 Salam and welcome to episode 3 of play things of alien forces. I'm Siddharth Ani and with me in the studio as always or at least as the plan goes is our sports editor, Leslie Xavier. Leslie, good to see you again. How's it going? Good. Watched the match. Matches. Yesterday was, of course, Super Sunday. India-Pakistan, India versus Oman in the football and then, of course, a whole range of football games across Europe that people are also following from Manchester United, Liverpool to Marseille versus PSG to Real Madrid, Barcelona. Renewed interest in PSG these days. Yeah, bit of an overload yesterday and while we are still nursing our hangovers and such we thought it would be a good time to begin a conversation about some of the talking points that have emerged from all the action on the pitch on that Sunday. Starting, of course, with the India-Pakistan game at the ICC T20 World Cup being held in the UAE where the first story or the big story that emerged, of course, Pakistan beat India quite convincingly by 10 wickets. Not much of a contest, pretty one-sided game there. So the big talking point from that game became what happened actually before the game even began where the Indian team decided to take a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, this has generated a lot of debate on the internet with people jumping in on different sides of the discussion, of the conversation. One side saying this is purely performative solidarity. It's just a performative gesture, just for a photo op. Something that's been done to sound right because the West Indies, of course, where a number of Black players are part of the team, they did the same the previous day when they played their game and it's the right thing to do in an international context. People like Michael Holding have been very vocal about racism in sport including in cricket and the wider context in which all of this is happening. Where do you stand, Leslie, on this debate in terms of how the Indian cricket team decided to come out with this message? A message that Dave also said, by the way, was communicated to them by team management. So it's not that necessarily the players have had a chat about it in the dressing room and their team hotel and decided to do this. More a case of a top-down kind of thing and then they figured out how they wanted to do it and the Pakistan players also expressed their solidarity in some manner. So, great to see the gestures and we've seen it across sport. But what's your take on the entire discussion? When I first saw the Openers, they nailed down in the middle, Kail Raul and Roy Sharma and I thought they were warming up because you don't expect this to happen from India. Not all due respect to the gesture, like you said, but our players are a bunch of inert celebrities because they, frankly, probably they have, I mean, within them, opinions about things that happen around but they are not vocal about it at all. And this is not just a problem with the current generation, it's been there right through history from great superstars even, someone like Sachin Tendulkar for instance. So, taking the knee and joining the Black Lives Matter bandwagon because it's a great thing to do and it also ticks the box for the Indian team as a bunch of aware woke players who can stand to point out things that are wrong and make a difference. There are many things that they could make a difference back at home which they are silent about. In fact, they are silent about their own fraternity as well. First thing that came to my mind when I saw that was, and there is a connection in fact because India-Pakistan match, Muslim nation versus Indonesian, that's the building that happens. I mean, the under-building, so to speak, a lot of banter happens online as well about those things. How Indian Muslims celebrate a Pakistan victory, blah, blah, blah, it goes on like that and it happened yesterday as well on Twitter. So, when Wasim Jaffa, a former India cricketer and a Renji Trophy domestic cricket legend and when he had a coaching assignment and he was treated badly by the state association and the state team and the insinuation was that he's a Muslim and he's selecting players who belong to his community. Nobody stood up. The BCCI didn't take a stance. You mentioned that this gesture came from top down. So, BCCI as an institution is trying to portray itself as a very woke organization. But when it came to them taking a stance for something that is happening within its realm, they were silent about it. And Wasim Jaffa has played with some of the legends who are very vocal on Twitter these days. Someone like Virendra Sehwag or Sachin Tendulkar or BCCI presidents of Gangal Eams. Not just on social media. In fact, when the games are on, a lot of these people are now in commentary boxes and studios and giving their opinion on all sorts of things, of which you would assume this is also a major part. So now the question, this is a topic where I have written on, I have spoken about it as well. Last year when our players were silent about COVID-19 lockdown, post that, whatever that happened, including the movement of walking off migrant labor force and how they struggle and all these things. Everybody was silent about it. That's probably the first time that we presented this case, how Indian players are silent about such things. And following that Black Lives Matter movement swept across the world and our players were actively involved about it. So it's, I mean, hypocritical to see what we saw yesterday. Especially in the context of, you mentioned, of course, Basim Jaffer, but also one of the players on the team, Mohammad Shami, who came in for horrific online abuse, all kinds of wild, bigoted things being thrown at him, being questioned on all these very nationalistic ideas of whatever it might be, with very little information or understanding of things. I mean, doesn't this also have a massive impact on how the team itself functions and gets along? Exactly. So forget the team. I was watching the match and the second over, Shami came into ball. And it's not like I have a personal liking for Shami as such. But I've interacted with him. One of the few cricketers I have interacted with, because he was there in one of the tours I covered long back. And I was hoping deep inside that he doesn't go for too many runs. Because ultimately, when results come in, if at all the big factor in that run chase is Shami's three overs, then you can imagine what all he would be going through online. And it affects the players. Players' psyche, mind, it affects them. Maybe it won't affect the team dynamics. Maybe they're set up with such that they would understand such matters, and Koli being Koli and Koli being the kind of leader that he is. Of course, there were certain instances within match play, which his leadership was questionable. But otherwise, as a leader of the team, I think Koli is pretty clear about such things. He may have some favorites, not favorites, but it's clearly not based on region or region. Right. Fair enough. But we still would like to see some support for Shami and for like an acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of all of this from within the establishment. That never happens and that silence is, you know how it is because these people, the same people are vocal about retweeting certain things which the government, or the establishment, or the established notions that is there in the country, they push forth and these people copy-paste that. In fact, yesterday I came across a tweet which mentioned six screenshots of bureaucrats, who had copy-pasted a tweet which read that Pakistan are taking back the coin home to help their economy. So look at the bad taste in that and these are government officials. So it's a larger problem within the country and team India as usual is reflecting the country, I would say, as far as these things are concerned. And again, the country and the leaders take stance when things happen abroad. Yeah. Solidarity. Give their opinions. Give their opinions, all these things. The same thing happened yesterday with the Indians. Yeah, also I think the position of like moral high ground or moral superiority from which many of these comments come, that let us show you the way of developing a society that is tolerant, that is accepting, that is diverse and all those things. But it's so superficial that literally at one T20 cricket game, everything kind of shows itself in a second. So it's actually black lives matter. What about Dalit lives matter? What about Muslim lives matter? Those things are pertinent questions that happen in India. I mean, so as our players stood for that, no, because they are all cocooned. This bubble idea has been existing in Indian cricket or Indian sport in general for a while. For a while, yeah. Also I think for me personally it put sharply into focus this little bit of grey area between sport and why let's say you and I perhaps look at sport and entertainment, which it now is. And if it is entertainment and these people who are going out and doing it, no doubt they are very good at their jobs. Some of them are the best at their jobs in the world. But they are entertainers and therefore the status according to them, the hero worship, the almost demigod status that they receive needs to also be very much questioned. And I think, of course, we are watching the game on the app that shows it, the OTT platform. People are watching from the top just on that app. So you can imagine how many more are watching on television through the country. So there is some value in even performative or symbolic gestures, but things need to evolve beyond that as well. Things need to be closer to home. Which brings us to the next point, which is closer to home, Pakistan. How did they do on the field and what does that tell you about India's, whether it's selection or decision making or team composition? Indian team composition, I would say that India missed a baller. I would have probably loved to see a spinner in the mix. The Pakistan had two spinners and it's sort of east of their captain's choice about which baller to go on, because he could go for specialized ballers, he could keep some save for the latter part of the innings. Of course, he had the luxury of bowling first and they opted to. And otherwise, looking at the Pakistan players, they are always, every generation, they had talented fast-ballers, they had talented batsmen. But every Pakistan team that we have seen over the years, of course, we love the way they play. But there was also that self-detonating nature to it. You never know when they'll lose everything and then just implode, explode, whichever way you look at it. So, yesterday's Pakistan team played like those Australian teams from the 90s early 2000s, perfect in all departments. Yeah, through the match, we watched and, of course, the great start by Shaheen, great baller himself, young though inexperienced, but it didn't show. And he has this, I mean, very intriguing statistics attached to him that invariably every third match, I mean, he takes it, we get in the first over. So, he has played more than 60-20 matches. He has taken wickets in 23-24 matches, including yesterday 24 matches. So, I mean, it's no surprise that K.L. Rahul, but K.L. Rahul had no idea how he got out there. And Rahul is coming from a great IPL season. He scored more than 600 runs, averaged more than 60, and highest score of 98. So, his selection in that, and to open India's in his, I would say, going by form, that was a good selection. But he just had no idea how to face, how to play someone like Shaheen. And so that makes us wonder, you mentioned earlier about the entertainment quotient of sport. IPL has a much more higher quotient than most other tournaments in cricket. I would say any sport in the world. Yeah. It's the biggest show. So, and again, multiple times we have had this discussion surrounding Indian football and the ISL, where a closed league and the competitive nature of it, and how if there is nothing at stake, will there be, I mean, that kind of intensity in the matches, which is always there at the World Cup matches, or a bilateral series, because countries are playing. If not anything, people are worried that they would come at your gate and burn things. And in this case, of course, it's a World Cup, so all the more reason. And the opening match of the World Cup. A lot of things at stake. Of course, the rivalry was at stake and all that. And in that match, despite having zero experience in the richest league in the world and all that, you saw this Pakistan players and you thought that they were professionals. You saw the Indian players. Of course, they were outplayed. It's not like they underperformed or anything like that. They played decently, but they were outplayed thoroughly through the match. And Pakistan came in with a game plan on how to face these batsmen out, which bowlers to use at what time. And they just executed it. While India, after putting runs on the board, when the inning started, I thought Virat Kohli was a little overwhelmed by the pressure. Because he tried five different bowlers in the first five overs. That defies logic, sporting logic, that defies cricketing logic as well. Because one would like to believe that you give your bowler the confidence and a couple of hours at least. Of course, it's T20, so you only have four, a maximum of four overs for a bowler. But use them for two overs. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar experienced bowler, can swing it. He went for 10 runs in the opening over. Don't take him out the next over because 10 runs is nothing. If you give him one more shot, maybe he's one of your most experienced bowler. He can turn it around in the next over. But no, he pulled out. And then second over, Shami came in. Third over, Bumrah replaced Bhuvaneshwar. Fourth over, Varun Chakravarti replaced Spinner replaced Shami. And fifth over, again, Bumrah came back in. It's like Virat Kohli presented all his bowlers to the Pakistan batsmen saying that these are our bowlers. Decide, take your pick. Yeah, get used to them and then after the finish of the match. And they did that duly. And Virat Kohli wasn't helped by the fact that he didn't have a spin option. And also Adik Pandya got, he is a bowling option. Adik Pandya got a shoulder injury, so he didn't get involved in the match. So that worked against Kohli that way. So Indian team, I have to get back into a lot of planning, playing 11 to start with. Also, Kohli's calls need to be a little bit more, especially pressure situations. And in World Cup, it's always pressure situations that way. Yeah, a little bit less reactionary and more thought out. More thought out and more planned out. That is where I guess MS Dhoni's presence was supposed to help, but I don't know. Yesterday's match, I thought that we were out of strategies. I have to question what Dhoni's role was in that dressing room, except for coming out and doing a photo of shaking hands with the Pakistan players. Yeah, fair enough. I think we'll wrap this part there because we've got a couple of other big enough stories to do and we're rapidly running out of time. But just as a last word, of course, first game of the tournament for India, as well as Pakistan, well done to Pakistan for the victory. But good reason to expect India to also go, or enough perhaps evidence, to expect India to also go long in the tournament at least. And some of that perhaps sort of value of playing so much T20 cricket will come out as the tournament gets along and some of this pressure or whatever. Very important to see how the team will regroup. But also in Pakistan and taking the knee situation that we were talking about earlier, how Pakistan cricket have been treated over the past few years and essentially pariah in that sense. We've seen back to back New Zealand and England pull out of tours with Pakistan. No one wants to really go to Pakistan and play in that country, of course. And an attitude of sort of it doesn't really matter because they are small fry and if it in some way keeps India happy then even better. Exactly. So yeah, we'll keep an eye on all of this obviously Leslie with you as the World Cup also proceeds. Well done on watching the game by the way. And we'll move on now to India versus Oman at the Asian Football Confederation under 23 qualifying championship also being held in the UAE. Where to me a very, very good win for India, a 2-1 win over a very lively, very fluid Oman side that was expected from all corners to well get a good result in this game. India we were hoping would compete, India we were hoping would get some goals but a win is definitely, I mean it's an exceptional start for Ego's team match and for the boys who played last night. It's a great victory and I saw the result and I missed the match but saw the result, I followed some live commentary as well. So it was surprising because you saw a senior India side have a mediocre and I would call it a mediocre outing at the South side struggling against much lower ranked teams. And then they came back no camp, Ego's team had a hastily arranged press conference in Bangalore before heading out for this tournament and frankly I just didn't give them any chance at all but surprise. It is surprising so of course you are the football guy so I would want to know what were the factors that played out where men under 23 side they just took the game, they took the game because they took a two goal lead as well. So they were playing an attacking brand of football too. And what is the change in dynamic here? Hard to say actually not also being on the ground to kind of understand very clearly what some of those dynamics are makes it a bit more challenging but the one thing that did stand out is that a lot of the boys who are now in this under 23 squad are boys who have experience of playing big tournaments somewhere not a ton of experience but many of them whether it's the captain Suresh Wangjaam, Aniket Jadav who played Rahul K.P. Jackson Singh, Dheeraj in goal. So they began in a sense their careers by playing a FIFA World Cup and of course they are the first generation of Indian footballers to do that. I think in some ways perhaps it shows here that with something at stake against a bigger team they have the mental strength of course also some amount of pace, physicality and technical ability to be able to execute those things but also they have the mental strength to go out without fear without giving the opponent the respect they deserve but not too much respect and what I was really impressed by was how the midfield kind of came together to make those spaces to fight for balls and Rahim Ali had a cracker I mean penalty converted with great confidence I think he had a role to play in winning of the penalty as well and he had an assist for the second goal scored by Vikram Pratap Singh super performance I would say from these boys I can't say much on how it happened but very happy that it did because for a long time we've been looking for good results of course we celebrated the SAF win but like you said it was a very average show Of course again we are expected to win over there but SAF was an important tournament because we are even in this show we had a discussion of whether Steemash should have taken the 223 scored there with the mix of a couple of seniors so that they can again translate that experience into the qualifiers here and then next year the championship itself as well as the Asian games because 223 scored would be playing if at all India sent them there but I believe that they should I mean I feel that they should be sending no I think so I think it will happen I think if they are invited to participate in the tournament they will now go I think everyone realises there is enough interest in it and we talked about this quite often you know with some of the guests who are regulars on our sister's show 420 grams where we talk basically about Indian football whether it's former India captain Renity Singh or Bai Cheng Bhutya they have said that part of the process needs to be because the club structure needs to be fixed so that these kids are getting enough game time to be able to have the same level of decision making while on the pitch as everyone else does but also a concurrent focus on each group level football across you know because that's where I think we can have an impact things change dramatically at the senior level and for countries that have a wider talent pool and things like that you will find that some under 23 players are so good look at Almoy Zali for example from Qatar right he is considered to be one of the top strikers in Asia regular with their senior team now it's highly unlikely to me that he'll be even in the squad for an under 23 qualifying tournament he may be I may be wrong I'm just I'm just using it as a representative example right so a lot of these the young boys in the more developed Asian countries in from a footballing sense have already moved on to full-time senior team duty so therefore all the age group all the other teams are also experimenting a bit evaluating their players as a pipeline to their own senior national teams so it allows a bit more openness in play more mistakes are made obviously and yesterday at least on the day India capitalized I was very very happy to see how the defensive unit performed particularly because that's been something that's been a massive challenge for the senior side as well and it doesn't necessarily translate it doesn't necessarily mean anything but for what it was it was pretty good and this match time for them again so I didn't get into the part where I wanted to check with you how many of these players featured in the SAF championship and how many of these players are regular because for me that is an important factor as a granted they had their World Cup experience granted they were part of the arrows system at some point so match time was there and then so you reached a certain level at the under 17 level level which is higher than what the country has seen so far because of the experience because of the camp structure they got the league exposure they got as a young stage after that to bridge that gap within the Indian standards takes a lot as well so forget we are aspiring or we are dreaming of taking that standard to a higher level but for these youngsters to bridge and be a regular then national team itself takes a lot and for that to happen they need a match experience and I believe they get limited time in the ISL because of the presence of Indian seniors who also have to fight especially in certain key positions they have to fight with the foreigners in fact it's a no fight also because foreigners are picked up so how do we beat that kind of a deficit because only then would a systematic improvement increment in standard will happen at the age group level and then that would show in the seniors yeah I mean it's something that we will talk about at length I think on 420 grams but just to very quickly answer your question I think time and consistent push is the only way and so that's that's pretty much it or I don't know whether one of maybe Chetri suggested this in our show maybe about a B team competition yeah all those things are in the works I mean there are many challenges if we start going the reason I'm not getting into it is because if we go down this road then we'll start a conversation about the entire footballing structure where of course many changes are required and it's something that we do sort of do repeatedly but I do want to encourage those of you who are watching and I'm interested to figure out more about this because not just us but people who have been in the system their entire lives have been on our show so you can check that out on YouTube as well 420 grams is the name of the channel several conversations there on the system and the things that are needed to like Leslie was saying bridge some of these gaps between us and the footballing north as it were and finally Leslie in the context of because we are again I'm going to keep saying this again and again play things of alien forces what's happening at the Australian Open and how is it that it seems some leaked emails indicating that there might be a U-turn on the vaccination policy where international players it had earlier been said in quite sort of harsh not harsh but very straightforward words by Australia's immigration minister that international players coming in for the Australian Open will have to be fully vaccinated an indication that there's a change on that policy decision and that in fact unvaccinated players or players who do not want to declare their vaccination status will be able to come to Australia to participate in the tournament with a 14-day quarantine so what brings about other than Novak Djokovic this change in sort of what was a clear stand now is a lot more ambiguous I think it was not just I mean of course Novak Djokovic's star power is there and it's also I think the player council was involved in these discussions leaked email was in fact a correspondence between WTA and the player council so there must have been some push from the players union as such also because it's the belief is that vaccination is a personal call and it shouldn't be forced upon and of course in the last 18 months or so tournaments have been staged and vaccinations for instance even grant big event like the Tokyo Olympics scale wise as well there was no clear rule that unvaccinated athletes won't be allowed into the system so the idea is that the quarantine rules would negate the possibility of if you are getting into a bubble and if you are doing a 14-day quarantine and post that you are within that bubble that would negate the risk some percentage of the risk that things would escalate into an infection or a cluster spread or whatever having said that Australian Open would be an open event that way because the country apparently is touching 90% vaccination status so like the cricket World Cup that is happening also crowd are being allowed in Dubai and Dubai as east of a lot of I mean UA as east of a lot of restrictions Covid restrictions because vaccination is reached a certain saturation point so to speak same thing will happen in Australia so it's not like the players won't be exposed so what the vaccination is supposed to do is keep yourself from remote chances of infection as well because in that sense it's a respiratory disease and you are within a crowded space and you are playing and so unvaccinated players go in with that kind of a risk because the bubble is changed now bubble is not closed bubble where you are so crowd is only watching it on TV and only the people who are within that bubble are involved in the stadium not anymore it's an open event so there is always a risk so their initial stance was made based on Australian Government taking that decision based on the risks that are involved now easing off whatever the pressures are may be player, may be sponsor and it is a tricky call because if at all cluster spread happens within or spread happens inside lots of challenges the tournament itself at stake the people who are involved in the tournament the staff, the workers, the kids I don't exactly know what the vaccination policy of Australia is as far as under 18 kids are concerned and all the bald boys and support staff around the court would be I think things are being opened up we'll check on that but it's an important point that you brought up whether it's pressure from players or from sponsors or from both because the argument is that players bring sponsors and then sponsor money drives everything else so that's also why the link back to our show name because at the end of the day the fact is that for a lot of people there's a lot of money riding on this and I think that is from the tennis perspective at least that is a dominant perspective from the national perspective I guess it's challenging because people looking at public health issues Australia now I mean I personally have a ton of very close family there and they have had to endure over the past two years a very very hard, very strict lockdown where even travel between two states for example Sydney where I have some family and Melbourne where the Australian Open takes place between the states of Victoria and New South Wales travel was closed the borders were shut people have suffered tremendously through these lockdowns because of all of the day to day life and livelihood issues that it's brought up and so for all of these people to have gone through this and then to see these guys who in any case because of their economic status and their social status occupy bubbles come in and take everything for sort of granted in a sense and also perhaps put under some kind of threat I'm not saying everything will collapse because of 5 or 10 or 20, even 100 players but they are putting what has taken a lot of effort to maintain from a public perspective in some kind of jeopardy Yeah, but it's an interesting email leak where you say the players who are vaccinated or are declared players they can come in and do 14-day quarantine which in itself is a deterrent because you are losing hard quarantine they are talking about it it's not like they could train so players who come in they are going off boil this issue had happened earlier where some players were treated with preference during the Australian Open itself Last Australian Open and some players couldn't train at all so I don't know now it's a smart chess game of sorts because pressure came in so you have to ease off the rule okay, we are easing off the rule but this is our state's rule and like you mentioned the decision is not from the Australian Government the Victoria State Government has to take this decision and their rule is pretty clear 14-day coming from abroad 14-day hard quarantine so ultimately at the application level I think all this will be negated all these games will be negated because players who come in they lose out so if you want to come in and be serious I mean be on peak for the tournament then you get a vaccinated income that's the message that the Australian Government authorities are sending out Fair enough and hopefully that message is coming across loud and clear at a time when also we are talking about having at least reached a global milestone of a billion vaccine doses having been administered and all so if billions of people have to go through this I think there is a strong argument to be made for athletes for sports people across the spectrum whether it's our cricket stars or someone else's tennis stars to become more a part of the world in which they inhabit and perhaps view all of these matters not purely in the context of individual liberty and freedom of choice but also in the wider context of how it impacts perception it impacts public policy and all of these things Leslie we will obviously follow up on this with you as things develop there is of course still I think some time before the Australian Open has actually played so it will take some time for this to be ironed out but we will wrap it at this it's been a long show and it's been I think quite a good chat Leslie thanks for bringing the energy and all of your perspective and we will be back with the next episode of this show next week same time same place meanwhile check out all of the other stories we are doing on newsclick.in you can visit our website follow us on YouTube and other social media channels and we will see you Monday next week until then stay safe goodbye