Captain's run out

Captain's run out

It’s truly amazing how Jaywant Lele's prophecy continues to unfold in all its terrible significance. Three months ago, the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had ventured to suggest that India would be wiped out during the Australia tour. Although he later claimed that he was misquoted, the disastrous tour Down Under proved the observation right. Today, it's not just the Indian cricket team that looks beaten down, but Indian cricket as a whole. And the extra-cricketing games played by Lele and his colleagues has been one of the most significant factors contributing to this development. Sachin Tendulkar's dramatic resignation on Sunday signals the rot that now characterises the administration of cricket in this country.

In July, when the Board announced Tendulkar's captaincy, this newspaper had welcomed the move and argued that he must now be given the required support and flexibility to both knit a team together and lead it. Don't tie his hands, was the message sought to beconveyed. Alas, to little avail. Not just the captain but the team's high-profile coach, Kapil Dev, have had to contend with the Board's inscrutable ways. As Dev pointed out after the news of Tendulkar's resignation came in, the Australia defeat was not the first that an Indian cricket team had suffered, and that the assignment which had him as coach and Tendulkar as captain was just in its early stages. What he was hinting at was the unseemly haste displayed by the Board to chop and change the Indian team without even bothering to involve the coach or captain. Indeed, Dev was initially informed that he was not required at the selection committee meeting and he expressed his humiliation at being treated in this fashion. Although Tendulkar was more circumspect, saying that he was only owning moral responsibility for the poor showing in Australia by resigning, clearly he too found the Board's functioning difficult to stomach.

It is well known that both Tendulkar and Dev have strong reservations about therecall of Mohammed Azharuddin and Nayan Mongia to the Indian team. That the Board did not consider their sentiments was bad enough, the lack of transparency it displayed in taking such a decision was worse. Azhar may demonstrate a temporary return to form, but the dependence on him that the Board displays reveals the bankrupt state of Indian cricket under its administration. Now that Tendulkar has resigned as captain, is the country destined to witness the return of Azharuddin as captain? Is Indian cricket going to be reduced to a never-ending shuttle between Azharuddin and Tendulkar? And what is the effect of all this going to be on the team as a whole, on its spirit and its sense of security? ``We don't know what we are doing and what we are supposed to do,'' one selector remarked and that just about sums up the present clueless state. Make no mistake, Indian cricket has never looked so divided, so uncertain, so defeated, as it does right now. And it has been defeated, not by Australian team, or the SriLankan team or the Pakistani team, but by the team that presides over its destiny _ the BCCI.