When honest men resign unhappily, it reflects poorly on the organisation they were a part of. Ramachandra Guha has said he has quit the Committee of Administrators (CoA) for “personal reasons”. In recent years, especially in sport, “personal reasons” has become the euphemism for “despair at the direction in which we are going.” Former cricket board president Shashank Manohar quit the ICC for “personal reasons” before being persuaded to return; it is dignified, and the message is clear.
Perhaps Guha does have personal reasons, but it is more likely that he is unhappy at the pace of reform, at the bureaucratic manner in which the CoA has been acting in the matter of enforcing the Supreme Court’s rulings in the State cricket associations; perhaps he is unhappy at the manner in which the CoA seems to be focused on the international players rather than the domestic. What cannot be denied is that he is unhappy. What cannot be denied too is that the CoA needs him more than he needs the CoA, an organisation he was working for free of cost.
What this says about Indian cricket at present is alarming. There is something not quite right here.
The CoA had the power of the Supreme Court, yet were overcautious and conservative when the need of the hour was bold decision-making and an uncompromising approach to the task of putting the Humpty Dumpty that is the BCCI together again. You cannot shrug off the feeling that some of the solutions might have been worse than the problems.
The CoA came to the job with enormous goodwill and a complete lack of the kind of agenda that has incapacitated the cricket board. Guha was its one member who understood the game, the context and had the necessary historical perspective. By resigning he sends out the message that the CoA is not being allowed to function the way it should.
Too much time and effort is being spent in overcoming the slings and arrows of outrageous BCCI. Perhaps sometime soon Guha will tell us the reasons for his move, and it should surprise nobody if the pattern that emerges is that the old guard in the BCCI is still calling the shots.
The much publicised coach-captain row is of a piece with this pattern. It was well orchestrated, with stories being planted in the media by two different parties — one which wanted to see Anil Kumble out for personal reasons, and the other keen to cause unrest generally and muddy the waters.
If it leads to another honest man resigning unhappily, that would merely reinforce the manufactured instability around Indian cricket. Those who place individual egos above the welfare of the national team would have won. To imagine that two sober adults like Kumble and Virat Kohli cannot sort out their differences over a quiet, unpublicised discussion is to believe that conversation as a peace-making tactic is dead.
If the complaint of the senior players is that Kumble’s insistence on discipline and punctuality is misplaced, then cricket itself is in trouble. For when did discipline become a negative quality, and punctuality something to be looked down upon?
Being coach (or earlier, cricket manager) of an Indian team — especially for an Indian — is difficult, as many greats, including BIshan Bedi, Kapil Dev, have discovered. Outsider Greg Chappell found it difficult too, but John Wright and Duncan Fletcher did not, simply because they pandered to the senior players.
Pandering cannot be the first law of coaching. And India’s most successful bowler doesn’t see the need to do that. In the ideal world, he would let his record as coach speak for itself — but as has been apparent for a while now, Indian cricket does not exist in the ideal world.
Few people have emerged with credit from the Kohli-Kumble conflict. The one exception has been Kumble himself, who has maintained a stoic silence, not contributing anything to the noise around him. Was the Indian captain being used as a pawn in a larger game? His back-door diplomacy doesn’t sit well with his image as a straight shooting young man who understands what is best for Indian cricket.
Still, all is fine between the coach and the captain, according to the BCCI secretary Amitabh Choudhary who has said, speaking from Edgbaston, that any “rift” is “purely in the realm of imagining (sic)”. He added, “The whole country is happy with Kumble,” which must make the former India captain feel somewhat better than he does now if he is forced to resign or if the Cricket Advisory Committee turn out to be just the three people in the whole country who are not happy with Kumble.
Perhaps there is an alternative staring us in the face. If Kumble’s tenure as coach is brought to an end by the CAC, then the Supreme Court could name him as replacement for Guha in the CoA. As player, former captain, former president of an association, and national coach, he knows the game better than anyone else in the country. Not just the one played on field, but the one off field too.
