Decade of spin

In Cricket, it has been the decade of spin. Four of the top five wicket takers this decade are spinners: Muralidharan, Warne, Kumble and Harbhajan. Ntini is the only quick in the top 5. If you look further down, 7 of the top 20 and 12 of the 35 bowlers who took 100 or more wickets in the 2000's were spinners. If these last two numbers don't look impressive, consider that most teams play only one spinner in the side made of four bowlers. So while spinners playing the game make up one fourth of the bowlers, they make up more than one third of the top bowlers. Anyway, at the very top, the numbers are indisputable.

Look at it another way, the top 5 spinners by wickets taken have all played this decade: Muralidharan, Warne, Kumble, Harbhajan and Vettori. Of course the top three are the top three wicket takers among all bowlers. True, there have been more matches for them to play but their wickets per match is also better, atleast for the top 4: 4.3 for Harbhajan, 4.7 for Kumble, 4.9 for Warne and a whopping 6.0 for Muralidharan. The best from the earlier era, Lance Gibbs, Bedi, Benaud, Chandrasekhar averaged around 4 or less. Grimmett is an exception but he played his cricket before WW II. Similarly, Vettori among the current lot is an exception but he has to contend with extremely spin adverse conditions at home.

Whichever way you look at it, the top three: Muralidharan, Warne and Kumble are the top bowlers of this decade and the top spin bowlers of all time. Given they are three highest wicket takers of all time, some may even claim them to be the top bowlers of all time.

Other spinners have come to the fore as well. Danish Kaneria, for all its fast bowling potential, has been the leading bowler for Pakistan. Before him was Saqlain Mushtaq. Very different from the glory days of the W's. Similarly Stuart Macgill did excellent work when he got the opportunity, even outbowling Warne in the matches they played together. Sad for him that his career coincided with Warne's. Tellingly England have had two spinners who have taken more than 100 wickets this decade, Giles and Panesar and a third who has been taking five fors in recent times, Swann. And these after the barren days, remember Min Patel, of sometimes belied potential, remember Phil Tufnell. Even West Indies now have a spinner who plays regularly and takes more than an odd wicket for the first time since Lance Gibbs in the form of Sulieman Benn. Indeed South Africa have been the only country without a spinning force for most of this decade while Australia has been struggling post Warne and Macgill retirement.

Why has this decade been so dominated by spin? Pitches have become better: even those in India are no longer dustbowls, bats and batsmen have become muscular: mishits go over the ropes, boundaries have come in. So why? One arguement is that we just had three of the greatest spinners of all time playing this decade. Second, the fast bowling stocks this decade weren't all that great giving spinners more opportunity to take wickets: certainly true for India and Sri lanka. Third, better batting surfaces meant that fast bowlers couldn't dominate and collapses against pace (which mostly comes first in an inning) were much less frequent. Fourth, a lot of innovation has come into spin bowling this decade: doosra and the carrom ball. Fifth, batsmen are more aggresive and a spinner relies on batsmen making an aggresive mistake more than a pace bowler: stepping out and getting stumped, getting caught in the deep on a mishit. Any other reasons?

Post script: A friend of mine asked me to compare strikes rates. I decided that averages should be considered as well. In terms of strike rates, Muralidharan and Warne are third and fourth among bowlers who have taken atleast a hundred wickets this decade. Shoaib Akhtar and Dale Steyn have significantly better strike rates (around 40 as compared to 50 for the two spinners). Raw pace does take wickets in fewer balls but it can bowl fewer balls as well. Kumble's strike rate is around the mean. In terms of averages, Murali is second behind Mcgrath. Warne is around 25 which is the new 22 this decade. Kumble is around 31, which again is around the mean.

The other comparision would be to compare spinners across ages. Murali, Warne, Kumble, Macgill, etc. have vastly superior strike rates than their predecessors. The verdict on averages is much more mixed, with Murali next only to Laker among major spinners but Warne and Kumble being back with the pack.

If we consider all four variables: total number of wickets, wickets per match, strike rates and average; still the three spinners come across as formidable if not as the all in winners that they seem based on the number of wickets taken. Paragraph 3 needs to be modified. I would consider them the greatest spinners of all time and the most influencial bowlers of this decade. After all to win you have to take 20 wickets and bowlers who can take more wickets per match are defintely better as long as the time and runs cost are not much higher: as is the case with Murali and Warne, and in the context of the Indian team, Kumble. Besides, paragraph 4 cannot be denied: South Africa are playing Paul Harris in Kingsmead Durban and Swann was the highest wicket taker in South Africa's first innings.

Modes of travel

I am at the airport, going home. Flight to Kolkata, then an overnight train to Bhagalpur. From warm and humid Mumbai afternoon to cool and more humid Kolkata evening to sub-teen, foggy, humidity neutral Bhagalpur morning. Travel, ofcourse, would be in theoretically neutral air conditioning making all the changes sudden. At one point considered taking a direct train from Mumbai, a 2000 kilometre, 36 hour journey across India's belly. However courage kept faltering, and the time to make the call came and went. Tiredness wouldn't have been a problem, airconditioned travel on Indian Railways is fairly comfortable. Vague ideas of boredom are what kept me away, in hindsight quite unfounded.

I miss long train journies. They are excellent for a lot of things: reading, reflection, eye soothing scenery, new perspective: conversations of and with strangers. To watch the evening descend on Indian rural life from a train window is a cathartic sight. On a recent journey from Bhagalpur to Patna, I overheard ( wasn't participating) a well informed arguement from a deputy superintendent of police on law and order, development and politics in Bihar. I always feel excited before train journies. In my grand father's time, during British rule, 'A train journey' was a common essay topic: not without reason.

In comparision, air travel is uncomfortable and sleep inducing, even a 30 minute delay is irritating. Seats sometimes seem insufficient for even small me. In the innumerable flights I have taken in the last three years I wouldn't have spoken to my neighbour five times. There is no exposure to the country one is travelling over.

Like a lot of things that make life faster, air travel too takes away its pleasure.Speed- dash it.

Random thoughts

Just as I sat in the car on exiting the airport on Friday evening (a ritual consultants like to follow), I looked up and saw the moon, still in its first few nights. I realized it has already been more than a month since Eid when I had similarly seen the moon, travelling in a car, though in Barmer. This feeling of time flying ever faster has been with me since the 1st of January 1988 when I had thought that 1987 went away much faster than 1986. I think it happens because as we grow up, we take note of fewer things, store fewer moments.

I live in an area of Mumbai which 10 years ago was salt pan country. There are a few in the vicinity even now. Its a thoroughly unfashionable part of town, as has been said by numerous friends, acquaintances and passer bys. However the advantage of the location is space. Space, as you know, is the primary scarce commodity in Mumbai. So the fly, when it exits my house, does not land in the middle of headlong traffic, to be promptly mown by a BEST bus, as is the case with many a Mumbai house in the more fashionable parts of town. Did you turn up your nose at the mention of the lowly fly, dryly remarking that no such creature is granted admittance to your UV cleaned house? Well, then, change it to butterfly. But you get the drift, right. The set of buildings, of which my building is one, are on a private road and there is a 25 acre garden behind these buildings. I really like these gardens, they are very nice for peaceful walks.

Drivers of road public transport in Mumbai are the leaders of a generally rough bunch. Everytime I start on a drive, after the first cuss, I resolve that I will be patience itself. However, what is my resolve when pitted against the recklessness and brigandry of numerous BEST bus drivers, auto rickshaw and taxi waalahs. I fail everytime and return home spent. These drives are an excellent test of your BP and blood cholestersol levels. If nothing happens on these drives, tuck into your chicken tikka with impunity.

On a rural desert road

On a 50 km ride on a one lane road in rural Rajasthan, I saw (This is all I saw on the road; there were other things on the sides):
1. One tractor without a trailer yet with 9 people sitting on it
2. A bus with four children hanging from the ladder at the back that goes up to the roof. They were a few men on the roof. Whether they were good men or not is between them and their providence.
3. A truck, which was moving so slowly up a slope that only on close inspection could you ascertain the fact that it was moving up
2. Two motorcycles with two men each in spotless white dresses. Where’s the water?
5. Another bus: coming from the opposite direction, so couldn’t see who were hanging from the ladder...
6. A SUV, non descript

I also saw:
1. Two women with their herd of goats and a herd of goats without their attendant woman.
2. A troika of cattle, a cow and its two calves, one of whom wasn’t very keen on moving off the road. They were all skinny and looked fit for long runs.
3. A pair of sheep, evidently lovers, took the cake, or the cud, what ever they like, in terms of not being keen on moving off the road
4. In fact, sheep in general weren’t very keen on moving off the road. There was another bunch, which showed marked reluctance and confusion while clearing off

Further, I also saw stretches of road covered by sand up to a foot deep. In fact, I m assuming there is road underneath.

A well made one lane road in rural India is like a bed sheet spread over a lumpy mattress. The surface is smooth but undulating. If the lurches were to any rhythm one could have likened the experience to riding a beast of burden.

Talking of beast of burden, on the side of the road, and this is the only thing I will mention which wasn’t directly on the road at the instant I saw it; I saw a camel with a man and his child on its back. And this wasn’t a touristy ride but a real ride of business: such as which made the camel the ship of the desert.

As time goes by

As time goes by, I am less and less sure. There was a time when worldly wisdom suggested it was the right thing to happen. They said it was a sure sign of evolution to grow unsure, surety about anything meant a simplicity, lower level of gyan. And I believed them, until very recently. Now I am not so sure about this as well. This is getting loopy , sorry. But all this vagueness, of explaining everything that doesn't agree by ,"Well you can't be sure. That's another world view", is disquieting. May be, I am just becoming indesicive, lazy. May be, I have gone too far and its time to constrain a few things, become sure about them.

One thing I am least sure about is other people's feelings. Many people are so inscrutable. They will keep smiling through cyclones and orgasms. And its becoming more and more important to understand those feelings, for more and more people come into my life from circumstances- present and past, and motivations that are not in sync with mine and therefore they may react quite differently from me to the same stimuli. Nor do I have time and occasion to know their circumstances and motivations, given the little time we spend together. It happens at work and at play. What has fundamentally changed is the amount of time I spend with people. Till I joined work, I spent time with only a few, all friends of one's own age, and spent lots of time with them. Now I spend time with a wide variety of people and only a little with each of them. To understand them through these glimpses is critical and also what is most difficult for me.

To solve this I decided to pick up a little psychology a little while ago, the scientific study of human behaviour. Sustained struggle, however, is not my forte and after the initial sally, progess has been that of a sail boat in the doldrums. Let's see

An early morning watching test cricket

I don't like test cricket on flat pitches very well. Matches I like most are where top innings score is about 300 to 400, two batsmen score centuries and a couple of bowlers take five fors. Basically I like the perfect test matches most. Fairly remarkable, one would say, isn't it. Matches I like second best are ones where a team is bowled out for under a hundred and the other team gets out for 189 and so on and bowlers end up with ten fors for the match. Run fests come a distant third. Of course, T20 comes after all this and they should just eliminate one dayers, now that they are neither here nor there.

In this context, waking up at 3:30 in the morning to watch the third day of the Napier test match was an unusual decision, particularly after a sloshy Friday evening, thanks to Vikram V. But I had reason, Tendulkar and Dravid were batting. 110 runs in 31 overs for the loss of 1 wicket reads pretty unspectacular but, boy, was I rewarded. Shots of such exquisite beauty are rarely to be seen in a two hour passage of play. Securing these memories is the reason why I want to describe these shots knowing fully well that words will never describe what was experienced.

Let me begin with Tendulkar, as all cricket conversations have begun in India for the last 20 years. There were the two cover drive to begin with. Commentors described it very well when they pointed out how Tendulkar moved his feet to make the cover drive into a straight drive. Then a pulled/ hooked a ball off his face, my favorite shot of his for the morning just because he doesn't play the shot all too frequently. I knew he was in nick. When Patel came on to bowl there was the delicate deflection that entirely his invention. Then there was the slog sweep and the cover drive against the spin in that same over of exhilarating batting against spin.

Dravid began with an on drive, his signature shot. Then there was the cut between gully and point, hit down in the ground. There was an excellent camera shot of how Dravid had rolled his wrist to keep the ball down. It was also the only shot that infrared showed to be not hit of the middle in the two hour session but just slightly off centre towards the ground. At this point, I was pining for the pure square cut hit perfectly perpendicular to the pitch. It was once, in the middle to late nineties, when Tendulkar used to play it a lot, my favourite shot. And guess what, I got it. In the very next over. Once again it was hit straight in the ground. Dravid rounded off the session with a cover drive of his own.

Laxman was at the crease for only 20 minutes or so but he had four beautiful strokes of his own. The first two were wristy on drives off the spinner Patel hit through increasingly narrow gaps between mid wicket and mid on. Then there was the square drive off the first ball of the last over of the sesion. And just as the over was winding down, I was wishing how a straight drive would make it a perfect session. I must have done some good somewhere for, for the second time in the space of an hour my wish was granted. Of the last ball of the over Laxman hit the most thumping of straight drives.

None of these shots were hit with brute power. Even the slog sweep, which is necessarily a shot of violence went all the way for six on the strength of timing rather than power. In fact, the camera showed that Tendulkar had tried to hit the ball down. All but the first square cut from Dravid were hit off the middle of the bat. Each shot seemed to contain exactly the right amount of power. It was classical batmanship at its very best.

The past and the future stretch interminably on both sides of the narrow isthumus of the present. Hence, life is half memories and half hopes. However, at times like these, when the present is so beautiful, it carves out its own space. And the delicious thought of these memories staying for ever. Ah!

House Help

My house help is a remarkable person. Now, one may call it a womanly topic but we are a household of men and somebody ought to introduce the wider world to the remarkable aspects of our house help. Also, people living in parts of the world other than India may completely miss the point, so please ignore.

Our house help believes in a five day week, although is not averse to take complementary offs on weekdays if you insist on service over the weekend. I sense though that she considers the Sunday evening as sacrosanct. She believes in all the world's religions and celebrates all the festivals, big or small, that these religions have to offer and refuses to work on any of them. All the world's children are hers and when you have so many and they are children one or the other is liable to be sick at every point of time. To take care of this, she has 30 casual leaves and medical leave of course is unlimited.

Her working style is not the only remarkable thing about her, her cooking is no less. Regardless of the vegetable she cooks, she can make them all taste alike. I believe its the strength of the process that inspite of widely varying input she can churn out consistant output, day in and day out. I heard the Japanese did something similar and earned a big name for themselves making cars. Our house help is just waiting to be discovered. She is not just after the Japs, the Russians are also on her radar. Her chapatis are almost like vodka, they are odourless and tasteless. I think she is working on making them colorless.

Our house help is very reasonable in terms of her pay increase demands. She has simply linked it to the indices. In 2007, it was the equities, through most of last year it was the Brent crude while currently she is tracking Gold.

Now tell me, shouldn't have I told you about this remarkable woman.

Ode to a girl

Meeting extraordinary people is life’s reward for so many things we bear. There are four things that strike me about these people. Firstly, they show you what one ought to be. Yet, their quality is such that they do not belittle you with the realization. You can celebrate their greatness without feeling small yourself. Secondly, there is no prototype for extraordinariness. All extra ordinary people I know are of different kinds. Thirdly, not all kinds of extraordinariness result in performance or achievement. People can exhibit/ experience extraordinariness without performance and/ or achievement. Lastly, there are far more extraordinary people that one would think.

I once met such a girl. As I think of this girl, I am reminded of Ganga in Bhagalpur where I spent many an evening watching the river flow by. Here, after Ganga has already travelled more than 1000 kms from its source, she has a calm beauty, maturity; dignity and inner strength (ask somebody who’s tried rowing a boat through the apparently sluggish waters).

Of course, this girl is beautiful. And she smiles a lot. It’s what attracted me to her in the first place. But it’s the least of what makes her extraordinary. There are many more beautiful people than extraordinary people. It’s the other three qualities that she shares with the river and in such measures, which make here extraordinary. In a place where attention seeking and self promoting behavior are rampant, in deed have been converted into an art form and are considered necessary for success, she never resorted to them. She may be the star of a show but she would never be in the limelight. Not once in my two years of knowing her, was her behavior anything but dignified.

She takes her time to open up. I don’t think she ever opened up to me. However, were you to talk to her, ask her questions, her responses would always be considered and full of common sense. She would participate in and enjoy the many idiosyncrasies of campus life but you could see that she knew them for what they were. Such balance and measure is rare from anybody and on first observation, particularly from her, one who had led such a sheltered life. She shattered the misconception I had around tough life experiences and perspective.

Where I met her, she was clearly out of her depth, initially. She persevered, never indulging in self pity. Hers would be the light that burnt the longest; she would be the last in the group to give up. The challenge she overcome required immense strength of character and she has it.

I haven’t met the girl in six months, haven’t spoken to her at any length for two years. Things are likely to remain this way. Yet, she, the way I know her, is one of those people that help retain faith in human kind. Thank you!