Suspended Animation

Spare a thought for Saurav Ganguly on April 16, going about his day as normally as anyone could—but still waiting for that one phone call that mattered. It is easy to visualise the (former?) Indian captain waiting anxiously for a call to rejoin the team he led with such pride and passion.

That call never materialised. Ganguly was conspicuous by his absence from the beleaguered Indian squad at the Ferozeshah Kotla, where it went down by 159 runs to Pakistan, losing the six-match one-day cricket series 2-4. Ganguly had to watch the final one-day international of an up-and-down season on television rather than be in the thick of things.

Though the last ball of the season has been bowled, the last wicket taken and the last awards given away, the rumours on what really happened haven't ceased, even as silence prevails in the corridors of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over l'affaire Ganguly.

So why did Ganguly not play the final game of the season, even though he was available, pending his appeal against ICC match referee Chris Broad's decision to impose a six-match ban on the Indian captain for slow over rate in a second successive match? Who really was responsible for keeping Ganguly out of the side? And what could be the reasons for such a decision?

The most popular perception is that BCCI president Ranbir Singh Mahendra, who'd won a litigation-filled election to his post in September '04, reopened an old wound and decided to keep Ganguly out of the team for the final two matches. This, some will have us believe, was Mahendra's way of getting even with Ganguly for calling him a "shame" in an interview to rediff.com in March 2000.

Understandably, Mahendra wasn't keen on getting into a debate on this, even when asked directly if he had been responsible for keeping Ganguly out of the Kanpur and Delhi ODIs. "I am not responsible for Ganguly not playing the matches. As board president, my job is to give assent to the teams the selectors choose. In this case, the selectors picked the team and I only okayed it. I don't know why I am being held responsible," he said from his Bhiwani home.

BCCI secretary S. Karunakaran Nair also raised no eyebrows with his corporate bromide: "From what I have seen, I can tell you that the board president and Saurav have had cordial relations," he said from Thiruvananthapuram.

The dazed manner in which Ganguly is said to have left the selection committee meeting in Ahmedabad—which picked Dravid as captain —is open to interpretation. Some saw it as his throwing in the towel in the face of bad form with the bat. It's a theory that could only have come from within the selection committee, though, of course, none of the selectors can go on record about what transpired at that meeting.

So, why didn't the selectors at least pick Ganguly for the final game in Delhi? Chairman of selectors Kiran More is clear. "We were informed that Ganguly would not be available for selection. The board did not inform us that we could pick him so there was no question of us meeting again to choose him in the squad. We are guided by the board."

For some years now, 'The Board' has meant a certain Jagmohan Dalmiya, whether or not as its president. And does Ganguly's exclusion from the Indian side, despite his parleys with Mahendra ostensibly seeking to bring the captain back in the frame, mean Dalmiya has lost his hold on BCCI? There seems little evidence either way. Not yet, anyway.

Nair is not very forthcoming beyond saying that the decision to keep Ganguly out of the Delhi match was made in the best interest of the team and all the players concerned. "The entire board management was involved in the discussion. There have been no fights within the board management," he says, dismissing talk that Dalmiya and Mahendra even had a public spat over Ganguly's inclusion on the eve of the Delhi match.

It turns out that Dalmiya, in his capacity as Cricket Association of Bengal president, realised that the selectors had committed themselves by not only naming Rahul Dravid as captain for the two matches but also picking Virender Sehwag as his deputy. Reinstating Ganguly at this high-pressure stage, with Pakistan leading the series 3-2, could actually have proven counterproductive if the captain did not deliver with his own bat and could not lift the team to a series-levelling victory.

So, when the Delhi crowd grew unruly and jeered stand-in captain Rahul Dravid for India's washout performance, the board's mandarins may well have patted themselves on the back for having given Ganguly a chance to extend his international career rather than ending it in a shambles.

Dalmiya now smiles and doesn't say much beyond: "We are confident that the board will back Saurav." Ganguly has no option but to accept the ICC appeals commissioner Michael Beloff's verdict upholding the six-match ban imposed on him by Broad. Meanwhile, the BCCI is getting its strategy in place. It plans to take the issue to the ICC executive board and get it to reduce the ban to four matches rather than approach the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Lausanne.

Indian cricket has been lucky to avoid the captaincy debate for some years. It may well resume at the start of the next season, more so since Ganguly will initially be unavailable for selection. Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly himself, and, on occasion Virender Sehwag, have all been speculated over.

And that's just the captaincy. With John Wright's departure, the Indian team also lacks a coach now. The likes of Greg Chappell have been discussed as possible replacements, but no decision had been announced at the time of going to print.

If Indian cricket is a ship, it clearly lacks both rudder and helmsman at this point. Both problems need to be fixed fast, before rival teams get their torpedoes in the water.