One of my friends recently cracked a joke revealing what BCCI actually meant: Board of Comedians and Cartoons in India. You may laugh at this revelation but if you have followed the Indian cricket administration even for the last 5-6 months, you would agree on the aptness of the full form of this acronym. Let us try to evaluate this. Do they really control cricket in India? Are they really administrators to qualify for a Board? An honest answer to these two questions will always be NO.
After every loss of Indian team, every one blames those XI players. They are criticized for their every move on the field and everything they have done seems to fetch a defeat. In this regard you would always hear a famous quote on India’s greatest batsman ever, Sachin Tendulkar, that whenever he plays, India loses. How wise is that? Scoring runs would result in a defeat. With every loss, thousands of cricket experts are born and they want to make a point or two. Why the captain did X and why the bowler didn’t bowl Y and how he dropped the catch? There would be plenty of reasons for the loss and people would be on look out for those XI players. It is good that for some reasons they are treated as heroes and are not easily available on Indian streets. But is this the problem? India’s shameful exit from the 2007 world cup was really embarrassing for Indian cricket fans and more for those who are fanatic fans, but who are to be blamed? The cricketers, yes to some extent they are because they could not execute the plans they had in their mind and they could not deliver under pressure. But let us look a little further, who sent them in the world cup? You got it.
Why are we blaming cricketers who go there and try their best to win the game. If they are not capable, it is not their mistake. Their bosses who selected them made the mistake. If some employees turn out to be incompetent in a company, the questions are asked to their bosses as to why they were recruited in the first place? This is a very basic set up in a professional administration. Do we have this basic set up in BCCI? Are the administrators accountable for the losses of Team India? Are they under the same kind of pressure as the players are? Since the selection committee, selects the team, it should be criticized and hammered for the team losses. They should be made accountable for the performance of the team and the way cricketers are dropped or fired, they should also feel the heat. And believe me, everything will automatically fall in place, next time; their selection is always going to be better.
For every loss, there is a knee jerk reaction from the selectors, drop a few players and bring in a few new ones. Sehwaag was doing okay in the tests and badly in the ODIs, but he is dropped first from the tests and then from the ODIs. Recently, Sehwaag, the opener, is brought back having done nothing in the domestic level after being dropped for 5 months in place of Rahul Dravid who is actually a middle order batsman. Are we trying to equate Mango with Banana? Bring a middle order batsman in place of a middle order batsman and bring a spinner in place of a spinner. It is so simple to understand.
Now a day, the selection panel sees the performance of a player in a game or two and gives him a chance for the next 2 games. Team is selected on a match-by-match basis. Imagine about the confidence of the player and just think what kind of plan they would have in mind for the opposition? No wonder some of them play so selfishly, after all everyone wants to have a good career in the chosen area. Inexplicable is the case when youngsters like RP Sharma or S Badrinath are chosen in the team for 2-3 games and they never get a chance to play, and they are subsequently dropped. If you had no place for them, you should have never selected and if you selected them, you should give them a fair amount of chances even to be qualified to be dropped. Do the selectors do not understand this simple thing? Do they understand what would be the morale of those young players when they are dumped like this? In my opinion, this is just a way for the selectors to appease the mass and the media. They select them for some games when those young guns become talk of the media for some reasons and as soon as it pacifies, they are dropped for the same reasons. The chief selector is more in the news and before the cameras than an aspiring model. Perhaps they want to cover up for the missed limelight during their era.
BCCI does nothing but makes money. Those 15 cricketers are nothing but its money making machines. Schedule tours mindlessly, no plan to give sufficient time in between those tours so that they could prepare themselves mentally for it, all these shows how inept BCCI is as an organization. Cricket is not the number one Agenda of BCCI, this is just the process to achieve what they have number 1 in their Agenda and that is to make money. Add to this the credentials of those who are heading the BCCI. The head of the sport body is an agriculture minister at a time when farmers are reportedly committing suicides on a regular basis. And all he does is to concentrate on seeing a few of those matches, to reprimand the selectors to concentrate on their jobs and to treat seniors well. Why do we expect such an inapt organization to be productive enough to produce good results?
In spite of all these things, if team India wins its 50% of the matches, I think the team is really doing well. The fact is, Indian team wins now and then because of individual brilliance as we really posses’ big talents in our team. We should be thankful to them who give us a reason to smile every now and then, in spite of them working under in-competitive bosses. It is tough to be productive when your boss doesn’t want to work towards your main goal and it is almost impossible when he is inept, unaware and irresponsible. BCCI administration possesses all these qualities.
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