Wanted: Image makeover for Indian sports

The wickets at Wankhede and Chepauk have been a shame, to put it mildly. And of course, no lessons have been learnt from earlier doping scandals, some only a few months ago at Manchester Commonwealth Games.

The wickets, we are told, needed a bit more time to settle down. In the hapless runner’s case the reasons have been even more varied — one version attributed it to the poor genetic liver history of her family; the other to her personal biological cycles and another even to biased testing. Why would anyone want to single out an Indian girl is beyond anyone’s comprehension.

This season was touted to be the beginning of a new era in Indian cricket. For long it has been lamented that the turners at home do not prepare our teams for contests abroad.

A pitches’ committee was set up to collaborate with the New Zealand Turf Sports Institute to produce sporty and bouncy wickets.

The West Indian cricket team came here in the hope of feasting on these sporty wickets, which would allow an interesting and fair contests. What they have got so far has been worse than what any visiting side before them has had to live up with.

The Wankhede and Chepauk wickets have surpassed the speed with which their predecessors cracked and crumbled. Within a span of just six deliveries Srinath had left his run up nicely marked all the way up to the bowling crease at the Chepauk Square.

The official reasons for the bad wickets go something like this. The monsoons came in July (when do they come otherwise?) and disrupted the laying process, not enough time was available for bonding separate layers and finally not enough time was left for rolling and cross rolling as the matches had to start.

Did the BCCI know or did it not that the series against West Indies started in early October?

The attempt to answer the constant lament about lack of quality sporty wickets has turned a bit farcical due to poor planning.

The BCCI’s pitches committee, under veteran G Kasturi Rangan, met only in mid-May and the New Zealand company started the work only by July-end. The multi-layering process finished in the second half of September, as the job is known to take 60 days.

It is also known that the turf has to be rolled and cross-rolled for another six to eight weeks for it to be ready for competitive cricket. The Wankhede and Chepauk wickets would have been ready by early November.

In this case matches at these venues should have been played later. Maybe, the Tests could have been scheduled after the one-day series. The two teams surely couldn’t have complained as they were after all coming into this series from a one-day competition — Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka. Even simpler would have been to start the work in April instead of July.

Likewise, the solution for the doping fiasco lies in not coming up with excuses and explanations but tackling the issue headlong. It would be very naive to assume that urine samples of Indian athletes get tampered or that unknown banned substances find their way into the system by consumption of Liv-52 tablets or medicines to prevent menstrual cramps.

Something is wrong somewhere. Instead of coming up with a fresh set of excuses each time our athletes get caught, why don’t we clean them before they leave Indian shores?

The first step in this direction would be to set up an accredited-doping laboratory in India. The cost of this lab would be far less than what the government would have paid out in rewards to one-time victorious but eventually disgraced weightlifters and athletes.

Mandatory domestic tests would ensure that officials, coaches and athletes don’t get tempted to enhance performances with the aid of drugs. One’s heart goes out for an athlete like Sunita Rani who has been turned into a subject of derision.

In all probability the athlete didn’t even know that she was being administered a banned substance. She almost won the 1,500 metres by a mile and perhaps never even required any external help to win this event.

Had she known the consequences she would have been careful. But surely the officials/coaches knew better. These are the people who have let the sport and their wards down.