Opinion Express View on Asian Cup selection: Just stargazing

India’s Croatian football coach Igor Stimac, a report in this paper has revealed, consulted an astrologer, Bhupesh Sharma, while selecting teams and shared injury updates and substitution scenarios with him. For a sport languishing for long in a rut in the country, and only just picking up in recent months, these revelations strike an especially jarring note. They suggest that India might not have fielded its Best XI, but simply the XI whose stars aligned astrologically during the Asian Cup qualifiers, and that considerations other than sporting merit were on top even as India’s results fluctuated between wins and losses, before the qualification finally came through. Footballing careers may well have hinged on astrology, and by all accounts, dressing room knowledge did not remain within the confines that are sacrosanct in sport. That at least four crucial international matches were played in this manner raises questions.

The sequence of events points to an institutional suspension of disbelief, not merely personal eccentricity. The astrologer was introduced to the coach by an All India Football Federation official, Kushal Das. The coach may arguably have bought into the dubious promises of astrology in an anxious moment but that he then continued to rely on the astrologer’s inputs, running team sheets by him, points to a deeper problem. This is surely a bizarre system of managing a team by someone who belongs to Croatia’s golden generation of footballers and has previously done better. Sharma was reportedly paid between Rs 12-15 lakh for two months by the federation, which didn’t deem the expenses as odd. The football federation looks gullible and unprofessional. Reliance on the astrologer’s inputs seems doubly misguided and risks compromising the integrity of the national squad in a time when match-fixing corruption is rife in sport.

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Sport administration in India in general seems to be operating without adequate checks and balances. Football isn’t the first federation to invite controversy and allegations of mismanagement. Wrestling has been under duress these past six months after top players accused its former chief of serious instances of sexual harassment. Indian sporting federations have for long been accused of playing around with careers through selection biases. In competitive sport, results are decided by fine margins. Medals are missed by micro seconds and goals by millimetres. It is a travesty that India’s football administrators were busy stargazing when they should have been putting their best foot forward.