Who will revive Indian Cricket ?
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
It appears that everybody connected with Indian cricket is out to excel each other in putting this most popular sport in the country in a complete mess. As if the underperforming heroics of Team India in the World Cup or before that were not enough to bring shame to the nation, deeper embarassments have been subsequently engineered by those who are supposed to manage the game at Administrative level and there appears to be no serious efforts to revive the game. Refusing to take lessons from the past failures, BCCI still seems to be quite happy with adhoc arrangements rather than to have a tight control over the situation.
One is forced to feel that this could be because everybody who has got some say in managing or should we say meddling with the affairs of Indian cricket, considers himself to be an institution in himself, rather than an individual, and tries to run the affairs in his own way. How else could we achieve the recent coach fiasco. We do not happen to like a man, with a proven track record, ready to take the challenge and who was better expected to agree to the terms of BCCI. May be because we did not like the colour of his shirt or the perfume used by him or any other such thing about him. Instead our brilliant boys come up with their own fantastic ideas and got hit in the face. But there appears to be no sense of remorse or embarassment anywhere in the concerned quarters. Even in the face of such humiliation, we are not in a mood to consider our own countryman on some permanent basis and keep groping in the dark. It would have been quite fair to explore the possibility of considering Mohinder Amarnath who was a candidate at the previous coach selection process and was quite willing to accept the responsibility. He could be tried at least for one year.
The mismangement has gone far too long now. All talks of performance oriented selections or payments appear to have been conveniently forgotten after initial euphoria about reform process. It would again be a great blunder to feel complacent on the recent successes in Bangladesh or Scotland. Inspite of their victories in the world cup, Bangladesh still continues to be a weak team at this level. Our real test would be against stronger teams on the circuit. To be ready for tough competition and regain our lost glory, there should now be no place in the team for a non or underperformer, irespective of his stature. Quick and firm actions need to be taken to build a consistently performing team. Weak kneed policies have been persisted with for too long and should now be done away with. More transparency and accountability needs to be brought about in team selection processes. Effort should be made to build a strong young team much before the next world cup.
In case lessons are not learnt from the past failures and frustrations, Indian cricket could also go the hockey way with no one to lament other than the fans. Or maybe this article about a hidden agenda in indian sports is really true after all - Indian Sports Strategy
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