By Veturi Srivatsa, IANS,
Indian cricket board president Shashank Manohar has found a novel way to punish under-performers. He sacked bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad and fielding coach Robin Singh for the Indian team’s failure to make the semi-finals of the World Twenty20 Championship and the Champions Trophy.
Now, when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) itself has been brought into disgrace by the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) by producing a pitch unfit and dangerous to bat on, he disbanded the Grounds and Pitches Committee, forgetting only the last week he had given the curators and the national selectors a whopping hike in their salaries for helping India to become the world’s No.1 Test team.
What about the administrators? Manohar’s answer is that the Board can’t be talking responsibility for the non-performance of the people it hires! To be fair to him, he had warned the curators that they and the state associations would be held responsible for under-prepared pitches. But he has not taken note of the complaints of state teams about sub-standard domestic pitches.
The minions have been given the boot, but what about the DDCA big bosses who have the dubious distinction of lining up the largest contingent for the post-match ceremonies at Ferozeshah Kotla? Some of the professional mourners, who are present at every ceremony, quietly slipped out of the stadium the moment they sensed trouble Sunday when the India-Sri Lanka fifth and last one-dayer was abandoned.
It is not enough that Manohar gets his Nagpur facilities in order or that Board secretary N. Srinivasan does so in Chennai or Inderjit Singh Bindra at Mohali and Brijesh Patel in Bangalore. Most other pitches where Test cricket is played have come in for criticism from time to time, but nothing could be done to improve their quality. Delhi is one among them.
It is a shame that a pitch could not be prepared for a 100 overs game even after International Cricket Council (ICC) officials had warned that the Kotla pitch would not pass muster for the 2011 World Cup.
Certainly, making a pitch is no rocket science. DDCA has been hosting Tests for over 60 years and over Rs.1 billion was spent on the new stadium a couple of years ago. All that the DDCA does whenever there is a complaint about the pitch is to dig it up and re-lay it. Therein lies the catch. Every time the pitch is dug up, overheads go into someone’s pocket and the track keeps deteriorating.
The trouble is that the DDCA has handed over control of the game to a sports committee which has essentially been formed to run the Delhi league. The committee has now become a monster and the game has gone into the hands of transporters, timber merchants, builders and bookies.
Does Manohar know that most of the state associations which he presides over are run by mafias and not cricket administrators who have no interest or idea about cricket? For most careerist officials, it is the easiest way to enjoy the perks of cash-rich associations. These officials rope in the politicians as frontmen and protectors.
What can he do now to haul the DDCA president Arun Jaitley and Sports Secretary Sunil Dev and the man in charge of the pitch, Chetan Chauhan, over the coals? Nothing, now that the DDCA chief is a key opposition leader and also has at least four votes in his pocket in a Board controlled by the Congress and its allies.
Luckily for DDCA officials, on a day when they were trying to hide themselves, the Delhi Ranji Trophy team bailed them out by entering the semi-finals of the national championship at the Palam Ground, beating a strong Tamil Nadu side. Sensing victory, the officials, including Jaitley, rushed to Palam to bask in the glory. Left to the players, they would like the DDCA disbanded after what happened Sunday.
Virender Sehwag, who raised a revolt against the petty officials, knew exactly what it is like playing at the Kotla and he made no secret of it when he said after India clinched the series at the Eden Gardens that he could not trust the pitch at his home ground. He wanted to quit Delhi and play his cricket elsewhere, but was persuaded against this by Jaitley promising to set things right. But the promises remained empty and the same unscrupulous motley group of hangers-on is running the show.
(28-12-2009- V. Srivatsa is sports editor of IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at [email protected])