Let146;s go back to the pavilion

The flawed view from Kotla8217;s Hill B sums up what8217;s wrong with Indian cricket

The view from Hill B of Ferozeshah Kotla on Tuesday morning was hazy. Half the field was all this writer could see; the batting strip was just about visible, the scoreboard decidedly not. And that was before the umpires called play. When the match did get under way, the front and side view was blocked by people; they were standing everywhere, in the rows, in the aisles. Within half-an-hour, the aisles were blocked as people from the rear seats tried to get some view of the ground. A serious safety issue, though the policemen milling around didn8217;t seem to care. And it was all because of a simple design flaw: the shamiana covering Hill B was too low.

A small point that could easily have been rectified but wasn8217;t. Maybe the officials in charge were too busy dressing up for their 15 minutes of fame on the post-match awards dais. Yet the flawed view from Hill B 8212; a prime section of a stadium rebuilt on ideas far ahead of their time 8212; sums up what is wrong with Indian cricket these days: too much money coming in too fast, with little thought for the public.

Almost every day brings with it the announcement of another mega-deal by the BCCI worth crores of rupees. After a while the figures stop making sense, they verge on the unreal. Yet what has the 612 million TV deal meant for Indian viewers? The cable channel that is telecasting the cricket doesn8217;t have an analysis show so we revert to Doordarshan. The commentary team comprises four Englishmen one of whom has played 1 Test and 0 ODIs here and three Indians 8212; and it doesn8217;t include the best Indian commentators.

Much has been said about developing the game. Admittedly, it8217;s been just four-odd months since the new regime came to power but so far the balance sheet has been all about income, little of expenditure. One of the decisions taken at the new board8217;s first working committee meeting on December 4 was to set up a cricket development committee. Great idea, with the likes of Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Hanumant Singh and Dilip Vengsarkar on board. The panel has not met even once.

Mention the million-dollar deals to those at the National Cricket Academy, the supposed nursery of Indian cricket, and they8217;ll laugh you off the pitch. When this paper8217;s reporter visited it earlier this month, an Under-22 camp was in progress. Coach Venkatesh Prasad was doubling up as film producer, directing two clerks who were holding the video cameras and recording batting and bowling actions. The lone computer analyst was swamped with data from a hundred different budding Dravids and Pathans. This is how the BCCI is developing its future.

Maybe it8217;s time for the courts to step in once again, and rescue the game. It did so recently in Delhi, directing the Delhi and District Cricket Association to curb the shameful practice of 8220;complimentaries8221; and release more tickets for sale to the general public. That was how 8,000 more tickets were sold for Tuesday8217;s ODI.

There8217;s another reason why more tickets should be sold: it cuts down on the kind of loutish behaviour witnessed at Wankhede Stadium during the recent Test match. Sachin Tendulkar was booed, Andrew Flintoff abused 8212; both times the guilty were in the members8217; stand, filled with 8220;complimentaries8221;. Those who8217;d queued up to buy their tickets knew the basic tenets of sporting behaviour.

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In a sense, it8217;s reminiscent of English football back in the late 1980s, the sport8217;s darkest days. Hooliganism was rampant, and added to that was the real threat to crowd safety. Stadiums were ramshackle, holding far more than they were supposed to; most tickets were for standing room only. A disaster was waiting to happen. That disaster happened in April 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans were killed in a crush at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. There was no hooliganism or riot; it was just too many people, too little crowd management. That8217;s when the Thatcher government stepped in and set up an inquiry under Lord Justice Taylor.

His report, submitted within a month, recommended sweeping changes to English football. One of them was that all stadiums in England and Scotland should be all-seater. It was a bitter 8212; and expensive 8212; pill for the clubs, who had to revamp the stadiums at their own cost. Today, football in England is once again a family affair, stadiums are far more comfortable and, though rising ticket prices are an issue, crowd violence is not.

That is an extreme case but the principle is the same: some good planning, some foresight and a lot of concern for the public8217;s needs can revitalise cricket. It isn8217;t all about million-dollar TV deals and logos on shirts; it8217;s about people. And those who pay matter just as much as those who play.