Bhogle's take on player burnout
Finding the right balance
By Harsha Bhogle
I must confess I am completely bewildered by all the rhetoric surrounding the issue of player burnout. A simple issue between two sets of people acquires the hue and venom of a monster. There have been exhortations of a strike which leads me to believe that well-paid cricketers are actually helpless bonded labourers in disguise; that players are awakened before dawn and made to work in quarries till well after sunset.
Essentially the question of how much cricket a player should play is an issue to be sorted between those that run the game and those that play it. If there can be no meaningful debate, if a meeting point is impossible, then organisations are in deeper trouble than mere scheduling of matches. Both parties need each other and more difficult issues than these are routinely sorted out. Where trust doesn't work, commerce does.
And people adapt. I have met a lot of medical representatives who go from shop to shop, from doctor to doctor, sit long hours in chambers and travel long hours through rain and sweat. And they have to deliver every time, otherwise they lose their salary raise and bonus. And they have to perform under pressure because very often they are the sole breadwinners. And they travel 22-25 days every month, month after month, year after year. I look at them and I think nobody can do their job but they do and a lot of them do it very well. They adapt to a life of great stress because they have no option. If one existed, nobody would be a medical rep; nobody would work through night and day at Siachen. But people do. And they adapt.
The way out is not to spew venom at the ICC, not to look upon it as a cruel emperor out to torment suffering subjects, but to understand that they are merely a collection of representative bodies and cannot function in the event of a discord. If cricketers believe that too much cricket is being played, then they need to look at what their own parent body has agreed upon. And Malcolm Speed is right when he says that the Frequent Tours Programme is a very acceptable load on cricketers. It is when cricket authorities start adding to it that the problem begins.
But let us for a minute assume that the amount of cricket a country plays goes beyond the reasonably accepted, maybe we need to change the way we look at the squad. Maybe the way out is to look at larger squads with players coming in and out depending on their fitness levels and the need for rest. It happens all the time in football and I believe that is the way ahead in one-day cricket.
It has other implications as well. Teams will then need to have a stronger bench to allow easy entry and exit of players and it will allow countries with greater depth to move ahead. There will then be an emphasis on building not just 13 or 14 quality cricketers but as many as 20 and that cannot do the game any harm. Teams that have fitter cricketers will be able to put out their best team on the field more often, those that cannot will need to seek replacements. That is fair.
It will also address the real issue behind too much cricket which is that players run the risk of merely turning up; of treating a match like just another day at work. It is natural for players, on some days, to wish they were somewhere else and on such days, someone else can take their place. I can assure you that if that happens more than a couple of times, cricketers will remain charged up.
But these are issues that the BCCI must address for it is up to them, and nobody else, to decide But they have to draw the balance between the playing of the game and the revenue more cricket can generate.
Currently they give the impression that gathering revenue is their primary priority but like players, administrators must eventually be judged not just by the profits they generate, but by the quality of their cricket team. And if they can sit across the table and sort things out with cricketers, nobody will talk about burnout.
Finding the right balance
By Harsha Bhogle
I must confess I am completely bewildered by all the rhetoric surrounding the issue of player burnout. A simple issue between two sets of people acquires the hue and venom of a monster. There have been exhortations of a strike which leads me to believe that well-paid cricketers are actually helpless bonded labourers in disguise; that players are awakened before dawn and made to work in quarries till well after sunset.
Essentially the question of how much cricket a player should play is an issue to be sorted between those that run the game and those that play it. If there can be no meaningful debate, if a meeting point is impossible, then organisations are in deeper trouble than mere scheduling of matches. Both parties need each other and more difficult issues than these are routinely sorted out. Where trust doesn't work, commerce does.
And people adapt. I have met a lot of medical representatives who go from shop to shop, from doctor to doctor, sit long hours in chambers and travel long hours through rain and sweat. And they have to deliver every time, otherwise they lose their salary raise and bonus. And they have to perform under pressure because very often they are the sole breadwinners. And they travel 22-25 days every month, month after month, year after year. I look at them and I think nobody can do their job but they do and a lot of them do it very well. They adapt to a life of great stress because they have no option. If one existed, nobody would be a medical rep; nobody would work through night and day at Siachen. But people do. And they adapt.
The way out is not to spew venom at the ICC, not to look upon it as a cruel emperor out to torment suffering subjects, but to understand that they are merely a collection of representative bodies and cannot function in the event of a discord. If cricketers believe that too much cricket is being played, then they need to look at what their own parent body has agreed upon. And Malcolm Speed is right when he says that the Frequent Tours Programme is a very acceptable load on cricketers. It is when cricket authorities start adding to it that the problem begins.
But let us for a minute assume that the amount of cricket a country plays goes beyond the reasonably accepted, maybe we need to change the way we look at the squad. Maybe the way out is to look at larger squads with players coming in and out depending on their fitness levels and the need for rest. It happens all the time in football and I believe that is the way ahead in one-day cricket.
It has other implications as well. Teams will then need to have a stronger bench to allow easy entry and exit of players and it will allow countries with greater depth to move ahead. There will then be an emphasis on building not just 13 or 14 quality cricketers but as many as 20 and that cannot do the game any harm. Teams that have fitter cricketers will be able to put out their best team on the field more often, those that cannot will need to seek replacements. That is fair.
It will also address the real issue behind too much cricket which is that players run the risk of merely turning up; of treating a match like just another day at work. It is natural for players, on some days, to wish they were somewhere else and on such days, someone else can take their place. I can assure you that if that happens more than a couple of times, cricketers will remain charged up.
But these are issues that the BCCI must address for it is up to them, and nobody else, to decide But they have to draw the balance between the playing of the game and the revenue more cricket can generate.
Currently they give the impression that gathering revenue is their primary priority but like players, administrators must eventually be judged not just by the profits they generate, but by the quality of their cricket team. And if they can sit across the table and sort things out with cricketers, nobody will talk about burnout.