Opinion Pointless journey
Its a land of azure blue water and off-white sand,of a journey to find India that ended with the discovery...
Its a land of azure blue water and off-white sand,of a journey to find India that ended with the discovery of the new world,where Bob Marley lingers subtly in the air in one part and the social tension between the Indian and the Black communities hangs lightly in the background in another.
A tour of the West Indies,where they love cricket even more than reggae and soca,is always a learning experience for a travelling Indian not just because of its rich cricketing history but because its an opportunity to see a totally new dimension of a sport that were told is our religion.
Trust the Indian cricket board,however,to reduce the Indian teams latest trip being undertaken on the back of the World T20,which was on the back of the IPL in South Africa,which in turn came almost immediately after the New Zealand tour into such a futile exercise that,the romance of cricket in the Caribbean notwithstanding, it seems this will be the last straw that breaks the donkeys back.
There has been so much said over the last few days about too much cricket,about injuries and how they must not be hidden. The arguments on all sides have been re-read and re-examined; the need for rest acknowledged,the how-much-is-too-much question asked. But to send the team all the way to the West Indies for four one-day internationals no Test match,no tri-series shows a level of pointlessness that far surpasses anything the board has been able to conjure up in recent memory.
Is India really coming here? a cricket writer from West Indies called to ask me last week. I mean,really, he stressed. I told him they were. He rang off,still unconvinced. I was told later that he wasnt the only one sceptical about the tour. Some of the West Indies players,certain that India would not embark on such a meaningless journey,were planning to book themselves on holidays that they will now have to take at another time.
For captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni,its a no-win situation. His tired team,already facing their first public trial in two years,will have to switch on again for a tournament where a win will be dismissed with shrugs of who cares and a defeat will further strengthen the case for their dismissal.
The players always say how playing for India is motivation itself,but Dhoni & Co will really have to dig into their reserves to find any for this assignment. For,as one of the fathers of modern management,Peter Drucker,once wrote: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Victory when needed most
The poetic justice behind Pakistans World T20 win has been the theme of this week. How badly they needed it; how the victory manifested that cricket in the country would not die even though it is resigned to a nomadic existence for the next few years. And its strange that a number of other World Cup wins in the past,too,have come at times when they were needed the most. In 1996,Sri Lanka was reeling from terror attacks that prompted West Indies and Australia to boycott matches in the country. One of the outsiders of world cricket back then,dismissed as a team the sport could survive without,they were so emphatic that even midway through the tournament they looked destined to win as if some outside force was willing them on.
In 2007,with Indian cricket reeling from the Caribbean World Cup debacle,Dhoni led a bunch of no-hopers to the inaugural World T20 in South Africa the seniors sat out,Gautam Gambhir was seen as a poor replacement for Sachin Tendulkar,and Joginder Sharma was drafted from nowhere. But it was almost palpable a week into the tournament that something special was coming our way from a most unexpected quarter.
Why? Perhaps it was destiny; perhaps no one else wanted it more and,as Paulo Coelho has written,the universe was conspiring for them.
kunal.pradhan@expressindia.com
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