Your foot, my ball?
FROM THE STANDS
S R Khelkoodkar
The authority on Indian football, it seems, is the Telegraph. Not only does it have probably the most comprehensive coverage of national and local football, but it also offers the ignorant reader doses of opinion to go with it.
The latest mess, if you want to call it that, in Indian football concerns the prospect of the appointment of a new national coach. It seems the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has been looking around the world to find a coach. Last week officials said the search was over. Not so, says the Telegraph.
"The world may change, not the All India Football Federation (AIFF). The AIFF has been synonymous with `confusion`, and it remains so. The latest instance of creating confusion came on Saturday when AIFF president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi said in Mumbai that another candidate will be interviewed on Sunday before a final decision is taken on appointing the national coach."
Why is there any confusion? According to the paper it is because AIFF officials have been giving contradictory opinions. From being just straws to gauge the direction of the wind, as such, these opinions have become the foundation of fact.
Says the Telegraph, "Most of the other AIFF officials said it was almost an open secret that Bob Houghton of England has been decided on as the new coach." But it turns out that AIFF president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi announced that they were to interview another candidate.
Continues the article, "Others in the AIFF have no clue as to what Das Munshi is talking about. None of them has any information on the arrival of another foreign candidate. The general feeling is that, this has been done to confuse everyone. The AIFF president had done something similar when Syed Nayeemuddin was shown the door in March."
Not surprisingly, the Telegraph`s parting words are those of yet another AIFF official.
"The situation was best summed up by an AIFF official, who did not wish to be named. `No one knows it better than Das Munshi that no coach is coming to Delhi on Sunday. Moreover, that none of the four shortlisted coaches is from Portugal,` he pointed out."
Anybody else find this reporting and all these opinions rather unsatisfactory?
Another confusing article, although with better intentions, is one carried by the Hindustan Times on the just-concluded ODI series in the West Indies. A reporter has done a statistical analysis of India`s performance in the last few months and in particular in this series. The question he is trying to answer is whether it was inexperience that let us down. The title of the article is "Blame it on inexperience!" and you will not be blamed for thinking that this is what the article believes.
But I`m afraid I don`t follow the rest. Make what you will of this:
"Can we really blame the team`s performance on inexperience? Certainly, Raina, Dhoni and Pathan were not more experienced against Lanka, South Africa, Pak and England, than they`re now. Commonsense dictates that they played `lesser` matches than when they came up to face Windies in their own den.
"If inexperience is indeed the problem, then Dravid as skipper is certainly much less experienced than Sourav, and Chappell must go to make way for some more experienced coach. It must also be an irony that when two of the most experienced players performed, India lost more matches, if not as many, than when the raw ones came up with some superlative show."
The tables suggest that the reporter believes that it wasn`t inexperience that let us down, but leaves us no further on the road to understanding what happened.
There is, however, as always, a suggestion:
"One may be inclined to call this series a step backward but that will only be a backward thought. If at all, this series will only help India plug the holes which were not visible when the team was having it too easy. In the same way as Australia learnt so much from lost Ashes."
And to end:
"Players like Raina must be persisted with, and given more chances. They are the finishers in the making. And if the pitches for ODIs are any indication, finishing touches will be the most critical when the teams go for glory in the World Cup 2007."
As I said earlier, the intentions are good but the execution is lacking.