Tour troubles

Faisal Shariff

Let me state a feat for Ripley's believe-it-or-not: On their last tour to South Africa, the Indian cricket team, frustrated by a dearth of net bowlers, inserted an advertisement in a local Indian newspaper calling for assistance.

Sounds unbelievable?

Here's more… The only reply the team received came from a county bowler, who later dished out some off-breaks to the Indian batsmen preparing to take on Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and Lance Klusener on the racy strips of the Southern Cape. The South African board, for its part, excused itself, citing Christmas as the reason for unavailability of net bowlers.

That in reality is the plight of an Indian team touring foreign countries; it isn't past records alone that go against them, but the entire tour is a trial in itself. That doesn’t cover for all the shortcomings the team faces on fast tracks abroad, but surely adds to the sack of qualms that accompanies the team on trips abroad.

Keeping to the subject of the need for net bowlers for practice, it doesn’t really need such alarming steps like placing advertisements in newspapers.

The Sri Lankan team on their last tour to South Africa did not have to take such desperate measures. The team manager did well to organise net bowlers by flying down to South Africa prior to the tour. The net bowlers were paid for their services and after the training session shared a drink with the players, all in good camaraderie.

The Indian team sure takes care of the latter part, by way of giveaways and posing happily for photographs with the bowlers and giving them their five minutes of recognition.

The clinch, however, can be grasped at the negotiation table when the two boards sign on the agreement about money, the number of single rooms for the players, the laundry arrangement and such other trappings.

To cite an example, Tim Lamb, the chief executive of the ECB, flew down to India for precisely one hour of serious business, to persuade his Indian counterparts to swap the Test venue from Kanpur to Ahmedabad. Needless to state, the Indian board readily complied and, in an attempt, to appease the Uttar Pradesh Association, awarded a one-dayer to Kanpur instead.

On the last tour of Zimbabwe, the Indian board settled for US$17 as daily allowance for the players. And the payment also wasn’t made in dollars but converted according to the bank rate, which was 56 Zimbabwean dollars as against the unofficial rate of a 180 Zimbabwean dollars. To survive on that kind of money in five-star hotels as well as take care of laundry is a tough ask requiring accountants rather than cricketers.

The mantra is good administration; a good team manager; an articulate and expressive manager who can liaison with the local authorities and take care of small things, like check medical facilities, good practice facilities, hotels with gymnasiums, tours planned with minimum criss-crossing and baggage handling.

Thus, the policy of continuity needn't necessarily be restricted to the players alone. The manager also needs to be given a long stint.

Take the case of Chetan Chauhan, the manager of the Indian team for the Australian series. The entire team gave him the thumbs up, but, to appease the local vote banks for the upcoming board elections, he was shown the door for a little-known Anand Mate from Maharashtra.

"Just when he was getting a real feel of the job, they replaced him," commented a team member.

Talking about the need for an efficient manager, the need for a media manager becomes all the more important with the South African tour early next month. While the Indian players were denied access to the press, the Aussies grabbed the opportunity to score vital brownie points, courtesy a very efficient media-manager who planned and vetted every request for an interview, saving the players the ordeal of refusing interview requests on their own.

Last heard, when asked, the board president had said, "We will have the media manager in another month’s time."

That was a year ago. We're still waiting.