Abhijit Kale hit six sixes in an over while playing for an amateur Kent side in 2009; Gary Sobers is the only other cricketer known to have done this. (Admittedly, it was against a lousy bowler who bowled three no-balls in that over,) He had played quite well in domestic cricket, scoring 6806 runs in 84 games. He was accused of an attempt to bribe selectors in 2003; that finished off his career as national player. I found the process of his punishment unsatisfactory, and suggested an alternative in this Business World column of 1 December 2003.
Are they good – or just lucky?
I am afraid that I had never
heard of Kale before the news that he had offered bribes to two selectors. It
is their word against his; so it is possible to believe anything. Maharashtra
Cricket Association backed him because he is one of “theirs”. The Board of
Cricket Control of India backed the selectors because they were “its”. Kapil
Dev backed him because he had been accused of something similar by
rumour mongers. It is the selectors’ word against Kale’s.
Whether he did it or not,
however, it would have been extremely rational for him to have done so. If a
cricketer is given Rs 15 million for just going to Australia, even if he does
not play a single match, then it is worth paying anything less than the amount
for the junket. Even if one had to borrow the amount, it would be worth paying
something like Rs 14 million. So a bribe of Rs 2 million would have been
conservative, if that is the word. Whether it happened or not, the scandal is
waiting to happen.
What can be done to prevent it?
One way would be to keep selectors under lock and key all the time, and to
record all their telephone calls. If they had to work under such punishing
conditions, however, selectors would probably want to be paid an astronomical sum
– certainly more than players.
Another way would be to auction
places on the team. That would certainly boost BCCI’s income. But then, it may
not: Australians may refuse to play a team of Indians whose only qualification
was their ability to buy a place. But then, it may: if they were paid enough,
Australians may play even such pseudo-cricketers. But then again, it may not:
India is the world’s biggest market for cricket, and Indians may not want to
pay to see eleven contemptible Indians walloped by the kangaroos. Altogether,
this course is just too hazardous; it would be best if BCCI avoided it.
A third way would be to run a
lottery. A set of official bookies should take two-way bets over the six months
preceding a tour. Interested punters can bet either that, say, Kale will be
included in the team, or that he will not be included. There will be a large
number of players on whose inclusion no one will want to place a bet; the
bookies will not be able to offer any odds on them. So the offer of odds will
itself act as a selection process. With luck, it will leave only 15 players
with measurable odds, in which case no further selection will be necessary.
Even if it selects more players than can be accommodated, the odds give the
bettors’ ranking of players. The 15 players with the lowest odds for inclusion
constitute the team.
The present system of selection
is one in which just the selectors place bets. And the performance of Indian
teams shows that they are pretty lousy punters: they cannot even select a team
from a country of a billion people to beat teams from countries of 15 or 25
million. Even if the present system continues, it can be made more transparent.
BCCI should publish the performance statistics of all Ranji Trophy players: not
just their batting and bowling performance, but also how many catches they held
and dropped, and how many fours or sixes they stopped or did not stop.
That would be better than the
present opaque system. But it would not allow for the quality of opposition
against which a player performed. One way of accounting for it would be to
weight the player’s performance by the strength of the opposition. The teams
should be ranked in inverse order of their performance, and runs scored or
wickets taken by a player against them should be multiplied by the rank. This
too is a bit rough-and-ready; Surjit Bhalla can probably improve on my system.
Until he does so, I would suggest
the following. BCCI should give every living, retired Indian test cricketer Rs
15,000, and ask him to bet on 15 players. The 15 players on whom the highest
sums are placed would form the team. The bettors would receive a multiple of
the sums they placed; the multiple would be the ratio of total sums placed to
the sums placed on the winners. This formula can be improved; but BCCI may not
understand the algebra.
