Cricket first

There are two ways of looking at the cricket circus on Tuesday 8212; a bewildering mess of a day when 8216;8216;breaking news8217;8217;...

There are two ways of looking at the cricket circus on Tuesday 8212; a bewildering mess of a day when 8216;8216;breaking news8217;8217; on some television channels included such gems as 8216;8216;Chappell leaves for the meeting8217;8217;. First, it would be easy to criticise the farcical press conference in the evening, the opaque ways of the BCCI, the implication that it was somehow the media that was to blame and all was actually well in the team. The trouble with raising such issues is not that they are not valid, but that they miss the big picture: the composition of the Indian team. That is why the one unambiguous statement BCCI president Ranbir Singh Mahendra made at his media interaction 8212; that 8216;8216;performance8217;8217; was the only criterion for selection 8212; should be iterated, emphasised and, eventually, held up as a self-declared commandment the Board must obey. In the case of the Indian team, it would boil down to the single, compelling question: does Sourav Ganguly deserve a place in this side? The answer, given his recent performance, is an unequivocal 8216;8216;no8217;8217;. Everything else is secondary.

The problem with India8217;s ever expanding basket of cricket controversies is that it comprises a whole variety of sub-issues. There is the team itself: a captain who has lost his moral authority, a playing XI that is divided, a coach who doesn8217;t seem to be able to tell a minefield from a jogging track. Next is the messy matter of the Board election: Jagmohan Dalmiya versus Sharad Pawar, both sides backed by politicians, bigwigs and busybodies. Finally come the lucrative telecast rights 8212; the BCCI8217;s flagship commercial property, eyed by sportscasters and Board factions with which they are aligned.

It is important to discriminate and distinguish between these issues. Cricket politics, sad and unfortunate as it is, is a fact of life. Its benchmarks are set by its practitioners. The rules of cricket team selection are, however, more generally accepted 8212; derived from empirical phenomena such as form, fitness, averages and commitment. As such, it is of paramount importance to insulate team selection from Board politics, regional compacts and plain favouritism. Should they choose to reflect on it, cricket administrators will detect a degree of enlightened self-interest here: if they select a quality team and enable it to do well, it keeps the Board and its politicians in business. For India8217;s sake, if not merely the BCCI8217;s, then, Ganguly needs to be escorted back to the pavilion.