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An open letter to Raj Singh Dungarpur

Date:	January 4, 1998

			   From:Binay Das,
				230 Triana Wy.
				San Ramon, CA 94583
				USA
				Tel./Fax:  (408) 324-5138

To:Mr. Raj Singh Dungarpur,
   President, BCCI
   8, Vijay Marg,
   D Road  (Opposite Wankhede Stadium),
   Churchgate
   BOMBAY - 400 020
   INDIA

Dear Mr. Dungarpur,

It is with much pain and frustration that I'm writing this letter to you, about the state of Indian cricket in the last several months, and the operation of the BCCI.

You are known as a person of respect and dignity (which, unfortunately, I find myself unable to say about the other office bearers of the organisation that you are president of). As such, it is up to you to take immediate steps to remedy the bad name that Indian cricket, and the BCCI, have earned in the past few months. Anything you can do for Indian cricket, if it is in the right direction, will be appreciated by 900 million people at home and many more millions outside. I will attempt to detail what, for us fans, has proved reason for grief.

First of all, I'm neither against Sachin Tendulkar nor against Mohammad Azharuddin as far as the captaincy is concerned. I do not care about the issue, as long as the person gets the job done. However, I bring this up here because a fundamental element seems to be missing. Let me try to explain it to you. Here in the USA, when a person is offered a job, a rigorous interview process precedes that. The purpose of that interview process is to find out -

1. Whether the person has the right set of skills for the job.
2. If the person does not have those skills, does he/she have the inclination to learn those skills.
3. Whether the person is a team player (most of the time, employees work in groups).
4. Whether the person is creative and able to adapt to different circumstances.
5. Whether the person communicates well.

If a person satisfies the above, then a job is offered. This is where the Company plays a big role in shaping the employee's career, in terms of providing all tools necessary for the employee to perform well in his job. Now, it takes a lot of learning curves for the employee before he/she is productive. The company which offers him/her the job, does not expect him/her to be productive right away.

Relate this to the players/captain of the Indian cricket team. The fundamental mistake being made is to pick a person to lead the side just because the person is either the best batsman in the team or the best bowler in the team or the most senior in the team. None of these have got anything to do with leading a team. A brilliant student is never a good teacher, similarly, the best batsman is not necessarily a good leader. Same is true with a good bowler or the seniormost player. What the team needs is a good leader. This leader may well be a poor individual performer, but the catch is, he is a good leader.

Ajit Wadekar comes to mind immediately. He was not a very good individual performer, but he was an outstanding leader. But lately, our think tank seems to believe that an outstanding performer is a good leader. That is precisely why Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Md. Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar etc. were picked to lead the side at various times. And that is flat out wrong. Think carefully, and you will see for yourself how right I am. A person, before being selected to lead our team, must go through the steps mentioned above. I can almost guarantee you, that if we had such a process in place, almost all the names mentioned above would have failed right at step 1.

After this rigorous interview process, the BCCI plays the most significant role to enhance the career of the captain by providing him with all the tools and training he needs. This would include -

1. Train him on how to manage people. There are fourteen individuals that this captain is going to deal with. So, he must learn People Management before anything else.
2. Train him on stress management.
3. Train him on when/how to take calculated risks.
4. Provide him (the team) with a coach who actually knows something.
5. Provide him (the team) a physical trainer.
6. Let him select the fourteen players (all of them) for the team. Let the selection committee question the selection of every single player. This will give an opportunity to him to justify the selection of all the players satisfactorily. The good thing about this would be that the captain cannot pick a player just because the player is either very close to him or because from the same zone etc. This process of justification will ensure that players with merit and nothing else are picked for the team. When the selection committee is satisfied with the justification provided by the captain for every player, they will put their official stamp of approval. You may want to change the name of this committee from "Selection Committee" to "Selection Approval Committee".
7. Give him a committee of at least three technically good people. The role of this committee would be to watch every single game from the technicality viewpoint. At the end of each game, these three people would get together and prepare a post mortem report of the game. They would then discuss this report with the captain and all the members of the team, and point out what, if anything, went wrong and what should be done to avoid the same. They should also highlight what went right. With this discussion, everyone in the team would walk out prepared (at least mentally) not to repeat the earlier mistakes.
8. Do not sack a captain just because the team lost several games. Sack him only when the above technical committee recommends such action. This committee would monitor the performance of the captain and the team through their post mortems, and only if it feels that the captain is incapable of learning and improving will they call for his ouster. When this committee recommends removal of a leader, it has to justify that recommendation.

The idea behind all of this is to ensure that -
1. We are picking the right captain for the team.
2. We are picking the right players for the team.
3. We are providing all the backup the team needs to perform.
4. We are providing feedback on their performance.
5. We are holding the captain, players and the technical committee accountable.

I know that you are not going to see success with this process overnight. It will take time. But once the process is established and everyone involved gets used to it, you will begin to notice positive changes in terms of success.

To achieve all of this, however, you will first have to clean your house. You are surrounded by a set of people who do not have any quality, or qualification, to be where they are. They make a mockery of themselves, end up looking like idiots and, in the process, tarnish your name and that of the BCCI. I'll give you a few examples.

1. The logic of dropping Rahul Dravid is beyond anyone. Let me tell you that I'm a software engineer and I deal with logic on a regular basis to earn my living. This is beyond me. It reminds me of the cat who went to the kitchen and noticed milk in a container. What the cat did then is, it closed its eyes and drank the milk in that container, with the idea that no one noticed the act. What the cat forgot is that it was only its own eyes that were shut, not that of the world. This selection committee reminds you of that cat -- it does what it wants to, thinking that no one will notice because its own eyes are closed. Apparently, Messers Desai and company are yet to realise that the whole world is watching them drink milk.

2. When Azharuddin was called up by the selection committee (for reprimand, pep talk, whatever), we heard Mr Lele (who, frankly, appears to be clueless about everything to do with the game) state shortly thereafter that the selection committee should have sacked Azharuddin for one dayers against Sri Lanka. A few days later, he says that Azharuddin is the best player to lead the side. Does Mr Lele at least remember his own words? He can be wrong, but is it too much to expect him to be at least consistent?

This brings up the question of credibility. How much does Mr Lele, and this selection committee, possess of that commodity today?

3. The selection committee never gave Tendulkar the players he wanted. Tendulkar himself has said as much. Instead, the selectors picked the players they thought were the best. If the press questions the omission of any particular player the committee gets angry and thumps tables, or refuses to answer. Further, the selection committee decide the batting order, they decide the playing eleven. Just when did the selection committee get such totalitarian powers? As per the BCCI's constitution, the captain has the right to veto any player picked by the selectors, and can ask for his own choices. This committee has not only made a mockery of your own constitution by denying that right to Tendulkar, but they have gone further to abbrogate unto themselves powers that no selection committee anywhere else in the world has (in fact, no previous selection committee in India has gone so far as to tell the captain which player to leave out of the playing eleven, or where the captain himself should bat). All this reminds me of Chicago in the fifties, run by Al Capone. When, and how, did our selection committee become a mafia?

4. I could go on giving you examples, but one more will suffice, to underline just what a laughing stock this selection committee has reduced itself, and the BCCI, into in the eyes of the world. I was watching television clips of press conference after the team selection for Bangladesh. One of the reporters asked if Jadeja would open the innings with Ganguly. Mr. Desai immediately said yes. A second later, Mr. Lele said "No, Sidhu will open with Ganguly." Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? I mean, the selection meeting is over, presumably the convenor (Lele) and chairman (Desai) are clear in their minds about what they have decided. So how is it that minutes later, these two can contradict each other in public view? And to add to the confusion -- Desai says that Jadeja will open, Lele says Sidhu will open, both Desai and Kishen Rungta a while earlier say that they have given Azharuddin, the new captain, carte blanche on the batting order and told him that he can decide who should play where, specifically adding that Azhar can even ask Tendulkar to open the batting if he sees fit.

Desai and company, each time they run out of answers, blame the media for misquoting them. Can they say the same now, when their totally contradictory views on a single issue were captured on television, to the amusement of a worldwide audience?

If, today, the BCCI -- of which, may I remind you, you happen to be the president -- has a bad name in the global arena (it really hurts to hear a Geoffrey Boycott, on international television, say that even his "moom" could have selected a better team than the Indian selectors), it is because of these people.

Cricket is one of the few remaining things that we Indians can take pride in, and follow with passion. You owe it to us, to the people of India and to Indians abroad, to restore to us the joy we used to take in the game.

I would like to hear your response.

Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Binay Das

Editor's note: It will be recalled that we had, on Saturday, published Mr Raj Singh Dungarpur's address for the benefit of fans who wished to write to him about their feelings for Indian cricket. Given above, is the first of the letters written by a fan. A copy of this, by snail mail, is, Binay tells us, being sent to Mr Dungarpur. We hope that cricket fans worldwide will follow suit -- after all, the great changes in history have been brought about not by individuals, or even by the media, but by the power of the people, of public opinion. Maybe such well reasoned, and argued, letters will not by themselves produce miraculous changes. But at the least, it is the start of a process -- and as the famous line goes, "The longest journey begins with a single step!". And for those interested in cleaning up Indian cricket, this could be that step.

For your benefit, Mr Dungarpur's address is repeated below:

Mr. Raj Singh Dungarpur,
President, BCCI
8, Vijay Marg,
D Road (Opposite Wankhede Stadium),
Churchgate
BOMBAY - 400 020
INDIA