Wanted: Vision statement that isn’t blind to reality

So in Delhi we start worrying about what to do in case of a fire three days before an international match, we award television rights less than 48 hours before a match starts, hockey appoints its captain a staggering four days before a tournament begins and schedules are totally changed a day later.

They must be sitting in their cabins and laughing their heads off over the worries of the Spanish coach who had prepared his team to play Holland and now discovers they are actually playing someone else.

Given this now-and-for-now situation, it would be interesting to see how the BCCI goes about implementing its vision statement. Currently it reads like an election manifesto, full of what one of our professors called “motherhood statements”, points that are obvious to everybody but need to be done anyway.

But, like with the Finance Minister’s Budget speech, the devil is in the fine print and it is the specifics we await. In the next couple of weeks, for example, the claim to transparency will be put to test with decisions on team sponsors and television partners.

I would like to see great care exercised with the choice of selectors in future. Nothing is more painful than former selectors spilling beans, it is undignified. Yashpal Sharma might have a grouse but by talking about Chappell and discussions held in private, he merely proves the point about the kind of selectors we need. If your code to secrecy is limited merely to your tenure — and often, as everyone knows, to less than that — how can you claim to have the interests of Indian cricket at heart?

I am also a bit worried about this xenophobia that surfaces from time to time. We have no qualms about offering our services to the rest of the world, we want justifiably to be proud of it, but we have a problem with bringing the best of the world to India. If you want to take you must be willing to give.

Equally disappointing is Pronob Roy’s statement that Sourav Ganguly was picked as a batsman. If that was indeed the case, either Yuvraj or Kaif should have been left out because it is quite preposterous to pick eight batsmen for a home Test. So either the selectors were wrong in picking eight or they were wrong in telling us the reasons behind the selection.

Unfortunately for our selectors, the truth doesn’t stay hidden and people get to know. It is just that some people respect confidentiality and some don’t.

And now we have another former selector complaining that the three new selectors appointed haven’t played Test cricket. This whole business of needing to play Test cricket for just about anything is a mighty bubble and betrays an insecure mind. If you are confident of your skills you don’t ask for reservations.

I haven’t heard of IIT graduates saying plum jobs should be reserved for them; if they have the ability they will get them anyway. You use your qualification to move ahead in life, you don’t hang on to it as if you possess nothing else.

Being a Test cricketer gives you an automatic advantage sometimes, but if you have to ask for it, you are probably not the right man anyway. I don’t hear proud journalists complaining that Test cricketers never got a single article published in their school magazines! You don’t have to.

And by the way, the best players need not necessarily be the best talent-spotters. The best students don’t make the best teachers, the best performers do not make the best coaches. Australia’s best chairman of selectors, and in a crucial phase too, was Lawrie Sawle, who never played Test cricket!

A badge of honour is to be worn lightly, it is meant to be noticed, not shown off.