Will The Real Swami Army Please Stand Up?

After 1 and half Tests of this 2011/12 Australian summer, it has become increasingly clear to many at the MCG and SCG recently that the famed Swami Army is merely a group of media hungry, bandwagon Team India fans bankrupt of all passion and verve when the chips are down. It's all well and good to tell the truth in advance, but at some point very soon there will need to be substance to support the fluff, else this lot's credibility will leak from Australian cricket stadiums at quite some rate of knots.

It is easy to join in the banter when life is good, but the modus operandi of a real supporter group should be to sustain the volume and vigour from the stands when shoulders begin to sag on the park. This requires creativity. This requires a genuine commitment to the cause. Above all, this requires unadulterated passion for the team in the face of all obstacles. After having witnessed this group in the flesh in Sydney and Melbourne, I can only surmise that they sadly may lack many of these qualities.

The one notable exception to this are the diligent lads on the dhol. They have shown time and again that they only need a small group to dance to their rapturous beats in an attempt to keep the inhabitants of the Swami Army bay from falling asleep. Long may they continue their fine work!

Welcoming High Commissioners and former Prime Ministers and cricketers is all fine and dandy. It looks great on TV and is also great fodder for the sound bite hungry online news media, and its no secret that any supporter group needs ample publicity to succeed. However, to actually fill a bay at an Australian cricket ground you need to be inclusive and prove that you are able to rally the troops when results on the park are less than stellar. Otherwise you leave yourself open to suffering the ignominy of being drowned out by opposition fans in all but the four rows you occupy.

As is the case for Team India for the remainder of this summer, there is still time aplenty for the Swami Army to prove they are the real McCoy and not merely the fair weather, flat track bullies they appear to be at the minute.

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Scrape Till You Can't Scrape No More

So four years after Lalit Modi and the BCCI gave us the IPL, Cricket Australia has decided the time is right to introduce its own franchised clone Big Bash League. It all sounded like a good idea, until they started telling us that the biggest crowd pullers they could attract to the competition were two 40 year olds. One is most recently known for giving up pizza in order to bed a former supermodel, while the other used to sell cookbooks and endorse oddly shaped cricket bats!

Has Cricket Australia seriously lost the plot in dusting off these "show stoppers" or is it merely a reflection of the sorry state of Australian cricket? It sounds ominously like the latter, for mine.

Take nothing away from the many exploits of Matthew Hayden and Shane Warne. Particularly, Shane Warne. Loyal readers of The Match Referee will attest to our unconditional adoration of the Great(est) Victorian (ever), over the years. The question is not of their greatness, but of their relevance to professional cricket in 2011/12. Frankly, for blokes who haven't bowled or hit a ball in anger since the inaugural IPL season, they are as good as irrelevant on a cricket field today.

The seeds of this sorry situation were sown all the way back on that Ashes tour when Andrew Symonds was sent packing, reportedly at the behest of one Michael Clarke. Cricket Australia lost Australia's best all-rounder in decades because of the personal peeves of an individual in whom they had invested all their eggs. You do not need a financial advisor to tell you why that was a disaster waiting to happen!

The result of all that pettiness is that Australian cricket has no bankable current player capable of drawing a crowd. Clarke's name is poison after THAT tawdry affair and other shenanigans, Shane Watson has proven himself to be a somewhat unbalanced simpleton, David Warner is a one hit wonder and Mitchell Johnson is best known these days for fighting with his mum in the Australian Women's Weekly. Hell, Mohammad Hafeez would have been a better face of the Big Bash League than these blokes!

This was the ideal time for CA to expend serious cash and bring in the big names of the sport globally. Instead, they've trotted down the County cricket route where geriatrics pose as cricketers. Such decision are only likely to increase the amount of money made by the sports betting types lurking in the midst!

Australian cricket needs more than just the Crawford Report. It needs an overhaul at the top, a large dollop of fresh ideas and someone prepared to make the tough decisions that will see the development of commercially bankable stars. Talent, personality and charisma get the turnstiles whirring, not corporate blandness and rigidity.

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In It To Win It

The Match Referee has been the staunchest supporter of Yuvraj Singh over the years. It doesn't take a genius to deduce that the kid has raw ability that many current international cricketers would kill for, however, like many of our loyal readers, we've often questioned whether he has the temperament and / or desire to fulfil his potential and deliver on the hopes and dreams of his many fans?

His past indiscretions / misdemeanours / lapses in judgement are well known to all and do not need to be trotted out here. However, I'm a student of a large school of thought that was hoping, praying and daring to believe that Yuvraj's performances in THAT tournament (yes, "the best world cup of all time"!!) was a turning point in Yuvraj's life. A turning point that would see him permanently ejected from the 'pretender' category and given his rightful dues in the 'genuine superstar' category.

Alas, thanks to a mysterious "lung infection" my fellow pupils and I have again been left scratching our heads as to whether this is yet again the corner that Yuvraj or his destiny steadfastly refuses to turn! After recently being dropped from the ODI team, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Yuvraj had realised that you've gotta be in it to win it. Clearly not!

In Yuvraj's place, Suresh Raina has shown that he may just have the gumption to turn himself into what Yuvraj has been promising all these years. Also, let's not forget that this tremendously unsuccessful series for Virat Kohli is probably the best thing that could've happened to the lad at this point in his career, for he has confronted every previous setback head-on and grasped his next opportunity with a vengeance and panache that belie age. There is no doubt that Kohli will be back in white very, very soon.

What about Yuvraj, you ask? I reckon weather forecasters have a better success rate than those predicting the outcome of Yuvraj's career, and we know how accurate our weather predictions are, right?

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Same Ol' Same Ol'

So much has happened in cricket over the past months that a passive peruser of cricket media would be forgiven for thinking the sky has fallen in. But, stop and think for a second. What do you know now that you didn't know 6 months ago? Have the events of the past few weeks actually changed your opinions about players from certain countries, proficiency (or lack thereof) of cricketing administrators or the unparalleled brilliance and grace of the living legends?

Reams have been wasted on the spot match-fixing controversy, but the revelations of Mazhar Majeed or the desperate and amateurish allegations of Ijaz Butt have taught us other than that the most delinquent team ever to take to a cricket field is still doing what the whole world has suspected, proven and kept suspecting. Clichés abound about fathers and sons, and apples and trees.

Then come reports of a certain Australian captain being advised by an Australian cricketing great to follow the in the footsteps of God one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. I, for one, would have thought there was a greater chance of Mike Hussey being caught with a hooker than any member of the Australian cricketing establishment advising his current captain to follow the lead of an Indian. For all the shock and horror of such news, Taylor has merely pilfered what real Team India / Sachin fans have been quietly advocating for years. Does that make us experts too, then?

And in the "It Happens Only In India" files, the BCCI has again affirmed its unstated view that it is a nation unto itself. That compromise, humility, national pride or common sense are attributes as foreign to it as cricket is to North Korea. The Indian Commonwealth Games organising committee must be the only body of its type to allow the sport with the largest supporter base in that country to play a marquee series during the Games, without even the slightest attempt at a whimper. Suresh Kalmadi's claims that he wasn't busy augmenting his personal accounts with public funds seem increasingly dubious.

Given nothing has really changed, we can assure ourself that the treacherous trio from Pakistan will soon be off the hook on account of lack of evidence, Harbhajan Singh will be "slapped" with a ban / fine at least once during the next month and Michael Clarke will once again out-bowl Nathan Hauritz in a Test, if not the entire series.

With this in mind, will you be watching India v Australia, or diversifying with a little multi-sport action offered by the other even in town?

If you enjoy watching the great sport of Cricket, why not check out the latest Cricket Betting?

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Money Makes Your World Tick, Ricky

You can't blame Ricky Ponting for being stuck in the times of Taylor and Waugh. A man is defined by his experiences and upbringing, and Ponting grew up in an era where brotherly Aussie love within it's cricket team was the be all and end all. However, in these times of freelance cricketers, the IPL and significantly greater personal at stake, such institutions of togetherness are paid lip mere service, at best.

With this background, it is no surprise that Ponting assumed that the words of the captain of Australia would carry the weight they once did. Welcome to the real world, mate.

As the opportunity and burden of personal responsibility and decision making power is transferred to kids of increasingly younger ages, so is their prerogative to pick and choose the people who's advice they heed. With Ponting's admission that nobody heeded his advice with respect to Aussie players' participation in IPL³, it is infinitely clear that the office of Australian cricket captain no longer carries the clout for which it was once renowned. Some might even argue that Ponting's unsuitability for this role has been the catalyst for this erosion of influence.

Ponting's strategic shortcomings are ruthlessly exposed by such admissions of leadership failure, especially in an era where he has been charged with the responsibility of developing and moulding a new generation to recover their nation's reputation as consistent world-beaters. Ineffective and impotent is a leader bereft of powers of persuasion or incapable of showing the requisite discretion to carefully select the fringe issues on which his voice must be heard by his charges.

It doesn't help that Ponting's own conflicted interests in this matter could rightly be deemed by many as highly hypocritical. The result of these heated discussions also put paid to frequent foreign players' utterances that security and safety is paramount in their thinking. Such assertions are pure facetious at best, for the it is abundantly clear that the number of greenback-filled suitcases are the sole consideration.

Ponting's leadership qualities have never been his strong suit. He has failed almost every time a situation has required him to show real leadership, tact or guile, on or off the pitch. His latest admission is yet more affirmation that Cricket Australia needs to act strongly and decisively in charting a succession plan that will deliver a captain that the next generation of Australian cricketers demand and deserve.

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