Flog Dhoni but only after you’ve flogged the real culprit

A second consecutive column on the plight of Dhoni and Co is definitely cause for concern. It is not just for the players who are being humiliated by the cocky Australians as never before but for Indian cricket as a whole, and the latter in a much bigger measure.

One needs to get over our skipper’s startling utterances on foreign soil, the reports of dressing room fissures, the on field non-performance, the complete slackness of the Indian arm and the comprehensive failure of Team India’s best-ever 11 in the Test format. There is an urgent need to introspect about the golden goose being systematically felled by its own nurturers.

The problem of such utter failure lies not in the players so much as it does in the grooming of these players by the Indian cricket Board. The BCCI’s rugged defence of its money spinning activities need to stop if the future of the game is to be saved in India.

Blame Dhoni as much as you want to for his straight talk of not being too comfortable as a Test captain, but the blame does not lie with him entirely. The utterance is the first public salvo fired at his Board which has been milking the cricketers with the sensitivity of a psychotic tyrant. The players in India play double the amount of cricket than their counterparts in any other country. The administrators have such a stranglehold on their careers that no one dares to say no to money spinning events like the 45-day-long IPL.

Yes, the players too are to blame in trying to play for money more than country, but who has been responsible for nurturing such inclinations in these cricketers? Let’s face the fact. Indian cricket is more inclined to playing the shorter versions of the game and in recent past has consistently excluded Test cricket from its home and away itineraries. Yes, when people point out how Australians like Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke have stood up to say no to money spinning events like the ongoing T20 Big Bash organised by Cricket Australia, they forget that crossing swords with the BCCI is a different ball game altogether. The Board’s chief owns an IPL team of which Dhoni is the skipper. Can he really, without evoking the ire of the Board, say no to playing IPL?

He can’t because witch-hunting of careers is not such an unthinkable proposition among our sports administrators at large, more so when it comes to a religion like cricket. Cricket Australia gives that window to its players to say no to its money raising activities over duty to the nation. The Indian Board is much less lenient.

When Dhoni said he would like to step down two years hence as Test skipper he was killing two birds with one stone — targeting the unthinking Board and ensuring his longevity in the ODIs of which he is the real master.

Look behind the utterance and you will see how this arrow was directed at the BCCI and I hope it has found its mark. The skipper, on earlier occasions, has been consistently talking about how coping with the rigorous schedule has increasingly become impossible.

Just before the T20 World Cup in England, he had raised media ire by repeatedly saying that the fielding (which was in a mess) was not likely to get any better. It sounded outrageous, unthinkable that the skipper of the best propped team with money and trainers and physios and what not, would say bad will continue to be bad. Even then, Dhoni was not saying but pointing out at the same problem — the excess of cricket killing the players with burnouts, fatigue and ultimately non-performance.

From then to now, the schedules have become only more unending. The Board needs to relent, look within, become considerably less greedy and reorient itself, the administrators and the players to give top priority to Test cricket — the IPLs and the T20s and even the ODIs can follow suit. And for this to happen there needs to be an axing of vested interests within the Board and a general honesty towards the game itself.

Perhaps, that’s what Dhoni has been trying to point out for a long time. And what he said the other day in Perth should be taken as a warning the skipper is sounding about the crippling malaise that is growing around Indian cricket like moss in the rainy season.

The tenets for the overhaul are pretty clear only if the Board gets honest. Separate the players of the Test team completely from the ODI and T20 cricketing teams and make Tests as lucrative as the shorter versions. If money is what is needed for instilling Test commitment among players, the Board has ample to spare. And it also has the global financial clout to get the ICC to introduce more Test events like a Test World Cup which has long been hanging fire.

Other than that, the BCCI also needs to get serious about churning out the future generation of good cricketers. Our team looks aged and the 40-year-olds or close to 40-year-olds are unable to perform. There should be enough viable alternatives to them in our nurseries for Dhoni to have enough options. Indian cricket needs to shed its past and look into the future or the future will be more bleak than the past. We all love the Tendulkars and the Dravids and the Laxmans but what we hate more is the vacuum that stares their imminent departure from the middle.

We are one billion and more, cricket is our religion, we have the most influential and moneyed Board in the world and yet we do not have our benches filled with talent. How much more mismanaged can this be?

Is there anybody in BCCI who is willing to understand the enormity of this alarming proposition? What Dhoni has said should be taken in the context of this scenario and only then should he be flogged for making such a provocative point on foreign soil.

Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 15 January 2012