Indian Cricket - The lie that was sold in Australia

If the Indian Cricket team was a corporation, this is the argument the team management has put out after another devastating quarter.

We have this great product lined up for launch in 2015 and here is the deal. Stay invested in us during these temporary losses so we can get the product in shape. And yes, we give you no guarantee. But do stay tuned in ok? We need your eyeballs and your faith. The sponsors won’t have it any other way.

We have been sold a lemon.

In a sport like Cricket where the top level barely has half a dozen serious contenders, the premise that we are preparing for an event three years from now is completely flawed. What we are being told is we are in it to not win it, but to plan for the day when we eventually will.

So, my question for the team management is what is an important event in Cricket except the World Cup? Is there no value to a Tri Series where the participants between them have won 7 out of the 10 ODI world cups. Or the management of the team thinks that the fan’s time is not worthy enough to put in the best side possible on little known grounds in Sydney and Melbourne against unknown cricketing opponents. If not the best team playing now, when? A tour to the Netherlands? The ridiculous Champions trophy? The freaking IPL?

Note to myself. Take a deep breath. Don’t break this laptop.

I am prepared to be rational. So here goes.

Let’s give MSD the benefit of the doubt. Let us say for argument’s sake that all these horrible Sundays over the last month were part of a bigger plan. Let’s say the Indian team needs to prepare to throw and field on large grounds for the 2015 edition and we need to have young blood scuttling around like rabbits in heat.

Here is my take. If you are so hell bent on fielding practice, can’t you ask these folks to throw from the parking lot to the stumps in some of the smaller Indian stadiums for the next three years? Or even better, move the stumps to the ropes on one side and ask the players to throw from the opposite side, over the pitch, across the ground – right into the wicket keeper’s hands? That should be enough distance. Just a thought Duncan Fletcher, it might work.

Batting and bowling practice for the bouncier Australian pitches in 2015? So, you are saying that this is the core of the side that will go to the World Cup in 2015. If it is, I am not amused – I am plain scared by the very insinuation. How much more of the elaborate grooming of Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma can this weak heart of mine take? Three years more?

The fact is the team has been in Australia for some time now, gone to the Opera House, done some Go Karting, seen the Beach front, and yet they can’t get a feel of the pitches? And the Lankans just turned up with nothing in their wallets and started playing well? So what the Indian team learns over a month, they can’t implement in the next match – yet what they learn now – they will remember three years from now? Bollocks to that, and that’s a word I always wanted to put in the same sentence as the BCCI.

This is not the Gymnastics gold for the 2020 Olympics we are talking about. We don’t need to pick up eight year olds now and throw them into Soviet Era preparatory camps. We are talking about Cricket, where the best preparation ultimately boils down to technique and mental strength. The whole argument that we are preparing for the future is a warning that there are going to be some good old fashioned hidings coming along. Post the World Cup, the excuse was tiredness. Now, it is preparing for World Cup 2015. Soon it will be the retirements of some great legends and the byline would be rebuilding a team.

Seriously, if this had been a corporation, it should have been declared sick. And small stakeholders like you and me would have started investing our time into other sports. Maybe it is not too late, or maybe someone in that charitable organization called the BCCI would think that it is time for a management rejig and dividends in the not so distant future.