By Veturi Srivatsa, IANS,
The killing cricket schedule is unsparing, and when it comes to the Indian Premier League (IPL) cash cow, even the players are not complaining of overkill.
The IPL-IV, beginning Friday, has cut short the Indian team’s World Cup celebrations and pulled players from other countries out even as they lick their wounds.
A Sachin Tendulkar or a Mahendra Singh Dhoni do speak up for players once in a while and they can pick and choose series and tours to play “with the permission of the cricket board.” For lesser mortals, the cricket board has a wily politician as its spokesman parroting the stock line: The board doesn’t insist that you should go on every tour or play every game. It sounds so straight and simple. It is not so, it is insensitive. The board is actually warning players that if they don’t want to play when it wants them to, there is no guarantee they would be picked when they want to come back.
Answering a pointed question at a media interaction in Chennai, Dhoni repeated for the umpteenth time that the crammed calendar this year will “drain the players both physically and mentally.”
Dhoni went on to clarify that players can battle the physical aspect, but too much cricket at times can leave players mentally and emotionally drained. And that can affect performance.
He did not leave it there. He rubbed it in by pointing out how long they will be on the road. A quick look at the schedule shows that there is no respite for them till the end of February 2012. And by then the next edition of the IPL-V is there.
IPL-IV ends on May 28 and it is time for the Indian team to leave for the West Indies on a month-long tour June 4-July 6 to play one T-20, five One-day Internationals (ODIs) and three Tests. From there, they go straight to England to play four Tests, one T-20 and five ODIs from July 21 to September 16. And the teams qualifying from the IPL for the Champions League will have key Indian players. On return, England will be waiting for them here to play five ODIs and one T-20 in October. Soon, the West Indies will be here in November-December to play three Test and five ODIs and after that series, India will be in Australia in from December 2011 to February 2012 to play four Tests.
If by the time you finish comprehending this itinerary you are breathless, imagine what it takes to live out of a suitcase for such long periods.
A look at England and Australia at the World Cup should drill some sense into cricket administrators. Both teams were clearly cricket-fatigued after playing five Tests and seven ODIs from November 2010 to February 2011. As England captain Andrew Strauss said, it is a huge amount of cricket and that long tour had affected their World Cup chances.
Things have come to such a pass that England all-rounder Michael Yardy left for home in depression and fast bowler James Anderson could not turn his arm over in the later stages of the World Cup. The two boards realised that it is cruel to punish players and they have now tweaked the schedules of the next two Ashes tours so that they do not clash with the 2012 London Olympics and the 2015 World Cup. Some foresight, that.
The Indians, too, played the World Cup after a rigorous tour to South Africa, though they had a comfortable ODI series against New Zealand at home despite the seniors getting a break to go to South Africa ahead of others to prepare for the Test series.
One frequently heard argument of the board is that all countries play as much cricket as the Indians do. But not all Test players get involved with the IPL or play ODIs at the drop of a hat. The Indian board has to squeeze in quickies to neighbouring countries for interests other than purely cricket.
Sachin Tendulkar told this writer a decade ago that ideally the players should get at least three weeks of rest after every tour. He is in a position to influence the board to arrange tours in such a way that they at least get the three-week rest after every quarter.
Of course, the Dhonis and the Tendulkars complain but when it comes to IPL they, too, are mum. They only want Tests and ODIs reduced and spaced out! Both of them can easily skip a part of IPL and can still get pampered by the franchise owners, certainly not others.
Tendulkar missed practically the entire first edition of the IPL through injury and Dhoni did not go to Sri Lanka to play Tests because of fatigue three years ago. If only the two could prevail over the board to make both playing and watching cricket more pleasurable.
(07-04-2011-V. Srivatsa can be reached at [email protected])