LONDON (BBC): The last live game for me before Covid closed down our world was the World Cup final at Lord’s. Yes, that one. And somewhat overcome by the moment, I ended my piece that night with this: if cricket were to die tomorrow, we would still have this game. How was I to imagine these words of pure hyperbole would turn mildly and eerily prophetic? It wasn’t until early last month, nearly 30 months since that manically unforgettable day, that I found myself at a cricket match once again.
It’s an absurdly unfair comparison, but Mumbai – the first day of the second Test between India and New Zealand, felt a thousand times removed from that day in London, and it had nothing to do with the cricket, which was compelling in its own way, with a dramatic mid-session Indian collapse followed by a punchy counterattack. But an air of desolation hung all around, the stands were sparsely populated, and the large press box, insulated from the sounds of cricket, seemed even emptier, with masks and distanced seating adding further layers of insularity.
The sterile joylessness (relative to previous experiences, of course) of the day, though, allowed for perspective, however tangential. The year gone by was one in which we learnt to live with a pandemic that has changed our lives for years to come. Alongside vaccines, there has been acceptance of new ways of life, and WFH has become a trending initialism.
But working from home is not an option for sportspeople, who must, sunshine or rain, travel to faraway lands to ply their trade in open fields, and because the stakes are so high and contact among players is essential and inevitable, they must live their life from bubble to bubble, their fishbowl existence made even more suffocating. And they must execute the rarest of skills, which require, apart from the skills themselves, peak physical and mental prowess. Doubt and anxiety, natural in these times, must be cast away or hidden, and there is no retreating to safe spaces.
It can be argued that they are professionals, the rewards are handsome, and far greater fortitude can be found among front-line health workers in the battle against Covid, but that will be somewhat reductionist. The nature of sporting performance is public, and every action is open to scrutiny and judgement. Even while living an abnormal life, elite sportspeople must create their own ring of normalcy. We don’t owe them gratitude, but empathy will do: isolation fatigue can be debilitating.
There is no playbook for how to conduct sport in such times. Three Sri Lankan players were banned for a year for breaking a curfew in Durham; virtually days later, the UK began dismantling Covid restrictions. An Indian team carried on playing in Sri Lanka after three of their team-mates tested positive, and six others isolated. Two weeks later the Indian Test team jettisoned the last Test in England after a couple of positive tests among their support staff. West Indies completed a T20I series in Pakistan with Covid in their camp and then there were too many cases for the ODIs to be played. Australia woke the first morning of the second Ashes Test to discover their newly appointed captain had to isolate after a stray contact with a Covid-positive diner at a restaurant, but the third Test was played despite four positive cases emerging in the England camp during the game. The IPL was suspended mid-season, so was the PSL, and the T20 World Cup had to change location.
Crises have always produced innovative solutions. When Covid was found in the English camp in the early summer, England put together a whole new white-ball side to play Pakistan, and ended up winning too. When tight schedules and strict quarantine norms made it impossible for India to send their first XI to Sri Lanka, an alternative team, with Rahul Dravid as coach, went and won the ODI series (they lost the T20Is only after half of the side had to be isolated). Why can this sort of thing not become a plan?
The pandemic has only widened the gulf between the richer boards and the rest. After being given Test status in 2018, Afghanistan and Ireland have together managed to play only nine Tests. And since cricket resumed after the lockdown, the Big Three have played 26% of all Tests played (14 out of 54) between themselves.
Ireland managed nine white-ball games against South Africa and England since the onset of the pandemic, but Afghanistan, who qualified directly for the 2021 T20 World Cup ahead of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, did not play a single match against a team ranked above them in the year or so leading up to the tournament. In the five-year period between the two T20 World Cups, Afghanistan, whose qualification in 2016 was one of the most stirring stories in cricket, didn’t play a T20 against any of England, India, Australia, Pakistan, South Africa and New Zealand.
In all, they have played 89 T20Is with a win-loss ratio of 60-28, the best among the 16 teams who have played at least 50 games, and yet only ten of these have been against teams ranked above them.
Equality will be forever elusive, but without the quest, the chasm will grow wider. It’s inevitable for schedules to be dictated by commerce, but a little creativity can even things out a bit. Countries fielding two sides simultaneously is an idea whose time has come: those with deeper talent pools – India, England and Australia to start with – must consider, or be persuaded to consider, the idea.
The benefits are self-evident. It will create more opportunities for smaller teams in a slightly more even playing field. Teams like Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, who rarely get to play the top sides, will be the obvious beneficiaries, but the idea can extend to other teams too: Bangladesh are in a white-ball slump, Sri Lanka are rebuilding and could do with more competitive cricket, and for teams like Scotland, Netherlands, USA or even Nepal, who mainly play each other, a few chances to test themselves against top-quality players outside of the World Cups will be priceless. There can’t be a less contentious way for the Big Three to share their wealth. Their own fringe players will also be grateful for the international caps.
There will be challenges, of course. The value of TV rights for these matches will need scaling down, some compromises might need to be made with the strength of reserve players in each squad, and the top teams might have their records a bit diluted. But the upside is enormous.
T20 World Cup: how to do the dew
That the T20 World Cup took place at all was a relief. And true to tradition, an unfancied team – an odd term to use for Australia in an ICC tournament – took the trophy. But the tournament didn’t really fizz, barring the two semi-finals, and for instant recall, those two overs from Shaheen Shah Afridi, of course: in one, he ripped the soul out of the Indian campaign; in the second, Matthew Wade, with three audacious hits, ended Pakistan’s.
