(Still) Outside the Line
I used to write about cricket a lot. I used to write about cricket so much that I once took a semester off university to go to the Caribbean and write about cricket for a month and a half.
That was during the 2007 World Cup, when I had vague notions of trying to write a gritty gonzo-style book about a cricket world in flux. Sort of a mixture between War Minus the Fighting and Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl.
Instead, I mostly sat by the pool in a rented villa in Tobago with my friend Joe, smoking weak joints and drinking strong highballs, firing off ornate blog posts about the magic of Lasith Malinga’s yorkers.
I was in the West Indies with one hope—watching Australia lose. As an Australian myself, it might sound a bit odd to say that, but I had my reasons. (And watching the Windies get annihilated by Australia in the Adelaide test right now, I’m clearly reminded of those reasons.)
Spoiler alert: Australia didn’t lose the 2007 World Cup. In fact, they won every single match by otherworldly margins and cemented their utter dominance in the game at that time. I recently went back and started to watch the final again, but as soon as I saw this graphic showing their path through the tournament, I had to switch it off.
And to add frosted-tipped insult to aggravated injury, one of the players I hated the most at the time, Glenn McGrath, emerged as Player-of-the-Tournament.
A decade and a half later—four World Cups later—I thought things had changed. This Australian men’s squad definitely doesn’t have the aura of invincibility that the 2000s one did, but last time I checked, they’d won the latest World Test Championship, the ODI World Cup and are first in the world test rankings. Just because they can get beaten these days doesn’t mean they do.
Plus ça change…
Anyway, here are a few thoughts I’ve had in the last few months about a sport I used to have a lot of thoughts about. They’re random and scattered and lacking a coherent narrative, but hey, so is cricket at the moment:
The Marcia Brady format gets its revenge
I’ll have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much from the 2023 ODI World Cup. When it started, it felt like an afterthought—ill-conceived and poorly-planned. A cash grab and a power flex by an Indian board growing more domineering, and less likely to care if anyone notices, by the day.
And, to be sure, the World Cup was all those things. But you know what else it was?
A fun tournament to watch; a showcase of great young talent; and a reminder that limited-overs cricket is actually a cracking way to spend an afternoon (or in the case of an Australian viewer… a late evening going into an early morning).
The 50-over game feels like the forgotten middle child of the cricket family. Endless dollars are pumped into the growth of T20 and myriad columns are written about the death of Tests, but what’s often overlooked is that, pound for pound, ODIs are the most likely format to produce an entertaining day of top-quality sport.
Something tells me that this might be the last time we’ll see the best cricket players playing in a men’s World Cup. It’s hard to see the Kohli/Smith/Stokes generation sticking it out till 2027. It’ll be a tournament hosted by two countries that didn’t even play in 2023 (Zimbabwe and Namibia) and one that is already sending out quasi-amateur squads on international tours (South Africa).
Let’s just say… I’m not keeping my hopes up.
Cratering Back Home
The return of England as a prime merchant of cricket schadenfreude in the last year has been nothing short of spectacular.
There was a period— right after their 2019 World Cup win and before the word “Bazball” even entered the lexicon—when, I must admit, I actually enjoyed watching England play.
It wasn’t something I ever expected to happen—it was more of a begrudging realisation—but I had to give them some credit for it. They played positively, had a number of likeable, charismatic players and were clearly the best in the world at limited-overs cricket for a while. Their victory at the 2022 Twenty20 World Cup only confirmed that.
And then… it all came crashing down.
They started believing their own bullshit, convincing themselves that they had invented a magical new form of cricket, culminating in an embarrassing sook at the Ashes that almost turned into a diplomatic incident, and I was suddenly right back where I belonged: wishing nothing but the most painful of English defeats, and getting my wish (and more) throughout the ODI World Cup.
It’s hard to imagine a quicker (or funnier) fall from grace. And now they’ve continued it with ODI and T20 series losses against the West Indies, a team that hadn’t even qualified for the World Cup in India.
May their love for the Spirit of Cricket continue unabated and may they continue to treat defeat like a form of success.
That’s the England I remember.
Captions on a Sunset
I’m convinced that if Harsha Bhogle—the jovial, globe-trotting Indian commentator and analyst—is ever on his deathbed, he will be visited by hundreds of people who knew and cherished him: friends, colleagues; some of them fellow commentators, some administrators, some former players. I picture him in his final moments: resting peacefully, with calm, beatific smile on his face; and as he draws his final weak breaths, he will somehow still find himself, for the 3,897th time, addressing a half-witted ex-player and having to explain to him how Umpire’s Call works.
It’s the question that reverberates dimly within commentary boxes around the world at least 3 or 4 times every match: “how can the same ball be out and not-out”?
Like a Schrödinger’s cat paradox for those with the probability literacy of a poisoned housecat.
It doesn’t matter how many times Harsha, or anyone else, explains that: a) ball-tracking is not perfect; that b) it’s just a statistical model; that c) certain balls are within the margin of error so their trajectory can’t be predicted with enough accuracy to give a definitive answer; and that d) in that case, the most prudent course of action is to just stick with an umpire’s original decision… the equation in most commentators’ heads never gets beyond:
“Oooh… red circle touch long cylinder = OUT!”
It’s a shame that we have to hear their constant struggle with those rare marginal cases, because it obscures the simple fact that cricket lbw reviews are one of the best features in all of modern sports. Maybe the best.
In many other sports, the use of review technology either slows down the flow of the game, leaves viewers unsatisfied, erodes trust in refereeing, or is just plain boring. Sometimes all at once.
I barely follow European football, and yet I still seem to see half a dozen news headlines griping about VAR every week.
Tennis line reviews are too straightforward and there’s rarely much at stake in any given one-point decision.
Basketball reviews add unnecessary stoppages to games that already seem neverending.
But cricket lbw reviews have everything you could ask for.
They contain multiple stages, each one following logically from the outcome of the one that came before. They’re fair, definitive, exciting, dramatic, and clearly presented both for spectators on the ground and television audiences.
They’ve even created their own vocabulary, with a number of familiar phrases that now feel like lyrics in an old standard that I’ve heard a thousand times:
“Rock n’ roll that for me”
“Do you have any other angles?”
“Move on to ball-tracking when you’re ready”
“You’re on camera now, Richard *… stay with your original decision”
*Half of all cricket umpires are called Richard. That’s a true statement that I’m not going to fact check.
I imagine the review technology will keep improving and the need for Umpire’s Call will decrease even further, eventually silencing the last naysayers.
I just hope Harsha gets to see that day.