Dear Mr. Gavaskar: fact-checking Sunny's astoundingly bad column for Mid-Day
This article is a slightly updated version of my reddit post from June this year.
Sunil Gavaskar recently published an opinion piece for the Mid-Day newspaper, which was rather poorly received due to numerous factual errors and nonsensical arguments (you can read the original column here if you don't think alcohol is effective enough at killing brain cells). In this post, I will go through his comments point by point and provide a fact-based antidote to what Bertus de Jong accurately described as "heights of ill-researched, ignorant garbage that were previously unthinkable". So, let's jump straight in:
Gavaskar seems to be of the view that Afghanistan don’t have domestic cricket of their own. I’m not sure where he got this impression, since their domestic scene is more developed than Ireland’s, with a 5-team domestic 4-day tournament since 2014 (recently increased to 6 teams), plus the T20 Shpageeza League which has been attracting sellout crowds since 2013. This year, they also successfully hosted the Afghanistan Premier League in the UAE, which featured 5 franchise teams and a plethora of international stars. In comparison, the domestic Irish Interpro competition has only 3 teams playing 3-day cricket (though this year the T20 competition was increased to 4 teams).
Firstly, let’s consider for a moment the phrase "most, if not all" - Gavaskar here is openly admitting to both ignorance and indifference towards the facts. He’s telling his readers that not only is he guessing off the top of his head, but he he can’t be bothered doing any basic research to provide them with easily-obtainable facts. Luckily, I’ve done his homework for him.
Rather unsurprisingly, his assertion is completely incorrect: of the playing XI that took on Pakistan, Ed Joyce retired from Sussex in May 2017, William Porterfield left Warwickshire at the end of 2017, Andy Balbirnie was released by Middlesex in mid-2016, Niall O’Brien was released early from Leicestershire in mid-2016, Paul Stirling is still with Middlesex, though mainly plays limited-overs cricket for them, Kevin O’Brien was let go by Leicestershire after the 2016 season, plus he was only contracted for white-ball cricket there anyway, Stuart Thompson and Tyrone Kane have never played for a county, Gary Wilson is still with Derbyshire, Boyd Rankin is still with Warwickshire, and Tim Murtagh is still with Middlesex. So 4/11 currently hold county contracts - hardly most and certainly not all. Even if we ignore Gavaskar’s failure to do any research and generously interpret his comments as meaning that Irish players have, at some point in their careers, played county cricket, he still displays significant ignorance of the Afghan squad’s experience both in their domestic leagues (which he doesn’t seem to realise actually exist) and playing in various overseas competitions in multiple formats around the world.
This is Gavaskar’s best result in the whole column - a distorted half-truth. Certainly it’s correct that the ECB has been blustering about this, but the change is not due to take effect until September next year; in addition, it’s unclear how this is compatible with UK work law, since (a) players from Northern Ireland are UK citizens, and (b) under separate Ireland-UK agreements, Irish citizens have the same legal residence and working rights as UK citizens. But Gavaskar is at least correct in stating that it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Incorrect. These players had to wait the mandatory 4-year requalification period to become eligible for Ireland again (which the ICC has recently changed to 3 years). Ed Joyce received special dispensation from the ICC to play in the 2011 Cricket World Cup for Ireland, since the tournament fell just before the 4-year cutoff after his last ODI for England in 2007, while in 2016 Boyd Rankin was able to play for Ireland 2 years after his final match for England because ICC regulations at the time stipulated that the 4-year period was halved for an Associate player returning to his original nation after having played for a Full Member.
This is absolute nonsense and again demonstrates both Gavaskar’s complete ignorance, and his utter lack of interest in doing basic research. The ICC’s full eligibility criteria are laid out in this document. Article 2 deals with "eligibility on the basis of nationality" and makes very clear that the ICC qualifying period is 3 years. Interestingly, most media reports seem to assume that because Archer started his qualification period before the rule change he still needs to wait 4 years (making him eligible just before the 2019 CWC); however the changes were retrospective so according to ICC regulations he is technically eligible already. The 7 years that Gavaskar is referring to is an additional, self-imposed waiting period decided by the ECB; they are perfectly within their rights to reduce their own extra waiting period to reflect the ICC minimum, and indeed that is all that’s been suggested - not the ECB somehow circumventing the rules at the ICC. That Gavaskar has managed to concoct such a narrative is either due to his current work as a paid BCCI mouthpiece or a symptom of a massive persecution complex. Or both.
As we’ve seen, this is absolute rubbish. The only thing that’s being speculated about is England changing their own eligibility rules. That’s an internal decision by the ECB, not one Australia has any influence on, and not one that is in any way connected to the ICC.
As an amusing aside, this thread from Peter Della Penna would seem to indicate that Gavaskar doesn't actually have a problem with the idea of players switching allegiances, despite the bluster in his column.
Gavaskar’s persecution complex again comes to the fore, and while it’s hard to specifically respond to such vague claims (which people and websites is he actually talking about?), there was certainly plenty of resistance, even amongst Australian cricket pundits, with luminaries such as Geoff Lemon, Dan Brettig, Dan Liebke, Ed Cowan and Peter Lalor lining up to criticise the decision. Gavaskar also conveniently overlooks the numerous occasions India has cancelled matches on a whim, like that time they shortened a series and bullied South Africa into suspending their own CEO simply because they didn’t like him, or that time they just couldn’t be bothered playing Zimbabwe, or indeed the BCCI’s official policy of never playing Pakistan ever (and their opposition to Pakistan even hosting tournaments). It must be said of course that there are diplomatic factors complicating the India-Pakistan situation, but the fact that the ICC is turning a blind eye to blatant political interference in the BCCI (something that is nominally forbidden) still undermines Gavaskar's victim narrative. And naturally Sunny fails to mention the fact that India have only ever hosted a single Test against Bangladesh - as opposed to the pair of matches Australia hosted back in 2003.
For context, Afghanistan were extremely lucky to even qualify past the group stage, relying on favourable results from other teams to squeak through with just a single victory from 4 matches (being beaten by Scotland, Zimbabwe and last-placed Hong Kong). The West Indies, meanwhile, also qualified thanks to a sizeable helping of good fortune: a shocking LBW decision put Scotland behind on DLS just before the rain break.
Firstly, as Gavaskar mentioned there were 4 Full Members at the "Associate Members" event. Secondly, Ireland are one of those Full Members. Thirdly, and most importantly, it is utterly vacuous to claim that teams didn’t qualify simply because they "were not good enough", when the tournament has kicked out 30% of its participants - you could equally say that anyone who missed out on a 6-team or a 4-team Cricket World Cup "were not good enough". Furthermore, the fact that only 2 qualifying places were available (that is, 8/10 teams involved in tournament are exempted from actually qualifying) would seem to indicate that "being good enough to qualify" is a standard that conveniently doesn’t apply to the established cricketing nations. Additionally, the "not good enough" argument does nothing to actually address the reasons put forward by those opposed to the 10-team CWC - namely, that cricket has never been more competitive (as a cursory glance at the results of the qualifying tournament would reveal), so kicking out 4 high-quality teams will deprive fans of thrilling cricket (like the Afghanistan-Scotland classic or Ireland’s tense win against Zimbabwe in the 2015 event; not to mention of course the benefits to cricket’s development that World Cup participation entails (especially for Scotland and Ireland, for whom a UK-based event would be a huge boost to promoting the game back home).
This comparison is idiotic for a number of reasons. Firstly, the subcontinent teams have not previously participated in the football world cup, only to be excluded by the tournament reducing the number of participants (in fact from 2026, FIFA has increased the number of places available in the football world cup from 32 to 48). Secondly, subcontinental football teams are significantly further off the pace than top Associates are in cricket - for example, Ireland and Scotland are ranked 12th and 13th respectively in ODIs. India is the best-ranked subcontinental football team at 97, while Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are statistically among the absolute worst in the world at 193, 198 and 199 respectively, so it's entirely moronic to compare top Associates with subcontinental football teams. Finally, it’s also worth noting that every single nation must earn their spot at the FIFA world cup via an exhaustive regional qualification system; in cricket the top sides are still exempted from having to qualify.
By implying that the victory over England is Scotland’s only major scalp I’d say Gavaskar is being dishonest, but given the breathtaking ignorance he has shown in the rest of this article, we can perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt and charitably assume that he genuinely isn’t aware of Scotland's success - in their last 2 seasons of 50-over cricket, Scotland have beaten 4 Full Members in 10 matches: Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and England, plus their amazing tie against Zimbabwe, and of course the absolute travesty of a defeat to the West Indies. Ireland’s impressive credentials at the Cricket World Cup are of course common knowledge, but to refresh Mr. Gavaskar’s apparently failing memory, they won 3 games at the 2015 edition (including 2 against Full Members) and narrowly missed out on progressing to the quarter finals due to run rate. Both of these teams have demonstrated that they are "good enough" to compete at the top table, if only the higher-ranked teams are willing to play them.
It’s especially ironic to see this garbage argument resurface just as England pummelled the hapless Australian side, mere days after going down to Scotland. Associates, both at the world cup and in general bilaterals (and especially more recently) have produced competitive matches at a very similar rate to Full Members, while Full Members thrash each other almost as much as they thrash Associates. It’s simply a fact of cricket that close games are rare and one-sided matches happen a lot. The participation of Associates is not a statistically significant factor on the closeness of matches. In fact, so far this year in ODIs, Associates vs. Full Member matches are 50% more likely to be competitive than Full Member-only clashes.
As we reach the end of Gavaskar's torrent of nonsense, I'd only add that while this is a particularly egregious example, it's depressingly common for ex-players to spout off about the game (and especially the Associate game) without bothering to do any research - and for media outlets to publish their ill-conceived drivel simply because they used to be good at playing. There's absolutely no way a non-cricketer could get away with writing a piece as terrible as this, but Gavaskar will in all likelihood continue his cushy job as a commentator. I can only hope that media outlets will, in future, start to hold ex-players to the same basic fact-checking standards as they do regular journalists. I also hope that we, as fans, can influence change by demanding a better quality of commentator rather than taking as gospel the words of those who used to good at playing.
Sunil Gavaskar recently published an opinion piece for the Mid-Day newspaper, which was rather poorly received due to numerous factual errors and nonsensical arguments (you can read the original column here if you don't think alcohol is effective enough at killing brain cells). In this post, I will go through his comments point by point and provide a fact-based antidote to what Bertus de Jong accurately described as "heights of ill-researched, ignorant garbage that were previously unthinkable". So, let's jump straight in:
Afghanistan’s story is much more moving than Ireland as there is no chance as yet of having any cricket in that country and all their international appearances will have to be outside their country because of the uncertain security situation there. [...] Ireland too have had their political troubles but there’s been a fair degree of peace for quite a while there and so they have been able to have domestic cricket and leagues of their own.
Gavaskar seems to be of the view that Afghanistan don’t have domestic cricket of their own. I’m not sure where he got this impression, since their domestic scene is more developed than Ireland’s, with a 5-team domestic 4-day tournament since 2014 (recently increased to 6 teams), plus the T20 Shpageeza League which has been attracting sellout crowds since 2013. This year, they also successfully hosted the Afghanistan Premier League in the UAE, which featured 5 franchise teams and a plethora of international stars. In comparison, the domestic Irish Interpro competition has only 3 teams playing 3-day cricket (though this year the T20 competition was increased to 4 teams).
Having said that most, if not all, of their international players play in the English county championship and so get to play a lot of cricket in all formats and so have a lot more experience and exposure than Afghanistan players have had.
Firstly, let’s consider for a moment the phrase "most, if not all" - Gavaskar here is openly admitting to both ignorance and indifference towards the facts. He’s telling his readers that not only is he guessing off the top of his head, but he he can’t be bothered doing any basic research to provide them with easily-obtainable facts. Luckily, I’ve done his homework for him.
Rather unsurprisingly, his assertion is completely incorrect: of the playing XI that took on Pakistan, Ed Joyce retired from Sussex in May 2017, William Porterfield left Warwickshire at the end of 2017, Andy Balbirnie was released by Middlesex in mid-2016, Niall O’Brien was released early from Leicestershire in mid-2016, Paul Stirling is still with Middlesex, though mainly plays limited-overs cricket for them, Kevin O’Brien was let go by Leicestershire after the 2016 season, plus he was only contracted for white-ball cricket there anyway, Stuart Thompson and Tyrone Kane have never played for a county, Gary Wilson is still with Derbyshire, Boyd Rankin is still with Warwickshire, and Tim Murtagh is still with Middlesex. So 4/11 currently hold county contracts - hardly most and certainly not all. Even if we ignore Gavaskar’s failure to do any research and generously interpret his comments as meaning that Irish players have, at some point in their careers, played county cricket, he still displays significant ignorance of the Afghan squad’s experience both in their domestic leagues (which he doesn’t seem to realise actually exist) and playing in various overseas competitions in multiple formats around the world.
It will be interesting to see what the situation will be for their international players when they play county cricket, for with Ireland getting Test membership their players can’t play any longer in English county cricket as local players but now will have to be treated as overseas players.
This is Gavaskar’s best result in the whole column - a distorted half-truth. Certainly it’s correct that the ECB has been blustering about this, but the change is not due to take effect until September next year; in addition, it’s unclear how this is compatible with UK work law, since (a) players from Northern Ireland are UK citizens, and (b) under separate Ireland-UK agreements, Irish citizens have the same legal residence and working rights as UK citizens. But Gavaskar is at least correct in stating that it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
England have always had the best of this situation where they could pick Irish players to play for England and these Irish players could then go back to playing for Ireland once England did not require their services or found out that they were not as good as was believed for Test match and limited overs international cricket.
These players did not have to wait for any length of time to qualify back for Ireland and this is where the ICC has to be now vigilant.
Incorrect. These players had to wait the mandatory 4-year requalification period to become eligible for Ireland again (which the ICC has recently changed to 3 years). Ed Joyce received special dispensation from the ICC to play in the 2011 Cricket World Cup for Ireland, since the tournament fell just before the 4-year cutoff after his last ODI for England in 2007, while in 2016 Boyd Rankin was able to play for Ireland 2 years after his final match for England because ICC regulations at the time stipulated that the 4-year period was halved for an Associate player returning to his original nation after having played for a Full Member.
Already there is talk in England of reducing the qualifying period to enable the talented Jofra Archer to play for England in next year’s World Cup. The ICC qualifying period, if a player has represented another country in the U-19 events and then wants to play for another country, is seven years and by that token Archer will have to wait another three years before he qualifies for England but England are apparently trying to somehow get that reduced. This is where the countries with real power will be seen.
This is absolute nonsense and again demonstrates both Gavaskar’s complete ignorance, and his utter lack of interest in doing basic research. The ICC’s full eligibility criteria are laid out in this document. Article 2 deals with "eligibility on the basis of nationality" and makes very clear that the ICC qualifying period is 3 years. Interestingly, most media reports seem to assume that because Archer started his qualification period before the rule change he still needs to wait 4 years (making him eligible just before the 2019 CWC); however the changes were retrospective so according to ICC regulations he is technically eligible already. The 7 years that Gavaskar is referring to is an additional, self-imposed waiting period decided by the ECB; they are perfectly within their rights to reduce their own extra waiting period to reflect the ICC minimum, and indeed that is all that’s been suggested - not the ECB somehow circumventing the rules at the ICC. That Gavaskar has managed to concoct such a narrative is either due to his current work as a paid BCCI mouthpiece or a symptom of a massive persecution complex. Or both.
India is often talked about as being a powerful country but the recent issues with the Supreme Court’s order has rendered the BCCI powerless as there doesn’t seem to be any cohesion in their representation at the ICC level on various issues and this has been taken advantage of by other countries with an agenda of their own.
If Archer does get to play next year’s World Cup the real powers will be known and as always it will be the old powers England and Australia.
As we’ve seen, this is absolute rubbish. The only thing that’s being speculated about is England changing their own eligibility rules. That’s an internal decision by the ECB, not one Australia has any influence on, and not one that is in any way connected to the ICC.
As an amusing aside, this thread from Peter Della Penna would seem to indicate that Gavaskar doesn't actually have a problem with the idea of players switching allegiances, despite the bluster in his column.
Australia have shown that already by cancelling an agreed tour of their country by Bangladesh reasoning that it was going to be non-profitable for them. If India had done something similar there would have been a huge hue and cry but there’s hardly been a whimper especially from those people and websites who are always gunning for India.
Gavaskar’s persecution complex again comes to the fore, and while it’s hard to specifically respond to such vague claims (which people and websites is he actually talking about?), there was certainly plenty of resistance, even amongst Australian cricket pundits, with luminaries such as Geoff Lemon, Dan Brettig, Dan Liebke, Ed Cowan and Peter Lalor lining up to criticise the decision. Gavaskar also conveniently overlooks the numerous occasions India has cancelled matches on a whim, like that time they shortened a series and bullied South Africa into suspending their own CEO simply because they didn’t like him, or that time they just couldn’t be bothered playing Zimbabwe, or indeed the BCCI’s official policy of never playing Pakistan ever (and their opposition to Pakistan even hosting tournaments). It must be said of course that there are diplomatic factors complicating the India-Pakistan situation, but the fact that the ICC is turning a blind eye to blatant political interference in the BCCI (something that is nominally forbidden) still undermines Gavaskar's victim narrative. And naturally Sunny fails to mention the fact that India have only ever hosted a single Test against Bangladesh - as opposed to the pair of matches Australia hosted back in 2003.
Meanwhile Scotland’s surprise win over England has again raised the cry about the number of teams for next year’s World Cup. These people have forgotten that there was a tournament among associate members and the two of the bottom ranked Test playing countries to qualify for next year’s World Cup. Afghanistan and West Indies qualified by getting to the finals.
For context, Afghanistan were extremely lucky to even qualify past the group stage, relying on favourable results from other teams to squeak through with just a single victory from 4 matches (being beaten by Scotland, Zimbabwe and last-placed Hong Kong). The West Indies, meanwhile, also qualified thanks to a sizeable helping of good fortune: a shocking LBW decision put Scotland behind on DLS just before the rain break.
The point here is simple that if Ireland and Scotland, from where most of the noise comes about the number of teams for next year’s World Cup, were not good enough to qualify in an associate members event then how can they even think in terms of playing with the big boys in the World Cup?
Firstly, as Gavaskar mentioned there were 4 Full Members at the "Associate Members" event. Secondly, Ireland are one of those Full Members. Thirdly, and most importantly, it is utterly vacuous to claim that teams didn’t qualify simply because they "were not good enough", when the tournament has kicked out 30% of its participants - you could equally say that anyone who missed out on a 6-team or a 4-team Cricket World Cup "were not good enough". Furthermore, the fact that only 2 qualifying places were available (that is, 8/10 teams involved in tournament are exempted from actually qualifying) would seem to indicate that "being good enough to qualify" is a standard that conveniently doesn’t apply to the established cricketing nations. Additionally, the "not good enough" argument does nothing to actually address the reasons put forward by those opposed to the 10-team CWC - namely, that cricket has never been more competitive (as a cursory glance at the results of the qualifying tournament would reveal), so kicking out 4 high-quality teams will deprive fans of thrilling cricket (like the Afghanistan-Scotland classic or Ireland’s tense win against Zimbabwe in the 2015 event; not to mention of course the benefits to cricket’s development that World Cup participation entails (especially for Scotland and Ireland, for whom a UK-based event would be a huge boost to promoting the game back home).
It’s like subcontinent teams asking to be included in the football World Cup.
This comparison is idiotic for a number of reasons. Firstly, the subcontinent teams have not previously participated in the football world cup, only to be excluded by the tournament reducing the number of participants (in fact from 2026, FIFA has increased the number of places available in the football world cup from 32 to 48). Secondly, subcontinental football teams are significantly further off the pace than top Associates are in cricket - for example, Ireland and Scotland are ranked 12th and 13th respectively in ODIs. India is the best-ranked subcontinental football team at 97, while Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are statistically among the absolute worst in the world at 193, 198 and 199 respectively, so it's entirely moronic to compare top Associates with subcontinental football teams. Finally, it’s also worth noting that every single nation must earn their spot at the FIFA world cup via an exhaustive regional qualification system; in cricket the top sides are still exempted from having to qualify.
Get real guys, one win does not make you good enough to play in the cricket World Cup.
By implying that the victory over England is Scotland’s only major scalp I’d say Gavaskar is being dishonest, but given the breathtaking ignorance he has shown in the rest of this article, we can perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt and charitably assume that he genuinely isn’t aware of Scotland's success - in their last 2 seasons of 50-over cricket, Scotland have beaten 4 Full Members in 10 matches: Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and England, plus their amazing tie against Zimbabwe, and of course the absolute travesty of a defeat to the West Indies. Ireland’s impressive credentials at the Cricket World Cup are of course common knowledge, but to refresh Mr. Gavaskar’s apparently failing memory, they won 3 games at the 2015 edition (including 2 against Full Members) and narrowly missed out on progressing to the quarter finals due to run rate. Both of these teams have demonstrated that they are "good enough" to compete at the top table, if only the higher-ranked teams are willing to play them.
If these teams are included then like we have seen in previous editions the quality of the game comes down and dilutes an event as big as the World Cup.
It’s especially ironic to see this garbage argument resurface just as England pummelled the hapless Australian side, mere days after going down to Scotland. Associates, both at the world cup and in general bilaterals (and especially more recently) have produced competitive matches at a very similar rate to Full Members, while Full Members thrash each other almost as much as they thrash Associates. It’s simply a fact of cricket that close games are rare and one-sided matches happen a lot. The participation of Associates is not a statistically significant factor on the closeness of matches. In fact, so far this year in ODIs, Associates vs. Full Member matches are 50% more likely to be competitive than Full Member-only clashes.
As we reach the end of Gavaskar's torrent of nonsense, I'd only add that while this is a particularly egregious example, it's depressingly common for ex-players to spout off about the game (and especially the Associate game) without bothering to do any research - and for media outlets to publish their ill-conceived drivel simply because they used to be good at playing. There's absolutely no way a non-cricketer could get away with writing a piece as terrible as this, but Gavaskar will in all likelihood continue his cushy job as a commentator. I can only hope that media outlets will, in future, start to hold ex-players to the same basic fact-checking standards as they do regular journalists. I also hope that we, as fans, can influence change by demanding a better quality of commentator rather than taking as gospel the words of those who used to good at playing.
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