English cricket marked by uncertainty
While England are expected to easily defeat New Zealand in the Test series which started on Thursday, the attention is not so much on what is happening here as on India.
Traditionally by this time cricket would have ceased in most of the world, barring the odd Test series in West Indies, and all eyes would be on the English summer.
But this year the vast riches offered by India and the Indian Premier League have made the English summer seem more like a cricketing footnote.
Even New Zealand great Sir Richard Hadlee, previewing his country's series, concentrated on the IPL.
English cricket gives the appearance of trying to somehow keep up with the Indian juggernaut.
The pity in all of this is that England has a long history of innovation. For example Twenty20, like all limited-over cricket, was conceived here.
English cricket as an innovator may sound a tall tale. Many years ago it was fashionable to dismiss cricket as the Tory party at play.
The reference was not meant kindly.
Even when John Major invoked cricket during his Premiership, the picture he presented was one of cricket conveying not change, but reassurance about traditional values.
But in the past, English cricket has welcomed change and even initiated it.
Take for instance New Zealand's entry into Test cricket. That came when they played England at Christchurch on 10 January 1930.
A day later another England team took the field in Barbados bringing Test cricket to the Caribbean for the first time.
Imagine two fully-fledged Test teams from the same country playing a day apart in two different hemispheres.
But England had to do that if cricket was to be taken to new lands.
Then, only two other countries played Test cricket - Australia and South Africa.
White South Africa, imprisoned by its racist outlook, refused to play anybody who was not white and it was only after the Second World War that Australia started touring countries like West Indies and India.
In the 1920s and 30s, English cricket also ventured into areas British politicians could not.
That decade was dominated by the question of dominion status for India. The Indians wanted to rule themselves while British politicians were not at all convinced they were capable of doing so.
In 1927, in order to judge India's ability to govern itself, the British government decided an all-white delegation of MPs - headed by John Simon and including a young Clement Atlee - should visit India.
India was so outraged by this visit that Gandhi came out of retirement to lead the campaign for freedom.
Contrast this with cricket. Around the same time an English team led by former captain Arthur Gilligan toured India, playing against Indians and often at British clubs that did not admit Indians as members.
He promised to help India get Test status and was so encouraging that India formed a cricket board before making their Test debut at Lord's in 1932.
It was another 15 years and many more Gandhi-led struggles before India got its freedom.
In the 20s and 30s, political Britain could not imagine Indians, or any non-white people, capable of governing themselves.
Cricketing England, however, could see merits in Indians and this opened the cricket door for the country when the political one remained shut.
But then even before that, English cricket had shown a remarkable ability to cut across racial and cultural divides.
This was in marked contrast to America.
Take Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji and Jackie Robinson; Ranji a cricketing great, Robinson a baseball legend.
The interesting thing here is Ranji, an Indian prince, made his Test debut for England in 1896 against Australia and was instantly hailed as a genius.
Over the following decades, two other Indian princes - his nephew Duleep and the Nawab of Pataudi - also played for England.
But it was 1947 before Jackie Robinson became the first black player to play major league baseball.
While the Indians were playing for England, America segregated black players into "Negro Leagues" to become the "invisible men" of baseball.
Let me not exaggerate the innovatory powers of English cricket.
It was very slow to recognise the evil of sporting apartheid, the awful diktat of white South Africa which not only insisted that its teams would be white but that its opponents should also field white players.
It was only in 1968 that English cricket was forced to confront it.
That was when the then South African Prime Minister suddenly made himself an English cricket selector and told England it could not play Basil D'Oliveria, a Cape-coloured who had to leave his homeland to achieve his ambition of playing Test cricket.
That led to the sporting boycott of South Africa but it also removed the MCC from the heart of English cricket.
The innovations we have been talking about were the work of the MCC which had run both English and world cricket and had a world mission for the game.
The England and Wales Cricket Board may be more efficient; it is certainly richer, but it has no such mission.
While its concerns must be focused on England it also needs to acquire a bit of that pioneering MCC spirit if English cricket is to meet the challenges it now faces from India.
I'm 
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The only people whose attention is focused on the IPL are those who are more interested in how much money the players are getting. No-one has any interest in the cricket, or can remember anything about almost any of it.
It's entirely typical of our shallow celebrity obsessed media that the money has got their attention. We have to endure all the boring insiders sitting around talking about how marvellous it all is, when in reality they are just greedy for their bit of the pie.
Now we have the MCC World cricket committee talking about curtailing the English season significantly, for the sole purpose of enabling perhaps a dozen players to make more money. Bearing in mind Collingwood was paid nearly £500,000 last year for very average performances, this is simply obscene.
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Mihir you are right that the English pioneered the spread of cricket. The torch however now seems to have passed to India, and there is potential for the torch to be wrenched away by a younger country.
I believe the IPL etc has potential to be far bigger than the Packer revolution. I am an ardent test fan but I found myself asking would I rather watch Tim Southee going off for bad light or Shane Bond bowling at 90+ in the IPL 20:20. MCC and the test playing countries that most support Tests need to take a good hard look at how they guarantee an audience and quality players in the next 20 years, that is the challenge and there may be no easy answers.
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Mr Cricket
When you talk about Greedy people, the fact is, it is money that promotes every show. In Economics, behind every successful venture, capital is of extreme importance. In your own job,if you get a 200% pay-rise for working in a different organisation, the chances are, you will accept it. I have managed to catch some matches of IPL, and I can tell you it has been very entertaining.
The only problem with us English is, we dont want to accept it (as Shane Warne and Peter Roebuck said in thier articles). The truth is, when ECB comes up with a similar T20 competition, the grounds will be flooded with these so called cricket purists who seem to 'loathe' IPL concept. There is no evidence that T20 will hurt Test cricket. and if Test cricket does need protection, then I think it should not really be saved. Let the public decide what they want and not force our purist views on others.
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mr cricket you just seem to be living in the past the ipl has done more for cricket and cricketers in the last 6months than what the ecb and county cricket has done for the last 50years in the last few days ipl club owners are flexing thier muscles and players who are not performing will be discarded and those who perform will get better contracts as they will be in high demand next year its called suply and demand mr living in the past and the consiquence of this is that we the cricket fan will see better and fitter cricketers playing a more exciting dynamic and skillful game as for you sir sup your g and t and sooze through county cricket match watching the journeymen cricketers
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The only country not to have taken to the IPL is England! Surprise, surprise.
It's obvious that Crcket England is very jealous, seeing as though they invented 20/20 and now it is being taken to new heights by India.
Why does the BBC have to support English Crickets stance so irrevocably? There are no articles or league tables etc about what is actually happening in the IPL, even though every cricket fan I know is watching it. Thank god for www.iplt20.com and Setanta!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Mihir,
Some Aussie cricketers who played in the IPL matches are yet to be paid. The news item which appears in the on-line versio of the Bangalore paper Deccan Herald carries a large news item on this. Please read it . the link is:
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/May182008/sports2008051868661.asp?section=updatenews.
A few friends of mine in Bangalore say that they heard from one of the franchisees that
he was wondering whether he would break even in 5 years.
There is life yet in the traditional cricket. We should not writeit off. IPL may yet turn out to be a white elephant.
Kiran
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I was in Bangalore,India a few weeks ago on work and went to one of the IPL games being played there Bangalore v Chenai.
I had a great time, the organisors really put on a great show. I enjoy my test cricket but I think 20/20 will phase out the 50 over ODI.
I saw a mix of Aus/SA/Indian/SL/Nz players playing good cricket in a fun atmosphere...sad to see that no English players were there
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