The Designated Sitter
Ashwin Mahesh
Like many of you, I've simply been too disillusioned by the events of the summer and autumn to really pay very much attention to individual games. When the heroes of sensational battles are revealed to be little more than charlatans in national colours, there isn't much pleasure to be gained. If a few games must go by while the batteries of spectatorship are recharged, so be it. Those
who survive the carnage of various investigations will be around to entertain us in years to come, and those who aren't are best
forgotten, lest their hollow love for cricket and country cast too dark a shadow upon our own affection for the game.
The sport itself is less easily banished from the mind, for the years of ardent listening and viewing have left their addictive mark.
Having tuned out the scheduled events, I busied myself instead with the trivia of interesting cricket problems, and in studying the
progress of the game itself over the years. A few thought-experiments from one of the game's most diligent and passionate
thinkers - fellow Rediff columnist Ananth Narayan - provided ample nourishment. So I found myself attempting to work out from old
scorecards the order in which batsmen were out, pondering the vagaries of ratings schemes for various performances, and such,
snatching the odd dose of cricketing nourishment to fill the void left from not following the games themselves.
And with the World Series of American baseball rolling around, my thoughts drifted to an aspect of cricket only now emerging to
the fore. Baseball in the United States, for those not in the know, is played in two leagues, the American and National leagues.
Each league plays a different style of baseball; whereas National League games are, in my view, more comparable to cricket,
American league games are starkly different, and often more explosive, for a very identifiable reason. In place of the pitcher,
American league teams use an additional batsman, effectively replacing a poor hitter and his sore arm with the muscle and skill of
a top-notch batter - the designated hitter, or as he is more commonly known, the DH.
The cricketing equivalent of this, if you haven't noticed already, is upon us as I write. Here's a link, check
this scorecard and see what I mean. Glenn McGrath, listed clearly at the very top of the bowling analysis, delivered to the
obvious satisfaction of the South Welshmen. Ten overs for 22 runs, defending the most modest of totals, is no mean feat in any
first class game, no matter that one expects no less of the great paceman. For our purposes, the curious bit is that alongside this
stellar bowling performance is a notable omission - he does not figure in the list of batsmen when the Blues batted. He bowled and
fielded, but when it came time to bat, wasn't expected to.
With Haddin eliminated as the wicket-keeper, and the bowlers counted, the scorecard tells us that in place of the ineffectual Glenn
McGrath, the Blues presented an additional batsman, from a list that includes the Waugh brothers, Bevan, Slater, Shane Lee, and
the relatively inexperienced Richards. Not a shabby list from which to pick an additional bat, you'd agree, with even the worst of
them possibly batting a good 25-35 points better than the illustrious paceman, and possibly very good in the slog overs at that.
Welcome to Mercantile Mutual Rules, with 12 players to a side, and each team filling one spot in the playing eleven with a bowler
or a batsman, in the field and at bat respectively. The Designated Hitting of a Shane Lee, possibly, for a Glenn McGrath.
The Australians, alongside the Proteas, have been at the forefront of change in the game, making great cause with separate
one-day and Test teams, computer-assisted strategy, and role-play as seen in few other teams through the last decade. The
addition of a playing/non-playing 12th man to the game should come as no surprise, then. Nor is this such a deviance from trends
within the sport. The money behind the modern game rewards batsmen far more than it does bowlers; this isn't even contested
anymore. The rules of the one-day game, embodied in the fielding restrictions throughout the 50-overs, clearly encourage
high-scoring matches, with little by way of pure cricketing reason for this bias. The paying public likes the slam-bang fests
dominated by the bat, and acknowledged or not, this is the prime mover behind the format.
There is no doubt, however, that certain roles are permitted by such twists, and these are entirely new. Suddenly, an ageing and
portly batsman still capable of wielding the willow with grace and power, but clearly no asset in the field, finds himself with his own
special spot, elevated to the rank of all-rounder-in-half! For the professionals who play the game, such redefinitions of traditional
roles must appear a godsend, extending their lucrative careers and maintaining an otherwise threatened link to the game. One
might even contend that there is little harm in this to the spectator - between watching Shane Lee and Glenn McGrath bat, the
choice is immediate, and at the bowling crease it is equally so if opposite.
The specialist 12th man, it could be argued, bolsters bowling at a time when the rules have been especially favourable to batsmen, thereby restoring some of the lost balance. In counter, it will then be pointed out that the additional bowler is unlikely to possess such skill that his role would matter greatly, with most sides boasting a surfeit of talented bats and a shortage of correspondingly capable bowling arms. If that is the more accurate assessment, the additional bat further polarizes the game away from its historical balance between the two main roles. And if neither argument is very powerful, or if both are equally valid, then the 12th man could be a wash, essentially, with little noticeable effect of any sort being achieved by this novelty.
Purists, no doubt, will deride this development. The parallel in baseball is revealing, with National League fans and teams referring
to the DH by the somewhat dismissive alternate - Designated Sitter. The difference, admittedly, is that in cricket, different sides do
not play to different strategies, which silliness has seen baseball increasingly dominated, predictably, by the league with the DH,
of late. Still, new roles in a changing game raise questions about the purpose and spirit of the sport, and more importantly, they
raise serious concerns that games from modern times may be impossible to compare to those from bygone eras. Can you
imagine Bradman not having to field very much, and turning all his energy to batting?
I suspect that some changes will be upon us perforce, with little debate over their value or propriety. The six-a-side slam-bang events, coaches and captains with headphones, and other marginal matters of today will possibly become mainstream in the coming years, refining the traditional game into the sort of professional clash that much western sport has become. There is little doubt that much of this will hone the game, extracting every ounce of perfection from it through tailored selection and effective deployment of physical, computational, and mental resources. If you've spent the last two decades lamenting the vanishing purist traditions of the game, and increasingly irritated by the novelties that detract from them, brace yourself.
The Designated Sitter packs a powerful punch.
Ashwin Mahesh
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