It's all so sad and sickening. The coach's six-page e-mail indictment of our captain, the latter's alleged reaction casting a stigma on the former's character, the Cricket Board's indifference to the immediacy of the crisis and instead preferring politicking at its AGM, a high court first appointing one retired judge to 'observe' the AGM election and then appointing two more such observers only to withdraw them 24 hours later -- all these are symptoms of a terrible sickness afflicting Indian cricket at the moment.
When a serious malady of the kind coach Chappell has diagnosed in captain Ganguly is suddenly brought to light, the first immediate thing the family seniors do is to ask for proof: results of all pathological and psychological tests on the patient. A second or a third opinion comes later. What our Cricket Board has done instead is resorting to a typically bureaucratic exercise that Parkinson so famously ridiculed: appointment of a committee. Our Board has nominated a 'high-powered' committee to look into Chappell's diagnosis which the Board has so astonishingly dubbed as 'a complaint.'
Good lord, what Chappell has done is not to lodge a 'complaint' about what's become his headache or stomach ache, but spelled out the prevalence of an infectious disease that could paralyse the Indian team's very survival in the World Cup two years hence. What he's done is to write out a dark prognosis.
And see the 'urgency' displayed on it by our Cricket Board. Instead of acting on it without any further ado whatsoever, the Board has left it to be examined by a high-powered committee's meeting convened for Tuesday, September 27 --- a good four days after Chappell's e-mail landed in the in-box of the Board's president. The 'scoops', the views and interviews spread in those four days by the news-hungry, cricket-crazy media may well spill a lot of bad blood, doing no good to the patient, the diagnostician and all friends and well-wishers of Indian cricket.
The composition of the 'high-powered' committee itself is intriguing. Two of its members are ex-Test cricketers, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, who, as contracted commentators for a sports television channel, have traveled with Ganguly & Co. times without number, but never seem to have spotted in their telecasts the slightest of the inadequacies now pinpointed out by Chappell who has been in the coach's seat for only a little while. Will those two sitting in the 'in camera' committee now bare the truth they never even hinted about to the millions of television watchers?
Three other committee members are administrators. Ranbir Singh Mahendra, the presiding president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, the Board's patron saint, and Board Secretary S K Nair, the errand boy, are just not equipped to validate or reject Chappell's assessment of the ailment. S Venkataraghavan, another ex-Test captain as well as a former Test umpire accredited with ICC, never stood in the middle when Ganguly was playing; he's known to be a no-holds-barred man but what personal input can he provide to assess Chappell's patient?
What the Board should have really done is to immediately summon Chappell along with his team physiotherapist, trainer, psychologist and the administrative managers of our teams that recently toured abroad with him, and told him to prove his diagnosis, point by point, before the Board's Selection Committee and Disciplinary Committee. Ganguly should have been asked to be present there and allowed cross-examination of the evidence presented. The jury's verdict would have been easy and quick. Punishment, too, could have been swift --- to one or the other of the parties.
Clearly, the Cricket Board has blundered yet again --- as it has done so often in the past since the time when the princes ruled the roast there and when a joker maharaja captained the Indian team instead of the colossus called Colonel C K Nayudu.
Yes, old ghosts have visited our Cricket Board once again. And this will happen again and again, beware, as long as a strong, committed Cricketers' Association doesn't gear itself for a veritable mutiny against those who run our cricket for little else besides power, pelf and prestige.
It's a small consolation that there still is one shining star in this pitch-dark scenario. This star respects even the waning moon that's stood above it so long. 'He has done a lot for the team, something which I couldn't have done when we were in the rebuilding process' is the beacon of a comment, where the 'He' is for Ganguly, and the 'star' is for Rahul Dravid -- 'The Wall who has always been so very clean and conscientious, on and off the field.
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