India lost the Sri Lanka on March 23rd. If you read the newspapers on 24, 25, 26, and haven’t read anything since, you might have been forgiven for believing that India’s squad of 15 players to the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies were history. Everybody from the President of the Board to former cricketers, to the shrill television networks to the general public seemed to have decided that Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell would have to go. Dravid was unable to inspire, unimaginative and incapable of tactical leaps of faith – in comparison, stated, implied or unstated, to Sourav Ganguly. Greg Chappell was a “poor man manager”, who’s sole contribution in this 18 months as the India coach, in return for the princely sum of 175,000 dollars a year, had been to sow the seeds of dissent and get rid of Ganguly. Dilip Vengsarkar and Greg Chappell disagreed about the selection of the squad to the World Cup it now appears. Something one would expect at the best of times – but not in those mad days. Every statement, every report was strained. Every reporter, and every news presenter personalized the defeat – Indias loss was his loss – a matter of dishonor and shame. Even my blog, with its modest readership recieved a response making some bizarre references to the British Empire, bangles and dishonor and docility.
Another weekend has passed and like the Woolmer murder fading into the obscure small print of the inner pages of the newspaper, the outrage seems to have subsided. Some of the India players are preparing for the first ever 20-20 tournament to be held in post-Dalmiya Eden Gardens. Ajit Wadekar, Sharad Pawar and Niranjan Shah have all made conciliatory noises – Shah went so far as to call Dravid “one of the most astute captains!”
The point here is to gauge the reaction to the performance and not the performance. What Niranjan Shah or Ajit Wadekar or Sharad Pawar say about the Indian side does not in any ways influence or reflect the reality of the Indian team. These players are still as good as they were just before they went to the West Indies. What of the “fans” though? The hollowness of the interest in the sport has been exposed. Nobody in India seems to care about the World Cup – Mandira Bedi has been reduced to being just one of the many faces of TV from being the noodle-strapped diva in India. Indian Express has reduced the number of pages dedicated to the World Cup, and even those pages carry stories about events in Pakistan and India rather than on events in the West Indies. The actual interest in Cricket is minimal. Sponsors have withdrawn from deals with India players. Like sea water receding at low tide, exposing to the world the rejects of the sea at Juhu beach, India has receded from the World Cup, with Cricketers and Cricket lying abused and battered – rejected. Like the tide though, it is only a question of waiting for the next high tide for India’s cricketers. Already though, the madness has given way to a realization that solution to the problems lie in Cricket.
It is here that i disagree. It is my contention that the below par performance had to do with perception amongst the Indian players – a perception driven by the “fans” and proved correct by these same “fans” after the adverse results, that this was more than a sporting contest. Before quotes from Shankly and Lombardi get thrown at me, let me point out that it is one thing for Shankly and Lombardi so say that “Sport is not a matter of life and death, it is far more important than that”, it is quite another for a figurative billion to embody it in absentia. Never before have a more unsporting group demanded such sporting excellence. May be it wasn’t sporting excellence they wanted – may be all they wanted to see was victory and the satiation of some chauvinistic honor.
I still remember – on 15th February 2003, Sehwag and Ganguly got out chasing wide ones against Australia and India collapsed to 126 all out. They were panned for playing poor shots – and conventional wisdom suggested that they these were indeed “bad shots” – never mind that thats how Ganguly and Sehwag tend to play. The very next day, Herschelle Gibbs made 143 against New Zealand and got or missed the inside or outside edge to similar wafts no less than 8 times in the first 15 overs of the South African innings there. Sometimes, the difference between and failure can be the width of the edge of a cricket bat. When India were bowled out for 42 in the second innings at Lord’s against Chris Old and Geoff Arnold in 1974, Sunil Gavaskar explained it very simply – the top 5 batsmen got 5 very good balls and the tail wasn’t very good with the bat in any case.
An appreciation of sport requires an appreciation that such uncertainties are likely. An appreciation of these uncertainties is what drives individuals genuinely interested in Cricket to watch South Africa v England with as much interest as they would watch India v New Zealand. It is what stops viewers from being abusive towards sportsmen. Sadly though, ex-cricketers, with a few stray exceptions, have shown themselves to be from the same hackneyed mould. So have Cricket administrators.
With the result that the the Indian public, ex-cricketers and the Cricket administrators (with the few stray exceptions) have made a fool of themselves in the last 8-9 days of March. The lack of interest in Cricket has been exposed. Surplus chauvinism has been to the fore. TV Channels have been quick on the take – the more outrageous the demonstration, the more prominent the coverage. The more pointed a quote, the more obscure the source.
Sport is supposed to be one of the few Win-Win propositions in the world. Yet, we in India have contrived to turn it into a Lose-Lose one. We have shown that we are quick to condemn – there by showing that we are unworthy of our cricketers. If we do hang on to them, it will be our good fortune. The BCCI has done very well to give the players some breathing space before calling them on April 6th.
Whatever the Cricket board decides, we will have reason only to be sorry – whichever way the decision goes with regard to the Coach and the Captain.
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