Will Mr Desai stand up and be counted?
Prem Panicker
Why is it that only people who are 'ex-' something or other are prone to attacks of conscience?
Back in Bombay after a four-day sojourn in Bangalore, that question keeps echoing in my mind - and first up, I must admit that it is none other than Mr Ramakant Desai who put it there.
Thursday night, I was having cricket with a former Indian star based in Bangalore. The conversation naturally revolved around the controversy regarding the selection of the side for the Asia Cup. And the former player startled me more than somewhat when, with utmost casualness, he said, "I pity 'Tiny' (the nickname Desai is known by in cricket circles), he is the one who is facing all the flak, but it is the others who have been doing all the mischief. Did you know that at one point, Tiny and Tendulkar actually got up and walked out of the meeting and only after Lele (J Y Lele, secretary of the BCCI) went running after them and persuaded them to come back..."
Where did you get this information from, I asked. "Oh, Tiny has been telling his friends about it pretty freely," was the response.
That was last night. This morning, what do I find? Agency reports in the papers, quoting Desai as admitting that yes, there was some disagreement during the selection committee meeting; yes, Tendulkar and Desai both wanted Vinod Kambli and Nayan Mongia, but the other four selectors rail-roaded the names of Azharuddin and Saba Karim instead and that yes, "the dropping of Nayan Mongia was unjust and calls for soul-searching on the part of the committee..."
Having said all this, what must Desai go and do, however, but to hedge, to vacillate?
The chairman of selectors first attempts to cast doubts on the paper, Aajkal, which quoted Sachin Tendulkar as saying he had not been given the side he wanted. Sachin had little time to talk to the media, says Desai while expressing doubt about the veracity of the report.
A while later, the chairman of selectors says, "Tendulkar may be upset with the omission of one or two players, but he would never comment on the entire team."
And he goes further to add, "Such reports before an important tournament could have an adverse effect on the morale of the team."
With all due respect to the chairman of selectors, his statement to the media has only made a bad situation worse. Examine his statements in sequence and you'll see why I think so.
First up, casting doubts about the veracity of a news report is an old tactic, used whenever the media gets uncomfortably close to the truth. Sachin didn't have time to talk to the media, Desai says. Fine. How then did the reporter for Aajkal know the names of the two players the Indian captain wanted picked? And here, it pays to remember that the news story got it exactly right -- as Desai himself admits when he says he and Sachin were keen on Kambli and Mongia, but were over-ruled.
Then again, Desai's words attempt to deflect the focus from the real issue, into extraneous regions. The issue is not the veracity or otherwise of a media story - the issue is the functioning of this selection committee. And the fact that the committee is not functioning as it should is attested to by none other than its chairman. For what does Desai say? "The omission of Mongia was a mistake, and calls for some soul searching..." and again... "Tendulkar may have been unhappy over the omission of one or two players, but he would never have criticised the entire team..."
This, to me, smacks of semantic gymnastics. Surely you don't have to be a cricketing superbrain to realise that a captain has a right to be unhappy when two positions as crucial as that of wicketkeeper and middle-order batsman are filled by people he does not have faith in?
It is this attempt to pooh-pooh the whole issue, to make it appear as a storm in the cricketing teacup, that appals me.
Time and again, we have been told that the meetings of the selection committee have been carried out in a spirit of amity and friendship. That the debates are purely based on cricketing merits, and that it is on merit alone that players are picked, or omitted.
That was the impression sought to be conveyed this Monday as well. When we asked Lele, during the post-selection media briefing in Bangalore, whether he was happy at the way the meeting -- which he was handling for the first time, in his role of secretary to the BCCI - had gone, Lele said, "Oh yes, very happy."
Has the team been picked on merit?, we persist. "Absolutely!" averred Lele.
If that is the case, how is it that two days later, the chairman of selectors himself admits that the omission of Nayan Mongia is a mistake grave enough to prompt soul-searching?
Does Desai -- or any of the other four selectors -- have the least idea what impact their shenanigans can have on the players?
A couple of hours before the selection meeting, Nayan Mongia was taking a breather from the nets. Chatting casually with me and with a former manager of the national side, he was telling us, during the fortnight's break from cricket that he got, he had been trying to catch up with his bride. "But you know, with a new season on us immediately, I can't even afford to relax, I had to keep doing my workouts, practising, staying fit and match-ready," Mongia told us.
Two hours later, he learnt that he had been dropped. I wonder if the Indian keeper gets any consolation out of the fact that the chairman of selectors thinks his omission was a mistake?
Take Vinod Kambli. After a run of good performances in the Wills World Cup, he is dropped for non-cricketing reasons. Not to put too fine a point on it, Kambli is told that his off-field behavious will have to be mended if he is to be considered for selection to the national side ever again. So Kambli cleans up his act, he mends his behaviour and, in the process, gets himself back into form on the domestic circuit.
His bat talks for him -- and talks so well that he forces himself back into the side for the Independence Cup. His last outing with the national side fetches him 65 good runs, against Pakistan.
So what good does all this do him?
None whatsoever -- he is dropped, because four of five selectors want someone else in the side, and in a democracy, the majority rules -- even if the minority comprises the chairman of the selection committee and the captain of the team.
Do any of the selectors have the least idea what this kind of thing can do to a player's morale? To his performance?
Bob Dylan, in Blowing in the wind, sang, "How many deaths will it take to ignore /When too many people have died?"
Today, watching the antics of the famous five -- to call them 'jokers', as Jimmy Amarnath once did of their predecessors, would be to insult the comic muse, for what is happening is increasingly unfunny - one is moved to wonder how many more cricketers they will ruin, before we all of us realise that Indian cricket cannot afford the loss.
In the midst of writing this, I was chatting about something with fellow columnist Harsha Bhogle. And Harsha -- whose general outlook on life is positively Pangloss-ian in its optimism, said look, you have a board president in Raj Singh Dungarpur who nobody ever sees, you have a secretary in Lele who has no cricketing standing whatsoever, how can you ever expect things to change? "Take my word for it, things will go on just as they are."
That seems to be the prevailing mood -- that nobody can do nothing to change, correct, what is clearly an unacceptable situation.
I disagree. It is not correct to say that nobody can do anything. One person can and, in my opinion, should - and that person is Ramakant Desai.
If the chairman of the national selectors has any strength of character, if he has the good of the game at heart -- as he himself has professed -- then he will speak out. Now.
Having been over-ruled on a crucial issue; having, if report speaks true, come to the verge of walking out of the selection meeting he himself chairs, Desai should now submit his resignation. And for once, tell the truth, the whole, unvarnished truth, about the games that are played in selection meetings.
The board cannot, and will not, make any changes to the system. The public, however, can by the sheer weight of its numbers force the board to act.
But for that, the public should first be informed. And Desai is the only one who can, as of now, let the public know exactly what the problem is.
Will Desai do that?
My heart harbours a hope that he will. My head, however, says he will not.
For we are like that only. When we have an opportunity to make a difference, we keep mum. Then, years later, when we have been put out to pasture, we suddenly discover that we have a conscience. We recall injustices of yesteryears. And we tell the media that we are speaking of those injustices because we have the good of the game at heart.
Ask Manoj Prabhakar.
|
