For owners, commitment counts, status doesn’t

“Some of the Punjab boys also play for India” he said, quite unaware of the fact that this tournament is no longer about India. At the Wankhede, crowds have chanted “Suryaaaaa, Surya” for a Sri Lankan, Shaun Pollock has been conferred a title, Polly kaka, that belonged to one of Mumbai’s most loved sons, Mohali positively doted on Brett Lee, Kolkata has taken its imports to heart and Dhoni is perfectly acceptable to Chennai.

I find that fantastic and it tells me that it is possible to have state and national loyalties as we do in business and in movies. Later this year when Hayden and Hussey play against Ishant Sharma and Dhoni we know where the crowd support will lie. Does that make crowds fickle? Or just more fun loving? Let’s live with the latter!

There’s been a lot of talk about learning from overseas players as well and I would like to add a word of caution to it. I have found over the years that players are quite happy to share their knowledge because they know that it is not in possessing knowledge that greatness lies, it is in being able to use it when the moment comes.

The onus here lies on the younger players and I really do hope that even if they do not learn a single skill, they watch the attitude of the greats. I hope they realise that skill is important but is widowed without attitude. And you don’t need to look too much further than two good cricketers who came to India and enhanced their reputations hugely.

Shane Watson is one of them. He came to the IPL needing more from it than he needed to give it. He wasn’t a major international star, he hadn’t been able to command a great price, injuries had haunted him all his life and his international career was challenged by hamstrings and sides and backs more than by anything else. And so he was hungry, he used his opportunity beautifully and I’d be very surprised if there is an Australian 20-20 team without him again.

So too with Dwayne Bravo, who was initially surprised to be invited and then revelled in the atmosphere. Like Watson, Bravo didn’t hold back from playing 100%, was willing to bat anywhere, bowl the new ball, bowl at the death, field anywhere breathtakingly and, like all West Indians, dance in the dressing room. It is players like Bravo and Watson that, I suspect, franchises will be looking for in the coming years; people who love playing cricket and give their adopted sides everything they have.

It leads me to suspect that franchises might be a touch wary of superstars who are not too keen to belong. Certainly player attitude will be factored into player pricing from next year.

I hope young cricketers like Praveen Kumar understand this. Post Harbhajan Singh, the last thing Indian cricket needed was a tantrum by a stupid young man. With some, affluence breeds greater ambition, with others it spreads a poison. Praveen Kumar should have got a rap on the knuckles, maybe more, for presenting the ugly side of an increasingly rich sport.

Instead the BCCI said it did not come under their jurisdiction and washed their hands off it. That can’t be right. No organisation can pay its employees large sums of money and not worry about what that can do to them. Now armed with this knowledge, and the fact that no complaint was registered against him “in the interest of Indian cricket”, Praveen can become more audacious and Indian cricket could lose a talented cricketer.

Oh, and by the way, I visited the IPL site to take a look at the leading run-scorers in the tournament and there, at number 9, I saw a familiar name. Rahul Dravid has made 329 runs at a strike rate of 126 and it compares pretty well with the numbers for MS Dhoni, for example. Does that spoil some scripts? Or is he not as bad a player as we thought he was?