Telling Inexperience

THE men who hold the puppet-strings of the BCCI show have played games all their lives. But they've rarely ever played cricket. That is why the game is on such a mud-pit of a wicket these days. Jagmohan Dalmiya was a nondescript Calcutta trader who found the backlanes of the city's business district too stifling, Raj Singh Dungarpur a pedestrian Ranji Trophy trundler who turned his arm over for Rajasthan under the shadow of Kailash Gattani and Salim Durrani, and Jaywant Lele an umpire with an eminently forgettable track record. All three have a point to prove. Tragically, they are doing so at the expense of Indian cricket.

Indian cricket's reigning triumvirate may have been shamed by consistent criticism in the media into packing the five-man senior selection committee with four former Test cricketers, having rid the panel of the likes of M.P. Pandove, Sambaran Banerjee and Kishen Rungta. But with the exception of chairman Hemant Kanitkar (two Tests), the more crucial junior selection committee has only one man who came anywhere near Test class—Rajinder Goel. Rungta had once said that "even a paanwallah can pick a national side". Perhaps. But selecting a junior team requires real foresight and an uncanny ability to spot talent. Will J.K. Mahendra, Shashikant Khandkar and Jumut Mohanty measure up?

Who cares? Not Dungarpur. Nor Lele. What if 72 per cent of the Outlook poll respondents feel that the board would be better off if professionals were allowed to call the shots, BCCI's decision-makers still prefer to repose their trust on people with tenuous links with the game. For these are the only people they can be at ease with. Hence the crucial tour and programme committee, headed by entrepreneur and former Union minister Kamal Morarka, doesn't have a single individual who can lay claims to having played the game with any distinction. Is it any wonder, then, that India's national cricket team is subjected to the kind of back-breaking tour schedules that can only be an invitation to burnouts and breakdowns. An international cricketer needs to be mentally and physically fit, but it is unlikely that Morarka and his ilk would ever be aware of that.

On paper, the BCCI's technical committee isn't quite as bad. It includes two former India captains—Sunil Gavaskar (chairman) and Ajit Wadekar—and two erstwhile Ranji Trophy players—Niranjan Shah and Hyder Ali. Last year, the committee had two members who hadn't even played Ranji Trophy cricket. This year, there are three. But this is the committee which makes decisions on such weighty and touchy issues as pitches, etc. Everybody and his uncle wants the quality of pitches improved, so the quality of batsmen and bowlers improves.

 At the international level, the secret of success in this game of glorious uncertainties lies in the ability to learn from past mistakes and adapt. The trouble with the BCCI is it doesn't even care to acknowledge its mistakes.