AUS CRICKET

Australian selectors have forgiven Michael Clarke for his poor form in Twenty20, naming him to captain Australia against Pakistan in England in July!! (Wonder if an Indian captain would have to be forgiven for his lack of form after the team reaches finals in such a dominating fashion!) The squad to take on Pakistan in two Tests from mid-July won't be named until several contenders such as Usman Khawaja,Michael kilnger and George bailey have fronted up for Australia A late next month.Siddle,Hilfenhaus,Stuart,Ferguson and Mitchell marsh are other talented cricketers making the bench strength..The standards that Aussies set for themselves are simply amazing!!


Australia is undoubtedly the best cricket team in the world at the moment and they have been for quite some time. The reason is neither that all there players are naturally gifted nor is this sucess down to a lucky crop of talented players.. The answer is that the Australian domestic structure is of the highest standard.The amateurish club cricket and bloated county circuit of other countries is no match for the conveyor belt of Australian state and grade cricket. The structure is based to inculcate resilience, unregenerate human nature and self-reliance. An Australian cricketer isn’t spoiling for a fight, but he is ready for one. There has been a line of succession which, perhaps, was never in doubt. Greg Chappell (7,110 Test runs) retired five years into Border’s career; Border (11,174 Test runs) retired nine years into Steve Waugh’s. During his reign, Australians took their bloodymindedness to the next level. Waugh (10,927 Test runs) retired nine years into the career of Ricky Ponting. An Australian cricketer is driven by the will to Win matches. He takes taking nothing for granted and has an inherent mantle of relentlessness.


So, what is so special about the domestic structure of Australians? Firstly, Australia has just six teams in its domestic structure governed by six different organisations. This means every Australian has to fight hard just to keep his place in the state side, forget the national side.Next, the success of the system can be dedicated to the efficient hierarchical system followed while appointing the various members of the organization and well organized domestic competitions.Each of the member organizations elects representatives to the 14 man Cricket Australia Board of Directors, and to the Senior Management Team, which consists of about 60 members of staff.The membership of the 14 man board is New South Wales (three Directors), Queensland (two Directors), South Australia (three Directors), Tasmania (one Director), Victoria (three Directors), and Western Australia (two Directors). The board develops Cricket Australia's strategic plan, but the plan is implemented by the Senior Management Team and the Chief Executive officer. Cricket Australia also organises domestic inter-state cricket in Australia, including the three premier competitions in each of the major forms of the game.These are the Sheffield Shield in first-class cricket, the Ford Ranger One Day Cup, which is the domestic one-day competition, and the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, which is the domestic Twenty20 competition. Most of the support staff around the world are Australians. There was a time when there were as many as five Australians as National Coaches – Greg Chappel (India), John Bucchannan (Australia), Tom Moddy (Sri Lanka), Dave Whatmore (Bangladesh) and John Dyson(West Indies). The best umpire, Simon Taufell, is also an Australian. Surely there is something in the Australian setup.


In comparison, India has 27 teams in the Ranji Trophy (at least one for each state). These are divided into two divisions – Elite (10 teams) and Plate (17 teams). This number was even higher in 2007 when there were 12 teams in the Elite division. Ideally, this number should be further reduced to eight (something that is hard to do).Until very recently, the Elite- division teams did not have a full time physical trainer. One can surely imagine the condition of the Plate division teams. IPL has brought in the money, but has done little to improve the quality.One of the obvious reasons is that there are as many as eight teams in IPL with the provision of 4 foreign players per team per match as compared to two foreign players allowed in the Australian domestic competition. Instead of improving their skills and developing their talents, the young Indian players thrust themselves into the limelight IPL brings. Its not difficult to imagine the standard of Cricket when the number of teams is increased in 2010. Inefficiency and Corruption in cricket is even higher at junior levels which are by and large outside the media glare. IPL has addressed this to a certain extent but it has also made players less enthusiastic of playing for India, since they can make enough money even if they never get to play for India.



So what can be done to improve the structure in India? Structures are easy to copy; cultures are far subtler. When is success structural and when cultural? Take West Indian cricket in the 1970s
and 1980s. With dazzling batsmen and lethal fast bowlers, the West Indies were all-conquering. What drove this success? Was it their club system? Was it their inter-island first-class competition? Certainly, their cricket was strong at the roots; far stronger than when the Test team declined in the 1990s. But surely the more decisive factor was cultural. Here was a loose confederation of islands collectively throwing off the yoke of colonialism. There was a score to be settled against England; against the white world. The West Indies honed intimidation alongside self-expression. It was a party with a purpose. In the 1980s did English cricket seek to copy the West Indies’ structure? Of course not! Everyone knew that it was a special case..In India, the extent of craze cricket brings is hard to comprehend. For instance,It is perplexing to see people support IPL teams. A guy from Hyderabad supports a team that hardly has any players from Hyderabad or AP for that matter! India’s population every year increases by an amount that is roughly equal to the current population of Australia. Yet our team (of which most of us ardent supporters) is thrashed by a team that was essentially composed of Australia’s reserves. Now, the Aussie culture is changing. Twentieth-century Australia harbored a long grudge that it wasn’t taken seriously enough—the cultural cringe, as it is called.The grudge has now been fully and properly settled, both on the field and beyond. Sydney is a capital of laid-back cool, and Australia is one of the most envied countries in the world.Can the system survive the transition? Will the new cool Australia show the old unshakable defiance? To whom will Ponting pass the mantle?


I’m not suggesting Australian cricket will nosedive as swiftly as the West Indies (though it's certainly possible). That structural advantages such as only six first-class teams, each fed by just one major amateur league shall certainly continue to play a crucial part in Australian cricket.If money alone would have been the issue, then Africa or North Korea would never win medals at the Olympics. Surely they have something right in their sporting structure and it is not marred by the corrupt and inefficient practices. BCCI is perhaps the only Sporting organization in India that has loads of money. It can surely be more innovative and invest in long term projects that can produce lasting results. For instance, it can invest in an Institute of Sports Science (A discipline that studies the application of scientific principles and techniques with the aim of improving sporting performance. Human movement is a related scientific discipline that studies human movement in all contexts including that of sport).Andrew Leipus, India’s physio during 2003 World Cup had a Sport Science degree from an Australian Institute. If we could have a local institute to produce physios, most Ranji sides could have a physio and thus India’s perennial problem of fielding could be solved. Fitness in other sports would also greatly improve. Likewise, Indian sports need Sports Psychologists. Domestic cricket can be reformed with fewer games, better wickets, more practice time and discrete time-slots for competitions to allow proper preparation for each form of the game. It is not because of the system, it is despite the system that Indian sportsmen still manage to win so many accolades and bring glory to the nation! :P