A vote for incompetence
Prem Panicker
For the first time in my memory -- and, I suspect, for the first time in international cricket -- a one-day match was abandoned because the pitch was found to be sub-standard.
There is only one word that can describe the situation -- shameful.
How did this come about? As with so much else in Indian cricket, the genesis of today's disgraceful incident goes right back, to a little over a year ago, when elections were conducted for the post of president of the BCCI. On that occasion, Raj Singh Dungarpur got through by a hairsbreadth -- said hairsbreadth being the Indore vote, which made the crucial difference.
Then came the second election, in November this year, which witnessed the most bitter battle for control ever in Indian cricket history, pitting former friends Jagmohan Dalmiya and Inderjit Singh Bindra against each other.
What the election did, effectively, was to polarise the Indian cricket establishment. Sure, politics has always been the name of the game -- but never before was the contest as bitter, never before were the various associations forced to openly align with one or the other faction.
It was one of those battles of which they say, there were no winners or losers, only survivors.
The survivors, in this instance, have been Messers Dalmiya, Dungarpur and Jaywant Lele.
Did I say "no losers"? Correction -- there was one. Indian cricket.
Consider the events since then. In late October, the national selection committee had reached what many thought was the nadir. In fact, a stage had come when the Board president was forced, before a selection committee meeting, to get the selectors together, read them the riot act, and made them select a team sans zonal bias and favouritism.
At that time, it was expected that the committee, which had in its one year in office earned universal opprobrium, would make way for a saner, more committed lot when its tenure expired and the time came to chose a new one. In the event, the same five men were retained for another year. Why? Because their respective zones had supported the Dalmiya-Dungarpur faction in the elections, and the retention of the selection committee was the payoff.
That was the first blow for cricket in India. Examine, if you will, the aftermath. Press statements for and against the present captain. Selection of teams from match to match. Selection of a captain "for 27 days". Retention of players against whom the team management in Sharjah had reported adversely. The dropping of six players, some of them against the advice of captain and coach. And above all, an increasingly dictatorial bunch of selectors who have started deciding everything from the composition of the playing eleven, to the batting order of the players.
Why has such a situation come about? Because the zones from which these selectors hail have paid their dues to the ruling faction, and are now exacting their price -- absolute, uncontrolled, unchecked power. And the hell with the interests of the team, and the fans of Indian cricket.
Then came blow number two.The fixtures committee got together to decide the venues for Tests and one dayers. Surprise, surprise -- centres like Kanpur and Indore, which boast facilities so sub-standard that even Ranji teams hate playing there, are picked for Tests and ODIs. Bangalore, one of the finest cricket venues in the country, does not get a single game. Why? Because Karnataka Cricket Association president C Nagaraj backed the Bindra faction in the elections.
In other words, the centre and, indeed, Indian cricket, gets to pay the price for the dirty politics of the Board, of its de facto boss Jagmohan Dalmiya, who in effect rules the game with Dungarpur playing his dummy.
And from those seeds of politics and intrigue, grows the debacle of today. When an international game is called off because a pitch is not up to standard.
Not that the disgrace of it bothers anyone, mind. Why should it? The BCCI, after all, is not concerned about cricket, about the game, about results, about performances. What concerns them, is votes, and money. It got the Indore vote. Indore got a game in return. 25,000 people paid good money into the coffers to watch a game. They got a meaningless, 25-overs-a-side exhibition game, with none of the participants taking it seriously -- and had to remain content with that.
Meanwhile, the concerned association laughs all the way to the bank.
What actually transpired in Indore? Therein lies another story.
Prior to the start of this series, the Indian team management indicated that it would like grassy, bouncy pitches to be prepared for the three one dayers. For one thing, that request is in keeping with the thinking that it is about time India stopped preparing dustbowls at home and looking for tailored-for-spin wins. For another, India obviously has the edge in pace, with the return of Javagal Srinath, and it is this edge the home side was counting on to keep the Lankan strokeplayers in check.
What the team found waiting for them at Indore, though, is a dustbowl. Curator Narendra Menon, a former Madhya Pradesh Ranji wicket-keeper, said that the pitch was a "sporting track" which would help both pace and spin, and also let batsmen play their strokes. The reality however was different -- the pitch was cracked, dusty, crumbly and, not to put too fine a point on it, downright dangerous.
At the urging of the Indian team management, the curator attempted to prepare a fresh pitch. A rectangle was marked adjacent to the already prepared one, the grass was cut to size, it was watered and rolled -- at which point the Lankan team arrived at the ground for practise. Spotting the ongoing operations, team vice captain Aravinda D'Silva was the first to voice an objection.
The reason behind the protest was obvious -- Lanka, already one down in the series, didn't need to find itself playing on a fast, grassy, bouncy track which would nullify its stroke-playing batsmen. Whatever the motivation, however, Aravinda and the Lankan team were within their rights in protesting -- no cricket pitch can be prepared in a day, and the attempts of curator Menon would only have resulted in an underprepared track of uncertain bounce.
ICC match referee Justice Ahmed Ebrahim of Zimbabwe intervened at this point, and insisted that the already prepared track would be used for play.
India went into the game with Hrishikesh Kanitkar coming in for Debashish Mohanty -- the change prompted by the fact that the crumbly wicket would aid spin more than medium pace. In the event, it was Ranatunga who won the toss and opted to bat. And the fun began right in the first over.
Javagal Srinath, bowling well under top pace, still managed to work up enormous seam movement and bounce. Romesh Kaluwithrana, opening with Sanath Jayasuriya, found one darting in and kicking up, attempted to force it on the up, was beaten by pace and movement and found the ball take the inner edge to crash into middle and leg stump. Roshan Mahanama came in, managed a single off the first ball he faced, and that brought Jayasuriya back to the business end. The last ball of the first over was pitched on good length. The batsman went forward -- and found the ball kick up alarmingly, to take the splice of the bat. If Rajesh Chauhan at first slip had not been as surprised as the batsman, that was a simple catch -- in the event, the chance went down.
Judging the pitch right, Sachin Tendulkar opted for Rajesh Chauhan to open the bowling with Srinath. And the very first ball -- remember, the off spinner, that is, the finger spinner, was bowling with a brand new, shiny ball that doesn't really permit spinners the kind of grip they like -- pitched about a foot outside off, and turned so sharply that it went right across the stumps to beat both the batsman and the keeper and go for four byes down the leg side. That kind of turn on the last day of a five day Test is alarming -- in the second over of a one day game, totally unacceptable.
The alarm level only increased as the over progressed -- every ball raised puffs of dust on pitching, and the indications were that the pitch would crumble totally in about 10, 15 overs and batting after that would be a total lottery, involving consiserable risk to life and limb.
The risk was underlined in Srinath's second over, the third of the innings, as the first ball kept ankle height, the second kicked, the third skidded through... and so on to the last ball, which was overpitched on off stump. Mahanama had to come forward -- what else do you do to an overpitched ball? And the batsman found the ball stand up straight from the pitch, rapping him sharply on the knuckles.
At this point, both batsmen signalled their protest. That brought a series of conferences involving the rival captains, the umpires, the match referee and with a self-important J Y Lele, who stalked out to the middle to add his two bits to the confab.
At the end of it all, good sense prevailed, and the match referee decided that the pitch was too dangerous to permit play to continue.
He was right. The two teams out there are international sides, their livelihood is cricket, and nobody has the right to expect them to risk their life and limb on a track like the one on offer at Indore.
And mind you, the problem was not only with the wicket -- if anything, the outfield was worse. Hard as concrete to start with, which meant that any fielder diving to stop a stroke or take a catch would have needed a skin transplant to repair the damage. And making it worse was little clumps of grass all over -- which meant that if you were a fielder, saw a ball coming at you and bent to pick it up, chances were it would hit one of those clumps and kick up, and the fielder like as not would be minus a few teeth.
Calling off the game, however, would have involved a riot -- there was a good 25,000+ people packed into the stadium expecting a game. And therefore, the two captains saved the local association and, indeed, the BCCI's face -- and, perhaps, skin -- by agreeing to play, on an adjoining strip, a 25-overs-a-side exhibition game.
Personally, I hate having to say this, because I have always felt that violence can never be an answer.
Increasingly, I am forced to do a rethink -- I frankly don't see this particular bunch of board officials learning their lessons any other way.
The media has consistently attempted to discuss the issues involved, to make a plea for sanity. The result? The BCCI refuses press passes for international games. The chairman of selectors makes disparaging comments about the media. The board secretary goes so far as to say that it is the media that is responsible for all the ills of Indian cricket.
That is why I increasingly believe that only the people -- the fans who support Indian cricket, who tear their hair out in despair at the goings on, who agonise over a team hampered by officials such as these -- are the only ones who can make a difference.
And that, in turn, is why I wish the captains hadn't agreed to play that exhibition match today. If they had gone off, there would have been a riot. And that would perhaps have woken up the local association to a sense of its responsibilities. And who knows, if Santa Claus was in a particular benevolent mood, maybe J Y Lele would have been caught right in the middle of it all.
Hey, if you know any other way of giving that bloke a wake up call, let me know!
Meanwhile, pardon me if I don't devote energy to describing a festival affair none of the players were taking seriously anyway. For now, it's all down to Goa, where the final game will be played on the 28th of this month.
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