Isometric view!

                                                                '.                             "Isometric View"

Lalit Modi is a disgraced Indian Cricket Czar hiding in UK mostly.  The idea of IPL can certainly be accounted to his credit . Of course as the tournament became commercially successful several powerful entities wanted a ride on the gravy train. Some wanted a free ride to boot! That led to what can only be termed as falling out of the thieves ! 

You might remember the fiscal controversy about now defunct Kochi Tuskars  Kerala franchise & the tragic demise of its 'sweat equity' holder Sunanda Pushkar under very mysterious circumstances. Supposedly due to complications of the Lupus disease or a drug interaction; or both; or a sophisticated, hard to detect poison called polonium, traditionally used by KGB to assassinate rivals! That famous '50 crore ki girl friend' remark about Shashi Tharoor by Narendra Modi is epic. Perhaps one day I will write about it -  when I feel like a crime thriller !

For now Lalit Modi has an interesting proposition !  He proposes that One day cricket format of 50 overs variety should be abolished entirely and cricket world should focus on test cricket; which is the classical 5 day, white clothes, red ball , 2 innings per team format and T20 format which is like after dinner, evening entertainment of 120 balls for each team kind. Wildly successful and popular IPL is a T20 tournament! There is ,as expected, a stiff opposition to this idea and even a sense of dismissal out of hand by some quarters because it is 'Lalit Modi' !

 

You do not know Swapan Mitra. He was my drafts person for a very long time. He was quite a bit older than I was and he was exceptionally good at his job. It was before cad software and a plethora of AI tools had made most of the drafting skills redundant. One thing that he really excelled in was 'Isometric View'. This comes from the world of design and simply put it is a 3 dimensional representation of an object in 2 dimensions; done in scale without any foreshortening as  you would find in a perspective view. One can accurately measure all dimensions. It gives a complete view of the object as if one is looking down from above the frame. 

 

So Mitra always made an isometric view for every plan; at times he made an exploded view too. He made that decision without my input. Fact is I was able to explain my concept to clients countless times on the strength of that Isometric view. Otherwise we as designers tend to focus  primarily at the plan view. It took me some time to realize why Mitra included it in every presentation ! Well; because it is the best client centrist view! And I am not even talking about design here!

 

When we look at people, life, events, concepts, theories; ideas, whatever; we must look at an isometric view! No foreshortening; no distortion; clearly measurable dimensions on all X Y Z axis. At the same time we must  look at the entire picture from above and avoid getting into the frame. Remaining a bit distanced and staying critical will lead us to see things clearly for how they truly are!  Get complete picture & present complete information! Mitra taught me this life lesson; though he is not aware that he did!

 

Let's circle back  to cricket! It is well known that cricket originated in England. Power  and decision making stayed there for a very long time. As the game spread across British colonies like Australia; South Africa; west Indies and the Indian sub continent; that power continued to grow and stay concentrated in MCC, England. First challenge to it came from Australia as their teams started winning matches. Don Bradman , arguably the greatest batsman ever was the face of it. They have produced several great players in every generation. Jeff Thompson  was tearaway; fastest ever according to some while Shane Warned us considered the greatest leg spinner ever! 

That challenge  to English power was managed well. Australians were white, western and subjects of the British crown. They got co-opted. The challenge turned into a great rivalry limited to the playing field. Off the field they merrily consulted and shared  power & cricketing  decision making. Moral and ethical considerations regarding their apartheid policies kept white South Africa out of the world cricket for decades. They were only readmitted after apartheid was dismantled in 1991 with a tour of India! 

There is no country called West Indies! It is a group of separate nations. Little specks somewhere in the Caribbean sea and North Atlantic ocean ; that field a joint cricket team. To my knowledge it is the only multi national team playing under one banner, in any sports anywhere in the world. Gary Sobers and Lance Gibbs are well known old stalwarts of the team. Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kalicharan and batting giant Brian Lara of a later generation are noteworthy. What really propelled west Indies to firmly dominate world cricket was their legendary ' fearsome four'; express bowling attack.

Holding; Roberts; Garner and Croft established west Indies at the top during '70 and 80'. And who can forget Malcolm Marshall? An absolute delight of fierceness ; if there is even such a word! Together they pummelled every opposition in sight and left them in dust. Smaller individual cricket boards making up  West Indies gained a lot of traction over the years but the power quietly stayed with ECB - English Cricket Board.

 

Trust Pakistan to play a sly hand! They perfected the reverse swing. It is achieved by roughening one side of the cricket ball and keeping the other side shiny. The aerodynamics at high speed ensures that the ball unpredictably and unconventionally swings to the shiny side instead of the rough. They achieved that by picking the seams with fingernails and roughening one side with bottle caps and other found material. It was not illegal at the time although not exactly in line with the spirit of the game. Their quick bowlers achieved tremendous success . Imran , Akram and Waqar easily come to mind. The success was rather short lived . White nations ensured that the rules changed and 'Making' the ball became illegal as it should always have been. Pakistan never became the centre of the cricketing universe.

 

In between an  Australian media tycoon, Kerry Packer of  channel 9 designed the one day match - a short format of cricket played in the evening wearing colourful dresses and a white ball! It allowed a lot more people to watch it on TV. The cheeky tag line was, " Big Boys Play at Night"! Marketing , sponsorship and international playing talent made sure that it catches public interest. There was a lot of opposition by various cricketing boards. Several players got banned for participating in this so called circus, but the money was good; way too good ! Money eclipses your brain cells; blinds your eyes and softens your heart!  Eventually it makes one forget  principles, if there were any to begin with! Short format and Long money had come to stay in cricket.

 

You can not keep Indians far from money! They are like a trained bloodhound tracking a prey! Traditionally Indian teams were known for their spin bowling and some batting brilliance like Gavaskar holding the highest test run record for long and that flag bearer of his legacy , Tendulkar; who has that record now as well as the record for all time highest total runs in all formats together . You may have heard about Suravanshi ; a young 15 year old ,that is promising to carry that baton now!

Bedi, Chadrashekhar and Prasanna are the much celebrated Indian spin trio. Indian Fast bowling was rather slow and cricket pitches, game and rules were slowly veering towards quick bowling. This is when Kapil Dev rose to prominence. He was quick and he was talented. He won India the short format world cup in 1983 and changed the loosing Indian mindset for ever. 1.4 billion people now have 10 fresh world class talents available for selection; to replace one retiring player. India can and at times does field more than one National team simultaneously. They can boast  of a world champion Indian women's cricket team as well!

 

It was bound to happen! With this big a market; third largest economy growing  @ 7%( highest in the world); massive popularity of cricket and visible rise in the disposable incomes; something had to give. India generates 80% of all the cricketing revenues worldwide and money talks! The Board of Control for Cricket in India ( BCCI) is very powerful to say the least. Currently even the chairmanship of International Cricket Council (ICC) is held by India as well. Who likes it ? It is complicated but the short answer is nobody! Who can do anything about it ? See the answer above!

 

 If India wants to relegate 50 over one day format to disuse....... it will reach the end of the road pronto! So coming back to Lalit Modi's proposal. I think he has a point or two there. 5 day red ball, white dress, test cricket is absolutely beautiful, classical and everything cricket is all about. Except test cricket is hard to monetise. It should receive support and funding because You can not sustain it by gate money and few sponsors  alone. People also have paucity of time to engage with it fully even when they appreciate it. Money has to come from the shorter T20 format which has the potential to engage several times more people; can be easily organised frequently ; can also have more participating teams that can qualify to play at the world stage and has shown to generate several times more advertising revenue from TV rights. Redistribution of these funds will support test cricket and make all the cricket purists like myself happy.

 

50 over format increasingly fails to fall in either the classical category or in the  revenue generating entertainment category. It can easily be retired to enable strengthening the other  two formats. That sounds like a good plan for cricket's future. At least that is what my isometric view shows!