Friday is Bastille Day. Two centuries ago, the storming of that prison marked the turning point of the French Revolution. It is a day awaited with trepidation by the Board of Control for Cricket in India which suspects it might signal the end of its absolutism too. For over a year now, it has been refusing to comply with the Supreme Court’s orders, and the court might just have run out of patience when the case comes up on Friday.
The acting board secretary, who has built a reputation for pointing to the truth by speaking its opposite denied on Tuesday that Ravi Shastri was the choice as head coach (he had told us last month that there was no Kohli-Kumble split). Communication is clearly not a strong point; lack of it also saw a bunch of officials land up for a Special General body in Delhi which had been called off.
More significant than the choice of Shastri was the manner in which the Committee of Administrators (CoA) finally put an end to the Cricket Advisory Committee’s (CAC) ridiculous delaying tactics and forced it to make the announcement.
This, just as everybody was wondering how many episodes remained in the soap opera called “Finding the Coach.” The toothless, pointless CAC had, on Monday, passed the responsibility onto the captain. Perhaps the argument was, if you are the one making the buck, then you need to be the one we pass it to.
The CEO of the BCCI was in both England and Jamaica with the Indian team. Could he not get an appointment with the Indian captain to find out where he stood? In any case, Kohli had been pushing for Shastri from the time he indicated that Kumble was not his man. So why all the drama? Hadn’t these folks heard of the telephone? The CoA did well to pull the plug on the soap opera.
The message — from the Indian captain, and now the CoA — is clear. The CAC has served its purpose (whatever it was) and needs to be disbanded. Kohli told the three wise men that he could not have the coach chosen by them while the CoA made it clear that they could not behave like irresponsible superstars.
It is not difficult to sympathise with the CAC, though. Here are three of the finest to play for India now having to come to terms with the manner in which the present sometimes treats the past. They are not unaware of this, since they were the present once, and got their way too then. The wheel turns inevitably, and mercilessly.
For months, after the CAC was appointed by the cricket board to give itself some credibility, the three members did not know what they were supposed to do. In 2015, they met exactly once. There was no job description, no to-do list, no salary, nothing. Then someone had the bright idea of asking the committee to pick the coach, just to give it something to do.
The longer the threesome — Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly and V.V.S. Laxman — remained in their sinecures, the more they began to function like the BCCI itself, often unprofessionally and sometimes reeking of politics.
Should the choice of the coach become such a soap opera? When Bishan Bedi and Ajit Wadekar were appointed to the post, the decision was made by the BCCI. For later coaches, a “search” committee was formed, with initially Sunil Gavaskar and then Gavaskar and Shastri recommending their choices.
In order to appear scrupulously fair, applications are invited now, and an occasional word dropped in a player’s ear to give the candidates some domestic heft. Virender Sehwag had the role of supporting actor this time. Phil Simmons saw the writing on the wall and decided he wouldn’t even bother to get on Skype to press his case. He had better things to do at midnight local time than to play an extra’s role in a drama whose denouement had no suspense.
All this is unfair on Shastri, a straight-talking professional who understands that a big heart often trumps natural talent in the game. He knows his job. Kumble was badly done by, and there is no guarantee at this point that Shastri will retain Kohli’s support till the World Cup two years away. Cricket is a funny game, and cricket politics is funnier still. The essential difference between the two coaches is that Shastri is more flexible.
He might not have got the support staff he wanted. After all, if the captain is entitled to his coach, then the coach is entitled to his staff. The CAC went beyond its remit by having its own men in place. Perhaps as a counter to a strong Shastri-Kohli partnership that might brook no opposition.
The CAC has behaved exactly like the BCCI — created more power centres to keep in check the growing player power. In any case, it has clearly outlived its utility — not respected by the captain, called to heel by the CoA and then seemingly acting as BCCI surrogate.
