The World Cup and The IPL: Who Bends to Whom?

SP on the Impact Sub, World Cup selections, and crying more

Artwork by Fisher Classics

In just over three weeks another ICC World Cup kicks off: this time in the USA and the Caribbean. Brace for 10am start times to satisfy Indian broadcasts, concern about local infrastructure, bemused Americans, and trivia about the USA and Canada playing cricket’s first international. Did you know that when Central Park was first being planned, demarcations were made for cricket fields? That was until AG Spalding said, “real men play cricket”. And things of that ilk. In the meantime, teams have been selected, and those selections have been wrong. Haven’t you been watching the IPL?

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Until mid-last year, it had been roughly 15 years since the Australian men’s team could lay serious claim to being the world’s best, pound-for-pound. And for those who follow them, the road back to the top has been a snakes and ladders journey of upheaval, solemnly commissioned reports, names like Argus and Longstaff wafting through parks and pubs and BBQs and office kitchens, with blood split and keyboards crunched over culture, ethics, identity and ideology. True, there were some good times, especially at home, but generally losses everywhere else and no real sense of the kind of systemic superiority Steve Waugh’s team achieved, which many Australians had already mentally rendered the norm.

However, in the eyes of the world, Australia has very quickly slipped back to being the Death Star of winning things, but now woke and well-adjusted. It has won every major ICC trophy in the last two and a half years, with broadly the same core of players. Australia’s women have won even more. If the men win in the Caribbean, Australian cricket will concurrently hold every major ICC trophy in men’s and women’s cricket. If you’re Australian it’s…pretty good.

The familiar sounds and shapes and contortions of Australian global cricketing hegemony have followed. Can you hear that? The sound of public excitement at Australia’s ascension to the peak after more than a decade in the wilderness? I can’t either. There is no real sense of living through an era of rare excellence. It feels more like normalcy restored. Rightful places resumed. Things as they should be. When Pat Cummins returned from Ahmedabad after toppling a home team that had hitherto smashed records and with every seeming conceivable advantage possible, about five people showed up to congratulate him, and a driver. That’s just how it’s done here.

Though this team is its most successful in 20 years, and best behaved in 50, most local reaction to Australia’s T20 World Cup squad has skewed critical. It’s either a compliment to how good Jake Fraser-McGurk is, or how much we crave fresh blood and new shapes, that it now feels Australia will need to win this World Cup to justify his omission. The squad’s detractors see bland conservatism, under-imagination and incumbency-obsession. That the boys are the boys and that you ignore a talent like Fraser-McGurk at your peril. They may be proven right, however there is a rational basis for his exclusion, however unsexy it is.

There is an “X’s and O’s” case. Put simply, a World Cup in the Caribbean is not franchise cricket in India. For starters, the World Cup limits teams to 11 per side, per game. Strange that it has to be written, but here we are. Watchers of the IPL will understand just how material this difference is. Under the IPL’s Impact Sub rule, teams effectively bat down to 8 or 9. There are lots of specialist batters and very little time. These are the conditions which bubble up Jack Fraser-McGurk, who – it has been proven in this IPL – has literally attempted to hit 75% of his faced deliveries for four or six. He opens the batting, faces pace primarily, the field is up, and he maximises the powerplay. As he noted himself, “my role is to go out there and score as many as I can in the first six [the powerplay]. If I go on, I go on.”

This, by the way, is the absolute optimal strategy and mindset for the 2024 IPL, where upwards of eight or nine batters follow you if it doesn’t work out. It is why four of the highest five ever totals in the tournament’s history have been record in the first half of this edition, and why there is barely any correlation between high individual scores and team success. Strike rate is King. Balls must sail. Your neck must crane. To watch this in action once is enthralling, but twice or more, less so. A player taking part in this year’s IPL sent a Direct Message to The Grade Cricketer on Instagram this week, simply saying, “using bowling machines next year.”

It’s possible Fraser-McGurk gets the last laugh. Watching what Jonathan Liew aptly described this week as an arcade-style hitting competition, it was easy to conclude that it had all gone too far. Influential people believe it has. Rohit Sharma, India’s captain, publicly criticised the Impact Sub rule (via the Club Prairie Fire Podcast), which is no small matter given how rarely Indian players criticise things pertaining to their own administration. Harsha Bhogle has been more nuanced, asking, “Is the Impact Sub good for Indian Cricket? No. Is it good for the IPL?...” Ricky Ponting has said “it’s a bit of a nightmare”, but also wondered if it’s what people really wanted. Is it what people want? Or what they are told they want? How free is the market’s “free hand” we keep getting told about?

Which brings me back to Fraser-McGurk’s last laugh. What’s more likely, the IPL bending back to international cricket? Or international cricket further bending to the IPL? If the IPL’s vision for cricket really is the future, then Fraser-McGurk will dominate. He may have missed out on selection this time, but he is – as a Wall St stockbroker might say – “on trend”.

But Australian selectors, and most selectors from every other international squad, recognise that the Caribbean will be substantially different to the current IPL. In their mind’s eye, 150 might prove a winning score, the powerplay and beyond is going to be home to slow, low, wily, guileful spinners, or pace off the ball into tired pitches, and that older heads are better going to be able to navigate that than, for the sake of contrast, pure golf swing merchants, whose hands whip-crack through a hard ball with short boundaries. This is with the exception of England, where Director of Cricket Rob Key referred to England’s last tour of the West Indies as “a slugfest, really”.

Nevertheless, most squads, including England’s, have emphasised spin and multi-disciplined players more than normal. Australia’s taking two specialist spinners, India’s taking four, and England are debuting Tom Hartley to go with Adil Rashid. In Australia’s case, Fraser-McGurk has suffered because not only are the top 3 highly established, but one of them (Marsh) also bowls and captains. After this, each of Stoinis, Green, Wade and Inglis are able to bat in the top 3 in the event change is required, and unlike Fraser-McGurk, each can either bowl or keep. To underscore how important multi-disciplinary players are, defending champions England has only made room for one specialist batter – Harry Brook. The remainder of their batters are either able to bowl, and four of them are wicket-keepers. Can Fraser-McGurk keep one day?

This is to say nothing of the World Cup afterglow effect, which reaches further back than Modi Stadium on 19 November, but to Allan Border in 1987. Australian selectors have gone with its known quantities that have done the business. They value tournament nous over the trends of the format, they believe tournaments have a self-contained life force, which contain mystical powers for Australia and hurdles for the rest. As one English journalist said to me, “I thought you should’ve picked Fraser-McGurk, but you’ll probably win it with these anyway.” So beyond the X’s and O’s, it may also be plausible to say Australia will find their way to a semi-final and do it with psychology after that.

However, probability suggests otherwise. India’s selectors must agree, as they’ve entrusted a core of players who’ve routinely come up short in ICC tournaments. The usual suspects will be there, even though most have failed to make an impact in the most recent IPL. But conspiracies are in, so instead of decrying the correlation between Virat Kohli’s Orange Cap and poor strike rate, perhaps we should be saying he’s batting in very Caribbean fashion. No one in the world is better placed to safely manoeuvre their team to 150 or 160 against quality bowlers, and if he leads India to a World Cup, all the memes and criticism from Sunil Gavaskar will dissipate quicker than excitement over two short balls in an IPL over.

Be that as it may, Team India selections very much feel like the scientist who repeats the experiment until the right result is achieved. It’s not so much that Virat, Rohit, Hardik, and Jadeja aren’t without merit (they have a tonne), it’s that even having a conversation about it feels dangerous. That said, a shift is happening. For one, The Grade Cricketer’s YouTube comments – heavily populated by Hindutva-style nationalists insisting we shut up about India (but also to cover their IPL team) – have so far been strangely devoid of the instruction that we “cry more”. But maybe, with the help of probability and sheer need, India finally gets it done.