Blighted in Blighty

India’s debacle in England was all the more shocking as they began the series as the world’s number one team as per the official ICC rankings and also World Cup champions. Dhoni was our very own Captain Cool, the man with the Midas touch. He took India to the number one spot in early December 2009, led Chennai Super Kings to the IPL title the last two years in a row (and also the Champions League title) and then crowning it all earlier this year by becoming only the second Indian captain after Kapil Dev to lift the World Cup. But the cracks were beginning to show and the more perceptive observers saw the warning signs as a resurgent England side were aiming to topple India from the top Test spot.

                                

For once the ire of the fan has not been directed solely at the players. There have been no hysterical calls for mass sackings as had occurred after India made an ignominious early exit from the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies. BCCI is undoubtedly the richest cricket board in the world. Jingoistic Indian cricket fans have gloried in this new-found power. But what goes around comes around and today that all-conquering Indian team is the butt of derision from the rest of the cricket world. BCCI is today in the firing line and under pressure to change its greedy ways.

The mad rush to make a fast buck is slowly killing the goose that laid the golden egg, in this case the players. And the players are largely pawns – albeit well paid ones – in this game of ego, power and greed. Slowly it is sinking in that the cash-rich IPL launched with such fanfare in 2008 is beginning to eat into the vitals of Indian cricket. This is of course being stridently denied by those who have a vested financial interest in the IPL. But then the credibility of those who are on BCCI payrolls and naturally sing from the same hymn-sheet has been well and truly exposed.

In the pre-IPL era the main grouse of professional cricketers was that there was too much cricket being played. Now with the introduction of the lucrative T-20 league, the couple of months in peak summer when our players could rest their weary bodies has been snatched away from them. It has become a non-stop grind, forcing India’s top cricketers to now pick and choose their international appearances. Franchise-based cricket is now taking precedence over representing the country due to the massive pay cheques being flaunted in the IPL. The league is the Board’s very own baby, so the top players cannot stay away from it.

BCCI’s scheduling is also little short of insane. The tour to South Africa early this year was followed shortly after by the high voltage World Cup at home and less than a week after that mega-event ended, the players were thrust into nearly two months of the IPL merry-go-round. Then followed the Caribbean tour and straight from there the team flew to England. The result was that half the team was under-cooked – such as Sachin Tendulkar who missed the entire West Indies tour – and the other half were woefully over-cooked and over-worked.

Serious questions must also be asked of the players themselves. No matter how many fitness tests they go through, ultimately it is a sportsman himself who knows his body best. In this regard both pace bowler Zaheer Khan and opening batsman Virender Sehwag stand indicted. Zaheer must have known he was not fully fit going into the opening Test at Lord’s. To see India’s top fast bowler of the last decade limp off in the first session of the first day after taking the first two English wickets of the series was a pathetic and heart-breaking sight. Though they bowled their hearts out, Praveen Kumar and Ishant Sharma were unable to carry the increased burden on their shoulders.

Sehwag looked a pale shadow of his normal dominating self as he was sent to England halfway through the series. He had delayed surgery on his shoulder in order to fulfil his commitments to Delhi Daredevils and with the off-colour Gautam Gambhir also risking injury in the IPL, the pendulum in Indian cricket has inexorably shifted. No longer is the India cap the pinnacle of ambition and achievement. Now a lucrative IPL contract is the dream of every youngster in the land. The finger of blame must be pointed at the BCCI for creating this Frankenstein’s monster rather than the cricketers themselves. While the team may still bounce back this year, the major worry is that the cupboard of talent looks increasingly bare.

With Zaheer, Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid – India’s lone silver lining in this dismal performance – VVS Laxman and perhaps even Harbhajan in the twilight of their careers, the toughest task will now be to find adequate replacements for these legends.