GUY walks into a bookshop. "I'm looking for a book titled 'Man, the Master of Woman!'," he tells the store chap. "Look under Fiction", comes the terse reply. Some day soon, I foresee similar conversations in newsrooms across the country. "Lele has given a press conference, it's on the wires," goes young eager sub. "Comics page, we are a cartoon strip short anyway," says the news editor.
Well, I mean to say, why not? The pronouncements of the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India are certainly not illuminative, so where's the harm in deriving, at the very least, amusement out of them? His "briefing" last Tuesday is a classic example. "The four stars, Sachin, Jadeja, Robin Singh and Anil Kumble, will NOT go to Toronto!" says the man. When told that their tickets have already been booked, Lele with archetypal belligerence says, "Who says? Show me the tickets!"
Poor man, how was he to know that his own president, Raj Singh Dungarpur, would give him the lie, the selfsame day? For over two years now Lele, both feet firmly in mouth, has navigated the complex waters of Indian cricket in a style future secretaries are going to find impossible to match. And nowhere has the damage been as apparent as in the Commonwealth Games vs Sahara Cup fiasco.
Let's gloss lightly over the fact that such a mixup in schedule should never have happened. The BCCI has a tours committee, convened by none other than Lele himself. By definition, the committee's job is to ensure the smooth scheduling of India's cricketing engagements. The Sahara Cup dates were fixed over three years ago. The Commonwealth Games schedule, similarly, has been common knowledge for years. So how a tours committee managed to book the same team to play in two different venues at the same time is, well, a question best left unasked.
Having messed up, Lele then went into overdrive. And put into operation what can only be described as the Scarlett O'Hara school of problem-solving: "Tomorrow is another day", maybe the problem will go away! Thus, though the media had been writing about the impending imbroglio since January, the board, and its secretary, blithely assured us that the problem would be solved "in time". Came the time, and nary a solution in sight. At which point, Lele went into earthworm mode—frenetic wriggling, powered by the hope that he could somehow slip off the hook he found himself on. Examples abound of his wriggles, but one will suffice: "We have sent an urgent fax to the ICC, and are waiting to hear if the Kuala Lumpur games are full-fledged internationals," said our hon'ble secretary, way past the Indian Olympic Association deadline for naming the Games-bound team.
Never mind that the ICC president was merely a phone call away, if he really did need the clarification, it should have been sought as soon as cricket was included in the schedule. The point is, even his friendly neighbourhood paanwallah could have told Lele that the cricket matches at the Games could not be full-fledged ODIs, simply because nations like Canada, Antigua, Jamaica, et al had not been given full international status. If Timbuctoo plays Tiru-chirapalli, is that a full-fledged ODI? No, and no one—least of all, Lele—needs a David Richards to tell him this. That was an exercise in time-buying, pure and simple: "Tomorrow is another day", remember?
If, thus far, the tone of this piece has been flip, it is on the "laugh that I may not weep" theory—for if you look at the events of the last month-and-a-half, you find that the damage to Indian cricket has been extensive, and inexcusable.
A team that couldn't seem to stop winning is, at the time of writing this, out of the Commonwealth Games, and poised to lose the Sahara Cup it won last year. When, for a while last year, the team seemed to be losing every other match it played, pundits spoke of how defeat, like victory, is habit-forming. Today, thanks to the board and its bungling, that habit is well on the way to being re-acquired.
The entire problem could have been solved, right at the outset, had the BCCI merely announced that it planned to take the Sahara Cup seriously, given its signed commitment for five years, to send a full team to Toronto, and a second string to Kuala Lumpur. After all, England, the originator of the Commonwealth, wasn't even sending a team. South Africa, Pakistan and World Cup holders Sri Lanka were sending second strings. Much has been made of Australia sending a first team—but no one is under the illusion that the Waugh brothers and other frontline players would not have made it to the Games, had it not been off season Down Under.
But what, you ask, of the IOA and its insistence that only the best team should be sent? Well, what of it? Just who died, and made the IOA god? The board merely had to tell the IOA that a second string team was all it would send, and if the IOA didn't like it, it could damn well lump it. For what is the very worst the IOA could have done? Scratched India's entry? So?
What the IOA saw, and went after, was not collective glory, but five minutes of individual fame. The last time Suresh Kalmadi, now IOA president, grabbed headlines was during the general elections—when a certain B. Thackeray referred to him as "beggar in a Mercedes Benz". Here, he saw an opportunity for media briefin-gs, for TV coverage—and cynically, he grabbed it. Perfectly natural, if reprehensible—after all, a politician who shuns the spotlight would be a contradiction in terms. The real tragedy was Lele rose to the bait(s) that Kalmadi threw.
The Indian team, harangued Kalmadi, would only march under the IOA banner. A complete non-issue—as per the protocol that surrounds such international meets, the banner flown is ALWAYS that of the national Olympic body. Lele could have let that one go outside off stump—but typically, he bungled, insisted that India would march only under the BCCI flag and, having given Kalmadi more opportunities for rabble-rousing, ended up backtracking.
Statement from Kalmadi, riposte followed by retraction from Lele—that, in sum, has been the story.
THE most ridiculous aspect of it all was Kalmadi's attempt to secure the moral high ground, to reduce the issue to a question of cash versus country, to introduce 'patriotism' as an issue. I mean, I am as patriotic as the next man. I listen—and when the volume is on full, the entire neighbourhood listens—to A.R. Rehman sing Vande Mataram. But that does not stop me from hiring a CA to see how best I can reduce my tax burden.
Tax BURDEN. It is an adjective all of us—even the Finance Minister, in his budget presentation—use. It is an adjective that puts our 'patriotism' in perspective—paying tax, in other words, supporting our country, putting our money where our mouth is, is a BURDEN. We are perfectly prepared to salute the flag, to stand in line for tickets for the next Manoj Kumar epic. But patriotism stops where the pocketbook begins—that's basic human nature, and cricketers are nothing if not basic human beings.
Trouble is, the BCCI—in the person of the ubiquitous Lele—fell for it. The 'patriotism' bait was another one Lele could have left, as being outside off stump. Instead, he responded with stirring words that Indian cricketers needed no lessons in patriotism. With that statement, he painted himself and the board into the tightest of corners.
Kalmadi, who was obviously enjoying his newfound ability to make the BCCI dance to his tune, then took off on sponsors' logos, insisting that the team could not wear them. Lele, without a moment's pause for thought, said the team would indeed wear the Wills logo, since they were professionals. Ooops!
Barely hours after that statement, Lele was issuing the mandatory retraction—once it was pointed out to him that Indian cricketers are not registered as professionals with income tax authorities, and that any attempt to so characterise them could land the lot in trouble. Thus it went on. Continuously buffeted by the Kalmadi statements, continually embarrassed by the Lele blunders, the board fina-lly capitulated, and dreamt up the "two strong teams" theory. At the post-selection press briefing in Chennai, Lele assured us with the straightest of faces that the two teams were picked purely on merit. Chairman of selectors Kishen Rungta, asked specifically when it was decided Sachin would go to Kuala Lumpur, said, "We took ALL decisions just now, in the selection committee meeting."
Did he, just! As early as the previous evening, everyone in the Indian team knew Sachin, Jadeja and two other stars were bound for KL. And what the team knew, we members of the media knew, too. So much for the decision having been taken during the meeting. The fact that Sachin and Jadeja among others would go to KL was a foregone conclusion ever since Kalmadi and Dungarpur met for a "friendly, informal" dinner the night before team selection.
The team to KL performed well below par. They were obviously disinterested. And in the crucial game against Australia, if the side did not actively throw the game, it did its very best to keep from winning it. Witness the sudden change in tactics when, with Australia 84/5 and Kumble in assassin mode backed up by a ring of three round the bat, captain Jadeja suddenly decided to push the field back, to "save Kumble for the end overs". Richie Benaud best described the field placing: "Mid off, which till now was saving the single, has now been pushed to long off to GIVE the single." The Indians gave. The Aussies took. And the conclusion was foregone.
I don't blame them—not this time. Not when the board shredded collective morale to shreds with consistent bungling. Not when the politicians did their very best to mess with their minds. One instance—that of the logos—suffices to illustrate the latter. Kalmadi made a fuss about the Indians not sporting the sponsor logos, right? So where was Kalmadi when, for instance, the Indian badminton team sported their sponsors' logos on their T-shirts? When, further, the team, having won a medal, hastily donned the logos of Indian Oil and BPCL on their Ts before the presentation, to ensure added mileage for the sponsors?
The cricket team in KL was already smarting, and why not? I mean, if you are asked to do something, for free, for the country, you and I would gladly do it. But if you then find that someone else is being asked to do the same thing, and is being paid for it, then the fine edge of our enthusiasm would nosedive—that's what happened here. Meanwhile, it was left to Lele to make the supreme bungle. First came the statement that the four stars were NOT going to Toronto. Then came the contradiction. The result—Sachin, for one, got the impression he was not going, and took off to Lonavla. Late last Friday, the board said the Indian star had been "traced" and would take the next possible flight to Toronto. So, a day has been wasted—and that day will make the difference between Sachin getting there with a day to spare to acclimatise, and his getting there the morning of the game, jet lagged out of his mind.
This latest bungle is, more than any other, indicative of the danger of having, at the helm, a man unaware of even the most basic rules of the game. The board, blithely, prepared to send four stars to Toronto—apparently, in that august body, no one was aware that once you submit a team list, it cannot be changed except in the event of injury to a player, and even then, only with the consent of the opposing side and of the match referee.
Bottomline? Simple. Two "equally strong teams" go down to two equally demoralising defeats. Actually, I am writing this on Friday, a day before the fourth Sahara Cup encounter—but after watching the first three games in Toronto, I would stake my bottom dollar on the assessment that what this team needs to retain the Sahara Cup they won last year is not Sachin Tendulkar, but Santa Claus.
And once the trophy is won and lost, the pundits will sit down to analyse and trot out reasons for the debacle. Make that twin debacles. And nowhere, in all that punditry, will there be a mention of the fact that the game was really won and lost not on the cricket field, but in the offices of the president and secretary of BCCI. Therein lies the essential tragedy of Indian cricket—if we win, as we have in the recent past, it is DESPITE the system, not BECAUSE of it. Come to think of it, isn't that true of Indian sport in general?
(The writer is Associate Editor, Rediff On The Net, www.rediff.com)
