If the media is to be believed, Greg Chappell has been milking India’s recent success (3-1 v WI followed by 2-1 v SL) to score much needed brownie points about his performance and about strategies followed by the team management and selection committee. Recent comments about Sourav Ganguly’s return and now this effort about Sehwag, all serve to embellish the Guru Greg image. The Sehwag story is a bit iffy though, because Chappell’s quote to me sounded more like thinly veiled exasperation at Virendra Sehwag’s stubborn resistance to common sense, compounded no doubt by the embattled batsman’s mind numbingly ridiculous dismissal at Vizag. Chappell said “something seems to have worked” and also said that “Sehwag was used in the middle order as cover for Yuvraj Singh”, and Rediff some how turned this into a “motivational ploy”!! Sometimes i wonder what the questions are like in these press conference – i mean, did they actually ask him “Why did Sehwag score runs?”!
Chappell’s detailed explanation about his methods is being interpreted by the press according to the press’s image of Chappell, and Chappell’s legacy will be defined by one thing and one thing only – Chappell v Ganguly. This sadly one eyed view shows absolute contempt for the position and role of the coach in life of a cricket team. If we can not grant people in positions of responsibility the basic courtesy of not questioning their motives every step of the way, then we dare not expect anything other than mediocrity. In this case, we find a very good cricket team and yet, i cannot help feel that we in India can learn so much more from cricket and Indian Cricket than we are today.
For Chappell, the only way he can “retrieve” the damage caused by the Ganguly issue (and this has nothing to do with Ganguly, but has everything to do with the fact that the purveyors of public opinion still continue to fuels old fires simply because it sounds smart to pummel someone with contempt. Ganguly himself has come to terms with the fact that the decision to sack him was the right one. Without this realization he would never had regained the clarity of thought which has been apparent in his recent cricket), is by winning the World Cup.
The sad thing is that should India win, the adulation, well meant as it will be, will still be rooted in hollow ignorance, and when the next coach comes along and the next selection committee comes along and deals with the next Ganguly, we will have a rerun of 2005. The cricket press has no responsibility and is answerable to no one and that is how it should be. It does have a responsibility to desist from caricaturizing every subject. Cricket is trivial in the larger scheme of things. Why then can’t we be decent where nothing is at stake?
Only then will we be spared binary positions “Oh X is out to get Y” and “Oh X is justifying things with 20-20 hindsight, who does he think he’s fooling” – neither position has anything to do with actual events and actual opinions expressed by any of the protagonists.
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