think they’ve been very poor with selections and auctions.’
The difficulty facing RCB was that most star Indian players were continually retained by rival teams. Yet the examples of Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders, who both recovered from similarly tumultuous early seasons, showed that it was possible to build an Indian core by focusing on intelligent scouting to identify good T20 players who had not yet been noticed by rival teams. These teams were both pioneers in establishing extensive scouting networks that worked all year round, forming the bedrock of their success across the next half a decade.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Players with 50 Caps or More (2008–19)
Player
Matches
Virat Kohli
192
A.B. de Villiers
127
Chris Gayle
91
Yuzvendra Chahal
83
R. Vinay Kumar
70
Rahul Dravid
52
Anil Kumble
51
At least in the IPL teams existed on a level financial playing field. In England, Northamptonshire reached three finals in four years from 2013 to 2016, winning two, despite being among the five poorest of the 18 counties. They illustrated how meticulous planning, with pre-match dossiers of up to 25 pages, shrewd recruitment – Northants specialised in finding undervalued players, often finding players who were comparatively undervalued because of unathletic looking physiques – and an open-minded approach could overcome the logic of financial determinism in sport.