It hurts Indian cricket first and foremost . . .
There are some genuine problems associated with the IPL culture which many tend to brush under the carpet. Today, in the Indian Express, there is a riveting piece on one such issue that affects the first class game in India.
HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Aditya Iyer
Indian Express
26th May 2013
This is the early '90s and you are an aspiring cricketer, on the verge of a first-class debut. You dream of taking the field with those oversized men with crooked moustaches, men whose feet you've squatted below and listened to tales of travelling and playing in the polytechnic institute in Agartala and the railway ground in Dhanbad. Or in the municipal complex in Thrissoor and the school field in Gulbarga. Then you do.
You spend nights linseeding your bat and white-taping its chipped edges. You spend days bruising those very bandages, with dabs to point or swishes to square-leg. Style, anyway, was never much your game. You stonewall your way to a 1000 Ranji Trophy runs, and your heroes (now your mates) throw you a chai and biscuit party in the evening. You steal a smile or two, for you know you have begun to climb the hierarchical ladder.
It is now the late 2000s and you, an oversized man with a crooked moustache, have 6000 first-class runs or 7000. You're never sure. Children in shorts and teenagers in whites scatter around your chair, eyes wide and ears pricked, hanging on to every stale narration of that incident at Mysore or that innings in Meerut. You see them off on their respective journeys, where they promise to achieve their ambitions and secretly dream of becoming just like you. You have no international recognition, but your domestic reputation is intact. You have respect.
Then those skinny boys return with their big contracts and fat wallets and flashy cars and high-end watches and call you 'bro' and want to sit on your chair and narrate stories of fast cities and faster women and a holiday to Vegas. They look at you differently and wonder why you, in your mid-30s, even bother to put in those yards for five months of the year between November and March. For between April and May, after all, is when the real cricket is played. The IPL has happened and for you, a little deeper than just personally, cricket will just not be the same again.
Ever since its inception in 2008, the Indian Premier League has left traditional domestic cricket in its wake. In the initial few seasons, it was observed that three sixes in the 18th over of the game could do for you what 5000 runs scored over a decade in first-class cricket perhaps couldn't — get you access to the national team. But now, over time and far more brutally, it has left a devastating gorge between the cricketers themselves — changing the very core of their dressing room dynamics. That divide, as the former India Test opener and current Himachal Pradesh captain Aakash Chopra likes to put it, is that of the haves and the have-nots.
A BITTER TASTE
"There is a clear-cut distinction. Players with IPL contracts are revered a little more, and considered to be in a different league, within the normal peer circles in a team. People who haven't got IPL contracts feel a slight resentment, a bitter taste in the mouth — the feeling that, just because he's younger, or can hit the long ball, he's getting a contract and not me. It's quite visible," says Chopra, who moved from Delhi, a side crowded with IPL players, in 2010 to a lower-key side in Rajasthan and instantly became a part of two Ranji Trophy wins.
"That distinction has never been encouraged by the coaches. Certain coaches have had to prohibit any mention or talk of the IPL, because a lot of conversations tended to revolve around it. Some coaches felt it took attention away from the Ranji Trophy."
One of those coaches, in all likelihood, was the one Chopra played under at Rajasthan, Tarak Sinha. Having cut his teeth in the Delhi club circuit, Sinha grew in stature as his wards flooded the Indian cricket team. Then, having won two Ranji titles for Rajasthan, he moved base to the cricketing outpost of Jharkhand last season. But even before the ink could dry on his contract and his quest to uplift a failing state side could begin, Sinha received plenty of warning calls.
"Before I took over, I was told that Saurabh Tiwary had a habit of making lives difficult for the coaches. The Jharkhand dressing room had issues with him. He was labelled as arrogant and aloof, and someone who always carried his IPL attitude to the state team," Sinha says. Tiwary, the Dhoni wannabe, was one of the finds of the third IPL season, and his big-hitting for Mumbai Indians in 2010 didn't go unnoticed by the selectors, who awarded him an India cap.
A star is born
He didn't play another game after his ODI debut. But still, he was now a star, of international repute, and could therefore command an auction fee. Royal Challengers Bangalore snapped him up for $1.6 million. Even in the Jharkhand dressing room, he was an RCB boy.
"I was aghast to see everyone wanting to be seen as an individual. IPL players would come to practise wearing franchise kits, intimidating others with their glamour," says coach Sinha. "I had a one-on-one session with Tiwary. It was important to manage him differently. I told him that he was a senior player of this side, and a lot would depend on his performance. I explained that he had to play for Jharkhand and not for himself. He scored 602 runs in the domestic season gone by. We qualified for the quarter-finals."
Sinha lost his job despite Jharkhand's success. He was replaced by Subroto Banerjee — a man who served as a consultant for Mumbai Indians and is said to share a great rapport with Tiwary.
Through the prism
Some cases aren't as clear cut as a player sporting his IPL gear at the Ranji nets. Wicketkeeper Mahesh Rawat, who had played the first two seasons with Rajasthan Royals, was suspended on disciplinary grounds for yelling expletives at a few Railways veterans — including the then captain Murali Kartik — in the 2009-10 season. Why, you may ask? He was reportedly asked to up the scoring rate in a Ranji game. This tirade may or may not have had anything to do with the IPL, but such incidents tend to get viewed through that prism.
"Some young players don't believe in respecting their seniors anymore. The basic cricketing culture seems to have taken a backseat. There was always a gap between the seniors and juniors in a side before. It was the gap of respect," says Railways coach Abhay Sharma. "The only way that such youngsters will learn a lesson is if the IPL franchises are in constant touch with the state teams they borrow players from. Bad behaviour at the state level, and the IPL contract should be whisked away."
Sharma's line of thought suggests that the big-money contract should be used to pull them back in line. Chopra's preferred adage, on the other hand, goes: dangle it like a carrot. "Tell them, if you do well, you could get an opportunity in the IPL. But you have to make it clear that the contract has no bearing on their position in the side," he says.
"We have to be pragmatic, understand where these kids are coming from. It's a legitimate desire for them. The IPL gives them money, and provides a platform. People have been picked for India, across formats, because of it. From nobody to somebody is a question of 30 runs or a few good overs."
Some of those 'few good overs' were bowled in one IPL by Rudra Pratap Singh. In the 2010-11 Ranji season, RP was the 30th highest wicket-taker in the tournament. Then the 2011 IPL happened, and for Kochi Tuskers Kerala (now defunct) the left-arm seamer managed a few decent performances — a couple of two-fors and a four-wicket haul. It was good enough to put him on a plane to England a couple of months later, and feature in the fourth Test for India at the Oval.
A question of attitude
Since then, RP featured sporadically for Uttar Pradesh in the 2011-12 season and didn't appear at all in 2012-13. Yet, this April, almost magically, there he was in Royal Challengers Bangalore colours, playing under the watchful eye of bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad, who, incidentally, was also UP coach the same season.
"If I say that I never had issues with any player because of his work ethic or attitude, I would be lying," says Prasad. "I won't name them, but some of the players who are earning big in the IPL, and have been on the fringe as far as the Indian team is concerned, throw their weight around. Attitude problems, as they say."
So, as somebody who successfully toggles between IPL and domestic coaching avatars, how would Prasad deal with the impudent from the following season? "We have got to lay down the rules very clearly with such players and let them know that they are getting their IPL contracts only because of their performances in first-class cricket. And they shouldn't be short-sighted only about the IPL," Prasad says.
"If their hunger for success is satisfied with an IPL contract, however good it may be, they will fade away very quickly."
(With inputs from Shamik Chakrabarty, Vinayak Padmadeo and Karthik Krishnaswamy)
