Outside of chess and perhaps bridge, the cerebral sportsman is a rare commodity. Those who think beyond their bank balances are rarer. In India, where the sports industry is struggling to find a durable framework, they’re even harder to come by. Of the thousands of cricketers who have worn India colours, Sunil Gavaskar has been one of the exceptions to this rule, as has Anil Kumble. Now Rahul Dravid has proved that he too is a fully paid-up member of that minority, with the Bradman Oration that he delivered in Canberra last week. As one of the most watchable, underrated and gentlemanly of cricketers, Mr Dravid's opinions carry a credibility that many of his contemporaries would find hard to match. His message to the global cricketing establishment — which is coincidentally dominated by India — is that sports is all about the fans, and that it should read the message conveyed by the dwindling crowds at the stadiums. “Everything that has given cricket its power and in?uence in the world of sports has started from that fan in the stadium,” he argued. “They deserve our respect and let us not take them for granted. Disrespecting fans is disrespecting the game.” He outlines the connection between empty stands and falling television revenues: “Bad television can lead to a fall in ratings, the fall in ratings will be felt by media planners and advertisers looking elsewhere. If that happens, it is hard to see television rights around cricket being as sought after as they have always been in the last 15 years.” Nimbus learnt the lesson the hard way last week, around the same day Mr Dravid was delivering his speech.
Mr Dravid’s message cuts through the spurious jingoism and big money that has enveloped cricket. He understands that “at the end of the day, we are performers, entertainers”, and he correctly suggests that the sport is being increasingly dominated by considerations other than the audience. He compares the India-England one-day international (ODI) series, which ran to empty stands, to the ODI series against the West Indies a month after that, when stadiums were packed. What was the difference? One was “context” — India and England had played each other in four Tests and five ODIs just a few weeks before. The second was the fact that the West Indies series was played in smaller venues that “didn’t host too much international cricket”.
This last observation is significant. As Mr Dravid pointed out, the ambit of cricket has widened beyond the big cities to smaller towns. “Like Bradman was the boy from Bowral,” he said, “a stream of cricketers now come from what you could call India’s outback.” This is the market that may need to be nurtured if cricket is to survive. But far from calling for less cricket or fewer ODIs and T20s, he suggests that a more imaginative approach to Test cricket — every cricketer and genuine fans’ “gold standard” — would work better. He suggests day-night Tests and Test championships.
Three decades ago, a brash Australian called Kerry Packer changed the face of cricket forever with this famous one-day, day-night format. Five years ago, Subhash Chandra introduced a new format of a T20 tournament for clubs, an idea the Indian cricket establishment purloined and turned into a global money-spinner. Mr Dravid is neither a Packer nor a Chandra, but when someone who has played at the top for 15 years makes a point with such elegant passion, the bean-counters at the ICC would be well-advised to listen.
