The battle of the brats

IN Opinion | 26/09/2005

Opinion is DIVided over who is right: Saurav or Chappel. The Board has to decide. It should sack both of them.

You don`t say!

Darius Nakhoonwala

It is not often that I feel sorry for the Board of Cricket Control in India. But even my heart is bleeding for it now. Just as no true romantic should be forced to choose between wife and mistress, the Board is being asked to choose between a captain it loves and a coach on whom it depends.

The two are quarrelling like alley cats now and the Board is caught in the middle. So what should it do? As can be expected, it is not lacking for direction because the leader writers have been busy.

The first off the mark was the Indian Express. Its headline said it all: Saurav must go.

The Board, it said had "been witness to many scandals; continuing with Ganguly would be another. He must go, not merely because of Chappell`s e-mail, or a falling average, or one run-in too many with authority, or for violating the basic ethic of team sport: making public dressing-room disputes. He must go because Indian cricket needs a change." Having shown the Prince of Kolkata the door, it went on to sing his praises. Marvellous leader, great batsman, superb leadership and so on. But, if I may distort a saying, every dog has its day and Saurav, it said, had had his. So go.

It then took an irritated swipe at the Board accusing it of being "a shamefully indifferent administration. And the common root cause is money. It is money that has DIVided a team that once inspired us all by its sheer patriotism. And it is money — in terms of the easy, and immense, revenue generated from television rights — that has blinded the BCCI to its other responsibilities. The time has come to sort out at least one of those problems."

The Hindustan Times also said the same things. If the choice was between Saurav and Chappell, it was Saurav that would have to go. It was very catty about it, too. "Saurav Ganguly wants us to believe that he is cricket`s Joan of Arc." Ouch! That was nasty.

Then it got nastier still. "Ganguly`s litany of woes consists of one long whine."   Then it made the substantive point, namely, that it was "never so much Ganguly the batsman who parted the sea and led the Indian team through the glorious period…the credit for that goes to Ganguly the captain. That Ganguly has been in retirement for a year now." It then went on to say it was wrong to suggest that a foreigner knows nothing about India and that this was a poor excuse for overlooking Saurav`s "childish sulks and tantrums."

Bur forget the leader writers on a Sunday with nothing better to do. The cricketers were also DIVided. Bishan Singh Bedi in the Sunday Times said Saurav must go. EAS Prasanna, writing in the Deccan Herald, also pretty much said Chappell was right. " I don`t think he has any agenda against Ganguly. It is only that such an upright approach is unfamiliar to our cricketers or followers of the game. As far as I know, the Australians do not beat around the bush, but focus on the job assigned to them."

"The job of a coach carries enormous responsibility. In Chappell`s case more so because he has been hired to reconstruct the team before the World Cup. He should be an integral part of the selection committee and his words need to be given due consideration."

Many others sounded off to the TV channels over the weekend, taking this side or the other. It was left to the Business Standard, which took a strictly managerial view, to settle the issue. A pox on both of them, it said. Send both packing.