Twenty20 is here to stay. The Champions League and the Pakistan T20 League are a testament to this. While Test cricket may be the holy grail of cricketing achievement, the shortest form of the sport has found its niche. It is the ideal entertainment for people who want to go out for an evening of smash, bang and wallop, with an assured result in the bargain. Test cricket takes five days of grinding combat, with perhaps no result at the end. And yet there is no more riveting experience than seeing two teams going at each other not just for a five-day Test but for a Test series lasting several months.
Delicious menu
To each his own, as they say, and there is a delicious menu of cricket of all forms coming up in the immediate future. After these T20 Leagues, Australia tour South Africa and the same players that are fighting it out side by side in the CL will be opposing each other tooth and nail in a highly anticipated Test series.
England visit India for an ODI series which could decide the best team in that format of the game. England are currently blessed with a wealth of talent, much of it not home grown, but good enough to make them the team to beat. How they handle conditions in India is another matter. The pitches will be batsman and spinner friendly, with the pacers finding their offensive weapons neutralized to a great extent. Graeme Swann could be the key England’s bowling prospects. The pacers will be fast through the air but will find the pitches discouraging and will have to redo their line and length accordingly. How they adapt will have a bearing on England’s prospects. England’s batting should prosper against an Indian attack devoid of Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh.
Champions League
overshadows National T20
It was interesting to compare the players and the teams in the Champions League and the Pakistan National T20 Championships. While the standard of cricket was quite good in our League, it was overshadowed by the presence of today’s stars in the CL. While the CL product was polished and quite compelling, the local competition lacked the finer points. They did not even have a speed gun, let alone all the other video playback goodies. But perhaps the biggest difference among the teams across the border was in the physical conditioning of the players and the Pakistani players fell short by some margin.
The great tennis champion of the 1950s and 1960s, Pancho Gonzalez used to cut off the pockets in his shorts because he was concerned about the extra weight of the sweat that they might absorb. Bjorn Borg used to monitor his weight down to a fraction of a kilogram because he was afraid of the effect the extra weight might have on his speed and his stroke technique.
Contrary to that, our Pakistani boys playing in the National T20 look grossly overweight for professional competition. There may be a few like Razzaq or Sohail Tanvir who are naturally lean, but the majority of the others look five or more kilos over their ideal playing weight. Even the Indian players who eat about the same diet as our players, look to be closer to their optimum weight.
It’s the weight, you know
An overweight athlete has many things going against him. Imagine running around with a five kilogram belt tied around your weight. You will be slower off the mark, less agile in changing directions, and will run slower between the wickets, especially in the stop and turn. While bowling, the load bearing joints will face much greater stress and consequently will break down more often. An overweight player will be less amenable to diving or sliding for a ball while fielding. In essence, extra weight will degrade all aspects of a player’s game.
The problem is probably our culture of eating oily foods and rich sweets. A doctor once told me that a gram of oil contains nine calories while a gram of sugar contains six calories. If these two items in our diet are controlled, the extra flab will simply wash away. The players will be sharper, faster and better in every aspect. This scribe, a serious veteran tennis player can vouch for the effect that even an extra kilo can have on playing effectiveness.
The England team of yesteryear was known for its unfit players. Andrew Flintoff was grossly overweight and this directly contributed to his ankle problems and early retirement. Ian Botham also sported a pot belly in his later days and lost effectiveness in his bowling. The current England team is a keen, lean fighting machine and their results are a reflection of it.
The PCB should take note of this issue and take steps to counter it. The players should be made aware that fitness, especially the fat percentage in a player’s body will be taken into account for selection, regardless of his batting or bowling achievements. They should hire nutritionists who can design proper diets for the players that are low oil and low sugar, yet are pleasant to eat. The athletic standard and appearance of our teams will improve overnight.
Indian highhandedness
It is really a shame that no Pakistani team is playing in the CL. There really is no excuse for this except for the chauvinism of the Indian authorities and perhaps the fear that a team from Lahore, Karachi or Sialkot could come across the border and sort out all the star-studded, over-hyped Indian teams, as some of our teams have been known to do in the past. The PCB ought to approach the ICC regarding the legality of an International Champions’ League where a team from one of the member countries is excluded for no apparent reason.
The Afghanistan team playing in the National T20 are a breath of fresh air. They are fitter, faster and keener than most of our local teams. Hardly any of their players is overweight. Their skills are as good as any other team. The only thing that is letting them down is their lack of self belief when it comes to the key moments of a game. Instead of stepping on the accelerator, they hold back. This confidence will come with time and they will become a force to reckon with on the international stage. All they require is good management and some semblance of a domestic system which could send players up to the national team.
