Mindless Scheduling hurting Indian Cricket

Only Jasprit Bumrah can afford to speak out his mind and escape unscathed when he explained during the ongoing ICC (International Cricket Council) T20 World Cup that India's poor performance was on account of fatigue. Outgoing head coach Ravi Shastri too admitted that the Indian cricketers didn't switch on in pressure situations, having been in a bio-secure bubble for six months. By getting knocked out of the marquee event, the Indian players might have earned at least a week's rest ahead of a nerve-wracking schedule that shall continue when they return home. What we shall see in the coming months is a lot of talk of resting or rotating players, but if past experience is to go by none of the top players will step aside. No sponsor would like to see the stars rested either in franchise cricket or international cricket.

If India had played the ICC T20 World Cup Finals on 14th November 2021, they would have had a two-day break before the first of the three T20s against New Zealand. That New Zealand agreed to this schedule is largely due to India's economic muscle in world cricket. Now Indians have an eight-day break! And if New Zealand play the World Cup finals, they would be flying out of Dubai straight to Jaipur and be on the field in a blink. 

The criss-cross travel for Indian cricketers across India begins followed by a whirlwind tour to South Africa and again frequent flight-hopping across India till June 2022.

India play three T20s against New Zealand at Jaipur, Ranchi and Kolkata on 17, 19 and 21 November 2021 reespectively. After a three-day break India and New Zealand meet in the first of the two Tests at Kanpur from 25 to 29 November 2021. So, obviously the Kiwis aren't playing any long-form warm-up game, as they switch from T20 to Tests, something India is used to on away tours anyways. The first Test will be followed by the second and final Test at Mumbai from 3rd to 7th December 2021.

After a nine day break, India play South Africa at Johannesburg in the first of the three Tests. As in the 2017-18 Test series in South Africa, the schedule leaves no scope for any warm-up game, something Virat Kohli had complained about after India lost the first two Tests then, only to win the third and then sweep the ODI and T20 series because by that time the players were fully acclimatised to the conditions and pace and bounce of the wickets. Even in the three Tests, India bowlers had done well, picking up all 60 South African wickets. Only Kohli made a top score of 153 in the second Test, while other Indian batsmen struggled with adjustments to pace and bounce on South African pitches.    

The three Tests in South Africa this time around will be followed by 3 ODIs and 4 T20s that conclude on 26th of January 2022. After a ten day break, India play three ODIs and three T20s versus the West Indies from 6th to 20th of February 2022 at home. Barely after a four day break begins the first of the two Tests against Sri Lanka which shall be followed by three T20s that conclude on 18th of March 2022.

On 27th of March 2022 begins the next season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) which will go on till 21st of May 2022. All talk of workload management of key Indian players so that they aren't too stressed during IPL, and are thus fresh for national duty, has been time and again thrown out of the window by the Board for Cricket Control in India (BCCI), such is the pressure from franchises. With 10 teams and 74 matches, the players will go through another gruelling summer. We have seen how teams like England and Pakistan have excelled in the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup so far because their players weren't part of the IPL second leg that preceded the World Cup in the intense heat and dust in the UAE. 

Interestingly India have scheduled five T20s at home from 9-19 June 2022 just before the tour of England where they have to play the 2021 Test series' abandoned 5th Test from 1st to 5th of July followed by three T20s and three ODIs from 7 to 17 July 2022. With the T20 series between India and South Africa concluding on 19 June 2022, Indians have an eleven day break before the Test match in England. Again no scope for a warm-up game before the Test series in English conditions. Cricket Ireland has offered to host warm-up games for India to help Irish cricket with some moolah before the England tour, but the eleven day window is too narrow, and anyway too stressful for India's top players who feature in all the formats.    

  

After The End

Everyone who has been to a movie, has often thought a different ending to the story, particularly if it has been a sad or tragic one. Or people have made up stories in their mind, taking off from where the movie story-line ends.

Going back to movies that touched my heart, I remember Mili, the story of a cancer-stricken girl flying off to Switzerland in the last scene, with her newly-wed husband. I remember people talking about a sequel to the film in which she returns completely cured, though sequels weren't the in-thing in the 1970s in Bollywood. But then cancer was considered incurable and film-makers had spun many a stories around cancer that had tragic ends - Anand and Safar to name a few.  Anand too had an impact on me and I too was waiting for Babu Moshai (Amitabh Bachchan) to return in the last scene with the miraculous homeopathic medicine that would have cured Anand (Rajesh Khanna). 

Another Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan starrer, and it is a pity they acted in only two films together, Namak Haram, had an end that did not please me. Why did Rajesh Khanna's character get killed? He could have easily reconciled the interests of the workers with that of the owners of the business with his good friend played by Amitabh. But story-tellers and film directors in particular, love creating tragic situations that add drama to the plot, which also sells. 

While on Amitabh Bachhan, it was beyond me to fathom why Parveen Babi's character had to be killed while she was pregnant in Deewar. I have often conjured a scenario wherein a dying Anita (the character player by Babi) is found by a police party on the trail of  Vijay (played by Amitabh) and taken to a hospital where she gives birth to a baby girl, who is later on adopted and brought up by Vijay's younger brother Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) and his wife Veera (Neetu Singh). Being overfed on Hindi movie plots, a movie buff like me can be pardoned for thinking up this filmi story.

Another Rajesh Khanna starrer that I wished had a different ending was Bawarchi. Why couldn't Raghu (Rajesh Khanna) have continued to serve in the Shanti Kunj, while we were all having so much of fun?

Tragic ends can be contagious. When Vasu (Kamal Hasan) and Sapna (Rati Agnihotri) are forced to commit suicide as the families are still not ready to accept the a north-south marriage in Ek Duje Ke Liye, it resulted in a number of couples following suit. The director was forced to announce that he had shot a happy ending to the movie, and chose the sad one for more impact. To make the suicide look inevitable, the heroine is raped and thus has no option left, while the hero is brutally thrashed by the villain's goons. The happy ending should have been, according to me, the two families accepting the couple and they having lived happily ever after. But then the movie wasn't made by me and neither had I financed it.