Ever since Ganguly was appointed captain of India for the Zimbabwe tour, I have been reading a lot of comments here about this.
Many Dravid supporters, who now seem to be outnumbered by Ganguly-baiters, have gone up in arms to make Dravid the "victim" and Ganguly the "schemer".
It all plays nicely for sensationalism and to keep the media columnists busy. Now it seems Virender Sehwag has also come out openly in support of Ganguly - I read a comment somewhere that this could be because Sehwag fancies himself as captain instead of Dravid.
It pains me to read all this. Just because Sehwag supports Ganguly, it does not mean he is anti-Dravid. At this rate the team will get split down the middle. Is that what we want ?
Let's get back to the basics here.
First of all, when was Dravid ever promised permanent captaincy ? I think this is all media mischief. Saurav Ganguly has been India captain for years. Dravid has been vice-captain. In games that Ganguly did not play (for whatever reason), Dravid was made captain. In the recent SL ODI series, since Ganguly joined in the middle and Dravid had been appointed as captain, Ganguly played a couple of games under Dravid. That's about it. New series starts in a week's time. Ganguly is fit and eligible to play. He has been handed back the captaincy. Dravid continues as vice-captain. What's the big deal ? Why is the media making such a fuss about this ? People are letting their personal preferences about Ganguly and Dravid cloud their ability to think rationally. I am a huge fan of Dravid the batsman, am not sure about Dravid the captain yet. I am NOT convinced about Ganguly the batsman for non-minnow Tests although I think he has still got it in him to swing any ODI game. I am NOT a fan of Ganguly the captain - only because I think he gets far more credit for his captaincy than he deserves. But that's my personal opinion. Nobody has to agree with me - just like I would have no problem if somebody has an entirely opposite point of view.
But what I cannot deny is the fact that Ganguly and Dravid have been captain / vice-captain for a few years now - and the Indian Board, in all its wisdom, has decided to maintain status quo.
What I am more concerned about is that this media-created controversy and further fuelling by the public may tell on the relationship between both players, on the performances of both players and in general on the morale of the side. These are two key senior players in the side and you really do not want your team to get distracted by off-the-field matters. Indian cricket is not in the healthiest of shapes (under-statement of the year). Let us not make it worse by allowing the sensation-crazy media to dish it out to us in loads and dominate our thinking. We are better than that, I hope !
We want Team India to do well - and if that means it is Ganguly to lead, Dravid as vice-captain, fine with me. For that matter, anybody as captain / vice-captain is fine with me.
We have enough on-the-field performance issues. Let us just stand behind whoever the captain is and keep our personal preferences aside for once.
About Me
- Raja
- If I can just give to the world more than I take from it, I will be a very happy man. For there is no greater joy in life than to give. Motto : Live, Laugh and Love. You can follow me on Twitter too . My handle is @Raja_Sw.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Edgbaston - the evening calm
It must be all quiet and calm at Edgbaston at this moment. There must hardly be any signs of the drama that took place earlier in the day today.
Nine hours after one of the most amazing cricket matches ever, I am choosing to write this piece. Anybody who knows me out here, knows that I am one of the most vocal supporters of Australia in this Ashes series. There are reasons for this - I will try to elaborate on these at a different time.
Writing this piece is not easy. It is always difficult to write about a match that you are so passionate about and which your team has lost.
How do you mask the disappointment of coming so close to winning and yet ending up on the losing side ? How do you, as an Aussie supporter, reconcile yourself to a 1-1 series situation when, secretly although very hesitantly, you had conjured up images of a swaggering 2-0 ?
The answer is, very simply, you DON'T for the first question and you DO for the second.
There is no shame in expressing your disappointment in ending up on the losing side. It is the most natural thing to do. Any pretence of bravado or casual indifference is insulting to the Ashes. Cricket lovers are passionate about the Ashes - and are fully expected to feel the pain of defeat or the euphoria of victory.
Having said that, the Aussie supporters now have to accept the result for what it is. There is no point in discussing umpiring decisions - that is all history. The bottom line is that England won the Test and levelled the series. The margin of victory is irrelevant - it was enough to allow England to believe they are on level terms with the Aussies and can win back the Ashes after a gap of 18 long years.
Freddie Flintoff mirrored the English point of view after the Test when he said, very matter-of-factly, in reply to a question about whether England could win the Ashes "We've got to".
Thanks to the English victory, the series is very wide open. Both the teams, and all of us supporters move on to Old Trafford, Manchester. The scene of many a notable Ashes match. It promises to be another cracker - and if the last two games are any indication, this Ashes series may go down in history as one of the best-ever, if not the best.
Let us consider ourselves fortunate to be part of this wonderful period in Ashes history. What we should consider ourselves even more fortunate for is that we have had the opportunity to enjoy the series together. It is infinitely more fun to enjoy a game in a group than to do it on your own. Here at cricbuzz, thanks to the wonderful efforts of admin and his team, we have all been able to be part of this series and enjoyed it immeasurably. I can never forget the tension in the chat today during the closing stages of the Test. That is what the game is all about - for, at the end of the day, it is but a game. Let us not lose perspective.
Edgbaston 2005 had everything. From fiery fast bowling to awesome batting to brilliant spin to superb catching to dubious umpiring decisions to a courageous fightback all the way to the last minutes of the game. In the years to come, when people talk about Edgbaston 2005, we can proudly say - "you know what ! I followed every minute of it, to the last ball".
Nine hours after one of the most amazing cricket matches ever, I am choosing to write this piece. Anybody who knows me out here, knows that I am one of the most vocal supporters of Australia in this Ashes series. There are reasons for this - I will try to elaborate on these at a different time.
Writing this piece is not easy. It is always difficult to write about a match that you are so passionate about and which your team has lost.
How do you mask the disappointment of coming so close to winning and yet ending up on the losing side ? How do you, as an Aussie supporter, reconcile yourself to a 1-1 series situation when, secretly although very hesitantly, you had conjured up images of a swaggering 2-0 ?
The answer is, very simply, you DON'T for the first question and you DO for the second.
There is no shame in expressing your disappointment in ending up on the losing side. It is the most natural thing to do. Any pretence of bravado or casual indifference is insulting to the Ashes. Cricket lovers are passionate about the Ashes - and are fully expected to feel the pain of defeat or the euphoria of victory.
Having said that, the Aussie supporters now have to accept the result for what it is. There is no point in discussing umpiring decisions - that is all history. The bottom line is that England won the Test and levelled the series. The margin of victory is irrelevant - it was enough to allow England to believe they are on level terms with the Aussies and can win back the Ashes after a gap of 18 long years.
Freddie Flintoff mirrored the English point of view after the Test when he said, very matter-of-factly, in reply to a question about whether England could win the Ashes "We've got to".
Thanks to the English victory, the series is very wide open. Both the teams, and all of us supporters move on to Old Trafford, Manchester. The scene of many a notable Ashes match. It promises to be another cracker - and if the last two games are any indication, this Ashes series may go down in history as one of the best-ever, if not the best.
Let us consider ourselves fortunate to be part of this wonderful period in Ashes history. What we should consider ourselves even more fortunate for is that we have had the opportunity to enjoy the series together. It is infinitely more fun to enjoy a game in a group than to do it on your own. Here at cricbuzz, thanks to the wonderful efforts of admin and his team, we have all been able to be part of this series and enjoyed it immeasurably. I can never forget the tension in the chat today during the closing stages of the Test. That is what the game is all about - for, at the end of the day, it is but a game. Let us not lose perspective.
Edgbaston 2005 had everything. From fiery fast bowling to awesome batting to brilliant spin to superb catching to dubious umpiring decisions to a courageous fightback all the way to the last minutes of the game. In the years to come, when people talk about Edgbaston 2005, we can proudly say - "you know what ! I followed every minute of it, to the last ball".
Labels:
cricket
Farewell to an unsung hero
This morning, with great sorrow, I read the news of Eknath Solkar's death. He was only 57.
I thought I would write a post about him as a show of respect for the man.
Many of you here may not even have heard of him. The easiest thing to do is to check his statistics and to conclude that he was just average. After all, a batting average of 25 in 27 Tests and taking just 18 wickets in these games could hardly be considered as anything but average.
I had the good fortune to follow the game during his playing days and will try to give my perspective on Solkar from my memories of those days.
His batting was certainly not exceptional - I would be lying if I said it was. But he did pull India out of trouble on more than one occasion and I know that I was always glad in the knowledge that he was still to come in to bat.
I remember his only Test hundred. It was the last Test of the 1974-75 series against the West Indies. The series was tied at 2-2 and the Windies had rattled up a huge score of 604-6 declared in their first innings. Engineer went without a run on the board, bringing local heroes Solkar and Gavaskar (himself returning from injury) together. They played like champions, battling it out against Andy Roberts, Bernard Julien, Vanburn Holder and the wiles of Lance Gibbs. Much against the run of play and just before the end of the day, Gavaskar was bowled for 86 by a beauty from Gibbs. Solkar closed the day on 76 and I remember all of us, young boys then, hoping against hope, that he would get his hundred.
The next day, he duly obliged us and we were very happy for him. Solkar was a very popular man and we felt nobody deserved a hundred as much as he did.
My other memory of his batting is when India were all out for 42 at Lord's in 1974. I was listening to the commentary of that innings with a sinking feeling. Wickets were falling like dry leaves in autumn. Seeing that he was running out of partners, Solkar began hitting out. He was left last man standing - 18 not out - but if he had also thrown in the towel, India would have been even worse off, maybe looking at the lowest score ever in Test cricket.
His bowling was also not very remarkable - but we must remember that we are talking of a time when most of the bowling for India was done by the spin quartet of Bedi, Chandra, Pras and Venkat. In those days, Solkar and Abid Ali used to open the bowling mainly to get the shine off the ball.
Inspite of this, Solkar took 18 wickets - and among his wickets, we can count players like Ian Redpath, Gary Sobers, Charlie Davis, Roy Fredericks, Rohan Kanhai, Brian Luckhurst, Alan Knott, Geoff Boycott, Deryck Murray and Clive Lloyd. Many of these wickets were either bowled or lbw.
From a quality point of view, not a bad haul, I would say !
He is of course best remembered for his fielding. 53 catches in 27 Tests is already a very impressive statistic - it does not however tell you the courage of the man and the quality of those catches.
He used to stand at forward short-leg, just an arm's length from the batsman. The ball would be played down by the batsman to stub the spin - and Solkar would scoop it up in one hand. He created many such catches - he would pluck them out of thin air leaving everybody, especially the batsman, in disbelief.
Unfortunately, there was not very good TV coverage in those days, if at all. I do remember however seeing one catch of his on TV. The batsman went for an expansive shot, Solkar turned away taking precautionary action, the batsman did not connect properly and the ball was falling short in front of his feet. Solkar, watching this from the corner of his eye, turned around in a flash and grabbed the ball almost from the batsman's feet. I do not remember the details but that was a catch that I can never forget in my life.
Indeed Eknath Solkar leaves behind a fielding legacy that Indian cricket would do well to try to emulate.
With this post, I would like to convey my humble gratitude to a cricketer who gave me many fond memories of cricket in my childhood. From what I recollect, he was a very modest man and a total team player too.
I thought I would write a post about him as a show of respect for the man.
Many of you here may not even have heard of him. The easiest thing to do is to check his statistics and to conclude that he was just average. After all, a batting average of 25 in 27 Tests and taking just 18 wickets in these games could hardly be considered as anything but average.
I had the good fortune to follow the game during his playing days and will try to give my perspective on Solkar from my memories of those days.
His batting was certainly not exceptional - I would be lying if I said it was. But he did pull India out of trouble on more than one occasion and I know that I was always glad in the knowledge that he was still to come in to bat.
I remember his only Test hundred. It was the last Test of the 1974-75 series against the West Indies. The series was tied at 2-2 and the Windies had rattled up a huge score of 604-6 declared in their first innings. Engineer went without a run on the board, bringing local heroes Solkar and Gavaskar (himself returning from injury) together. They played like champions, battling it out against Andy Roberts, Bernard Julien, Vanburn Holder and the wiles of Lance Gibbs. Much against the run of play and just before the end of the day, Gavaskar was bowled for 86 by a beauty from Gibbs. Solkar closed the day on 76 and I remember all of us, young boys then, hoping against hope, that he would get his hundred.
The next day, he duly obliged us and we were very happy for him. Solkar was a very popular man and we felt nobody deserved a hundred as much as he did.
My other memory of his batting is when India were all out for 42 at Lord's in 1974. I was listening to the commentary of that innings with a sinking feeling. Wickets were falling like dry leaves in autumn. Seeing that he was running out of partners, Solkar began hitting out. He was left last man standing - 18 not out - but if he had also thrown in the towel, India would have been even worse off, maybe looking at the lowest score ever in Test cricket.
His bowling was also not very remarkable - but we must remember that we are talking of a time when most of the bowling for India was done by the spin quartet of Bedi, Chandra, Pras and Venkat. In those days, Solkar and Abid Ali used to open the bowling mainly to get the shine off the ball.
Inspite of this, Solkar took 18 wickets - and among his wickets, we can count players like Ian Redpath, Gary Sobers, Charlie Davis, Roy Fredericks, Rohan Kanhai, Brian Luckhurst, Alan Knott, Geoff Boycott, Deryck Murray and Clive Lloyd. Many of these wickets were either bowled or lbw.
From a quality point of view, not a bad haul, I would say !
He is of course best remembered for his fielding. 53 catches in 27 Tests is already a very impressive statistic - it does not however tell you the courage of the man and the quality of those catches.
He used to stand at forward short-leg, just an arm's length from the batsman. The ball would be played down by the batsman to stub the spin - and Solkar would scoop it up in one hand. He created many such catches - he would pluck them out of thin air leaving everybody, especially the batsman, in disbelief.
Unfortunately, there was not very good TV coverage in those days, if at all. I do remember however seeing one catch of his on TV. The batsman went for an expansive shot, Solkar turned away taking precautionary action, the batsman did not connect properly and the ball was falling short in front of his feet. Solkar, watching this from the corner of his eye, turned around in a flash and grabbed the ball almost from the batsman's feet. I do not remember the details but that was a catch that I can never forget in my life.
Indeed Eknath Solkar leaves behind a fielding legacy that Indian cricket would do well to try to emulate.
With this post, I would like to convey my humble gratitude to a cricketer who gave me many fond memories of cricket in my childhood. From what I recollect, he was a very modest man and a total team player too.
Labels:
cricket
Passage to India
After the excitement of the India-Pak series, it has been a very quiet period for Indian cricket. There has been nothing happening on the field and the next big game is still a couple of months away.
During this “lean” period, it is interesting to observe how the Indian media fills its space. There is absolutely no doubt that cricket occupies reams of newspaper space and hours of TV coverage in India when the game is on. So it must be somewhat difficult for the media to find enough material to keep its space filled. But the media is nothing if not persistent, and knows that, for anything even remotely cricket-related that it churns out, there is some cricket-crazy chump out there who will lap it up and be happy with that dose for the day.
I am just back from a visit to India and can vouch for this, first-hand. I spent about eighteen days in the country, almost all of them in Bangalore and was, as usual, hungry for all news Indian. India seems to have this effect on me – although, in today’s world, I can quite easily keep in touch with happenings in India from outside the country, I tend not to be very good at this. But once I land in India, I devour every issue of every magazine that I can get hold of – from India Today to The Week to Outlook. Much of the news is the same – there is just a different take in each magazine, which usually underlines its leanings.
This time was no different – and in addition to the time I spent reading I also spent a lot of time watching TV. Not prime time because that was spent with my family (that being the main purpose of my visit) but the time that I had purely to myself. Blame it on the soaring summer temperatures, even in Bangalore, but staying indoors and lazing in front of the TV often seemed to be the most desirable course of action. I had never seen Bangalore this hot in the month of May and complained to family that Bangalore was becoming like Chennai – that was till I landed in Chennai for a day on my way out of India. Chennai was like a smoldering cauldron and suddenly Bangalore felt like heaven. I had heard in the news that Hyderabad and parts of Northern India were enjoying temperatures upward of forty-three degrees Celsius and my thoughts went out to Anoop and others in such places. I had absolutely no reason to complain.
Sitting in front of the idiot box I suddenly realized how much of a misfit I am in today’s India. There are a whole lot of channels to choose from nowadays and yet I am most certainly not the target viewer for most of these channels. While in India, I do not want to watch English films or serials – I get plenty of that outside India. I want to watch Indian programmes – but neither can I sit through Indian soaps (most of them seem to have somebody eavesdropping on somebody) nor can I enjoy the rushes of the latest Bollywood films, most of which comprise of heavy dance and music numbers that tend to be so repetitive that they end up giving me a headache. After all, there is only so much of Esha Deol in Kaal that you can take. If you zap, you are most likely to see Amitabh Bachchan – not so much in a film but in some advert or the other.
It is most certainly not the fault of the channel programming – it is me. India has become a completely different place from the one I left years ago and I need to recognize this. TV caters to common interest and my interests are becoming increasingly uncommon.
Having said that I still managed to catch some programmes of my interest. Ironically, many of them were on Doordarshan – the channel most persons love to hate. I can always depend on Doordarshan to instill nostalgia in me. Many of their programs still have a feeling of the seventies or eighties in them – which for me, was not such a bad thing. They had a decent tribute to music composer Khayyam – I thoroughly enjoyed this as they played snippets from some of his classics of yesteryear.
I also managed to catch some Indian football on TV, which was real fun. I get to see a lot of European football and, after watching clubs like Man United and Barcelona, it was interesting, for a change, to see Indian clubs battling it out on the field. One thing is for sure – the quality of the football may not be comparable but the heart and spirit which the Indian players showed was fantastic to watch and I must salute these players. They earn much less than their cricketing counterparts but are no less deserving of praise. It brought back many fond memories of the 1970s when, growing up in Eastern India, I used to religiously follow the football league scores in Kolkata (then Calcutta) – especially the scores of the big three, East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting. Football was a religion in Calcutta then – I am not sure whether it is still the same. Between the exploits of Surajit Sengupta, Subhash Bhowmick, Prasanta and Prasun Banerjee and, not to forget, the famous brothers, Mohammad Habib and Akbar (both played for Mohammedan Sporting with great distinction), there was plenty to cheer for a football fan. They may not have been world-beaters but they won many hearts in their local stronghold.
This is all very well but what cricket did I catch ?
I was most fortunate to be able to catch one of the most amazing end-games that I have ever seen. It was rather late at night but this Windies-Saffies one-dayer at the Kensington Oval seemed to have something extra about it. The game went back and forth and Chris Gayle’s batting made it look like a game worth watching. So I stayed up - and was amply rewarded when the game took an extraordinary twist in the last over. The Windies had all but sealed the game but, out of nowhere, Charl Langeveldt came up with some decent deliveries and got a hat-trick, the Windies contributed to their downfall with some atrocious batting and the game finished with the Saffies winning by one run off the penultimate ball. Very exciting stuff although I felt really sorry for the Windies supporters and the players in the pavilion. The tense look on their faces during the last few deliveries and the way they had their head in their hands when it was all over – you had to feel for them. A couple of individual performances notwithstanding, from a team point of view everything had been going wrong for them and again they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Something just does not seem to be right.
On the Indian cricket scene, since there was not much happening, the news was about things off the field. The ICC World XI to take on the Aussies was announced – and the big news was that Saurav Ganguly did not make the cut. But, as he himself quite modestly admitted, on current form, he did not deserve a place in the side. So that was that. No big controversy, no big story.
Another news item was an ICC proposal to change some of the rules of one-day cricket to make it more interesting. I am not aware of all the details but I know that there are changes proposed on the first 15-over field setting and something to do with allowing 12 players to be part of a side, with one as reserve who can come in – something like in football. Surprisingly, I did not come across much coverage on this subject.
To keep cricket news alive in their columns, some newspapers reported on the activities of players in their non-playing season. So Saurav is presumably on holiday in Europe, Sachin on holiday in the US and Dravid too on holiday abroad (I think it was South Africa but I am not sure). None of them is in India – and looking at the mercury levels, I am not surprised. One can only hope that they enjoy their holidays with their families and are fully rested before the next season starts. The news item about Saurav’s holiday in Europe said that he would be at the French Open in Roland Garros, Paris to support Sania Mirza. Sachin was also presumably at the Formula One Grand Prix at Barcelona to support Kartikeyan. Looking at the fate that befell both these sports personalities at the concerned events, perhaps Indian cricketers are just not lucky for Indian sport.
By far the biggest sports news item when I was in India was speculation about the next coach of the Indian (or should this be BCCI) cricket team. It hogged the news headlines – not just on the sports pages but also on the main pages of almost all newspapers. Not to mention the continuous TV coverage on the subject. I doubt if ever so much interest has been evinced in the media of any country on the selection of a coach – for any sport. Clearly there was not much else to report about – so this became the numero uno subject for one and all.
Every day there would be speculation about the subject – and contenders would keep cropping up. Greg Chappell was always one of the leading contenders and all comments, supposedly attributed to the BCCI, seemed to only make the case for him easier. Thus an “informed BCCI source” said that money would not be an issue for the right candidate. Another “reliable BCCI source” said that “it was felt that the players would respect a coach who had himself been a very successful player” or words to that effect. Another “informed BCCI source” said that the first preference was likely to be a foreign coach. Put one and one and one together and you cannot help feeling that it was like a game of dumb charades being played. The answer was known upfront – clues were being given to tease a hungry public.
It did make for a lot of amusing reading and coverage though. A lot of persons are supposed to have said a lot on the subject. Sunny Gavaskar, in his characteristic style, is supposed to have said something like “I don’t think the coach makes much of a difference anyway.” Chandu Borde is supposed to have said “How can a coach teach somebody like Anil Kumble bowling ?”
Anybody and everybody seemed to have an opinion. There was the familiar question of “foreign coach or Indian coach”. Opinion was divided on this. There was even a comment “A foreign coach will be better but we should have an Indian coach”. Somebody please explain that to me.
The list of candidates seemed to change every day. Mohinder Amarnath, in an interview with a magazine or on a TV channel, expressed his desire to coach the Indian team. The next thing you knew he was a candidate. The BCCI announced four names and kept a couple of names secret. I wonder why. Then Sandeep Patil dropped out and suddenly the BCCI announced that Desmond Haynes was a candidate. What were his credentials ? Well, he did not have any experience worth mentioning but, being West Indian, maybe he would be able to help the Indian team for the next World Cup in the Caribbean ? The BCCI clearly said that when Sandeep Patil dropped out they needed to fill his spot, so they decided to include Haynes in the race. It could not have been very comforting for Haynes to think that he was making up the numbers.
Somewhere along the line, Sir Viv Richards, who like Mohinder Amarnath became a candidate when he talked to the media about not being uninterested in coaching the Indian side, fell out of favour for the position. I do not remember when this happened and do not care to remember.
Then Venkatesh Prasad, who has just armed himself with an advanced coaching degree from the UK, threw in his lot in the ring – not so much as the national coach but possibly as the bowling coach for the team. Maybe, if given the chance, he could be a worthy successor to Bruce Reid and Wasim Akram. Why is it that I am not very much convinced about this ?
Then, just about a day before D-day, you suddenly had Balwinder Singh Sandhu (of World Cup 83 clean bowling Gordon Greenidge fame) putting his hand up to be counted as a candidate. He admitted that it was a bit late but thought he could be a good coach. If not given the job of the national coach, he would even be happy with the job of bowling coach.
All this while, Tom Moody was the other foreign coach in contention. His own track record at international level was nowhere as solid as Greg Chappell’s but he had earned tremendous respect in Worcestershire and came with relative youth and experience. He was also apparently the preference of most senior players (except Ganguly who apparently wanted Chappell).
All in all, without a ball being bowled on the field, this was a wonderful soap to follow. Sometimes you did not know whether to laugh or to cry – the situation was so ludicrous. Possibly never more so than when, as soon as Chappell was announced as coach, a leading news channel immediately began getting opinions – and one of the first persons I saw on TV was none other than Saba Karim, former Indian wicketkeeper, talking from the streets of Kolkata on his mobile phone to the channel.
That was when I decided I had had enough.
Chappell, usually circumspect but for once grinning from ear-to-ear, was immediately garlanded in typical Indian neta style. Amarnath initially seemed to take the decision of the BCCI in his stride but later, in typical style, lashed out at them for having bought a “presentation”.
As I was leaving India, I had my usual pangs of pain – at leaving family. It is always difficult. However on another level, I left India a much more relaxed man. So what if I am out of tune with the official entertainment dished out by the Indian media. The unofficial entertainment, all spontaneous, easily more than makes up for it and is in fact what makes India so charming. On one level a lot of things have changed. Yet, in some respects, things are still the same.
I can never be out of place in India.
During this “lean” period, it is interesting to observe how the Indian media fills its space. There is absolutely no doubt that cricket occupies reams of newspaper space and hours of TV coverage in India when the game is on. So it must be somewhat difficult for the media to find enough material to keep its space filled. But the media is nothing if not persistent, and knows that, for anything even remotely cricket-related that it churns out, there is some cricket-crazy chump out there who will lap it up and be happy with that dose for the day.
I am just back from a visit to India and can vouch for this, first-hand. I spent about eighteen days in the country, almost all of them in Bangalore and was, as usual, hungry for all news Indian. India seems to have this effect on me – although, in today’s world, I can quite easily keep in touch with happenings in India from outside the country, I tend not to be very good at this. But once I land in India, I devour every issue of every magazine that I can get hold of – from India Today to The Week to Outlook. Much of the news is the same – there is just a different take in each magazine, which usually underlines its leanings.
This time was no different – and in addition to the time I spent reading I also spent a lot of time watching TV. Not prime time because that was spent with my family (that being the main purpose of my visit) but the time that I had purely to myself. Blame it on the soaring summer temperatures, even in Bangalore, but staying indoors and lazing in front of the TV often seemed to be the most desirable course of action. I had never seen Bangalore this hot in the month of May and complained to family that Bangalore was becoming like Chennai – that was till I landed in Chennai for a day on my way out of India. Chennai was like a smoldering cauldron and suddenly Bangalore felt like heaven. I had heard in the news that Hyderabad and parts of Northern India were enjoying temperatures upward of forty-three degrees Celsius and my thoughts went out to Anoop and others in such places. I had absolutely no reason to complain.
Sitting in front of the idiot box I suddenly realized how much of a misfit I am in today’s India. There are a whole lot of channels to choose from nowadays and yet I am most certainly not the target viewer for most of these channels. While in India, I do not want to watch English films or serials – I get plenty of that outside India. I want to watch Indian programmes – but neither can I sit through Indian soaps (most of them seem to have somebody eavesdropping on somebody) nor can I enjoy the rushes of the latest Bollywood films, most of which comprise of heavy dance and music numbers that tend to be so repetitive that they end up giving me a headache. After all, there is only so much of Esha Deol in Kaal that you can take. If you zap, you are most likely to see Amitabh Bachchan – not so much in a film but in some advert or the other.
It is most certainly not the fault of the channel programming – it is me. India has become a completely different place from the one I left years ago and I need to recognize this. TV caters to common interest and my interests are becoming increasingly uncommon.
Having said that I still managed to catch some programmes of my interest. Ironically, many of them were on Doordarshan – the channel most persons love to hate. I can always depend on Doordarshan to instill nostalgia in me. Many of their programs still have a feeling of the seventies or eighties in them – which for me, was not such a bad thing. They had a decent tribute to music composer Khayyam – I thoroughly enjoyed this as they played snippets from some of his classics of yesteryear.
I also managed to catch some Indian football on TV, which was real fun. I get to see a lot of European football and, after watching clubs like Man United and Barcelona, it was interesting, for a change, to see Indian clubs battling it out on the field. One thing is for sure – the quality of the football may not be comparable but the heart and spirit which the Indian players showed was fantastic to watch and I must salute these players. They earn much less than their cricketing counterparts but are no less deserving of praise. It brought back many fond memories of the 1970s when, growing up in Eastern India, I used to religiously follow the football league scores in Kolkata (then Calcutta) – especially the scores of the big three, East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting. Football was a religion in Calcutta then – I am not sure whether it is still the same. Between the exploits of Surajit Sengupta, Subhash Bhowmick, Prasanta and Prasun Banerjee and, not to forget, the famous brothers, Mohammad Habib and Akbar (both played for Mohammedan Sporting with great distinction), there was plenty to cheer for a football fan. They may not have been world-beaters but they won many hearts in their local stronghold.
This is all very well but what cricket did I catch ?
I was most fortunate to be able to catch one of the most amazing end-games that I have ever seen. It was rather late at night but this Windies-Saffies one-dayer at the Kensington Oval seemed to have something extra about it. The game went back and forth and Chris Gayle’s batting made it look like a game worth watching. So I stayed up - and was amply rewarded when the game took an extraordinary twist in the last over. The Windies had all but sealed the game but, out of nowhere, Charl Langeveldt came up with some decent deliveries and got a hat-trick, the Windies contributed to their downfall with some atrocious batting and the game finished with the Saffies winning by one run off the penultimate ball. Very exciting stuff although I felt really sorry for the Windies supporters and the players in the pavilion. The tense look on their faces during the last few deliveries and the way they had their head in their hands when it was all over – you had to feel for them. A couple of individual performances notwithstanding, from a team point of view everything had been going wrong for them and again they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Something just does not seem to be right.
On the Indian cricket scene, since there was not much happening, the news was about things off the field. The ICC World XI to take on the Aussies was announced – and the big news was that Saurav Ganguly did not make the cut. But, as he himself quite modestly admitted, on current form, he did not deserve a place in the side. So that was that. No big controversy, no big story.
Another news item was an ICC proposal to change some of the rules of one-day cricket to make it more interesting. I am not aware of all the details but I know that there are changes proposed on the first 15-over field setting and something to do with allowing 12 players to be part of a side, with one as reserve who can come in – something like in football. Surprisingly, I did not come across much coverage on this subject.
To keep cricket news alive in their columns, some newspapers reported on the activities of players in their non-playing season. So Saurav is presumably on holiday in Europe, Sachin on holiday in the US and Dravid too on holiday abroad (I think it was South Africa but I am not sure). None of them is in India – and looking at the mercury levels, I am not surprised. One can only hope that they enjoy their holidays with their families and are fully rested before the next season starts. The news item about Saurav’s holiday in Europe said that he would be at the French Open in Roland Garros, Paris to support Sania Mirza. Sachin was also presumably at the Formula One Grand Prix at Barcelona to support Kartikeyan. Looking at the fate that befell both these sports personalities at the concerned events, perhaps Indian cricketers are just not lucky for Indian sport.
By far the biggest sports news item when I was in India was speculation about the next coach of the Indian (or should this be BCCI) cricket team. It hogged the news headlines – not just on the sports pages but also on the main pages of almost all newspapers. Not to mention the continuous TV coverage on the subject. I doubt if ever so much interest has been evinced in the media of any country on the selection of a coach – for any sport. Clearly there was not much else to report about – so this became the numero uno subject for one and all.
Every day there would be speculation about the subject – and contenders would keep cropping up. Greg Chappell was always one of the leading contenders and all comments, supposedly attributed to the BCCI, seemed to only make the case for him easier. Thus an “informed BCCI source” said that money would not be an issue for the right candidate. Another “reliable BCCI source” said that “it was felt that the players would respect a coach who had himself been a very successful player” or words to that effect. Another “informed BCCI source” said that the first preference was likely to be a foreign coach. Put one and one and one together and you cannot help feeling that it was like a game of dumb charades being played. The answer was known upfront – clues were being given to tease a hungry public.
It did make for a lot of amusing reading and coverage though. A lot of persons are supposed to have said a lot on the subject. Sunny Gavaskar, in his characteristic style, is supposed to have said something like “I don’t think the coach makes much of a difference anyway.” Chandu Borde is supposed to have said “How can a coach teach somebody like Anil Kumble bowling ?”
Anybody and everybody seemed to have an opinion. There was the familiar question of “foreign coach or Indian coach”. Opinion was divided on this. There was even a comment “A foreign coach will be better but we should have an Indian coach”. Somebody please explain that to me.
The list of candidates seemed to change every day. Mohinder Amarnath, in an interview with a magazine or on a TV channel, expressed his desire to coach the Indian team. The next thing you knew he was a candidate. The BCCI announced four names and kept a couple of names secret. I wonder why. Then Sandeep Patil dropped out and suddenly the BCCI announced that Desmond Haynes was a candidate. What were his credentials ? Well, he did not have any experience worth mentioning but, being West Indian, maybe he would be able to help the Indian team for the next World Cup in the Caribbean ? The BCCI clearly said that when Sandeep Patil dropped out they needed to fill his spot, so they decided to include Haynes in the race. It could not have been very comforting for Haynes to think that he was making up the numbers.
Somewhere along the line, Sir Viv Richards, who like Mohinder Amarnath became a candidate when he talked to the media about not being uninterested in coaching the Indian side, fell out of favour for the position. I do not remember when this happened and do not care to remember.
Then Venkatesh Prasad, who has just armed himself with an advanced coaching degree from the UK, threw in his lot in the ring – not so much as the national coach but possibly as the bowling coach for the team. Maybe, if given the chance, he could be a worthy successor to Bruce Reid and Wasim Akram. Why is it that I am not very much convinced about this ?
Then, just about a day before D-day, you suddenly had Balwinder Singh Sandhu (of World Cup 83 clean bowling Gordon Greenidge fame) putting his hand up to be counted as a candidate. He admitted that it was a bit late but thought he could be a good coach. If not given the job of the national coach, he would even be happy with the job of bowling coach.
All this while, Tom Moody was the other foreign coach in contention. His own track record at international level was nowhere as solid as Greg Chappell’s but he had earned tremendous respect in Worcestershire and came with relative youth and experience. He was also apparently the preference of most senior players (except Ganguly who apparently wanted Chappell).
All in all, without a ball being bowled on the field, this was a wonderful soap to follow. Sometimes you did not know whether to laugh or to cry – the situation was so ludicrous. Possibly never more so than when, as soon as Chappell was announced as coach, a leading news channel immediately began getting opinions – and one of the first persons I saw on TV was none other than Saba Karim, former Indian wicketkeeper, talking from the streets of Kolkata on his mobile phone to the channel.
That was when I decided I had had enough.
Chappell, usually circumspect but for once grinning from ear-to-ear, was immediately garlanded in typical Indian neta style. Amarnath initially seemed to take the decision of the BCCI in his stride but later, in typical style, lashed out at them for having bought a “presentation”.
As I was leaving India, I had my usual pangs of pain – at leaving family. It is always difficult. However on another level, I left India a much more relaxed man. So what if I am out of tune with the official entertainment dished out by the Indian media. The unofficial entertainment, all spontaneous, easily more than makes up for it and is in fact what makes India so charming. On one level a lot of things have changed. Yet, in some respects, things are still the same.
I can never be out of place in India.
Labels:
cricket
The lost rhythm of calypso music
Considering the composition of membership on this site, it is not surprising that most of our cricket discussion tends to be subcontinent-centric. We tend to forget that apart from India and Pakistan, there are eight other cricket-playing nations out there – each with its history, challenges and aspirations.
For a change, I decided to take a detour from the India – Pakistan obsession and talk about something, not Indian or Pakistani, but still close to my heart.
It is about the West Indies. At the moment of writing, South Africa is visiting the West Indies and, not entirely unexpectedly, giving them a thrashing. This is not the greatest of South African sides but it does not take much nowadays to topple the once-mighty West Indians over. Soon it will be the turn of the Pakistanis to visit the Caribbean – and I am afraid there are all indications that the result is not likely to be very different.
Having seen the glory of the batting of Lloyd, Richards, Kallicharran, Greenidge and Fredericks and the bowling of Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner and Marshall, for me personally it is very painful to have to see the state of West Indian cricket now.
So what has gone so horribly wrong ? The obvious one is the dirty politics within the cricket administration. It was never going to be easy - considering the West Indies is a conglomeration of various countries in the Caribbean, each with its own proud identity. Imagine getting India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh under one banner and hoping not to have politics in the administration of this combine.
Full marks then to Sir Frank Worrell, one of the finest, if not the finest, statesman the game has ever produced. He was instrumental in bringing players of various Caribbean countries together, instilling in them a common cause and passion - to play for the West Indies. The results began to show. Whether you were Guyanese Clive Lloyd or Barbadian Gordon Greenidge or Antiguan Viv Richards, you were first and foremost West Indian on the international cricketing stage. To the tune of calypso music in the background, the West Indian players on the field would come together to demolish everything that stood before them.
But that was a different time and ethos. Just as success breeds success and failure failure, the decline of the West Indian powerhouse in the early nineties (after the departure of many prominent players) was perfect breeding ground for regional interests and politics to re-surface.
In the current atmosphere, everything seems to be in turmoil – from team selection, to the coach, to the major dispute about sponsor logo promotion. A superstar like Brian Lara seems to be constantly at the center of controversy – something that is definitely not doing the team cause any good. It does not matter whether this is justified or not – what matters is that the team spirit and motivation seem to be very low. This is hardly the team that Sir Frank Worrell would have envisaged. Once again, West Indian cricket is at odds with itself. Today, the politics in the West Indian cricket administration makes the BCCI look like a saint.
Another reason for the current decline of the West Indian side is, I think, the position of cricket in the Caribbean sports hierarchy. Once cricket held pride of place and talented sportsmen with multiple choices of sports as a profession, would opt proudly for cricket. Those days are long gone by. Even sports such as beach volleyball seem to be gaining in popularity and the influence of American sports and wealth seems to have pushed cricket somewhere into a corner. One can only speculate that cricket's loss has been some other sport's gain.
A third reason is, I believe, the pitches in the West Indies. At one time, they were sporting wickets and were result-oriented. They provided a challenge to batsmen and were often a bowler's delight. Today, the tables have turned - many of the pitches are almost dead pitches, the batsmen flatter themselves while bowlers toil away with scant reward. This cannot be good for the game - as is witnessed in diminishing numbers at the gates. Which means less takings, less interest in the sport, less TV rights - a vicious cycle at its most vicious. I am sure there are many other reasons - it is too simplistic to try to attribute such a shocking decline to just two or three reasons. But let us hope, for the sake of the game and for West Indies cricket, that they can rise from this level. They just have to.
I counted yesterday the track record of the players in this last Test. The eleven players have 130 Test wickets between them, with Chris Gayle having the maximum - a rich 30. The best bowling average was Bravo – an average of over 33. That in itself tells a story of the experience of these bowlers. And bowling on an Antiguan wicket, it is hardly a surprise that the South African openers have both helped themselves to hundreds.
My thoughts go out to the late Malcolm Marshall – one of my favourite cricketers and one of the best bowlers the world has seen in the last thirty years. He must be turning in his grave at the quality of fast bowling being dished out by West Indian bowlers today.
Although there are a lot of concerns about the West Indies hosting its first World Cup, I personally think that if it would help increase interest and money in the game in the region, it would be a fantastic thing to happen. Every other region (England, South Asia, Australasia, South Africa) has had its chance - and the West Indies is the rightful place for the next Cup. If there is renewed passion in the game and , very importantly, more money is poured into West Indian cricket to make it a career of choice (let's face it, in today's commercial environment , it is money that talks) , I think there is a good chance we will see a revival. Probably not in the immediate future, but over the next four or five years.
But then I have always been an optimist.
For a change, I decided to take a detour from the India – Pakistan obsession and talk about something, not Indian or Pakistani, but still close to my heart.
It is about the West Indies. At the moment of writing, South Africa is visiting the West Indies and, not entirely unexpectedly, giving them a thrashing. This is not the greatest of South African sides but it does not take much nowadays to topple the once-mighty West Indians over. Soon it will be the turn of the Pakistanis to visit the Caribbean – and I am afraid there are all indications that the result is not likely to be very different.
Having seen the glory of the batting of Lloyd, Richards, Kallicharran, Greenidge and Fredericks and the bowling of Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner and Marshall, for me personally it is very painful to have to see the state of West Indian cricket now.
So what has gone so horribly wrong ? The obvious one is the dirty politics within the cricket administration. It was never going to be easy - considering the West Indies is a conglomeration of various countries in the Caribbean, each with its own proud identity. Imagine getting India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh under one banner and hoping not to have politics in the administration of this combine.
Full marks then to Sir Frank Worrell, one of the finest, if not the finest, statesman the game has ever produced. He was instrumental in bringing players of various Caribbean countries together, instilling in them a common cause and passion - to play for the West Indies. The results began to show. Whether you were Guyanese Clive Lloyd or Barbadian Gordon Greenidge or Antiguan Viv Richards, you were first and foremost West Indian on the international cricketing stage. To the tune of calypso music in the background, the West Indian players on the field would come together to demolish everything that stood before them.
But that was a different time and ethos. Just as success breeds success and failure failure, the decline of the West Indian powerhouse in the early nineties (after the departure of many prominent players) was perfect breeding ground for regional interests and politics to re-surface.
In the current atmosphere, everything seems to be in turmoil – from team selection, to the coach, to the major dispute about sponsor logo promotion. A superstar like Brian Lara seems to be constantly at the center of controversy – something that is definitely not doing the team cause any good. It does not matter whether this is justified or not – what matters is that the team spirit and motivation seem to be very low. This is hardly the team that Sir Frank Worrell would have envisaged. Once again, West Indian cricket is at odds with itself. Today, the politics in the West Indian cricket administration makes the BCCI look like a saint.
Another reason for the current decline of the West Indian side is, I think, the position of cricket in the Caribbean sports hierarchy. Once cricket held pride of place and talented sportsmen with multiple choices of sports as a profession, would opt proudly for cricket. Those days are long gone by. Even sports such as beach volleyball seem to be gaining in popularity and the influence of American sports and wealth seems to have pushed cricket somewhere into a corner. One can only speculate that cricket's loss has been some other sport's gain.
A third reason is, I believe, the pitches in the West Indies. At one time, they were sporting wickets and were result-oriented. They provided a challenge to batsmen and were often a bowler's delight. Today, the tables have turned - many of the pitches are almost dead pitches, the batsmen flatter themselves while bowlers toil away with scant reward. This cannot be good for the game - as is witnessed in diminishing numbers at the gates. Which means less takings, less interest in the sport, less TV rights - a vicious cycle at its most vicious. I am sure there are many other reasons - it is too simplistic to try to attribute such a shocking decline to just two or three reasons. But let us hope, for the sake of the game and for West Indies cricket, that they can rise from this level. They just have to.
I counted yesterday the track record of the players in this last Test. The eleven players have 130 Test wickets between them, with Chris Gayle having the maximum - a rich 30. The best bowling average was Bravo – an average of over 33. That in itself tells a story of the experience of these bowlers. And bowling on an Antiguan wicket, it is hardly a surprise that the South African openers have both helped themselves to hundreds.
My thoughts go out to the late Malcolm Marshall – one of my favourite cricketers and one of the best bowlers the world has seen in the last thirty years. He must be turning in his grave at the quality of fast bowling being dished out by West Indian bowlers today.
Although there are a lot of concerns about the West Indies hosting its first World Cup, I personally think that if it would help increase interest and money in the game in the region, it would be a fantastic thing to happen. Every other region (England, South Asia, Australasia, South Africa) has had its chance - and the West Indies is the rightful place for the next Cup. If there is renewed passion in the game and , very importantly, more money is poured into West Indian cricket to make it a career of choice (let's face it, in today's commercial environment , it is money that talks) , I think there is a good chance we will see a revival. Probably not in the immediate future, but over the next four or five years.
But then I have always been an optimist.
Labels:
cricket
On India-Pakistan beyond cricket
cAfter the Indian tour to Pakistan last year, I wrote an article “Thank You, Pakistan”. I thanked Pakistan from the bottom of my heart for the very warm hospitality that it had extended to the Indians and was very optimistic about the opportunities the tour had opened for better relations between the two countries.
Before the start of the recent Pakistani tour to India, I re-iterated my feelings about the two countries coming closer to each other and emphasized that the most important measure of the success of the tour would not be the cricket itself but the response that the visiting Pakistanis (both players and other visitors) would get from the Indian public.
So, was the tour successful ? Has this tour helped the two countries to come a step closer towards each other ?
I would like to think so. To be honest, I have not been following this series as closely as I followed the previous one. I have been traveling quite a bit in the last couple of months and have not been able to examine the media coverage, both Indian and Pakistani, enough to give an unchallenged (although based on media reports only) report card on the Indian treatment of its Pakistani guests.
What I do know is that there were a couple of unpleasant incidents – something to do with stone-throwing at the bus carrying the Pakistani players and possibly another such odd incident.
In between, there was also the very significant event of the bus route between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar being opened. Just before it happened, some explosives were discovered on the route – a reminder of the magnitude of the task that lies ahead for both countries as they try to work towards a relationship that many with vested interests will do their utmost to sabotage.
It is a very tenuous relationship – as I mentioned in my “Thank You, Pakistan” article, fifty-five years of mistrust cannot be undone in a couple of months. Both governments are taking baby steps towards each other, aware that in today’s realpolitik and changed global equations, there is probably no other option. Yet both sides are equally cautious to commit to anything that may be seen as ground-yielding, such are the internal compulsions of both states. There are enough rabble-rousers on either side, with considerable clout amongst the masses, to topple or at the very least make uncomfortable any government seen as compromising on its hitherto hard stand on sensitive issues.
In this situation, considering the huge impact the media could make in the bridge-building process, one would look to them to play their part in promoting the common cause. But so far, the media, although it has not been particularly irresponsible, seems to have taken no more than a “wait-and-watch” approach. Perhaps it has been bitten by bitter experiences of the past.
Like I said, a very tenuous relationship – with loads of history.
It is for the politicians of both countries to make those major moves which they hope will open doors for better relations. Moves like cricket matches between the two countries. Moves like bus routes between the two countries. Moves like more trade between the two countries. Moves, which in today’s acronym-addicted world, are now officially referred to as “CBM” or “Confidence Building Measures”.
All of this makes sense to me and I support these moves one hundred percent. But, like I have said before, relationships are not built by governments – they are built by people. And, put it down to my impatience, I do not want to wait for the governments alone to build bridges. We, the people, are quite capable of building bridges on our own – if only we open our minds and hearts to doing so.
It is easier said than done. I understand the sensitivity of the issues involved. And the issues are far more serious than just a game of cricket. The main issue – the central issue – the “K” issue cannot be brushed off the table just because of a goodwill cricket series. The President of Pakistan quite rightly made this very clear.
For my part, I will approach the matter of Indo-Pak relations in the only manner that I can and in the manner that I believe will finally lead to people of both countries coming together.
I will not take stands or argue about history – for this will lead nowhere. It is for the politicians and the historians, on both sides, to attempt to explain and to justify whatever they seek to defend.
The only way I know to bring people together is to relate to them on a human level. Not on a level of state, religion, caste or creed. These help to form aggregations in society but, at the most primal level, everybody, wherever on earth he is born or lives, has the same emotions. Which mother does not grieve on the loss of her child ? Which child’s face does not light up when he or she is showered with love by the child’s parents ?
Is it not therefore much more logical to relate on a level of humanity than any man-made level, such as state ? After all a political boundary is nothing but a man-made demarcation on land – usually with a perfectly well-meaning objective of providing administrative ease but sometimes serving to separate societies rather than bringing them together.
There was this person who once spoke of a world without borders. I consider this a fascinating thought but am not convinced about its practicality. However, when such borders create societal splits, I cannot help wondering about what a world with borders is actually achieving.
These are random thoughts and must not be contextualized to the specifics of the India – Pakistan imbroglio. Border conflicts exist in many parts of the world and, next to religion, are the biggest reason for wars. Ironically, the ones who fight the wars and who have the most to lose are usually the ones on whose land the political lines have been drawn by governments sitting many miles away.
To many who read this, I may be coming across as naïve, wishful and theoretical. Somebody with nothing better to do than to blabber on meaningless matters. After all I have said nothing new here. But if all that I have said is so obvious, why is it so difficult to relate to people on a human level ? Why is it so difficult to accept people for what they are – as human beings first, and not as Indians or Pakistanis first ?
I am not suggesting that Indians or Pakistanis should not retain their national identity. If it gives them a sense of belonging, by all means they should. They should be proud of their country’s achievements and should not feel any embarrassment in wearing their country’s badge on their sleeve if they so wish.
However it would be immensely more valuable for humanity if we just took a step back and understood our core values and responsibilities as humans - and not as Indians or Pakistanis or whatever. We are privileged to be (or so I believe) among the more intelligent of species on this planet – and we would serve our cause better by forging relationships on a humanitarian level first. All forms of dichotomy, usually created and imposed by society (which by the way is also man-made), only come later.
For those, albeit a minority amongst the readers of this piece, to whom this article makes some sort of sense, I extend my friendship – to those who dismiss it as nonsense, I bear no malice. After all, it is just a dump of my thoughts and, as long as it harms nobody, I have no shame whatsoever in expressing my thoughts.
For these are values that I have carried all my life and have never had reason to doubt. I have often been accused of being a dreamer but when a dream is so close to your heart and you so badly want it to happen, I suppose you can be excused a degree of madness in its pursuit.
To me that dream has been one of India – Pakistan friendship. Today, thanks to technology, there is much more opportunity for Indians and Pakistanis to interact with each other. If that interaction helps a better understanding of each other and brings people together, that is a much stronger bond than the governments of both countries will ever be able to create.
That is all I hope from this article.
Before the start of the recent Pakistani tour to India, I re-iterated my feelings about the two countries coming closer to each other and emphasized that the most important measure of the success of the tour would not be the cricket itself but the response that the visiting Pakistanis (both players and other visitors) would get from the Indian public.
So, was the tour successful ? Has this tour helped the two countries to come a step closer towards each other ?
I would like to think so. To be honest, I have not been following this series as closely as I followed the previous one. I have been traveling quite a bit in the last couple of months and have not been able to examine the media coverage, both Indian and Pakistani, enough to give an unchallenged (although based on media reports only) report card on the Indian treatment of its Pakistani guests.
What I do know is that there were a couple of unpleasant incidents – something to do with stone-throwing at the bus carrying the Pakistani players and possibly another such odd incident.
In between, there was also the very significant event of the bus route between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar being opened. Just before it happened, some explosives were discovered on the route – a reminder of the magnitude of the task that lies ahead for both countries as they try to work towards a relationship that many with vested interests will do their utmost to sabotage.
It is a very tenuous relationship – as I mentioned in my “Thank You, Pakistan” article, fifty-five years of mistrust cannot be undone in a couple of months. Both governments are taking baby steps towards each other, aware that in today’s realpolitik and changed global equations, there is probably no other option. Yet both sides are equally cautious to commit to anything that may be seen as ground-yielding, such are the internal compulsions of both states. There are enough rabble-rousers on either side, with considerable clout amongst the masses, to topple or at the very least make uncomfortable any government seen as compromising on its hitherto hard stand on sensitive issues.
In this situation, considering the huge impact the media could make in the bridge-building process, one would look to them to play their part in promoting the common cause. But so far, the media, although it has not been particularly irresponsible, seems to have taken no more than a “wait-and-watch” approach. Perhaps it has been bitten by bitter experiences of the past.
Like I said, a very tenuous relationship – with loads of history.
It is for the politicians of both countries to make those major moves which they hope will open doors for better relations. Moves like cricket matches between the two countries. Moves like bus routes between the two countries. Moves like more trade between the two countries. Moves, which in today’s acronym-addicted world, are now officially referred to as “CBM” or “Confidence Building Measures”.
All of this makes sense to me and I support these moves one hundred percent. But, like I have said before, relationships are not built by governments – they are built by people. And, put it down to my impatience, I do not want to wait for the governments alone to build bridges. We, the people, are quite capable of building bridges on our own – if only we open our minds and hearts to doing so.
It is easier said than done. I understand the sensitivity of the issues involved. And the issues are far more serious than just a game of cricket. The main issue – the central issue – the “K” issue cannot be brushed off the table just because of a goodwill cricket series. The President of Pakistan quite rightly made this very clear.
For my part, I will approach the matter of Indo-Pak relations in the only manner that I can and in the manner that I believe will finally lead to people of both countries coming together.
I will not take stands or argue about history – for this will lead nowhere. It is for the politicians and the historians, on both sides, to attempt to explain and to justify whatever they seek to defend.
The only way I know to bring people together is to relate to them on a human level. Not on a level of state, religion, caste or creed. These help to form aggregations in society but, at the most primal level, everybody, wherever on earth he is born or lives, has the same emotions. Which mother does not grieve on the loss of her child ? Which child’s face does not light up when he or she is showered with love by the child’s parents ?
Is it not therefore much more logical to relate on a level of humanity than any man-made level, such as state ? After all a political boundary is nothing but a man-made demarcation on land – usually with a perfectly well-meaning objective of providing administrative ease but sometimes serving to separate societies rather than bringing them together.
There was this person who once spoke of a world without borders. I consider this a fascinating thought but am not convinced about its practicality. However, when such borders create societal splits, I cannot help wondering about what a world with borders is actually achieving.
These are random thoughts and must not be contextualized to the specifics of the India – Pakistan imbroglio. Border conflicts exist in many parts of the world and, next to religion, are the biggest reason for wars. Ironically, the ones who fight the wars and who have the most to lose are usually the ones on whose land the political lines have been drawn by governments sitting many miles away.
To many who read this, I may be coming across as naïve, wishful and theoretical. Somebody with nothing better to do than to blabber on meaningless matters. After all I have said nothing new here. But if all that I have said is so obvious, why is it so difficult to relate to people on a human level ? Why is it so difficult to accept people for what they are – as human beings first, and not as Indians or Pakistanis first ?
I am not suggesting that Indians or Pakistanis should not retain their national identity. If it gives them a sense of belonging, by all means they should. They should be proud of their country’s achievements and should not feel any embarrassment in wearing their country’s badge on their sleeve if they so wish.
However it would be immensely more valuable for humanity if we just took a step back and understood our core values and responsibilities as humans - and not as Indians or Pakistanis or whatever. We are privileged to be (or so I believe) among the more intelligent of species on this planet – and we would serve our cause better by forging relationships on a humanitarian level first. All forms of dichotomy, usually created and imposed by society (which by the way is also man-made), only come later.
For those, albeit a minority amongst the readers of this piece, to whom this article makes some sort of sense, I extend my friendship – to those who dismiss it as nonsense, I bear no malice. After all, it is just a dump of my thoughts and, as long as it harms nobody, I have no shame whatsoever in expressing my thoughts.
For these are values that I have carried all my life and have never had reason to doubt. I have often been accused of being a dreamer but when a dream is so close to your heart and you so badly want it to happen, I suppose you can be excused a degree of madness in its pursuit.
To me that dream has been one of India – Pakistan friendship. Today, thanks to technology, there is much more opportunity for Indians and Pakistanis to interact with each other. If that interaction helps a better understanding of each other and brings people together, that is a much stronger bond than the governments of both countries will ever be able to create.
That is all I hope from this article.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
From Adelaide to Bangalore
"Twenty-four hours after what was one of Indian cricket's lowest points in the last twenty-four years…" is how I planned to start this article/blog. But then, looking back, I realize, for me at least, this is not entirely true. Yes, Indian cricket hit a major low on the 28th of March 2005 but for those of us Indians to whom defeat to Pakistan is not the worst shame in the cricketing world, it was just another very bad, hugely forgettable day in the office for the Indian cricket team.
Don't get me wrong. It hurt – and it hurt real bad. If India, chasing 383, had gone gamely for the target and been bowled out for 350, Indians would still have been very disappointed, it would still have pained many diehard Indian fans. But there is pain - and there is anguish. The Indian performance yesterday evoked anguish and anger in equal measure to start with – and very soon anger overtook anguish as wave after wave of hostile public sentiment was targeted at the Indian players who would probably wish they could turn the clock back by twenty-four hours and start all over again.
If it was a forgettable day for Indian fans, it is not like they are going to be allowed to forget this day very easily. For years, Sharjah 86 and Chennai 99 were the Pakistani highlights in cricket talk against Indians. Now Bangalore 05 will join them and Indians will wince. Whatever trouble the Indian players on the field have negotiating the Pakistani bowling, their fans off it will have far more trouble fending off the jibes. Hopefully it is all in good taste and there will be a balance in opportunities to have a go at each other. That is what fan clubs are all about.
(For the record, though yesterday's defeat was painful for me, it does not even come close to the emptiness I felt when India, chasing 120 for an away series victory at Bridgetown, Barbados a few years ago, was shot out for 81. That was about as low as it got for me. True Chennai 99 hurt real bad because India had come so close to victory but Bridgetown 97 left me numb for a while).
What now ? Nothing.
There will be a huge hue and cry for a few days, a few heads may roll – or they may not, depending on whether this is indeed required to appease an angry public. There will be a few games played, the BCCI team (at least for now I do not want to call it the Indian team) will win a few, there will be some records created and all will be well again. Public memory is short if anything, and until the next Bangalore, life will be back to normal.
That has been the story of Indian cricket – and nobody should be surprised if the story plays itself out again. The first couple of games in the World Cup 2003 tournament invited tremendous public wrath against Indian players, they immediately put up a better showing and soon they were returning home as heroes for having made it to the final.
For every Bangalore, the Indian players manage to pull off, from time to time, an Adelaide. And the country goes ga-ga over them. So all I can say is, let's wait for the next Adelaide.
The danger with the Adelaides of the world is that you could very easily get carried away in the euphoria of the result. These games very easily lead you to draw misleading conclusions about the quality of the Indian side. After all, beating the Australians on their home soil is something other teams can usually only dream of. If India has actually done it, it must mean that they are a notch above the rest, that they are world-beaters, that they have excellence in all departments of the game.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you carefully analyse each of these Adelaides, Multans and Rawalpindis, you will find that, at the root of each of them, are either a few individual performances, or some moments of indiscretion on the part of the opposition, or helpful pitch conditions or some such aspect of the match that gave India the edge. It is rarely sheer hard work or brilliance sustained over the entire duration of the match that resulted in the victory. But, in the euphoria of the moment, we do not want to dampen the mood by analysis.
I do not, for one moment, want to downplay any of these wins. A win is a win and is something to be cherished. But when we ignore the underlying fabric and concentrate only on the silky sheen, we do grave injustice to ourselves because we are under-prepared when the silk is worn out and the ugly fabric stares at us, all exposed. We have to acknowledge the fabric for what it is and, even in "good times", fix it if we want to have a better chance of sustained success.
Fix it ? Easier said than done. In the corporate world, where shareholders elect the Board of Directors and have the right to change them if the results are not to their satisfaction, there is power in the hands of the shareholders (at least in theory). In the cricketing world, where the public neither elect the selection committee nor select the players, they can do little more than wringing their hands or banging their heads against a wall when the players put up a sorry performance. (The more frustrated and adventurous amongst the public may not stop at these hopeless gestures of failure but, tempting as it may be, any more drastic step is something that I would not be at liberty to recommend in this column).
This is where the problem therefore lies, to start with. There is only one team representing India – and therefore just one team on which the aspirations of millions are placed. The public lives and dies with these players' performances – but not for the players themselves, but for what they represent – Team India. This is very important – players come and go, but the public loyalty to Team India is much deeper and stronger than sentiment for any one individual. Each cricketer better get this clearly into his head - he is worshipped because he plays for Team India and brings glory for Team India. The day he stops doing this, he must be replaced for another player who can do the job better. The corporate world is ruthless in its pursuit of success and struggle for survival in a competitive world, there is no reason why the cricketing team representing the country and carrying the hopes of millions should be treated any different. On their part, the public should stop glorifying individual performances over the team cause.
Another point which the cricket establishment would do well to realize is that you can only pick the best from what you have. And if what you have is rotten or average, stop kidding yourself - you will never have a world-beating side. Again we can draw an analogy with the corporate world. The quality of its employees manifests itself in the results of the corporation. Many companies hire the best or ensure they have training programmes or even in-house educational institutes that act as a feed for employee development. There are a few cricket academies in India at the moment but, while they are probably doing creditable work, the tangible output (in terms of value for Team India) has not quite met the requirement. One Srinath or a Prasad, is, I am afraid, not good enough.
A third point to consider is performance-based compensation. I cannot help feeling (and maybe I am out of line here) that, barring a few exceptions, most Indian players are quite content with doing just enough to keep themselves in the squad. They do not seem to have the hunger to go all out to excel. This is possibly because, as long as they are in the squad, their revenue stream is assured and they are anyway well compensated through channels of income other than just their salary from the cricket board. This is a major dampener for the team performance and does great injustice to the fans who expect each player to give his best at all times. In corporate life, usually the terms of employment dictate that the employee shall not engage in any earning activity that may conflict with the interests of the employer or that may interfere with the ability of the employee to perform to the best of his ability.
I know this has been tried by the BCCI and has failed due to the power of the star players involved. But either the BCCI should consider re-inforcing this (and if a player refuses, well, he just cannot represent the BCCI or Team India) or the BCCI should make its player compensations so attractive as to make it worth the player's while to stick with BCCI. This is probably not going to fly (since it involves commercial considerations and market forces) but, instead of concentrating on the process, the BCCI can easily concentrate on the output. If the BCCI raises its performance bar much higher than it is at the moment, players will automatically need to deliver more to be part of Team India and since it is their currency with Team India that makes them attractive for product sponsors, it will automatically require them to push themselves to perform better.
So, if all this is in place, will we see a better performing Team India ? I believe much more is required than just this. All this will help but the fire burning in your stomach that makes you push yourself is something that cannot be educated or trained into an individual – either you have it or you don't.
Till we have our underlying structure in place, we will just bumble and stumble along –with a Bangalore to match every Adelaide, and more positively spoken, with an Adelaide to match every Bangalore.
Until the next Adelaide.
Yours,
Raja Swaminathan
Don't get me wrong. It hurt – and it hurt real bad. If India, chasing 383, had gone gamely for the target and been bowled out for 350, Indians would still have been very disappointed, it would still have pained many diehard Indian fans. But there is pain - and there is anguish. The Indian performance yesterday evoked anguish and anger in equal measure to start with – and very soon anger overtook anguish as wave after wave of hostile public sentiment was targeted at the Indian players who would probably wish they could turn the clock back by twenty-four hours and start all over again.
If it was a forgettable day for Indian fans, it is not like they are going to be allowed to forget this day very easily. For years, Sharjah 86 and Chennai 99 were the Pakistani highlights in cricket talk against Indians. Now Bangalore 05 will join them and Indians will wince. Whatever trouble the Indian players on the field have negotiating the Pakistani bowling, their fans off it will have far more trouble fending off the jibes. Hopefully it is all in good taste and there will be a balance in opportunities to have a go at each other. That is what fan clubs are all about.
(For the record, though yesterday's defeat was painful for me, it does not even come close to the emptiness I felt when India, chasing 120 for an away series victory at Bridgetown, Barbados a few years ago, was shot out for 81. That was about as low as it got for me. True Chennai 99 hurt real bad because India had come so close to victory but Bridgetown 97 left me numb for a while).
What now ? Nothing.
There will be a huge hue and cry for a few days, a few heads may roll – or they may not, depending on whether this is indeed required to appease an angry public. There will be a few games played, the BCCI team (at least for now I do not want to call it the Indian team) will win a few, there will be some records created and all will be well again. Public memory is short if anything, and until the next Bangalore, life will be back to normal.
That has been the story of Indian cricket – and nobody should be surprised if the story plays itself out again. The first couple of games in the World Cup 2003 tournament invited tremendous public wrath against Indian players, they immediately put up a better showing and soon they were returning home as heroes for having made it to the final.
For every Bangalore, the Indian players manage to pull off, from time to time, an Adelaide. And the country goes ga-ga over them. So all I can say is, let's wait for the next Adelaide.
The danger with the Adelaides of the world is that you could very easily get carried away in the euphoria of the result. These games very easily lead you to draw misleading conclusions about the quality of the Indian side. After all, beating the Australians on their home soil is something other teams can usually only dream of. If India has actually done it, it must mean that they are a notch above the rest, that they are world-beaters, that they have excellence in all departments of the game.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you carefully analyse each of these Adelaides, Multans and Rawalpindis, you will find that, at the root of each of them, are either a few individual performances, or some moments of indiscretion on the part of the opposition, or helpful pitch conditions or some such aspect of the match that gave India the edge. It is rarely sheer hard work or brilliance sustained over the entire duration of the match that resulted in the victory. But, in the euphoria of the moment, we do not want to dampen the mood by analysis.
I do not, for one moment, want to downplay any of these wins. A win is a win and is something to be cherished. But when we ignore the underlying fabric and concentrate only on the silky sheen, we do grave injustice to ourselves because we are under-prepared when the silk is worn out and the ugly fabric stares at us, all exposed. We have to acknowledge the fabric for what it is and, even in "good times", fix it if we want to have a better chance of sustained success.
Fix it ? Easier said than done. In the corporate world, where shareholders elect the Board of Directors and have the right to change them if the results are not to their satisfaction, there is power in the hands of the shareholders (at least in theory). In the cricketing world, where the public neither elect the selection committee nor select the players, they can do little more than wringing their hands or banging their heads against a wall when the players put up a sorry performance. (The more frustrated and adventurous amongst the public may not stop at these hopeless gestures of failure but, tempting as it may be, any more drastic step is something that I would not be at liberty to recommend in this column).
This is where the problem therefore lies, to start with. There is only one team representing India – and therefore just one team on which the aspirations of millions are placed. The public lives and dies with these players' performances – but not for the players themselves, but for what they represent – Team India. This is very important – players come and go, but the public loyalty to Team India is much deeper and stronger than sentiment for any one individual. Each cricketer better get this clearly into his head - he is worshipped because he plays for Team India and brings glory for Team India. The day he stops doing this, he must be replaced for another player who can do the job better. The corporate world is ruthless in its pursuit of success and struggle for survival in a competitive world, there is no reason why the cricketing team representing the country and carrying the hopes of millions should be treated any different. On their part, the public should stop glorifying individual performances over the team cause.
Another point which the cricket establishment would do well to realize is that you can only pick the best from what you have. And if what you have is rotten or average, stop kidding yourself - you will never have a world-beating side. Again we can draw an analogy with the corporate world. The quality of its employees manifests itself in the results of the corporation. Many companies hire the best or ensure they have training programmes or even in-house educational institutes that act as a feed for employee development. There are a few cricket academies in India at the moment but, while they are probably doing creditable work, the tangible output (in terms of value for Team India) has not quite met the requirement. One Srinath or a Prasad, is, I am afraid, not good enough.
A third point to consider is performance-based compensation. I cannot help feeling (and maybe I am out of line here) that, barring a few exceptions, most Indian players are quite content with doing just enough to keep themselves in the squad. They do not seem to have the hunger to go all out to excel. This is possibly because, as long as they are in the squad, their revenue stream is assured and they are anyway well compensated through channels of income other than just their salary from the cricket board. This is a major dampener for the team performance and does great injustice to the fans who expect each player to give his best at all times. In corporate life, usually the terms of employment dictate that the employee shall not engage in any earning activity that may conflict with the interests of the employer or that may interfere with the ability of the employee to perform to the best of his ability.
I know this has been tried by the BCCI and has failed due to the power of the star players involved. But either the BCCI should consider re-inforcing this (and if a player refuses, well, he just cannot represent the BCCI or Team India) or the BCCI should make its player compensations so attractive as to make it worth the player's while to stick with BCCI. This is probably not going to fly (since it involves commercial considerations and market forces) but, instead of concentrating on the process, the BCCI can easily concentrate on the output. If the BCCI raises its performance bar much higher than it is at the moment, players will automatically need to deliver more to be part of Team India and since it is their currency with Team India that makes them attractive for product sponsors, it will automatically require them to push themselves to perform better.
So, if all this is in place, will we see a better performing Team India ? I believe much more is required than just this. All this will help but the fire burning in your stomach that makes you push yourself is something that cannot be educated or trained into an individual – either you have it or you don't.
Till we have our underlying structure in place, we will just bumble and stumble along –with a Bangalore to match every Adelaide, and more positively spoken, with an Adelaide to match every Bangalore.
Until the next Adelaide.
Yours,
Raja Swaminathan
Labels:
cricket
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
