Modernity, RIP

The ongoing feud between Greg Chappell and Saurav Ganguly has claimed anunlikely victim. Chappell's website Chappellway.comformed during his pre-India coach avatar has ceased to exist for all practicalpurposes. Chappell's associate, Ian Frazer, who was virtually running the showall this while, tersely says: "Greg and I were forced to take this actionto ensure we keep the integrity of our vision. Over the next period we willinvestigate better ways of providing leading edge interaction. In the meantime Iencourage some reflection on your own learnings. Good time to go back and have alook at some old posts. I'll certainly be taking advantage of the break."

One really wonders how the integrity of vision of a venture, whichessentially was a discussion forum, could possibly be endangered by what's happeningbetween Chappell and Ganguly. But it is likely that the website's members, mostof them die-hard Indian fans of Chappell, flooded its pages with venomouscomments against Ganguly. Something that could further embarrass the alreadybeleaguered Indian coach. 

Within a few hours of Ganguly's fateful press conference in Zimbabwe,there were about 3,000 well articulated comments on the site, supportingChappell. It is interesting to see how Chappell's public support curve has showna steep decline in the last one week. Most of the dipstick surveys conducted aweek back showed the captain trailing the coach 35 to 65. With the reviewcommittee virtually absolving Ganguly of all charges levelled against him by thecoach, public opinion too seems to be with him now. 

But it is still surprising that Chappell, an outsider, has been able to divideopinion so sharply in a country where cricket following is characterised byextreme jingoism. And that tells me that the youngsters in urban India (the setthat most of these surveys and SMS polls cover) are watching a hell of a lot ofEuropean football on TV, where coaches like Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Fergusoncall the shots, and are more influential than most of their team members.

If Ganguly had decided to pursue his first love football and acted in thereckless manner that he has, as the captain of a team, there would have been noreview committees and SMS polls. He would simply have been shunted out. TheIrish are as passionate about football as we are about cricket, and Roy Keane amore pivotal character for his team than Ganguly. But that didn't deter theIrish coach from sending the celebrity captain, who refused to play ball, on along journey back home to Dublin from Yokohama in the midst of the all important2002 World Cup campaign. More recently, Mourinho, the Chelsea boss, not onlydropped Ricardo Carvalho, star defender, a protégé and fellow Portugese, for acouple of games but also asked him to get an IQ test done for making his outragepublic over the star-studded team's rotation policy.

Having watched more hours of football than cricket in the last one year, Iwould personally like to see a rule framed in Indian cricket whereby a playerwould be dropped for two matches if he gets run out on account of failing toslide his bat to the crease while taking a run, instead of casually plonking itin, as if he was doing mankind a favour by scoring it. Doesn't matter if theplayer in question is a Virender Sehwag who hits a hundred in the match.

But M/s Sehwag and Ganguly (the two most frequent plonkers) needn't worry.Such rules can never come into effect here because we are Indians. Any coach whoworks here will have to work "within the system". It is a uniquesystem indeed resting on the pillars of inefficiency, mediocrity, inflated egosand total opacity. And we seem to be guarding it with the same zeal with whichcountries like Australia and New Zealand protect their unique bio-diversity usingthe most stringent quarantine laws.

Ergo, Greg Chappell, Member of the Order of the British Empire must go. Hisdirect Australian methods and the "commitment to excellence" threatento destroy the edifices of mediocrity that that we have erected with such greatcare. He is a bloody liar who is out to tarnish the good name of our winningestand angel-like captain who is also in serious contention for the non-playingcaptaincy of India's Davis Cup team for his great motivational skills. Move overLeander Paes. Chappell, after all, slave-drives them, and has a "headmasterly"attitude towards players who don't follow the training routines. We are notnatural athletes, you see. When it comes to natural ability, flair and skills,we can beat the Aussies hollow

A lot of cricket writers and ex-players have asked if we should be treatingour heroes like Ganguly in this manner. But what about Chappell? He may not haveendorsed as many products as Ganguly but has more Test runs and is probablystill a hero Down Under. Imagine what we'd have said if Sunil Gavaskar or KapilDev had been called a liar by Cricket Australia. We branded match referee MikeDenness a racist when he accused Sachin Tendulkar of ball tampering and stopped shortof conferring a similar title on umpire Daryl Harper when he gave Tendulkar outLBW when he was struck on the helmet ducking a short-pitched ball from Glenn McGrath.

But soon after Chappell leaves for Adelaide, after a "swadeshi"coach like Mohinder Amarnath is installed, we should collectively, as a nation,resolve not to feel envious when Australia wins another major tournament orEngland stamp their newfound authority on the cricket field. Nor should we askourselves stupid questions like why we lost yet another cup final. Sehwag willoccasionally make a sparkling hundred, Irfan Pathan would bamboozle Bangladeshwith his in-swingers and we'd still have heroes to worship.