 Hello and welcome to NewsClick, you're watching Playthings of Alien Forces. Ha ha ha ha! I'm Siddharth Dhanian with me on the show as always is our sports editor Leslie Xavier. Today is an ICC World T20 special. We're talking about all our stories are from that tournament which is currently underway in the UAE. India of course having a dismal start to the tournament. Two losses out of two, first against arch rivals Pakistan. And then last night against New Zealand a proper rubbing. Leslie, you watched the game, there wasn't much to sort of comment on. But what really went wrong? What are the key aspects that India is clearly lacking on? I guess batting failure has been the common factor across both the losses. Of course against Pakistan you can't say a complete failure as such, but still the batsmen failed to make good on the start that they got. And against New Zealand of course the New Zealand ballers they have the ball to play, they have won the toss and then if you look at the wickets that India lost the early wickets, all of them were in the outfield caught and tagging shots. Wrong ball, I mean yeah it's a tricky call in T20 right, you have to be attacking. So someone was deceived by a slower ball, someone was deceived by the bounds. Kohli again I mean going for a six against Spinner. So it's they went attacking but I guess when at international level you talk about batsmen applying themselves and with the experience that the Indians have across formats, IPL, they should I guess have that understanding which ball to go for, which ball, which baller. So for me if you look at it there was a besides short selection or besides the timing of the short as such, there is also this lack of individual attention given for planning for opponents which New Zealanders came with, which Pakistan players came with. If you look at a baller's strength you should know what to expect from that baller right, if it's a change of bounds, change of pace, drift. We just went in, I don't know was it overconfidence or was it lack of strategy or was it fatigue also because these guys are playing back to back, biobubbles, nonstop in the Middle East itself so it could be a factor of all these things but yeah. With arguably a lot more at stake in other tournaments but we'll come to that little further on in the show. First I want to ask you one of the things that I was reading was that India were done in by the size of the boundaries, the bigger ground in Dubai. Now for a team that plays this much cricket is that kind of a reason or reasoning valid from any stretch because you see then Darrell Mitchell I think coming and hit sixes whenever he kind of felt like it. We also hit sixes, it's not like our players didn't and also it's not sixes that win matches right, there are also options to go the ground route, you can hit boundaries, you can make two, I mean classic what do you call that, cliches of cricket convert two to three and all those things because the ground the larger the chance for that and so again coming to the quality of Indian batsmen on paper and what has translated in the tournament there is a gulf, pun intended. Because Filuccai, Raui Sharma or Virat Kohli, again Virat Kohli as played just that it didn't work this time around but first match he did play well. So our KL Rahul that brilliant stroke players use of timing is one of their hallmarks also so you can hit boundaries, you don't have to hit sixes all the time and as far as sizes matter Indians are played in all sorts of, I mean Indians never play in smaller grounds that way it's medium sized or large grounds whereas New Zealand come from a country which has smaller grounds so if you look at it that kind of handicap applies more to New Zealand than India so I would disagree with that. So mathematically still of course there are chances but very difficult now for India to make it through to the next stage which is the semi-finals of this tournament so massive sense of disappointment I guess for cricket fans in the country. Disappointment it's also, I don't know, Indian team is on a cusp also right because Virat Kohli's last captain's team has a T20 skipper and so I don't know, I mean I don't exactly qualify as a cricket fan because I am a professional too so I look at it things differently but these kind of things are natural in a team's transition so for me I would take lessons from this, I would look at future, I would look at the next captaincy candidate the coaching staff changes that is going to happen and I would take it forward from here and as a person who watches cricket for the joy of it and not necessarily fanatic for one specific team as such I would look for positives from this, I would look at young players who are there in the mix someone like Spinner like Varun Chakraborty or Ishan or Rishabh Panth and all these players and see how these players can fit into a larger scheme and take things forward and I would be hopeful that the next team management would not be insistent on having someone like MS Dhoni as a mentor because that gives out a wrong signal to the current crop of players it's giving wrong signals to Kohli because there is this idea that Dhoni has a brilliant mind Kohli is aggression personified but not necessarily so that drills in that sets a wrong precedent as such so I hope the BCCI and the management realizes that mistake, I would call it a mistake and give the players in the mix the chance to evolve and become better and be good at what they do Right, hope and BCCI in the same sentence, you are truly an optimist my friend Yeah, I woke up in the wrong side of the bed, it's clearly evident Fair enough, final question, does India seem to be suffering from a spin problem, from the batting point of view all of this cricket is being played yet Sodi had a great game for New Zealand and it seems like our boys didn't understand quite what to do with the spin It's again, I would say it's a cascading effect because you have a bad start then you can't be careful with the spinner and when you are facing quality spinners of course it becomes a problem, excuse me so I wouldn't call it a problem with spin because Indians traditionally have played in smaller pitches they know how to attack, take the... So if you look at the batsmen and when they were playing, they were reading spinners okay, it's just that maybe shot selection might have been better but that's why I say the cascading effect because they had no choice but to go for shots at that point because they were already in the back foot run rate wise, wicket wise so how do you play that and it's just 20 overs so I would still not call it a spin problem as such, I don't think that exists Indians batting has a problem, in general fair enough alright, we'll wrap up the India bit at that Leslie some kind of headaches for the suits at the International Cricket Council because India going out of a tournament early on is never a good sign I mean we remember the 2003-50 World Cup in the West Indies where not only did that tournament collapse but sort of as a fallout I mean the current situation of West Indies cricket and the kind of economic and other difficulties that they find themselves in can be traced back in a way to that... it was 2007 2007 World Cup and can be traced back to all the sort of economic fallout that India's early exit from that tournament had so we'll see if they can figure out some magic formula to make sure fallout I don't know because BCCI hosts here and last I heard they made some 12,000 crore so I don't think they would be too much worried so they're pretty happy to be at your bank fair enough we're moving on to a slightly more complex story than of course India's performance on the pitch at the ICCT-20 and we're talking about Afghanistan cricket of course the Afghan men's cricket team doing pretty well at this ongoing ICCT-20 championship they beat Namibia quite convincingly after also registering another win so two wins out of three reasonably close fight with Pakistan as well so they're doing not too badly still with a chance of qualifying for actually out of a quite tough group that also includes India and New Zealand for the next round we'll start with what's happening on the pitch for Afghanistan and then move into some larger aspects of how sport is being looked at under the new Taliban regime in that country I'll just get into the India bit of it as far as tournament is concerned so India started off with the strongest opponents in the group while Afghanistan started off with the easiest opponents so them getting six points in the kitty I mean four points in the kitty against two smaller teams Namibia and Scotland I mean should have happened and it's gone according to script they lost against Pakistan though and now for them it's the tight matches against New Zealand and India and both of them are in a must win situation I mean all three of them are in a must win situation that way so India has mathematical chance revolve around New Zealand messing up and then Afghanistan winning big against Afghanistan because as far as Afghanistan's victory against Scotland is concerned it was by a huge margin so their net run rate is plus three and for India it's minus 1.6 so if things fall into place with New Zealand slipping up and a chance over net run rate with Afghanistan India have a huge task and against the three lesser teams but still they have to go out and win those matches with a big margin and Afghanistan as a team we should understand that over the course of the last four or five years they have gone through stages of development it's not that they have been you can't call them minors at the T20 level anymore because they have players who are who play in different leagues players who feature in IPL as well and a couple of spinners are world class their opening batsmen are aggressive they I mean with the right mould for the T20 game and a couple of great fastballing talent as well when you look at I mean that side of the world again that generative factor food, water, whatever that is that works for Afghanistan as well and playing together and they also had a training base in India as well they were based in J.P. Green's in New Delhi so it's all these factors have slowly and also their experience playing various including test playing countries it's not like they were playing associate members again so that as made them a cut above there are teams like Scotland and Namibia whom they were rivals a few years back and so that takes us to that question where ICC's policy about keeping associates separate and the test playing nations separate and the top three again as a great elite match it hardly helps the global growth of the game as such so only with a team's effort and team's luck and all these factors and also the time factor it just grows out and classic example is Bangladesh early 2000s Bangladesh had many number of bilateral series with countries like India, England and test playing nations West Indies they just grew from there and they are a great side now and the same thing is Afghanistan is getting there now and just that politically the country is in turmoil and things all the growth all the work that has done in Afghanistan or for that matter any sport that way because Afghanistan football team is also a great side there is a chance that things can get undone because of the policies of the current regime over there so that's a big worry still the players are out there performing with all these things happening back home they are probably performing with the mission to showcase what they have and what the current regime there should realize how sport is an engine for them as well so I don't know how things will progress in the near future because ICC is yet to come out with the stance on Taliban government and what its approach might be just before we get into that any further just to set the context for our viewers the situation is such that Afghanistan of course scheduled to play a historic one-off test with Australia the Australian cricket board has threatened to call that off if Afghanistan's national women's team is not allowed to play cricket now the signals from the Taliban government currently in power in Afghanistan are pretty clear that there is not going to be despite perhaps voices that might have indicated differently earlier there are not where sport for women is not going to be a thing anytime in the near future the few people who are on the ground we were able to contact and speak to have also indicated the same women athletes those that were engaged in any kind of sport earlier are now staying as far away from it as possible even if there is no official ban in place there is definitely fear that if women are seen engaging in sporting activities or anything that goes against what is being interpreted as the laws of Islam or anything that could be interpreted as un-Islamic will be dealt with very harshly and therefore they are choosing to stay as far away from it as possible Afghanistan receives five million US dollars in aid from the National Cricket Council annually this is for the development of sport at the grassroots level and other such as far as India's role is concerned in the US backed regime in Afghanistan one of our focal areas was the development of a multi-million dollar cricket stadium in Kabul and cricket was a big part of our diplomacy as Leslie was mentioning they have now found a base to train here in India many of the current players in the men's cricket team who are also like Leslie was saying involved in T20 cricket they have now found a base in Dubai or other such places away from the country which allows them to continue their training their families are relatively safer and they can continue however because of the doubts around women's sport continuing many nations and international sports bodies in Afghanistan and as far as we can tell the methodology that they are going to resort to is banning that nation from participating in international events so this approach in mind Leslie how does a ban work and what does it solve firstly it solves I mean if you are looking at forcing the government to realize what is wrong I don't think it has ever worked any which way yeah it creates sort of like a president it creates it sets that idea of sanctity of sport and saying sport is equal for everybody and these are the set of guidelines or these are the set of maxims that sport follows and if at all someone falters if human right violations are happening or if things are not right in a particular country there could be a ban but the larger purpose that it serves I mean I mean if sport is making a ban or a move it should it should serve sport in that country or the sports person in that country right so how will a blanket ban on Afghanistan serve the current cricketers like you said hardworking cricketers who have put in effort over the years to come up to where they are and they are shifted basis and still applying their trade and if they can't represent their country then it's their loss and and it's not their fault also so who is getting punished the players are getting punished the sport is getting punished so probably the ICC or for that matter any global body like the IOC or FIFA subsequently all these questions will arise because Afghanistan has a football team it also has a women's football team who apparently are now in Qatar I think they have airlifted from Afghanistan and they are based in Qatar now and so a larger discussion should happen within the sporting communities as to how to deal with this this crisis this situation and ban is more like a caveman approach to it bang bang bang it hardly works anymore we should realize the reality of what global sport has become and what it stands to lose and what it stands to gain if an altered approach can be arrived at especially when we are talking here about the context the whole story is based on inclusion that women and perhaps at a future stage or even at an early stage transgender people be included in sport and organized sport and on the other hand you are excluding this nation from participating so it's almost at loggerheads with your own logic exactly so that's what Australia's the first thing that when Australia's news came up the threat to not stage Afghanistan for the test match was that wouldn't it serve a larger purpose for Afghanistan sport and the democratic voices that need to come out that give these players a platform and let them use that platform and let them also the willing players among the mix and I'm sure many of them might have their opinion about what is happening in their country imagine that a person scoring a test essentially in a story test and then post that he comes out and he talks about what is happening in their country and what needs to be done and that as a larger global say to sway things than not playing at all when it would be like whose loss is that and also Australia should also realize that they should probably because that's what Indian world food also cricket Australia food also probably think out of the the money idea of it as well because for them when they do the math it's like if you ban India then they lose a lot but if you ban Afghanistan they lose nothing that's what they thought is but imagine what they would gain out of it as well goodwill the larger role in cricket diplomacy sport diplomacy and also that's an entity which set precedent for global bodies like the FIFA and IOC to take cognizance and take over and device means how to deal with this thing and Afghanistan is not a one-off also across the world there are places where crisis I mean interior crisis are happening and there will be instances when such measures have to be mulled and so let this and I would urge administrators and diplomats to use this as a stage to set precedent on how to deal with things and well that's moved on from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s where these things worked not anymore particularly from sort of an internationalist multilateral stage you know it cannot be a similar approach to the United States that the United States takes embargoes and sanctions on countries that they don't like to deal with and we all know that these embargoes have vested interest and larger things behind so trade embargoes so blanket bans it just it means is to kill a culture kill a country ultimately the losses that you lose something so and it's a loss felt most by the people there and not necessarily the goals that were set the so called goals it's never met of course a complex situation there in Afghanistan and one that we'll be looking at closely in the next weeks and months to see how that develops and we'll keep you guys also updated at least from our understanding how things are going and finally we're talking about another very complex situation and country South Africa and the actually mixed bag of taking a knee approach in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that several teams have taken at this ICCT-20 South Africa being among them where apparently it was conveyed to the players that this is a compulsory decision that players must take a knee and as a result of that making it mandatory one of their I think key players Quintin de Coq who's been a feature of several of their sides across formats chose to withdraw from that team it's not something that we are talking about in great detail today because we'll be joined by our friends from South Africa and those that are covering cricket more closely Sharda Agra perhaps to talk about it in detail with Leslie later on but just to put the story into a bit of context Leslie why did de Coq pull out and subsequently he released a two page statement that in my opinion didn't say much but how did you read it? He was trying to state or justify not taking the knee I mean more or less indicating that he was a little confused and also that he felt that it infringed on his right to decide which on the outside it's pretty clear it's a personal choice also right where you stand as far as Black Lives movement or the larger picture of racism or as some South African cricketers former cricketers also have put it racial inequality that's inherently there in South Africa sport South African society as well so it's openly there have been issues in South Africa as far as running of the sport is concerned I'm not getting into the society part of it because it's a hugely complex you call it rainbow nations I would I've been I've traveled to neighboring states of South Africa covering cricket to Zimbabwe I've met a lot of South Africa former players as well as journalists and the understanding is that it's rainbow but it's also completely fissured as well so it's quite a tricky situation there and so former skipper Graham Smith heads the cricket operations director of cricket operations in South Africa and a few months back for his stance for the general stance of cricket South Africa as far as Black Lives Matter movement is concerned the stance that he took many former cricketers including players like Pat Simcox and all that who has shown inclination that he is a bit racist and and also various quarters he received even death threats for his stance supporting the movement so that's the kind of social societal pressure that is there on players on white players and on black players as well and the pressure on black players is manifold and it's even Michael Olding as dedicated a chapter in his book book towards this quoting Makaya Antini who is one of the greatest black players first black player to play for South Africa internationally and it's the quota system which was supposed to help integrate black players into the mainstream cricket and international cricket but it's the backfiring that is happening is that the players who make it they are under tremendous pressure throughout the career so much so that their achievements are also marginalized or undermined with the quota tag Antini has openly said that he is one of the greatest borrowers of the generation and he always felt that he was never there he always felt that he was not recognized so and that kind of baggage that a player a black player has to carry it it trickles down into the grass roots where young kids young black kids are not willing to take up cricket at all week and that's again Antini has come out earlier in the year on record saying how the province that he comes from and also various states where black players used to come up it's it's it's it's dwindling now nobody is taking up the sport and so it's not about so what he was trying to say was that the quota system is firstly creating problems and secondly it's not coming down to a planned systematic approach where domestically there is a system in place where black players can be included and brought up that's not there it's always I mean the root always is for white players and to add to that Brexit has created problems where all the white players used to leave South Africa they are all going to come back it's going to be a big mess now South Africa cricket with the corruption allegations in the previous administration with the current headaches that the current crop have to deal with including what Dicoc has because it's not I mean if you look at Dicoc's move it's not a I mean it can it is interpreted as a personal decision from his letter it's they have tried to portray it as that but it showcases a larger problem in that team in that setup in the country and and it's something that ICC has to deal with also because it shows that ICC's approval for the teams it's not ICC's decision apparently ICC's spokesman on record has come and said that it's a team's decision to do this we have nothing to say in that we have just given them permission because ICC's rule states that any sort of political social religious messaging or insignia or signage on jerseys and all that our band are not allowed will be allowed provided prior permission is taken so again in that statement they never mentioned that they have given a blanket permission for black lives movement taking the knee symbolic gesture of taking the knee but it's clear that they have and again interestingly India also joined the bandwagon but second match they didn't take the knee as well and it's it's a kind of like a zombie situation where brain watch situation I would say where players didn't have any say I believe if you believe what Koli was saying, saying we were asked to do it we're doing it and we were asked to not do it we are not doing it so where do we stand as far as responsible discontent so in that regard maybe Quintan de Cork is better because he at least took a stance on something he believes is right right or wrong look forward to your in-depth chat on the situation in South Africa because I mean many of us in our country we can relate to the challenges that any policy decision that includes affirmative action all of the the obstacles, the barriers, the opposition that these kind of moves face and how it oftentimes lead to further marginalization of the sections that are not further marginalization but in this kind of in the narrative at least that's created in against these kind of quota systems so I look forward to that larger chat and I think many of our viewers will as well but that'll do it for our show we said we'll do about 25 minutes and we've done a little bit over that as usual but we'll keep it under 30 so let's let's wrap it up here thank you very much for watching you this has been playthings of alien forces from Leslie and me that'll do it for us today you can follow us on newsclick.in for all our sports stories as well as see updates on all our social media channels we'll be back next week with more and stay tuned for all the updates on the other stuff we do around sport goodbye