Why Pawar can’t drive a Ford

Professionalism? The latest edition of the great Indian coach laughter challenge has given us the answer. Any semi-professional sports organisation, forget the ‘professional’ BCCI, would have sat down with Greg Chappell before the World Cup, worked out whether they want him to continue. And, if so, on what terms. Instead, Chappell sat in the dressing room as the team imploded in the Caribbean, was caught up in the team politics that swirled around him, not knowing what lay ahead, not knowing whether he would need to fly back to India at all.

Once here, he was asked to submit a report about India’s failure, told to tone it down to avoid another controversy, and asked to hang around for a final word. The reward: he was told that he would continue to be “associated with Indian cricket”. Then came Sachin Tendulkar’s public attack on Chappell’s style of functioning, and the BCCI’s coach hunt started all over again.

Next on the list was Bangladesh’s Dav Whatmore, who the players found in Bangladesh was as adept at media leaks as Chappell was. Whatmore’s willing-to-please-anybody-to-get-the-job line did not help much, either.

And next? No one. Until the players got into the act, dreading the prospect of another interim coach that would lead the team nowhere.

So far so good. Pawar’s by now trademark ‘consensus’ style of functioning was working wonders. Except that consensus without common sense equals chaos. Especially when the consensus is sought from a motley crowd of lawyers, businessmen, former players with personal agendas of their own and hangers-on, whose only aim is to milk the Board for what it is worth.

Oh yes, the players are asked for their opinion, too. But what happens then? Their choice, Graham Ford, the former South Africa coach, is flown in all the way from England to Chennai as the Chosen One. No effort was made to find out whether the man himself wanted the job; whether he had actually understood the environment in which he would work; whether he had agreed to the conditions that had been drawn up for him, including the fact that he would have no support staff and would get just a one-year tenure.

Meanwhile, England’s John Emburey, the dummy candidate put up by former cricketers on the coach panel to show that they can have a say, too, gets a free ticket to Chennai and a day’s stay at Chennai’s Taj Coromandel.

Again, chaos. Ford refuses, Emburey, too. Apparently, both have been informed by “well-wishers” that the Indian job is just not worth it — not with the immense media pressure that comes with the job thanks to the BCCI not having a formal media pointman. The fact that it has a haphazard salary disbursal system and is marked by vicious Board politics, didn’t help.

And who is to be blamed for this media pressure? The BCCI. The team still doesn’t have a media officer, the players are still accosted by reporters in lifts, behind the dressing room, in the hotel lobbies, on their way out during practice, and even through the team bus window.

And who is to be blamed for the salary mess? The BCCI. John Wright never really knew when he would get his next installment. Chappell was aghast at the sheer sloppiness of it all.

And who is to be blamed for the politics? Isn’t it clear by now? But, believe it or not, a few BCCI officials are now, discreetly, pointing fingers at the players for getting it all wrong about Ford. Really? Maybe, they should simply step aside and let the players run the BCCI instead. At least, the word ‘professional’ will then have some meaning.