How much is too much?

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

There are two sides in every game, but cricket has three - the good, the bad and the ugly, reports L Suresh.

The Colosseum is filled with over 50,000 fanatics, with more waiting outside, eager to witness the grand show – professionals fighting each other for the entertainment of the spectators. Specially trained men controlled by their rich owners and rented out for large sums to anyone who wanted to stage games. Sportsmen attended to by trainers and physios during their days of action, and eventually eased into retirement - if they survived and if their sponsor allowed them to. Dashing performers who became celebrities and developed a large female following.

Now morph the Colosseum to a more contemporary setting – the concrete cauldron, packed with spectators. Replace the gladiators with their present-day counterparts – and a game of cricket evolves from one of the world’s most famous spectacles of a bygone era. But one thing hasn’t changed. Cricketers are still held under the control of their Boards, the sponsors, marketing companies and the selection committee, with all its whims and fancies. Look closely at their flannels and embossed between all those logos will be seen a little testament of truth – I am my own man and I have my Board’s permission to say so. So they play, they travel, they play, they promote brands, they play, they feature in ads, they make social appearances – and they make millions.

But was it always as hectic as this? There was a time – before the era of one-dayers and Twenty20 - when a cricket series consisted of only Tests and league matches. So how much cricket could they have played? Well, take the case of New Zealand’s tour of England in 1949 when they played four Tests – and 28 first-class matches across four months and 10 days. A year later, the Windies played a similar series – a 129-day tour out of which cricket was scheduled for 114 days. Seven back-to-back matches were played before the first Test – that’s 25 days of non-stop cricket before a Test series.

And one thought that players today were playing too much cricket.

Well, at least quite a few current players think so. Brett Lee, Ponting, Shahid Afridi, Graeme Smith, Inzamam-ul-haq and Trescothick have all spoken out against the overdose of cricket today. Sehwag talked of player burnout even he must have keenly listened to Tim May speak of a players’ protest – a ‘strike’ must have been music to his ears after a whole season of mere swing and miss. Dhoni, suitably inspired by his new fan ads, asked for more rotation. The politically correct cricketer that he is, Sachin decided to be true to his endorsers and took the 50:50 route. Harbhajan had to be different and while scoffing at the idea of too much cricket, stated that those who wanted to be rested could ask for it. He’s right – they will be asking for it, considering the number of players who have lost their places due to injury and form and are trying to get back into the team.

The BCCI seems to have its players petrified - to an extent that its promise of ‘adequate breaks’ sounds like an ominous threat to them. The very thought of opting out and having to claw one’s way back into the team has spurred each player on to take the field day after day, with a gag firmly in place. (And with this, one can see the Board exploring another window of opportunity – each gag could sport a logo that could add a few million dollars to the overflowing coffers.)

As with most politically afflicted organizations, the Big Brother syndrome has gripped the likes of the BCCI and the ICC with a ‘do what I say, don’t do what I do’ credo. While the former discourages players from speaking out on issues like schedules, tours and their former captain, the latter has decided on the ‘if you can't lick them, threaten them’ route, as it has questioned the identity of the Federation of International Cricketers Association (FICA), claiming that it has been recognised only in five countries. That’s a lot of noise being made by a body that presides over a game played seriously only in ten countries in the world.

So, while the players blame their Board and the Boards blame ICC schedules, the ICC blames the cash-rich and greedy-for-more Boards. Sure, we understand. Increasing the number of matches in the World Cup by modifying the Super Sixes to Super Eights, changing the format of the Champions Trophy from a knock-out to a league format, adding official Twenty20 matches to the already bursting-at-the-seams tours, forcing the Afro-Asian tournament into the schedule - how can these possibly lead to an increase in the players' workload?

Management principles say that when you can’t sell something straight, use jargon. The ICC does that rather well, with the advent of the Future Tours Programme (FTP) – which means if you think the past was bad, check out the future. And the ATPs (Annual Touring Programmes) – if you are a stickler for numbers, then 60 ATPs make this new FTP. And there is the icon series that the Boards bring in – those famous ones where icons are pitted against each other - Sachin against Shoaib and McGrath against Trescothick - and they all get injured. Of course, if these don’t work, use operative phrases like ‘mandatory minimum requirements’, ‘foundation for a balanced schedule’ and ‘discovering future commitments’. Hopefully, they will all mean something when put in context.

Back home, the Indian Board is taking a leaf out of Bollywood as it is replicating the idea of star shows abroad. Having started with Abu Dhabi, the Indian jamboree is now moving on to those parts of the world with a large NRI population – which is practically everywhere – and the Indian stars will be ‘performing’ before their fans. Canada could follow, one hears Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya and London being mentioned and hold it – the North Americas have been taken as well, with India playing the Windies somewhere in the US.

Benefits matches. Friendship series. Icon series. Offshore series (with a software boom rocking India, the BCCI has obviously cottoned on to the terminology). And now, the Indian team would also be playing to raise money for Olympic disciplines. What’s next? A fundraiser to produce a Bollywood film? Of course, the best way to absolve oneself of one’s sins is by transferring them onto the neighbour. The BCCI believes that each tour helps other cricket boards make big money - it is noble thoughts like these that make titles like Patron Saint all the more appropriate.

So is there a solution to this problem? Keeping in mind the fact that it is the spectators who should decide how much cricket they want to watch (and you can be sure that their idea of exciting cricket tussles don’t necessarily include a tired Australia floundering against Bangladesh or a weak West Indian side taking on a weaker Zimbabwe in the one dayers), here are a few:

One body, one mind: There can be only one schedule - and it must come from the ICC, in concurrence with all the Boards. The Boards should not be allowed to add their own agenda to the itinerary - an ICC schedule that was two years and 10 drafts in the making cannot be amended by a BCCI schedule that has 750 million dollars to be made.

No minnow bashing: Divide cricket-playing countries into two leagues of six teams each, like in the Champions Trophy, with only teams from the same league playing one another. This will ensure that nail-biting clashes between New Zealand and Kenya or Pakistan and Zimbabwe can be averted. This will also bring down the number of matches that each team plays. And thirdly, it will stop meaningless triangular tournaments with a weaker third team that’s normally brought in to be knocked out.

Rotation makes the cricket world go around: Australia has been doing this for years, but has been terribly shy about admitting this. The new-look Indian side has been championing this concept and it has worked well in our favour. A pool of 20 players will give everyone sufficient breaks and bring in more cricketers into the limelight.

No torture tests: Losing 38 times in a row to Australia will not make Bangladesh a better Test team. If anything, it will only dampen its spirits. The teams at the bottom of the table need to play against ‘A’ teams from the top ranked nations, take part in first-class tournaments in other countries and play against under-25 teams until they improve their playing caliber.

No frivolous preliminaries: It’s time the ICC put an end to long-drawn preliminary matches in tournaments like the World Cup and Champions Trophy, where the results are a foregone conclusion and one just can’t wait for the real action to begin. Incidentally, the 1975 World Cup had 15 matches while the 2007 edition will have 51.

Of course, the biggest solution of them all would be for the Boards to put a lid on their bottomless greed - but then, isn’t that a bit like telling Shane Warne to take lesser wickets and appear in fewer scandals?

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 21 May, 2006)

The code to success

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

You’ve heard the controversies. Now watch the movie, says L Suresh as The Da Vinci Code hits theatres worldwide.

A two-time Oscar-winner and one of the highest grossing actors of all time. A double Academy Award winning director who has etched his name across genres. A singer, songwriter and pianist turned writer who is one of America’s most controversial authors today. And a renaissance man - an architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, musician and one of the world’s greatest painters who ever lived. The perfect setting for a Jeffrey Archer tale of four men from different backgrounds who come together to crack a code and reveal secrets that are likely to ‘shake up the very foundations of mankind’.

Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, author Dan Brown and the one and only Leonardo Da Vinci (who has contributed to every aspect of the movie, from the clues to the controversies, from the plot to the paintings and from the theme to the title) team up for a potential winner that, in its book version, has generated enough controversy for the world to remember Da Vinci twice this month – on his death anniversary on May 2 and again on May 19, when The Da Vinci Code unravels ‘the biggest cover-up in human history’ on tens of thousands of big screens the world over. (For someone who has been a bigger money-spinner than GE and Wal-Mart put together, it is surprising to know that Leonardo didn’t even have a surname – da Vinci just indicated the fact that he was ‘from Vinci’. If only he knew how men would feed off his work and then take each other to court on copyright issues, he would have written one last book- “How Leonardo got ripped, got sold and got a surname”.)

For those who haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, the plot revolves around famed symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), two strangers who are thrown together into a whirlwind adventure, with only the cryptic clues hidden in Da Vinci’s works to help them locate an ancient secret that is now threatening to take their lives. In hot pursuit of this duo are the French police, a scary, hooded albino and some extremely powerful enemies who remain in the shadows till the very end. Thrilling chases through Paris, London and Scotland, gruesome murders at chapels and at the Louvre, and innumerable twists and turns mark this cat and mouse game as Howard promises us a blend of exciting action and gripping drama.

While history says that few movies have bettered the book they were based on, Howard has taken on a subject that turns history on its head - so there’s no reason why he can’t disprove the theory. One way that Howard is trying to do this is by taking advantage of the three-layered setting against which the story operates - with Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and his apostles at one level, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Robert Boyle and Victor Hugo in the second and the Opus Dei, the Vatican and other powers-that-be in the third - thus offering a backdrop spanning 2000 years for the on-the-run lead pair, Langdon and Neveu. So, while the book features the characters from various time zones as part of the narrative, the movie, according to its director, takes the viewer into each of these time zones – the Last Supper, the clandestine congregations of the Priory of Sion held in dark chambers and the high powered meetings of the clergy.

Looking at the choice of actors, the name that automatically comes to mind for the role of Robert Langdon is Hollywood’s first professor – Harrison Ford. But then, it’s 20 years too late for such wishful thinking. Of course, Dan Brown seems to have had similar ideas, as he not only creates a present day Indiana Jones, but also has the Boston Magazine refer to Langdon in the book as “Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed”. Since Ron Howard has this pact with Tom Hanks according to which they make a movie together every 11 years - Splash in 1984, Apollo 13 in 1995 and now, The Da Vinci Code in 2006 – we shall not contest the matter any further.

The film’s cast clearly indicates that star values and acting abilities have gotten the better of the book’s description of the characters. So Langdon is not a strong-jawed, dimple-chinned character with a ‘thicket of coarse, black hair’, but a puffy-faced Tom Hanks with a receding hairline. And Bezu Fache, the stocky, dark, ‘almost Neanderthal’ man will be played by the tall, lanky, bearded Jean Reno, the man who gives every action movie that extra dose of adrenalin. However one area where Howard seems to have conformed to the book is in building each character up with a peek into their past – the albino Silas who goes about mindlessly obeying his master’s command, the French cryptologist Sophie Neveu – each has a past that explains the reason why they are what they are and we see fleeting glimpses of the same through the younger version of these characters.

Having to pack three different eras, an array of powerful characters that includes everyone from Jesus Christ to Isaac Newton, the impossibly massive Louvre and crypts spewing out conspiracy theories, all in one movie, Howard will have no option but to run it like a flip book that one used to collect of cricketers, where a rapid flip of the book from cover to cover would result individual images forming one continuous action. While it would keep the film fast-paced, it may not leave much room for those rare occasions where Dan Brown has indulged himself as a writer – like the one where Langdon describes his predicament as being’ trapped in a Salvador Dali painting’.

A large portion of Dan Brown’s research and theories have been presented in the book as Langdon’s lectures, so one never knows if any of them will feature in the movie at all. And without the academic parts, the book reads like a racy screenplay that conforms to the Alistair MacLean genre– a ‘ready for the movies’ paperback. (In case Langdon’s lectures don’t figure, please pick up a copy of the book and pick out nuggets like the significance of the number Phi, the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile, the truth about the Star of David, the hidden symbolisms in Walt Disney’s animation and several other theories – you’ll realize how the thin dotted line separating facts and fiction is soon obfuscated and you are left to decide what you want to believe.)

The more you read about the movie, the more you'll realize that it is not your regular chase-across-the-globe thriller and that it has an academic slant to it as well, but in a movie where a Harvard symbiologist and lecturer and a cryptologist are being tracked down by a man known as The Teacher, what else can you expect?

For those of you who have read the book and know the story, think of it as a journey to places you’ve probably never been to before – the Louvre, the inside of a Swiss bank, some breathtaking cathedrals in London and to an all-powerful secret meeting of the Priory of Sion. But for those who haven’t, it’s time to go to the theatres and do exactly what the tag line says – seek the truth.

(Appeared as a slightly abridged version in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 14 May, 2006)