Make Gentlemen for the Gentleman’s Game

Picture an athlete.

38 years old, short, greying hair and a pot belly probably doesn’t come to mind, yet the person I am describing is an international sportsman. Cricket is the only sport where a man like Rangana Herath could not only play for his country, but also be a meteoric force of destruction. That is because cricket is played as much in the mind as it is on the field. Every ball, every field placement is a chess move with hundreds of parameters: pitch, weather, ball, spin, altitude, it’s endless. Imran Khan, Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara were a few of those brilliant individuals that studied the game with an academic focus. They excelled at cricket because they were great students of the sport, understanding its nuances with razor-sharp precision.

Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath may not be the fittest player around , yet he is one of the most successful bowlers of this era. (Image Source: The Telegraph)

There’s a reason men like Sangakkara have been able to outplay, outmanoeuvre and outsmart their opponents: the mental faculties they have unlocked, through higher education, has not only gone a long way in furthering their personal game, but also helped them become ambassadors of the game and of their countries. However, for every Misbah-Ul-Haq, who graduated from the University of Management and Technology, Lahore with an MBA before making his first-class debut, there are tens of thousands of middle and lower-middle-class aspiring cricketers, particularly in the Indian sub-continent, who do not have the resources or inclination to pursue higher education. Every neighbourhood, village and school in India thinks they have the next Sachin Tendulkar, the golden boy earmarked to wear the blue jersey at some point in his life but cricket, like any other sport, doesn’t have the resources to make every budding amateur a professional and often, youth emblazoned by success stories and movie plots of the dumb and deaf village boy opening the bowling against Pakistan have led to a culture of young people throwing away a chance at a solid career and steady income through higher education to pursue an unlikely dream. Thus, it is imperative to intertwine professional cricket in the Indian sub- continent with the formalised higher education system, to create a centralised, elite sports competition similar in structure and principles to the USA’s National Collegiate Athletics Association’s football and basketball tournaments.

“It’s just not cricket” is a phrase that means something is not fair, or that something is just not done. For example, spot-fixing in international sport is just not cricket. Yet it is, isn’t it? Over the years, cricket has had every possible corruption or betting scandal a sport could have and yet, amidst the recent PSL scandal, instead of understanding and eliminating the root of the issue, the same “few bad apples” excuse was repeated to every news outlet. Must the world of cricket continue turning a blind eye to properly educating its cricketers, particularly the ones fromdestitute areas of third world countries. Perhaps in a world where players were given an education from the top institutes of the country, there would be far fewer cases of match-fixing and general controversy from the top role models of over a billion and a half people.

The table illustrates the educational qualifications of the national men’s cricket team in the subcontinent.

Using national teams is an unfair way of judging the education of the thousands of cricketers in a country. Wealthier, or even upper-middle-class families, can afford expensive coaching and training and have a leg-up on poorer families to get a place in the national teams. The same families insist on a college education and these players form the bottom few rows of the table. However, it is no surprise that the majority of cricketers in the sub-continent are not college- educated. Aspiring players, especially fast bowlers, are known to make their first class debut or even their international debuts between the age of 17 and 23. Furthermore, families cannot afford to sustain cricketers’ education and coaching at the same time. In 2016, Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman, Shaharyar Khan, cited it as one of the main contributors to the failures of the national team and said that administratively, the PCB would need to address education in grassroots cricket, such that the governing body educates cricketers in its own performance centres. However, it is felt that rather than introducing college education to cricket training facilities in the sub-continent, it would be far more effective, lucrative and mutually beneficial to create a formal and intensive grassroots structure through existing institutions.

PCB Chairman Shaharyar Khan is himself very highly educated, having attented University of Cambridge and Tufts University. (Image Source: IBN Live)

The tournament structure would be similar to the structure of American Football in colleges, where there are regional ‘conferences’ set up for each of three divisions, allowing players recruited from high schools to gain a free education by playing high level American Football at top schools. The tournament is broadcast regionally and gain huge fan following, merchandise sales, and draws large crowds. The players, based on their performances can get selected to play in the national league, which is the premier sporting competition in the country. There could be a similar college cricket structure in the subcontinent. The flagship event would be the T20 competition, due to the limited time and high interest levels that youth has in the IPL. There would also be a 3-day and 50-over competition, but these would be more for selection purposes, rather than a product. Colleges in the subcontinent would be placed in divisions based on their cricket funding, the performance of their teams in existing competitions, such as the Red Bull Campus Cricket Tournament and the quality of training and match facilities. The aim would be to concentrate the talent, so as to create a premium quality league, rather than make teams weak with one or two star players,like the Sri Lanka’s Premier Trophy. Thus, the focus would be on creating several divisions with promotion and relegation, rather than expansive leagues with several teams. The system would run alongside the current domestic setups in order to allow first-class teams, domestic T20 league teams and in special circumstances, the national team to pick players straight from the tournament.

Often, international students in the US are amazed by the collegiate athletics setup, but what is even more astounding is the amount of money in college athletics. The salary of USC’s football coach is nearly double that of India’s men’s national cricket team coach. The thought process is not only extremely simple, but very replicable in the Indian sub-continent. People love watching cricket and often matches are not close to home, and tickets can be difficult to obtain. This is an issue that faces Pakistani cricket in particularly, as all their matches, including domestic T20 league games are played in the U.A.E.. College students and alumni are a huge built-in TV audience, considering the size of some universities. The matches would be broadcast live on sports channels and the league would attract local and alumni loyalties, allowing the league to gain traction amongst the public. Sponsors, former player involvement, high-level coaches and elite sports facilities are a simply an extension of large-scale viewership. The key to the high- scale viewership would be the ‘tamasha’(Cheerleaders, pyrotechnics, loud noises, bright colours and other things that make sports festival-like) often associated with the IPL, that has garnered significant public interest over the years.

As soon as the American college sports setup is mentioned, there are a thousand Helen Lovejoy- style cries of “Won’t somebody think of the children?”. It’s true, the NCAA Division 1 football, basketball and baseball has two overwhelming flaws when it comes to college athletes’ treatment: the inability of athletes to gain a proper education due to the ridiculous amount of training players have to do, which in turn makes the ‘education’ they receive diluted and frankly, useless. This is exemplified in cricket, a sport where the games themselves go on for multiple days. The simple solution is by studying the ways in which current players balanced both college and training. By arranging longer matches during the holidays, or around the academic schedules, this could be arranged. As for training, the hours devoted to cricket training are significantly less than the 60-hour training often prescribed in US Colleges, and a governing- body-imposed cap on training hours would go a long way in eliminating that potential issue. The other main issue with college sports is that athletes are not paid for their work, and are only given a free education as compensation. By giving a stipend to players for the hours they are putting in, or alternatively a small share of the revenue of the sports, the system would reward young cricketers for their hard work.

Through his speech at the MCC’s Cowdrey Lecture, Kumar Sangakkara demonstrates the benefits higher education has on a cricketer as a role model and the benefits it has on the game itself. (Image Source: Island Cricket)

A high-quality education at a top university helps a cricketer in ways that go beyond the skills he learns from his or her major. Dealing with pressure, situational analysis, a scientific understanding of the game and a command of language are few of the valuable additions to a young cricketers’ game. The player gets better equipped to deal with trying situations and is a worthy of being a role model to his country. Would Mohammad Amir have been coerced by his

captain to spot-fix if he had spent 3 years being educated in a top college? An education allows cricketers to communicate well with the press and gives him or her several possible career options after retirement. Furthermore, playing in a big time league allows cricketers to know how to deal with fame and the press at a young age, giving them experience in dealing with the rigours of being in the public eye before they make it to the big leagues. Cricketers who have been college educated have gone into several successful fields, such as politics, like Imran Khan, journalism, like Sanjay Manjrekar and coaching and administration, like Anil Kumble or Erapalli Prasanna.

Conversely, certain players believe that a formal education is not necessary, and that their learings through cricket are equivalent to a degree. As former Pakistan captain Mohammad Hafeez eloquently put it, “Education is an important part of life but Having degrees r not enough..I m proud to b a TEST cricketer#my DEGREE.” Despite these claims, a formal higher education gives players the analytical skills and soft skills they need to succeed in a high pressure and highly complex sport. In addition, the primary benefit would not be the aspirants that make it to the international or even domestic circuit, where earning a decent living is not difficult, especially with the advent of T20 leagues. It is estimated that there are over 54 million people in India playing cricket at some level. Only the top few thousand can make a career in cricket. By allowing the top high school cricketers, for whom the setup is reasonably sound through national tournaments, to gain a proper education, the number of failed cricketers working low-paid jobs would decrease. A college education enhances one’s earning potential, and for cricketers who cannot make it at the higher level, a degree is their first step to leading a successful career outside the sport.

The colleges themselves would be major beneficiaries. Not only do they get the monetary rewards of being a big-time athletics hub, they also reap the rewards of fame. The athletics system brings large alumni donations from players that make it, state-of-the-art facilities are bought and paid for by the athletics department and the school gets to show off a holistic application process, wherein they are empowering underprivileged children with immense sporting talent to gain an education. In addition, they can boast year-long sporting entertainment for their students. In addition, the schools would be able to monetise on merchandise, food, posters and the tournament could be used to promote local businesses as well. The system would also attract a higher number of students to the university as college sports are essential to the college’s ‘culture’. However, it can be noted that certain subcontinental institutions, particularly religious institutions, would be averse to giving sports a large focus, as it contradicts with the

values of ‘education’ and takes the focus of the school away from imparting knowledge. This is overcome by identifying sports powerhouses in the countries, such as Jain University in Karnataka, as the Division 1 schools. Another key concern is the funding. Currently, athletics programs in the subcontinent are underfunded and do not boast expensive coaching or facilities. To make the league a success, investment by businesses and more importantly, the value of the competition must be demonstrated to broadcasters, in order to fund the start-up costs. Networks like Sony-ESPN and Star have brought great interest to international and domestic cricket through creative marketing and and can make it a national sensation. The governing bodies themselves would help fund this as it is acting as a sportsperson education program, a direct aim of certain cricket boards, as Shaharyar Khan said.

In 1909, more than a century ago, the game of cricket was said to be dying, due to its lack of relevance in a society with shrinking attention spans, but the game has kept adapting, to ensure it continues to thrive in this day and age. The next step to cementing the game’s success in the 21st century is college cricket. Youth in the subcontinent are largely drawn to sports like football and high-level college cricket is the first step to creating a new legion of loyal fans. In fact, systems like this in colleges outside conventional cricket-playing nations would be an excellent way to promote the game outside its current sphere of influence. The system also gets breeds intelligent cricketers in the Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara mould who are fantastic ambassadors for the game. The formalised structure proposed will prevent talent from slipping through the cracks, as it usually does in the subcontinent due players’ lack of funds to pursue the game. The stipend, top notch sports facilities and scholarship will prevent this from being a problem. However, there is a concern that cricketers, fast bowlers in particular, might waste their peak physical years playing for their colleges, rather than their country or state. By early exposure to international cricket, bowlers are often burnt out by the time they reach their late twenties. By preparing them carefully and monitoring their workload in college cricket, they can in fact be better prepared for domestic and international cricket by the time of their graduation and be able to play for longer than they earlier could.

While the player pipeline created is a major advantage, the dearth of quality coaches, medical staff, data analysts and press in the subcontinent would be vastly changed. The colleges, that have programs in these fields, would be allow their students to intern and get full-time jobs with their respective cricket teams, which would lead to a pipeline for journalists and support staff in domestic and international cricket as well. This, in turn largely benefits the less economically developed third world countries. College cricket makes going to college aspirational and possible for youth in the country. A more educated population directly relates with a higher standard of living and economic development, college athletics promote healthy living and leisure in the general population. The improvement of colleges in the country would also be a key factor in arresting the brain drain that is becoming increasingly common in the subcontinent. In areas of the world suffering from the ill after-effects of a colonial hangover, it is only fitting that one of the products of colonial times be used to develop the subcontinent.

Picture an athlete.

Mature, intelligent, unfazed, articulate and ready to take the world by storm. If this is how you want to picture the cricketer of the next generation, it’s time to embrace high-level college cricket.

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Vedant Jain is a cricket fanatic and contributor for CricMetric. For any queries, comments or information, email vedantja@usc.edu