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As I have noted several times previously, there are often uncanny parallels between foreign policy and international cricket. I would go so far as to argue that few phenomena better-capture the dynamics shaping India, or its foreign policy potential, than its cricket team.
That said, I was amazed to see this comprehensive list of India’s 32 Test victories on foreign soil. Before 2000, India had won only 13 tests away from home, and only one solitary victory (against Sri Lanka in Colombo) during the 1990s.
Armed with a newfound confidence since 2000 (not to mention the addition of some talented top-order batsmen and pace bowlers, historically India’s weaknesses), India managed 19 Test wins away, 12 of them against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. With the victory in Hamilton last week, India has also now won an away Test in each of the nine other Test-playing nations this decade. Not too shabby.
Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute has a trite, meandering article in The American on cricket, which came to my notice only because it was featured on Arts & Letters Daily. On top of the illogical comparisons between cricket and baseball, which are reminiscent of the idle chatter of adolescent public school layabouts (“Tendulkar would make a reasonably good baseball player.” “Ryan Howard of the Phillies might be able to play for a decent cricket team, but his immobility would make him a liability.”), I was mildly taken aback by this sentence:
While there is no love lost between Red Sox Nation and Yankees fans, India and Pakistan almost went to war over cricket (and who knows, they still might).
Wadekar Test Fifty? Pray tell, Mr. Bate, when exactly did the two nations come to the brink of war over a bat-and-ball sport? Was it, by any chance, a byproduct of cricket diplomacy? Were East Pakistani refugees fleeing a post-match lathi charge? Was 26/11 simply a few firecrackers gone wrong at the Brabourne?
India and Pakistan may at times be petty and vengeful, but Lilliput and Blefuscu they are not. The spreading of such misinformation (which, in some hands, is disinformation; I give Bate the benefit of the doubt) is reprehensible, not to mention irresponsible.
As Nitin quips:
I recall the USA and USSR went to war over Cuban cigars.
Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute has a trite, meandering article in The American on cricket, which came to my notice only because it was featured on Arts & Letters Daily. On top of the illogical comparisons between cricket and baseball, which are reminiscent of the idle chatter of adolescent public school layabouts (“Tendulkar would make a reasonably good baseball player.” “Ryan Howard of the Phillies might be able to play for a decent cricket team, but his immobility would make him a liability.”), I was mildly taken aback by this sentence:
While there is no love lost between Red Sox Nation and Yankees fans, India and Pakistan almost went to war over cricket (and who knows, they still might).
Wadekar Test Fifty? Pray tell, Mr. Bate, when exactly did the two nations come to the brink of war over a bat-and-ball sport? Was it, by any chance, a byproduct of cricket diplomacy? Were East Pakistani refugees fleeing a post-match lathi charge? Was 26/11 simply a few firecrackers gone wrong at the Brabourne?
India and Pakistan may at times be petty and vengeful, but Lilliput and Blefuscu they are not. The spreading of such misinformation (which, in some hands, is disinformation; I give Bate the benefit of the doubt) is reprehensible, not to mention irresponsible.
As Nitin quips:
I recall the USA and USSR went to war over Cuban cigars.
Kim Jong-Un, heir-apparent to the North Korean leadership, has been given the title of “Yongmyong-han Dongji,” which apparently translates roughly to “Brilliant Comrade.” Foreign Policy‘s Joshua Keating:
I can’t help thinking that the progressive downgrading from “Great Leader” to “Dear Leader” to Brilliant Comrade” could become problematic. What comes next? Decent Administrator? Qualified Manager? Righteous dude?
On a completely unrelated note, Yuvraj Singh and Yusuf Pathan are finally lighting up an otherwise lacklustre batting display by India in the Twenty20 World Cup against the West Indies. But will it be enough to defend against a Chris Gayle Dwayne Bravo onslaught? Update: No.
Consider the following statistics. Uttar Pradesh has a population…of 166 million people, but it has no team represented in the Indian Premier League. Maharashtra has a population of a mere 97 million, but two of its cities, Mumbai and Pune, have IPL teams.Now consider this second set of facts. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are three of the most populous states in India. Roughly one in three Indians live there. On the other hand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh together account for less than one-fourth of the country’s population. Yet there is not one IPL team from those three large states in North India, whereas from next year, 2011, each state of South India will have its own IPL team.The Constitution of India says that every citizen of India has equal rights…This lopsided allocation of IPL teams is thus insensitive to democracy and demography.This maldistribution of IPL franchises undermines its claim to be ‘Indian’, and is in defiance of sporting history and achievement as well. The truth is that citizenship and cricket have been comprehensively trumped by the claims of commerce.
Why is this such an affront to Indianness or democracy? Guha himself brings up the constitutional right to equality. The IPL was designed—first and foremost—as cricket for television audiences. Today any Indian can turn on a television and watch the same cricket match, regardless of where it is taking place. Is that not equality?
But more importantly, Guha promotes a somewhat outmoded position of how we should consider egalitarianism, which is indeed enshrined in the Indian constitution. Social equality, in this view, is no different from democracy, which functions on a one-person-one-vote basis. The hazard is that it leads to a sense of entitlement. Just as a vote is each person’s birthright, each of us has the right to similar levels of material well-being (in this case, access to watching live cricket near us), with no consideration of effort exerted or quality of performance. Consequently, Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior deserve IPL franchises.
But frame this as the right to equal opportunity, and Guha’s argument appears a lot less compelling. Rather than focus on the individual rights of people and states—that U.P. deserves an IPL franchise by the simple fact that it has more people—why can’t he project the designation of franchises as rewarding good governance and economic performance? South India has performed well on both counts compared to the North. So have Gujarat and Maharashtra compared to Orissa or Madhya Pradesh.
That Pune has better nightlife, and Hyderabad a better airport than Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior is not a sign of inequality, as Guha would have it, but simply a manifestation of better performance. If Kanpur had Hyderabad’s airport and Pune’s hotels, the IPL would come knocking. Given that each city and each state has an equal opportunity to attract an IPL franchise, the distribution of cricket teams seems quite a fair one.
I have great respect for Guha’s contributions as an intellectual, but sometimes I wish he realised he lived in the 21st century.
Here is the man set to become the president of the International Cricket Council in two years:
Bowling very, very wrong ‘uns may not have got him the job, but as a retired statesman, there are plenty of things that former Aussie PM John Howard can bring to highest levels of cricket adminstration. A few humble suggestions for how the old boy can successfully make use of his background in international politics as ICC president:
1. Make Australia a bridging power. While India may be the center of cricket now, the rest of the world—particularly outside South Asia—is somewhat conflicted about how much to bandwagon against it and how much to balance it. Australia under Howard was faced with a similar dilemma. Was Australia an extension of the West, as proudly proclaimed by Robert Menzies, or was it primarily a regional player in the Asia-Pacific, as Paul Keating envisioned it? “Well, why not both?” Howard seemed to ask when he assumed the Prime Ministership. Under Howard’s leadership of the ICC, Australia can position itself as an actor that takes full advantage of Indian financial and administrative dominance in cricket while keeping England, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies actively engaged.
2. Don’t be a lemming. Just because the big man says something ought to be done, doesn’t mean it should be. While he himself may disagree with this assessment, Lalit Modi is not God. And neither was George W. Bush. It may have won Howard serious brownie points in Washington committing his country to the Iraq cause, but it came back to bite him in the end. Similarly, he shouldn’t be afraid to push back against the BCCI’s more outrageous demands, rather than just going with the flow.
3. Adopt institutional Darwinism. Like the multinational architecture of the Asia-Pacific region, the international cricket calendar is a jumble, a mishmash, a mess. Rather than let it try to do everything (badly), Howard should force the ICC to focus on the events that bring out the best of cricket, and create windows for them. Prioritise and standardize the IPL, the ODI World Cup, the World Twenty20, regular Test series, and domestic First Class and Twenty20 competitions. Scrap the Champions Trophy, the bevy of minor ODI tournaments, and series over five matches. Create a two-tiered Test structure. Overhaul the Future Tours Program, even if that proves more daunting than UNSC reforms.
4. Enforce norms. Cheating—Shahid Afridi style—is not controversial. It’s just plain wrong. But what about discrepancies over pitches, umpiring or power plays? There’s plenty to do still to ensure that everyone—players, officials, coaches, commentators and fans—are on the same page.
5. Save Pakistan. Pakistani diplomats regularly argue that Pakistan is too important to fail. Bad rhetoric, perhaps, given the negative connotations, but with only ten Test-playing nations around, this is undeniably true for cricket. Giving billions of dollars of aid may be a waste, and selling conventional weaponry may be downright dangerous, but keeping Pakistan—and Pakistanis—involved in cricket is worth every penny.
The compilation of an all-time XI of Indian cricket reveals some of the same cognitive biases that blur our assessments of recent history.
Cricinfo—that venerable authority on all things cricket—is compiling an all-time XI for India, having already performed similar exercises for seven other Test nations. Comparing athletes across eras is always tricky, but based upon the other lists of all-time greats, it seems that the criteria for selection is based upon some combination of the following:
Players’ performance in Test matches. Ajay Sharma, who played but one Test, probably does not deserve to be considered for his First Class batting average of 67.46, his off-field activities notwithstanding.How players compared with their contemporaries the world over. For example, the 2000s was an era of bloated batting averages; the 1990s were lean years for batsmen. It’s more than just a strict statistical comparison.How important players were to achieving important results for their sides. Did players save their team from defeat, or play crucial roles in famous wins?Unfortunately, it looks as if sentimentality is set to obfuscate what should be a fairly objective activity. Take, for example, the short-list for openers, which consists of Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Vijay Merchant and Navjot Singh Sidhu. All four have the credentials, but I was disappointed that the jury failed to recognize current Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir has a batting average of almost 53, higher than Gavaskar’s (51), Merchant’s (48) and Sidhu’s (42), and just below Sehwag’s (54). One argument against him would be that, as a relative newcomer, he has not played enough matches (32 so far). Yet Merchant played in only 10 Tests and Sidhu not many more (51). In fact, this further strengthens Gambhir’s case: despite fewer Tests, he has already scored as many centuries as Sidhu (9), not to mention many more than Merchant (3). The argument can also be made that Gambhir’s figures are exaggerated by batting-friendly conditions and weak opposition. Fair enough. Yet two of his centuries came in wins over quality opponents (Australia and Sri Lanka). Merchant, while no doubt a great player, never played for a winning Test side. Compared to his peers, Gambhir was voted the best Test player at the 2009 ICC awards. Had such awards been around during their careers, it is unlikely that Merchant or Sidhu would have ever been in the reckoning for them, based on their Test performances alone (Merchant did indeed have a stellar First Class record). I still think that India’s two best openers have been Gavaskar and Sehwag, which may make this debate irrelevant, but there appears to be no objective basis for Gambhir’s exclusion from the short-list.
I bring this up for what it tells us about our attitudes towards recent history and the various cognitive biases that come into play when considering important policy debates.
On the one hand, a set of logical processes bias us in favor of what we have experienced firsthand, a trait that has long been documented in psychological literature. Thus, many of us are more likely to appreciate contemporary achievements, such as those of Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer over Don Bradman, Jack Nicklaus or Rod Laver. Similarly, the big ideological breakthroughs of recent memory overshadow those of earlier times. We may have all had the experience of reading an older work of scholarship, only to be struck by how applicable it is to a current situation; it is often quite humbling to realise that complex ideas have already been so well thought through by thinkers of an earlier era, many of whom are now nearly forgotten. In the security realm, the disproportionate emphasis placed on Indian sacrifices during the Kargil War (India’s first televised conflict) when some 2-3 times the number were killed in 1947-48, 1971 and 1987-1990 in Sri Lanka would be one noteworthy example, one that is by no means meant to diminish the achievements of Indian forces in 1999.
By contrast, most of us fall victim to a number of cognitive biases that make us favour the more distant past over the present. Consequently, the achievements of Merchant, whom none of the Cricinfo jury saw play, take on a mythic aura and his failures get overlooked. By contrast, all of Gambhir’s failings, technical or otherwise, are both seen and recalled. While demonstrably talented and successful, he remains a mere mortal.
Such thinking is particularly applicable to evaluations of politics and policy. For example, there has recently been a rediscovery of sorts of Indian internationalism in the early years after independence, which—according to most such narratives—gradually gave way to a closing off of the country to the outside world, particularly during the Indira Gandhi years. Supporters of this view point to India’s mediation before and during the Korean War and the leading role that Nehru took in the early years of the Non-Aligned Movement, as among the examples of past Indian activism on the global stage.
But these ought to be offset by other considerations: the much smaller size of India’s foreign policy infrastructure (for example, India lacked an external intelligence bureau, and had only three IB officers posted abroad in its early years), the lack of resources at home to leverage to its advantage, and the immensity of security challenges nearer at hand. Neutral mediation and third world multilateralism are both the domains of countries with little or no stake in major issues (take present-day Finland, for example). Indian activities in the first two decades after independence, successful or not, take on that same rosy aura that Vijay Merchant’s batting does, placing current efforts in a comparatively unfavourable light. Such biases should not come in the way of objective appraisals of achievements past and present.
You can’t make this kind of stuff up. More from Woodward:
Safe havens would no longer be tolerated, Obama had decided. “We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan,” he declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was “so the cancer doesn’t spread there.”
But we’re spending 10x on Afghanistan what we’re spending on Pakistan. The cancer argument is a post-hoc rationalization because if you actually believe it, you could never justify such a large preventive commitment to Afghanistan. It is treating a patient with colon cancer by focusing most of your attention on making sure the cancer does not spread to the appendix. If Pakistan “dies” of cancer, Afghanistan will be wholly irrelevant. If Pakistan is “cured” somehow, then efforts to contain the threat in Afghanistan will become exponentially easier.
Everytime Pakistan comes up, it makes clear how poorly conceived is our Afghan policy. Sometimes we need to stabilize Afghanistan to prevent it from destabilizing Pakistan. Sometimes, the problem is in Pakistan and we need to keep it from spreading to Afghanistan. But the links between stability in the two countries is just assumed rather than actually examined. The empirical data strikes me as unambiguous. Despite the fact that the border is porous, Pakistan was under less threat from radical Islamist in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan than it is now when various extremists groups are loosely affiliated in a series of overlapping (and sometimes competing) insurgencies.
I’ve suggested one reason why in the past:
This is not surprising actually. Insurgencies are at their most dangerous — in terms of threat of contagion — when they are fighting for power. The number of insurgencies that actually manage to sponsor insurgencies elsewhere after taking power is surprising low.
I’ve also raised another related issue before as well:
In reality, the Taliban — if it did seize power, which is no sure thing — would likely find itself starved for resources to maintain itself in power. Indeed, it is probably as likely that efforts to retain control would drain resources currently devoted to the campaign in Pakistan. This may be one reason, by the way, why Pakistan was under less threat from Islamist radicals from 1996 to 2001 when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan then in the years since.
Yet another issue comes from Pakistani paranoia vis-a-vis Indian machinations in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ambivalent attitude toward radical Islamist groups is a function of the primarily anti-Indian orientation of the Pakistani security aparatus. You can disarm that in one of two ways — either you can solve the India-Pakistan dispute or you can provide the Pakistanis with “strategic depth.” I’ve long argued that solving the Indian-Pakistan dispute would do more for American interests than progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front:
In contrast to our imprecise interest in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as a way to improve our image, we have more concrete interests vis-a-vis Pakistan. We want to encourage Pakistan to retool its military to combat Islamist insurgents and ensure the security of its nuclear weapons in the case further gain by the Taliban. The only way to achieve these goals is by easing tensions with India.
Reduced tensions with India would strengthen civilian control in Pakistan. It would allow the Pakistani military to refocus on the domestic insurgency. It would reduce incentives to support radical groups like Laskar-e-Taiba. Furthermore, the only way to move forward on the issue of nuclear safeguards would be in conjunction with the adoption of like measures in India.
But the reality is that like the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, this one is also likely close to intractable. Both sides’ established patterns of behavior are grounded now more in spite than in strategic calculus. India and Pakistan remain at each other’s throats as a matter of habit and precedent as much as anything else, and as a result the conflict is durable beyond its rational foundations. But if you can’t reduce tensions between the two, then you have to accept the consequence, which is that Pakistan will never wholeheartedly crack down on the Islamist insurgents that they see as their best tool for keeping pressure on India and influence in Afghanistan.
Back to Woodward:
“How can you fight a war and have safe havens across the border?” Panetta asked in frustration. “It’s a crazy kind of war.”
Well, of course. But is even crazier is seeing a fatal flaw to the core of your strategy and yet continuing to try to implement the strategy. Our inability to think clearly about the Pakistan issue is probably the single most significant reason for the incoherence of our approach in Afghanistan.
If the main worry is the future stability of Pakistan, then in a weird way the best way to safeguard that would be to tolerate an Islamist and anti-Indian government in Afghanistan. If the main worry is Afghanistan, then we need to think about some sort of containment approach because Pakistan will never be as cooperative as we’d like. That’s just the reality of the situation, and wishing it were otherwise is not going to make it so. Our current approach to Pakistan is the ultimate triumph of hope over reason.
The player auction represented the tragic blurring of two distinct spheres of experience: politics and cricket.
If one sought to imagine how India might act as a superpower, one could do worse than follow the world of cricket, where it already is one. The last decade has witnessed not just a resurgence of India as a top international side, but also its complete domination of the administrative and financial levers of the sport.
With power comes privilege. After 96 years of being based in London, the International Cricket Council moved its headquarters eastwards, to Dubai, to be closer to the new centre of power. The ‘liberal’ entente regarding the rotation of World Cup hosting rights between continents was done away with, the subcontinent demanding a second helping over Australia and New Zealand’s protestations. And now, the world’s richest and most high-profile league is based in India, attracting the best international talent. Rich, brash, ruthless and unforgiving, Indian cricket has acted much like a hegemon might have been expected to act in international politics.
The dynamics of this parallel world order, however, rarely matched those of the international political system. The other poles of power in cricket have been Australia, South Africa and England, none of whom would count themselves among India’s chief political competitors. Along with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, India formed a powerful subcontinental bloc, despite constant political friction with its neighbours. While perhaps ‘unnatural,’ the parallel universes could exist in relative harmony, their distinction, in fact, proving mutually invigorating. Cricket could always thrive, while helping to overcome and dilute political conflict.
But the third IPL player auction, held today in Mumbai, represents a tragic blurring of the two spheres of experience. Several star Pakistani players on the auction block were painfully, publicly passed over by Indian franchises. The cricketing logic for this collective decision on the part of IPL teams is certainly questionable. On present form and future potential, there is no reason that Umar Akmal and Mohammed Aamer should have been passed over. Shahid Afridi may arguably be past his destructive prime, but few non-Indian players are bigger draws for Indian cricket fans. And Sohail Tanvir and Umar Gul already proved themselves Twenty20 superstars in the 2008 edition of the IPL, with the former finishing top wicket-taker. Added insult to their snub came in the form of players who were picked instead: the long-ordinary Mohammad Kaif, retired stroke-maker Damien Martyn, and the chronically unfit Yusuf Abdulla.
The publicly-stated reason for the snub was unsatisfactory: teams were simply unwilling to deal with the added security and uncertainty that Pakistani players would bring with them. Given the security necessary to hold the IPL (the absence of which forced a move of last year’s edition to South Africa) and the draw their inclusion would bring the tournament in Pakistan, these excuses ring hollow.
Worst, the manner in which this was done (the Pakistani players were reportedly included in the auction following demonstrations of interest by teams), renders irrelevant all the cloying calls for peace, understanding and Track IV dialogue being made by the Indian and Pakistani media in recent weeks and months. If cricket—perhaps the last bastion of Indian popular culture left untainted by the worst aspects of international politics—is to be tarnished in this manner, it is a sad day indeed.
Further reading: INI alumnus Offstumped provides another reason for outrage: the franchises’ tacit collusion is suggestive of cartelisation—in other words, bad business practices.
As I have noted several times previously, there are often uncanny parallels between foreign policy and international cricket. I would go so far as to argue that few phenomena better-capture the dynamics shaping India, or its foreign policy potential, than its cricket team.
That said, I was amazed to see this comprehensive list of India’s 32 Test victories on foreign soil. Before 2000, India had won only 13 tests away from home, and only one solitary victory (against Sri Lanka in Colombo) during the 1990s.
Armed with a newfound confidence since 2000 (not to mention the addition of some talented top-order batsmen and pace bowlers, historically India’s weaknesses), India managed 19 Test wins away, 12 of them against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. With the victory in Hamilton last week, India has also now won an away Test in each of the nine other Test-playing nations this decade. Not too shabby.
Consider the following statistics. Uttar Pradesh has a population…of 166 million people, but it has no team represented in the Indian Premier League. Maharashtra has a population of a mere 97 million, but two of its cities, Mumbai and Pune, have IPL teams.Now consider this second set of facts. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are three of the most populous states in India. Roughly one in three Indians live there. On the other hand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh together account for less than one-fourth of the country’s population. Yet there is not one IPL team from those three large states in North India, whereas from next year, 2011, each state of South India will have its own IPL team.The Constitution of India says that every citizen of India has equal rights…This lopsided allocation of IPL teams is thus insensitive to democracy and demography.This maldistribution of IPL franchises undermines its claim to be ‘Indian’, and is in defiance of sporting history and achievement as well. The truth is that citizenship and cricket have been comprehensively trumped by the claims of commerce.
Why is this such an affront to Indianness or democracy? Guha himself brings up the constitutional right to equality. The IPL was designed—first and foremost—as cricket for television audiences. Today any Indian can turn on a television and watch the same cricket match, regardless of where it is taking place. Is that not equality?
But more importantly, Guha promotes a somewhat outmoded position of how we should consider egalitarianism, which is indeed enshrined in the Indian constitution. Social equality, in this view, is no different from democracy, which functions on a one-person-one-vote basis. The hazard is that it leads to a sense of entitlement. Just as a vote is each person’s birthright, each of us has the right to similar levels of material well-being (in this case, access to watching live cricket near us), with no consideration of effort exerted or quality of performance. Consequently, Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior deserve IPL franchises.
But frame this as the right to equal opportunity, and Guha’s argument appears a lot less compelling. Rather than focus on the individual rights of people and states—that U.P. deserves an IPL franchise by the simple fact that it has more people—why can’t he project the designation of franchises as rewarding good governance and economic performance? South India has performed well on both counts compared to the North. So have Gujarat and Maharashtra compared to Orissa or Madhya Pradesh.
That Pune has better nightlife, and Hyderabad a better airport than Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior is not a sign of inequality, as Guha would have it, but simply a manifestation of better performance. If Kanpur had Hyderabad’s airport and Pune’s hotels, the IPL would come knocking. Given that each city and each state has an equal opportunity to attract an IPL franchise, the distribution of cricket teams seems quite a fair one.
I have great respect for Guha’s contributions as an intellectual, but sometimes I wish he realised he lived in the 21st century.
The compilation of an all-time XI of Indian cricket reveals some of the same cognitive biases that blur our assessments of recent history.
Cricinfo—that venerable authority on all things cricket—is compiling an all-time XI for India, having already performed similar exercises for seven other Test nations. Comparing athletes across eras is always tricky, but based upon the other lists of all-time greats, it seems that the criteria for selection is based upon some combination of the following:
Players’ performance in Test matches. Ajay Sharma, who played but one Test, probably does not deserve to be considered for his First Class batting average of 67.46, his off-field activities notwithstanding.How players compared with their contemporaries the world over. For example, the 2000s was an era of bloated batting averages; the 1990s were lean years for batsmen. It’s more than just a strict statistical comparison.How important players were to achieving important results for their sides. Did players save their team from defeat, or play crucial roles in famous wins?Unfortunately, it looks as if sentimentality is set to obfuscate what should be a fairly objective activity. Take, for example, the short-list for openers, which consists of Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Vijay Merchant and Navjot Singh Sidhu. All four have the credentials, but I was disappointed that the jury failed to recognize current Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir has a batting average of almost 53, higher than Gavaskar’s (51), Merchant’s (48) and Sidhu’s (42), and just below Sehwag’s (54). One argument against him would be that, as a relative newcomer, he has not played enough matches (32 so far). Yet Merchant played in only 10 Tests and Sidhu not many more (51). In fact, this further strengthens Gambhir’s case: despite fewer Tests, he has already scored as many centuries as Sidhu (9), not to mention many more than Merchant (3). The argument can also be made that Gambhir’s figures are exaggerated by batting-friendly conditions and weak opposition. Fair enough. Yet two of his centuries came in wins over quality opponents (Australia and Sri Lanka). Merchant, while no doubt a great player, never played for a winning Test side. Compared to his peers, Gambhir was voted the best Test player at the 2009 ICC awards. Had such awards been around during their careers, it is unlikely that Merchant or Sidhu would have ever been in the reckoning for them, based on their Test performances alone (Merchant did indeed have a stellar First Class record). I still think that India’s two best openers have been Gavaskar and Sehwag, which may make this debate irrelevant, but there appears to be no objective basis for Gambhir’s exclusion from the short-list.
I bring this up for what it tells us about our attitudes towards recent history and the various cognitive biases that come into play when considering important policy debates.
On the one hand, a set of logical processes bias us in favor of what we have experienced firsthand, a trait that has long been documented in psychological literature. Thus, many of us are more likely to appreciate contemporary achievements, such as those of Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer over Don Bradman, Jack Nicklaus or Rod Laver. Similarly, the big ideological breakthroughs of recent memory overshadow those of earlier times. We may have all had the experience of reading an older work of scholarship, only to be struck by how applicable it is to a current situation; it is often quite humbling to realise that complex ideas have already been so well thought through by thinkers of an earlier era, many of whom are now nearly forgotten. In the security realm, the disproportionate emphasis placed on Indian sacrifices during the Kargil War (India’s first televised conflict) when some 2-3 times the number were killed in 1947-48, 1971 and 1987-1990 in Sri Lanka would be one noteworthy example, one that is by no means meant to diminish the achievements of Indian forces in 1999.
By contrast, most of us fall victim to a number of cognitive biases that make us favour the more distant past over the present. Consequently, the achievements of Merchant, whom none of the Cricinfo jury saw play, take on a mythic aura and his failures get overlooked. By contrast, all of Gambhir’s failings, technical or otherwise, are both seen and recalled. While demonstrably talented and successful, he remains a mere mortal.
Such thinking is particularly applicable to evaluations of politics and policy. For example, there has recently been a rediscovery of sorts of Indian internationalism in the early years after independence, which—according to most such narratives—gradually gave way to a closing off of the country to the outside world, particularly during the Indira Gandhi years. Supporters of this view point to India’s mediation before and during the Korean War and the leading role that Nehru took in the early years of the Non-Aligned Movement, as among the examples of past Indian activism on the global stage.
But these ought to be offset by other considerations: the much smaller size of India’s foreign policy infrastructure (for example, India lacked an external intelligence bureau, and had only three IB officers posted abroad in its early years), the lack of resources at home to leverage to its advantage, and the immensity of security challenges nearer at hand. Neutral mediation and third world multilateralism are both the domains of countries with little or no stake in major issues (take present-day Finland, for example). Indian activities in the first two decades after independence, successful or not, take on that same rosy aura that Vijay Merchant’s batting does, placing current efforts in a comparatively unfavourable light. Such biases should not come in the way of objective appraisals of achievements past and present.
In a rare bit of good news, President Asif Ali Zardari today announced Pakistan would allow political activity in the violent Pashtun tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
In other news, the head of Zardari’s party was recently witnessed honing his oratorial skills:
[h/t: The Pakistan Policy Blog.]
Posted in Pakistan | 2 CommentsKim Jong-Un, heir-apparent to the North Korean leadership, has been given the title of “Yongmyong-han Dongji,” which apparently translates roughly to “Brilliant Comrade.” Foreign Policy‘s Joshua Keating:
I can’t help thinking that the progressive downgrading from “Great Leader” to “Dear Leader” to Brilliant Comrade” could become problematic. What comes next? Decent Administrator? Qualified Manager? Righteous dude?
On a completely unrelated note, Yuvraj Singh and Yusuf Pathan are finally lighting up an otherwise lacklustre batting display by India in the Twenty20 World Cup against the West Indies. But will it be enough to defend against a Chris Gayle Dwayne Bravo onslaught? Update: No.
Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute has a trite, meandering article in The American on cricket, which came to my notice only because it was featured on Arts & Letters Daily. On top of the illogical comparisons between cricket and baseball, which are reminiscent of the idle chatter of adolescent public school layabouts (“Tendulkar would make a reasonably good baseball player.” “Ryan Howard of the Phillies might be able to play for a decent cricket team, but his immobility would make him a liability.”), I was mildly taken aback by this sentence:
While there is no love lost between Red Sox Nation and Yankees fans, India and Pakistan almost went to war over cricket (and who knows, they still might).
Wadekar Test Fifty? Pray tell, Mr. Bate, when exactly did the two nations come to the brink of war over a bat-and-ball sport? Was it, by any chance, a byproduct of cricket diplomacy? Were East Pakistani refugees fleeing a post-match lathi charge? Was 26/11 simply a few firecrackers gone wrong at the Brabourne?
India and Pakistan may at times be petty and vengeful, but Lilliput and Blefuscu they are not. The spreading of such misinformation (which, in some hands, is disinformation; I give Bate the benefit of the doubt) is reprehensible, not to mention irresponsible.
As Nitin quips:
I recall the USA and USSR went to war over Cuban cigars.
Here is the man set to become the president of the International Cricket Council in two years:
Bowling very, very wrong ‘uns may not have got him the job, but as a retired statesman, there are plenty of things that former Aussie PM John Howard can bring to highest levels of cricket adminstration. A few humble suggestions for how the old boy can successfully make use of his background in international politics as ICC president:
1. Make Australia a bridging power. While India may be the center of cricket now, the rest of the world—particularly outside South Asia—is somewhat conflicted about how much to bandwagon against it and how much to balance it. Australia under Howard was faced with a similar dilemma. Was Australia an extension of the West, as proudly proclaimed by Robert Menzies, or was it primarily a regional player in the Asia-Pacific, as Paul Keating envisioned it? “Well, why not both?” Howard seemed to ask when he assumed the Prime Ministership. Under Howard’s leadership of the ICC, Australia can position itself as an actor that takes full advantage of Indian financial and administrative dominance in cricket while keeping England, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies actively engaged.
2. Don’t be a lemming. Just because the big man says something ought to be done, doesn’t mean it should be. While he himself may disagree with this assessment, Lalit Modi is not God. And neither was George W. Bush. It may have won Howard serious brownie points in Washington committing his country to the Iraq cause, but it came back to bite him in the end. Similarly, he shouldn’t be afraid to push back against the BCCI’s more outrageous demands, rather than just going with the flow.
3. Adopt institutional Darwinism. Like the multinational architecture of the Asia-Pacific region, the international cricket calendar is a jumble, a mishmash, a mess. Rather than let it try to do everything (badly), Howard should force the ICC to focus on the events that bring out the best of cricket, and create windows for them. Prioritise and standardize the IPL, the ODI World Cup, the World Twenty20, regular Test series, and domestic First Class and Twenty20 competitions. Scrap the Champions Trophy, the bevy of minor ODI tournaments, and series over five matches. Create a two-tiered Test structure. Overhaul the Future Tours Program, even if that proves more daunting than UNSC reforms.
4. Enforce norms. Cheating—Shahid Afridi style—is not controversial. It’s just plain wrong. But what about discrepancies over pitches, umpiring or power plays? There’s plenty to do still to ensure that everyone—players, officials, coaches, commentators and fans—are on the same page.
5. Save Pakistan. Pakistani diplomats regularly argue that Pakistan is too important to fail. Bad rhetoric, perhaps, given the negative connotations, but with only ten Test-playing nations around, this is undeniably true for cricket. Giving billions of dollars of aid may be a waste, and selling conventional weaponry may be downright dangerous, but keeping Pakistan—and Pakistanis—involved in cricket is worth every penny.
The player auction represented the tragic blurring of two distinct spheres of experience: politics and cricket.
If one sought to imagine how India might act as a superpower, one could do worse than follow the world of cricket, where it already is one. The last decade has witnessed not just a resurgence of India as a top international side, but also its complete domination of the administrative and financial levers of the sport.
With power comes privilege. After 96 years of being based in London, the International Cricket Council moved its headquarters eastwards, to Dubai, to be closer to the new centre of power. The ‘liberal’ entente regarding the rotation of World Cup hosting rights between continents was done away with, the subcontinent demanding a second helping over Australia and New Zealand’s protestations. And now, the world’s richest and most high-profile league is based in India, attracting the best international talent. Rich, brash, ruthless and unforgiving, Indian cricket has acted much like a hegemon might have been expected to act in international politics.
The dynamics of this parallel world order, however, rarely matched those of the international political system. The other poles of power in cricket have been Australia, South Africa and England, none of whom would count themselves among India’s chief political competitors. Along with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, India formed a powerful subcontinental bloc, despite constant political friction with its neighbours. While perhaps ‘unnatural,’ the parallel universes could exist in relative harmony, their distinction, in fact, proving mutually invigorating. Cricket could always thrive, while helping to overcome and dilute political conflict.
But the third IPL player auction, held today in Mumbai, represents a tragic blurring of the two spheres of experience. Several star Pakistani players on the auction block were painfully, publicly passed over by Indian franchises. The cricketing logic for this collective decision on the part of IPL teams is certainly questionable. On present form and future potential, there is no reason that Umar Akmal and Mohammed Aamer should have been passed over. Shahid Afridi may arguably be past his destructive prime, but few non-Indian players are bigger draws for Indian cricket fans. And Sohail Tanvir and Umar Gul already proved themselves Twenty20 superstars in the 2008 edition of the IPL, with the former finishing top wicket-taker. Added insult to their snub came in the form of players who were picked instead: the long-ordinary Mohammad Kaif, retired stroke-maker Damien Martyn, and the chronically unfit Yusuf Abdulla.
The publicly-stated reason for the snub was unsatisfactory: teams were simply unwilling to deal with the added security and uncertainty that Pakistani players would bring with them. Given the security necessary to hold the IPL (the absence of which forced a move of last year’s edition to South Africa) and the draw their inclusion would bring the tournament in Pakistan, these excuses ring hollow.
Worst, the manner in which this was done (the Pakistani players were reportedly included in the auction following demonstrations of interest by teams), renders irrelevant all the cloying calls for peace, understanding and Track IV dialogue being made by the Indian and Pakistani media in recent weeks and months. If cricket—perhaps the last bastion of Indian popular culture left untainted by the worst aspects of international politics—is to be tarnished in this manner, it is a sad day indeed.
Further reading: INI alumnus Offstumped provides another reason for outrage: the franchises’ tacit collusion is suggestive of cartelisation—in other words, bad business practices.
As I have noted several times previously, there are often uncanny parallels between foreign policy and international cricket. I would go so far as to argue that few phenomena better-capture the dynamics shaping India, or its foreign policy potential, than its cricket team.
That said, I was amazed to see this comprehensive list of India’s 32 Test victories on foreign soil. Before 2000, India had won only 13 tests away from home, and only one solitary victory (against Sri Lanka in Colombo) during the 1990s.
Armed with a newfound confidence since 2000 (not to mention the addition of some talented top-order batsmen and pace bowlers, historically India’s weaknesses), India managed 19 Test wins away, 12 of them against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. With the victory in Hamilton last week, India has also now won an away Test in each of the nine other Test-playing nations this decade. Not too shabby.
Consider the following statistics. Uttar Pradesh has a population…of 166 million people, but it has no team represented in the Indian Premier League. Maharashtra has a population of a mere 97 million, but two of its cities, Mumbai and Pune, have IPL teams.Now consider this second set of facts. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are three of the most populous states in India. Roughly one in three Indians live there. On the other hand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh together account for less than one-fourth of the country’s population. Yet there is not one IPL team from those three large states in North India, whereas from next year, 2011, each state of South India will have its own IPL team.The Constitution of India says that every citizen of India has equal rights…This lopsided allocation of IPL teams is thus insensitive to democracy and demography.This maldistribution of IPL franchises undermines its claim to be ‘Indian’, and is in defiance of sporting history and achievement as well. The truth is that citizenship and cricket have been comprehensively trumped by the claims of commerce.
Why is this such an affront to Indianness or democracy? Guha himself brings up the constitutional right to equality. The IPL was designed—first and foremost—as cricket for television audiences. Today any Indian can turn on a television and watch the same cricket match, regardless of where it is taking place. Is that not equality?
But more importantly, Guha promotes a somewhat outmoded position of how we should consider egalitarianism, which is indeed enshrined in the Indian constitution. Social equality, in this view, is no different from democracy, which functions on a one-person-one-vote basis. The hazard is that it leads to a sense of entitlement. Just as a vote is each person’s birthright, each of us has the right to similar levels of material well-being (in this case, access to watching live cricket near us), with no consideration of effort exerted or quality of performance. Consequently, Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior deserve IPL franchises.
But frame this as the right to equal opportunity, and Guha’s argument appears a lot less compelling. Rather than focus on the individual rights of people and states—that U.P. deserves an IPL franchise by the simple fact that it has more people—why can’t he project the designation of franchises as rewarding good governance and economic performance? South India has performed well on both counts compared to the North. So have Gujarat and Maharashtra compared to Orissa or Madhya Pradesh.
That Pune has better nightlife, and Hyderabad a better airport than Kanpur, Cuttack or Gwalior is not a sign of inequality, as Guha would have it, but simply a manifestation of better performance. If Kanpur had Hyderabad’s airport and Pune’s hotels, the IPL would come knocking. Given that each city and each state has an equal opportunity to attract an IPL franchise, the distribution of cricket teams seems quite a fair one.
I have great respect for Guha’s contributions as an intellectual, but sometimes I wish he realised he lived in the 21st century.
The compilation of an all-time XI of Indian cricket reveals some of the same cognitive biases that blur our assessments of recent history.
Cricinfo—that venerable authority on all things cricket—is compiling an all-time XI for India, having already performed similar exercises for seven other Test nations. Comparing athletes across eras is always tricky, but based upon the other lists of all-time greats, it seems that the criteria for selection is based upon some combination of the following:
Players’ performance in Test matches. Ajay Sharma, who played but one Test, probably does not deserve to be considered for his First Class batting average of 67.46, his off-field activities notwithstanding.How players compared with their contemporaries the world over. For example, the 2000s was an era of bloated batting averages; the 1990s were lean years for batsmen. It’s more than just a strict statistical comparison.How important players were to achieving important results for their sides. Did players save their team from defeat, or play crucial roles in famous wins?Unfortunately, it looks as if sentimentality is set to obfuscate what should be a fairly objective activity. Take, for example, the short-list for openers, which consists of Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Vijay Merchant and Navjot Singh Sidhu. All four have the credentials, but I was disappointed that the jury failed to recognize current Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir has a batting average of almost 53, higher than Gavaskar’s (51), Merchant’s (48) and Sidhu’s (42), and just below Sehwag’s (54). One argument against him would be that, as a relative newcomer, he has not played enough matches (32 so far). Yet Merchant played in only 10 Tests and Sidhu not many more (51). In fact, this further strengthens Gambhir’s case: despite fewer Tests, he has already scored as many centuries as Sidhu (9), not to mention many more than Merchant (3). The argument can also be made that Gambhir’s figures are exaggerated by batting-friendly conditions and weak opposition. Fair enough. Yet two of his centuries came in wins over quality opponents (Australia and Sri Lanka). Merchant, while no doubt a great player, never played for a winning Test side. Compared to his peers, Gambhir was voted the best Test player at the 2009 ICC awards. Had such awards been around during their careers, it is unlikely that Merchant or Sidhu would have ever been in the reckoning for them, based on their Test performances alone (Merchant did indeed have a stellar First Class record). I still think that India’s two best openers have been Gavaskar and Sehwag, which may make this debate irrelevant, but there appears to be no objective basis for Gambhir’s exclusion from the short-list.
I bring this up for what it tells us about our attitudes towards recent history and the various cognitive biases that come into play when considering important policy debates.
On the one hand, a set of logical processes bias us in favor of what we have experienced firsthand, a trait that has long been documented in psychological literature. Thus, many of us are more likely to appreciate contemporary achievements, such as those of Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer over Don Bradman, Jack Nicklaus or Rod Laver. Similarly, the big ideological breakthroughs of recent memory overshadow those of earlier times. We may have all had the experience of reading an older work of scholarship, only to be struck by how applicable it is to a current situation; it is often quite humbling to realise that complex ideas have already been so well thought through by thinkers of an earlier era, many of whom are now nearly forgotten. In the security realm, the disproportionate emphasis placed on Indian sacrifices during the Kargil War (India’s first televised conflict) when some 2-3 times the number were killed in 1947-48, 1971 and 1987-1990 in Sri Lanka would be one noteworthy example, one that is by no means meant to diminish the achievements of Indian forces in 1999.
By contrast, most of us fall victim to a number of cognitive biases that make us favour the more distant past over the present. Consequently, the achievements of Merchant, whom none of the Cricinfo jury saw play, take on a mythic aura and his failures get overlooked. By contrast, all of Gambhir’s failings, technical or otherwise, are both seen and recalled. While demonstrably talented and successful, he remains a mere mortal.
Such thinking is particularly applicable to evaluations of politics and policy. For example, there has recently been a rediscovery of sorts of Indian internationalism in the early years after independence, which—according to most such narratives—gradually gave way to a closing off of the country to the outside world, particularly during the Indira Gandhi years. Supporters of this view point to India’s mediation before and during the Korean War and the leading role that Nehru took in the early years of the Non-Aligned Movement, as among the examples of past Indian activism on the global stage.
But these ought to be offset by other considerations: the much smaller size of India’s foreign policy infrastructure (for example, India lacked an external intelligence bureau, and had only three IB officers posted abroad in its early years), the lack of resources at home to leverage to its advantage, and the immensity of security challenges nearer at hand. Neutral mediation and third world multilateralism are both the domains of countries with little or no stake in major issues (take present-day Finland, for example). Indian activities in the first two decades after independence, successful or not, take on that same rosy aura that Vijay Merchant’s batting does, placing current efforts in a comparatively unfavourable light. Such biases should not come in the way of objective appraisals of achievements past and present.
Kim Jong-Un, heir-apparent to the North Korean leadership, has been given the title of “Yongmyong-han Dongji,” which apparently translates roughly to “Brilliant Comrade.” Foreign Policy‘s Joshua Keating:
I can’t help thinking that the progressive downgrading from “Great Leader” to “Dear Leader” to Brilliant Comrade” could become problematic. What comes next? Decent Administrator? Qualified Manager? Righteous dude?
On a completely unrelated note, Yuvraj Singh and Yusuf Pathan are finally lighting up an otherwise lacklustre batting display by India in the Twenty20 World Cup against the West Indies. But will it be enough to defend against a Chris Gayle Dwayne Bravo onslaught? Update: No.
Here is the man set to become the president of the International Cricket Council in two years:
Bowling very, very wrong ‘uns may not have got him the job, but as a retired statesman, there are plenty of things that former Aussie PM John Howard can bring to highest levels of cricket adminstration. A few humble suggestions for how the old boy can successfully make use of his background in international politics as ICC president:
1. Make Australia a bridging power. While India may be the center of cricket now, the rest of the world—particularly outside South Asia—is somewhat conflicted about how much to bandwagon against it and how much to balance it. Australia under Howard was faced with a similar dilemma. Was Australia an extension of the West, as proudly proclaimed by Robert Menzies, or was it primarily a regional player in the Asia-Pacific, as Paul Keating envisioned it? “Well, why not both?” Howard seemed to ask when he assumed the Prime Ministership. Under Howard’s leadership of the ICC, Australia can position itself as an actor that takes full advantage of Indian financial and administrative dominance in cricket while keeping England, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies actively engaged.
2. Don’t be a lemming. Just because the big man says something ought to be done, doesn’t mean it should be. While he himself may disagree with this assessment, Lalit Modi is not God. And neither was George W. Bush. It may have won Howard serious brownie points in Washington committing his country to the Iraq cause, but it came back to bite him in the end. Similarly, he shouldn’t be afraid to push back against the BCCI’s more outrageous demands, rather than just going with the flow.
3. Adopt institutional Darwinism. Like the multinational architecture of the Asia-Pacific region, the international cricket calendar is a jumble, a mishmash, a mess. Rather than let it try to do everything (badly), Howard should force the ICC to focus on the events that bring out the best of cricket, and create windows for them. Prioritise and standardize the IPL, the ODI World Cup, the World Twenty20, regular Test series, and domestic First Class and Twenty20 competitions. Scrap the Champions Trophy, the bevy of minor ODI tournaments, and series over five matches. Create a two-tiered Test structure. Overhaul the Future Tours Program, even if that proves more daunting than UNSC reforms.
4. Enforce norms. Cheating—Shahid Afridi style—is not controversial. It’s just plain wrong. But what about discrepancies over pitches, umpiring or power plays? There’s plenty to do still to ensure that everyone—players, officials, coaches, commentators and fans—are on the same page.
5. Save Pakistan. Pakistani diplomats regularly argue that Pakistan is too important to fail. Bad rhetoric, perhaps, given the negative connotations, but with only ten Test-playing nations around, this is undeniably true for cricket. Giving billions of dollars of aid may be a waste, and selling conventional weaponry may be downright dangerous, but keeping Pakistan—and Pakistanis—involved in cricket is worth every penny.
As I have noted several times previously, there are often uncanny parallels between foreign policy and international cricket. I would go so far as to argue that few phenomena better-capture the dynamics shaping India, or its foreign policy potential, than its cricket team.
That said, I was amazed to see this comprehensive list of India’s 32 Test victories on foreign soil. Before 2000, India had won only 13 tests away from home, and only one solitary victory (against Sri Lanka in Colombo) during the 1990s.
Armed with a newfound confidence since 2000 (not to mention the addition of some talented top-order batsmen and pace bowlers, historically India’s weaknesses), India managed 19 Test wins away, 12 of them against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. With the victory in Hamilton last week, India has also now won an away Test in each of the nine other Test-playing nations this decade. Not too shabby.
Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.