Opinion The Flintoff way
Has the all-rounder gone rogue,or is he on to something revolutionary?...
Mahendra Singh Dhoni,India. Ricky Ponting,Australia. Graeme Smith,South Africa.
Andrew Flintoff,freelance. Should we get used to it?
Its often hard to judge the impact certain moments will have in the future,as they unfold in the present. In many cases,the tendency is to exaggerate the consequences. Arsenal did not drop out of the top four in the Premiership when Thierry Henry left. There would never be another Pete Sampras,we said with misty eyes,but as soon as the tears were wiped off,there stood Roger Federer. And though it did look extremely likely at the time,match-fixing did not kill crickets popularity.
However,its as easy to go the other way.
When Kapil Dev stood on the balcony at Lords holding up the World Cup trophy,you knew it was a moment that would spark something big,especially in a nation as starved of international sporting success as India was. But did anyone see the complete shift in power coming? Did they see Indian rupees taking over the game to such an extent that there would not be enough time for advertisements between overs,leaving high-profile commentators plugging motorbikes on air even as Sachin Tendulkar crafted a masterly century out in the middle? In fact,two-and-a-half decades down the line,the Board of Control for Cricket in India could very easily drop the last bit of its title.
Similarly,its been impossible to tell where the Twenty20 revolution is headed,and this time its all happening at breakneck speed. In the last two years,weve debated,endlessly,the probable demise of Test cricket and the near-certain death of one-dayers as we know them. A rebel league sprung up,and has since been crushed. The Sri Lankan board cancelled a Test tour of England so their players could play the IPL,and an extremely reluctant West Indian outfit was dragged,kicking and screaming,to fill in for them. Many see cricket organising itself more on the lines of football,where battles between clubs dominate the calendar with national teams coming together for major tournaments once every couple of years.
Things seem to be snowballing so fast that the games administrators are having to dance around on twinkle-toes to avoid being flattened by the monster they have created.
Of these,Andrew Flintoffs turning down a contract with the England and Wales Cricket Board to go freelance has the potential to be the biggest game-changer,because it empowers the player like never before. Suddenly,representing the country is not the only way to make a living. Flintoffs agent is on the record saying the all-rounder could play in as many as six different Twenty20 leagues if he skips national duty. If he has his way,Flintoff or Andrew Symonds,who plans to take a similar path could end up making more money from the final few years of his career than he has from playing a decade of international cricket.
And while both Flintoff and Symonds are well into the second halves of their careers,is it too far-fetched to imagine players taking similar decisions while still at their peak? I dont like your terms,Im off to play for the Timbuktu Terminators. (If this seems like an overreaction,think of the day an Indian cricketer chooses to play in the proposed Southern Hemisphere league over a tour of Bangladesh.)
It is important not to blame the players though. Sportsmen have short shelf-lives and deserve every penny they make when theyre still able to perform most of them spend their lifetime getting that good at what they do,and retiring at 35 with few other skills cannot be pleasant. (It is possible,as his agent says,that Freddie wants to go bungee-jumping,which the contract with the English board did not allow).
The real question is where this leaves the games administrators. They can hardly allow international cricket to be diluted,for that would be the beginning of their own irrelevance; neither can they afford to get confrontational:
banning high-profile players from plying their trade may not be as easy as bullying the Indian Cricket League to its knees.
How successful Flintoff is,or is allowed to be,with this plan could have a big bearing on whether this becomes a trend or not. And while we wait and watch… do you reckon Federers loss to Juan Martin del Potro at Flushing Meadows is the end of an era?
deepak.narayanan@expressindia.com
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