There is a growing trend in the game of cricket to try and measure achievements. So-and-so is better than so-and-so. This man is the best cricketer. Increasingly, there is a move to bring in objective criteria to measure something as sublime as the batting of a Sobers, the bowling of a Lillee, the glorious sight of a Bland pouncing in the covers or the guile of a Bishen Singh Bedi teasing and tantalising a man and keeping him at 99 for all of three overs.
Each attempt that is made has the blessing of some advertiser of the other, and claims to be the best of its kind, the most accurate and one that takes in criteria which the other 20 on the block (that's a conservative estimate) did not. We are not content to enjoy the game and have our subjective debates (arguments without which cricket would lose all its charm). No, we must have everything down to a "T".
This cannot be better illustrated than by Sunil Gavaskar's latest brainchild (?), the Ceat cricket ratings. These ratings attempt to measure performance and offer an award of half a million Indian rupees (roughly $14,000) to the person who tops the ratings at the end of May each year. Brian Lara was given the award for 1995-96.
The methods for measuring performance are rather funny. Points are given for scoring runs, taking wickets and holding catches; the same goes for stumpings. Test cricket and one-day games are no different to the curiously illogical mind which devised this system. Thus, one comes up with amazing results at times -- as of January 28, the top 10 were all Indian and Pakistani players. The first man from another country to figure in this so-called rating system is the South African Daryl Cullinan who was at 14.
As Lewis Carroll wrote, it gets curiouser and curiouser. Something called the Ceat efficiency quotient is also cited as coming into play. Works this way -- a man gets 100 points over 10 innings and another gets them over five. the first gets a quotient of 10 and the second one of 20. This will influence the final placings but nobody is saying how.
Gavaskar has roped in Ian Chappell and Clive Lloyd to give respectability to the award. The three were all great cricketers. But that does not mean they are the greatest judges of ability. The simple fact is a man who excels in one facet of the game can be a total zero in another. John Arlott was not a great cricketer but name me another who became synonymous with cricket commentary.
This award is obviously not going to make people play a lot better or worse than they already are. There are enough financial rewards in the game right now and while nobody will turn down the sum, it is not going to be something prestigious to aspire to. With such obviously flawed methods being used, it has little or no credibility.
It might be a good idea if all these cricketing greats let the game get on without this kind of input. Trying to encourage cricketers to outdo each other -- so that they can boast, as little boys do, that "mine is bigger than yours" -- is childish, to say the least. There are other way of contributing to the game if that is the intention. The only ones to benefit are the companies who lend their name to the award. So too the ones who think up these schemes. The pair of them will laugh all the way to the bank. The game gets a bad name.