Whatever Happened To Good Old Fashioned Retiring?

It used to be that when a player felt he could no longer compete at the highest level, either due to the physical limitations age imposes or because he simply no longer had the same motivation, he would retire. It was that simple, really. The player asked himself, "Am I good enough to continue playing for my country?" and then decided for whatever reason that he couldn't anymore, and so retired.

Not anymore. Nowadays, retirements are all about making some statement or the other. If you do want to announce your retirement, you either do it in one format or two, to prolong your career in the other. Its like a caveat you need to add for feeling bad that you're walking away from the game. And of course some people simply can't walk away, even when they clearly are well past their best. In fact, they feel so bad about it that they dismiss all talk about the "r" word. Really.

And then there is the most common use of retirements today, employed mostly by ex-Pakistani skippers and the odd Bangladeshi. These "I'm retiring... for now... but I could be back... in fact, I'd like to be back... in fact only an idiot wouldn't *want* me back... but since you're all acting like idiots... I'm retiring and making you all look like bigger idiots, ha!" Younis Khan, Mohammed Yousuf, Shahid Afridi... often they end up captaining a series not much later and then they're sacked, rinse, cycle, repeat. We could probably classify these as neo-retirements (unfortunately not the TV channel).

Then we have the never-ending retirements. Players who just can't get enough of a farewell. I can't even remember the number of times Flintoff has announced his retirement at some different stage or the other. Or Ganguly. Or Muralitharan. Or Warne. At a test/ODI. Then in T20s. Then in first class cricket. Then in a T20 league. And all the same tributes get written all over again. I blame Steve Waugh for starting the glorious never-ending retirements.

The evolution of retirements from being an honest admission of not having it in you to continue to staging a protest or demanding a fitting farewell perhaps only competes with the change in quality of cricket bats.

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Had Michael Schumacher been a cricketer

Provided the pain in the neck, both figuratively and literally, subsides, Michael Schumacher would be back behind the Ferrari wheels in Valencia later this month.

In another world and at this point of time, he could well have been a former Australia cricket captain, minting money out of syndicate columns and commentary stints.

Had he been a cricketer, Schumi would have been Steve Waugh.

As much a cyborg as Tugga. Even when the world around them come crashing down, they would just flick the dust off the coat sleeve and move on.

And the similarity doesn’t end their. Both were followed by their siblings into the field.

Steve arrived, in this world that is, full four minutes before Mark.

Michael Schumacher arrived little earlier, six years to be precise, than bro Ralf.

Those who have seen him vouch, like Waugh, Schumacher too drove. And with élan.

And he cut as well. Like in 2006 Hungarian GP, where he cut chicane after Pedro de la Rosa’s McLaren had overtook him.

And there are fair chances that after Damon Hill had rammed his car into Schumacher’s in 1994 Australian GP to miss the Drivers’ Championship, the German said:

“You’ve just dropped the Championship, son.”

And if Waugh had his Sourav Ganguly, Schumacher had Jacques Villeneuve.

Fast forward to 1997 European Grand Prix, season’s last race at Jerez.

Schumacher leads the Championship race by a wafer-thin one point from Villeneuve and is cocksure he would romp home.

Fortunately there is no toss of coin in F1 and drivers have to turn up in time. So Villeneuve, unlike Ganguly, could not be blamed for getting under Schumi’s nerve in that particular way.

Race starts and Schumacher pips Villeneuve before the Canadian steps on gas. And as he is about to go past Schumi, the devil in German takes over. Schumacher rams his right wheel to knock off Villeneuve’s side pod before coming to a screeching halt.

To his dismay, Villeneuve contrives to complete the race in third position to bag four points and the driver’s championship!

And like Waugh, Schumi believed charity doesn’t begin at home. It begins abroad.

While Waugh bats for orphans in Kolkata, Schumi’s charity is of much bigger magnitude. The guy has shelled out nearly USD 50 million for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, UNESCO and child victims of war in Sarajevo.

P.S. An ominous fallout of the hypothesis is Ricky Ponting might soon be hit on head, a la Felipe Massa, to prompt Steve Waugh come out of retirement in Australia’s hour of crisis.

Som also blogs at Doosra.


picture courtesy Tribune India

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Happy Bored Day Waugh! Happy Bored Day Waugh!

Happy B'Day Mark. Happy B'Day Steven. One of those days you're bound to see double. One of those days you're bound to see double. So, who was your favourite twin? So, who was your favourite twin? For me the ice man was a nice man.

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Look who is talking...

Pink Floyd are entertaining me in the background as I write this post.

While doing my customary rounds of http://www.cricinfo.com/ I found something interesting.

"I'm 43 but wouldn't mind having a crack at it. I think I'll go okay but I am not sure if any side is desperate to take me"

Appropriately Floyd were playing the famous "Money" song as I was reading this.

But yes there is a side that is desperate, desperate that it wouldn't even mind taking or rather waking up a WG Grace or Sir Donald Bradman off their grave to manage a win, one WIN. I hear grapevine telling me that this guy might be the replacement for the "Fountain of ideas".

Now that I have given enough away, the man who said those famous words is Stephen Rodger Waugh. And yes, you got it right...

The team we are talking about are the Kolkata Knight Riders.

So would Stephen Play or Make Play ??

Whatever it is, he would make pots of money.

Some more music please...

And, Mark Knopfler now, Money for nothing

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How long will he hold on?

by Raja Baradwaj

When this person called Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar became the highest run getter in test history, it would have been around 6-7p (roughly) down under and about 11a or so in England. At that point in time it was the euphoria of someone having broken a big record that dominated the press. Now that it is about 48 hours since and the feeling sinking in, I am sure a lots of them have started thinking / writing about the next stage. Their prediction about the state of this record

So the logical next question is… Who will break it?

Ricky Ponting or Jacques Kallis? For they seem to be the closest to breaking the record.

So here I am trying to crunch some numbers to figure the fate of the record, when will it be broken and who will.

Source: http://www.cricinfo.com/

Assumptions

1. The last biggie to retire was a small man called Brian Charles Lara, he retired when he was 37. So 37 has been taken as the benchmark year here for the other three players in question.
2. Based on the number of years they have been playing and the number of matches they have played, we have arrived at a number of matches they play on an average per year. Based on which we have arrived at a number of matches they would play further (projected)
3. To arrive at the number of runs they would score in the years left, 3 scenarios were looked at
(a) Their average at the start of their career. First 25 matches
(b) Average at present. The last 25 of their matches
(c) The average across their career
(d) The best among these three has been taken as the projected average for the rest of their career

Interesting takeouts

1. The bottom line seems to be very tightly poised, there is a less than 200 run difference between the two players as they finish their careers
2. We traditionally know Sachin as a very poor second innings player (remember my previous hard hitting stats post?!!). One look at Ponting proves he is no better. Both of them have only 27% of their total runs come from the second innings.
3. Ponting has a good match average because he has far more incomplete innings, meaning not outs etc.
4. While Sachin seems to have a steady average across his career, the other two have had a very good last few years. The variance between the first 25 and last 25 match average for Ponting is +25 and for Kallis is +14
5. Kallis is an odd man in this club. He has a very healthy second innings average. The variance of first to second is +8. The only one to have so
6. We could literally rule Kallis out of the race for the simple reason that he is an allrounder. This means that the wear and tear is more compared to the other two.
7. Sachin too has a fair share of his injuries. More recently a cricket irrelevant injury, the tennis elbow!! And Ponting too is not left far behind. So what are we talking about here??

While we have been speaking about the present, we also need to have one look at the past. For there have been some splendid players who, had they had opportunity like the blessed ones today, they would have placed the bar miles away.

Source: http://www.cricinfo.com/

Interesting facts

1. Geoffrey Boycott baffles me. His career spanned across 18 tumultuous years, as we all know he also quit playing as and when he liked. In spite of all this, had he played like the others did, more importantly like the England of those days, he would have played about 9 matches an year on an average. That would have left him at 15,374 test runs
2. One look at the figures here tells you a big story. The story of test matches across years, there was a time (Geoff, Sunil & Allan) when they played full 5 days cricket, when both the innings were equally important. As test cricket evolved, the second innings became more irrelevant. The strategy now changed to put a huge score, choke them. Because of this the present day cricketer is pressured to apply himself well in the first innings and then he plays the second innings either to win or for a desperate draw. The result, a poor second innings record.
3. Steven Waugh seems to be as lucky as talented a man he is. He has been at the right place at the right time. The accumulator he is, he wouldn't have had enough chances like he had, had he started today

There are many more things one could read from these two simple charts. I leave the rest to your imaginations.

Well, as we all know statistics are like miniskirts. They reveal more than they hide.

There is also a converse to this…

Talent is like a dhoti, it covers more than it should reveal.

We are talking about 3 real talents at present. The competitive environment today is, you never know when any one of them would retire or where they would place the bar should they retire.

It would be for time to say where, when and how.

Till then let’s all join in saying Cheers!! Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Laghe raho.

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