Low pitch

It seemed perfect. A pleasant,late-December day,made for watching cricket. A Sunday afternoon and evening with a match that could be the highlight of a long weekend. And then Sri Lanka and India started playing,and it swiftly became clear that the pitch wasnt going to let the days cricket be played. It was more than a disappointment; it was a warning and a reminder: ignoring governance issues in Indian cricket cannot be a sustainable policy.

Indian cricket will continue to suffer until the Board of Control for Cricket in India stops behaving like a relic of the amateur age. Sixty years ago,when many cricketers had day jobs and the sport was a leisurely affair played on matting,it might have been acceptable to have a pitch curator who is as is the case at Kanpurs Green Park actually an electrician. Its not as if the BCCI doesnt know this is a problem: everyone in the cricketing world has repeated the cliché that Indian pitches come in two varieties,boring and terrible. Years of such snark caused the setting up of the Grounds and Wickets Committee,or GWC,in the BCCI,as long ago as 1997. And yet,nothing got done. One exasperated member of the GWC quit saying the wickets are left to local malis and they are always up to some mischief. Dhiraj Parsana,one of the longest-serving members of the just-sacked GWC defends the central board: their mandate is simply not to interfere in pitch-making,the nature and texture of the wicket. So there isnt any professionalism,and theres no central authority imposing accountability either.

But how can the BCCI drag itself towards professional management when even those in charge at most levels of the sport are part-timers,embedded deeply in power structures external to the game? The occupation of crickets power structures by political time-servers will have,as its natural consequence,an inability to modernise. Here,as in so much else,the IPL is indicative: the money and eyeballs that it brought in werent used to bring Indian crickets facilities and governance up-to-date; they were used instead for self-aggrandisement and petty politicking. And open lobbying for games that passes as the rotation system ensures that,regardless of pitch quality,what matters to get a game is your political power. So why try? We see now the consequences of such thinking. The sacking of the GWC was long overdue. But ensuring we never see scenes like we did at the Kotla will require much deeper change.