Twitter Status: Isn't John McCain very uninspiring when he speaks? Everything looks so forced when he speaks... even if he tries to speak sense
11May2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League.
Pradeep Magazine has been the latest to jump onto the mad corporates killing cricket bandwagon, in his latest article on the Hindustan Times.
Now, from what I’ve read so far, he hasn’t been particularly fond of the IPL as such. So this article may come as little surprise. He takes the one incident — of Mallya’s mindless sacking of Charu Sharma — and uses it to preach doom and gloom for cricket.
Now I don’t want to go on a long rant on this again, because I’ve already done it. But I do have just one more thought to add to what’s already been said, and that is in response to this one remark from Magazine’s article:
It is said that poor Charu Sharma, who was trying his best to become a buffer between the players and the owner, had to face the music after every loss and was told to crack the whip and not be too soft on the players. The players themselves, new to this corporate governance, can do nothing but watch and absorb this new “ethos” either with amusement or accept their fate and seek solace in the fat paycheques they are getting.
Here’s my thought: can’t we, for a moment, consider that this — with all the money flying around — is indeed a business with the product being cricket; different teams represent competitors fighting to stamp their authority, as separate business entities. They all run their franchises in their own individual styles, thinking what they believe to be the right way to run their businesses. But they, just as the players, are new to this market segment. And, as with any other fledgling market, mistakes will be made along the way and business entities will learn from those mistakes, and slowly, as the market matures, you will have a more stable management style that won’t simply fire personnel on a whim.
The sports franchise model is new in India — I don’t consider the ESPN backed PHL as a franchise model — and you will have the odd moments of madness.
So just as we don’t agree with the reactionary nature of Mallya sacking Charu Sharma, we mustn’t ourselves jump to knee-jerk conclusions about how the corporate system is going to run (ruin?) cricket. So again, as I said earlier, let’s give it time.
For a start though, I’d have to agree with the closing lines of Magazine’s article, which is to leave cricket to the cricketers.
8May2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League; Twenty20.
Jayaditya Gupta in his column in the Cricinfo magazine: ‘Market rules, ok ‘ writes about private ownership bringing about uncertainty and despotism in the way clubs/franchises are run in cricket. The argument he makes and the analogy he draws, with football in particular, is flawed to a great degree and hence this post.
The article has come on the back of the Charu Sharma sacking — which, admittedly, is a bird-brained move because the rot had seemingly set in from the day the auctions were held. But taking this instance as a premise to accuse the attitude of the owners for being results oriented is a little difficult to digest.
Let’s have a look at what he’s had to say:
As the game’s profile has risen, so have the stakes. And those high stakes don’t have any time for the “glorious uncertainties of cricket”. The bottomline does not respect honour in defeat. All that matters is results; the rest is for the writers and romantics. The big stakeholders are rarely given to sitting on their hands while their team’s fortunes dwindle, hoping providence intervenes; they act fast, often shooting the first person in sight, usually shooting first and asking questions later, but shooting. And publicly; they must not merely act, they must be seen to have acted.
About time, don’t you think? How many times have we — and not just we, the fans, but even journalists like the one quoted above — bemoaned the lack of professionalism affecting Indian cricket. What would you expect if you see paid professionals who are expected to show results — and, hence, an improvement in the quality of cricket? Firing personnel to get things moving, sending a message across to the dressing room and setting your house in order are just some of the things one can think of. And when a ruthless approach is taken — more often than not they are under good counsel — team politics and favoritism can be wiped out.
Now when this sense of accountability is being applied to a team, why the anger? Charu Sharma’s sacking may have been ill-advised, but a generalization based on this one incident is grossly unfair.
To make his point clear he cites the example of foreign ownership in football and the English Premier League:
Liverpool was bought by two Americans who were buddies at the time but now can’t bear to sit in the same room. Manchester United was bought by one American who turned the club from a profitable, cash-rich and debt-free listed company into a private enterprise, which though profitable on its own, owes US$1.5 billion to all creditors and has $1.2 billion in total borrowings. Chelsea’s owner, the second-richest man in Britain, has brought two league titles to the club and may bring a third but runs Stamford Bridge with as much glasnost as the Kremlin under Leonid Brezhnev.
Being a Manchester United fan and having had a more than passing interest on the happenings in football, in general, I think he hasn’t exactly nailed the idea of despotism he wanted to convey with the above analogy.
Liverpool are victims of infighting — not despotism; although their manager has been undermined when one of the owners went behind his back to talk to Jurgen Klinsmann about a possible contract with the club. But for a club like Liverpool that hasn’t won the English Premier League for about 18 years now, and are fighting to finish fourth despite spending big the owners can’t be blamed too badly for being concerned about success.
The Glazers who own Manchester United have plunged the club in debt, but have left matters related to football to David Gill (the Chief Executive) and manager Sir Alex Ferguson — again no despotism there.
The only case of despotism could have been Man City’s owner. Chelsea’s owner doesn’t really run the club as a business — he runs it like a sugar daddy without trivial concerns like breaking even and making profits.
That said, my point is this: football clubs in England and Spain are in the results business whether they are owned by billionaire owners or not. All clubs have strong fan bases that demand a certain level of success. Barcelona, for example, is not owned by an entity but by the 100,000 member fans that elect presidents to run their club — they are currently undergoing a major upheaval in key personnel that run their club, are most certainly going to ship Ronaldinho out of the club. No mad billionaire owners making rash decisions here. Not even sympathy for a former FIFA player of the year. Just a mix of common sense, results and a need to stem the rot.
Getting back to the IPL and the franchises, it is actually good for a fan to see proactive action being taken to improve results and, consequently, the quality of cricket on offer for the team one supports. How many years have we spent waiting for a world cup debacle for a change in personnel in the national team?
Market forces will allow players to give a hundred percent due to the stakes involved. How often do you get to see an Ashish Nehra dive full stretch at the straight boundary to save a certain four? Yes, the IPL and the pressure has made such wondrous sights possible. So let’s give it a chance, shall we?
23April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Internet; Twitter; Wordpress.
As you might notice I now have my latest Twitter status on my main homepage. Those of you reading this on RSS feeds, feel free to click through and see.
Now this was possible thanks to the TwitterRSS plugin by Dave Kellam [via Patrix]. It is a very simple plugin and easily integrates Twitter with Wordpress. However, it doesn’t have enough material to explain how to customize it, although it is really quite simple.
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22April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League; Twenty20.
I have been meaning to write on this for quite sometime, now. In fact, there was one more thing I wanted to talk about in regards to the IPL, but that deserves separate space.
There has been a lot of talk going around about tribalism in the IPL. Questions like, “Will fans cheer for their home team when Symonds plays for them” and “Will they boo Sachin when he plays in the opposing team?” have been asked. Answers to these questions could, in some way, determine the loyalty quotient of the public, so to speak.
But while these are some fairly easy questions and can be answered upon watching three to four games, there are yet other questions, the answers to which, could go some way determining the extent of loyalty these fans have towards their adopted teams. A couple of them, off the top of my head, are: “Will fans travel to away games?” and “Will they feel conflicting emotions when a foreign player, who is a star of their franchise, comes and plays a match winning knock against India?” These questions would need more time and would really go some way to determining the extent of tribalism in Indian league cricket.
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18April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Internet.
Cricketwires seems to be just that. It’s a newly launched site that follows the “river of news” principle of Techmeme. It looks promising, but with Cricinfo, Rediff and other established cricketing behemoths, it remains to be seen how successful this will turn out to be. Of course, they seem to have forgotten to add a header on their page with the word “Cricketwires” written.
A few hours to the IPL, I suppose. Pity I’ll be at work when the fireworks commence.
17April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League.
Minutes after a “short, sharp and sweet” opening ceremony on Friday to launch the inaugural edition of the Twenty20 tournament, the organisers are planning to switch off all lights at the Chinnaswamy Stadium before the first match between Dravid’s Bangalore Royal Challengers, the hosts, and Ganguly’s Kolkata Knight Riders, the visitors, which begins at 20.00 local time. “Then, the spotlights will come on, and focus on the two skippers as they walk out for the toss,” Charu Sharma, the Royal Challengers’ chief executive, told Cricinfo.[source]
Yes, that’s the kind of drama the IPL is going to experience. A bit much don’t you think? Turning off the lights eh? Better let the crowd know that it’s pre-planned. Else, they might mistake it for a power cut.
There will be some more IPL posts over the next month. Trust me, I wanted to write about other stuff too, but there still are a few thoughts on Lalit Modi and his cronies’ handling of things that have been eating my brain for the past few days. So hang on tight.
Since the league is now almost underway, let me make my affiliations known to every one: I support the Chennai Super Kings — what with me being Tamil and liking Chennai in general.
14April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Asides.
I am one of the new contributors on the wildly popular Desipundit. For those who haven’t heard of DP, it’s a filter blog for the best of the desi blogosphere. So you can catch me, there, linking to posts from desi bloggers I find interesting. I hope, I manage to contribute there on a regular basis.
12April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Indian Premier League.
With the ongoing wrangling between the Indian Premier League and the media — with sections of the media threatening to boycott the league entirely — I happened to stumble across a similar incident concerning the American National Football League. Apparently they had placed limits on other sites showing online footage of their content in order to protect the NFL’s own “internet business interests”; most insane of their rules was that only a maximum of 45 seconds of NFL footage could be shown per day online.
The Houston Chronicle made a hilarious video showing how silly such a restriction can be:
8April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League; Social Media; Twenty20.
Pardon me for the highly cricket-centric nature of posts in the blog so far, but, I assure you, this post is hardly about cricket as you will find out.
I promised, in an earlier post, that I would give a detailed overview of the IPL from an internet marketing standpoint. In that article I listed out the eight franchises and gave a very brief overview of their respective site designs. I also pointed out that Mumbai Indians didn’t have a website. Newsflash: they still don’t have one, to my knowledge. Unless one considers this to be their official site. (It’s the second result on Google for the keyword “Mumbai Indians”. So the domain squatter(?) might stand to gain quite a bit of dough from Mr Ambani.) I also pointed out how pitiful it was to see the lack of any updates on the official IPL site; so much money and they couldn’t find anyone to update a few lines.
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1April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Google.
I think Google’s April Fool thingy is getting far too lame than it used to be. This time it’s GMail Custom Time.
Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn’t slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.
‘Cmon guys, time you either made things more believable (or plausible) or at least actually launched a product, like you did with GMail. These things won’t cut it anymore.
Update: Oh well, I retract some of what I said, there are a lot more April Fool pranks this time than before. Here’s the whole list.