DID THE INDIAN selectors – or rather the chief selector Kris Srikanth – goof-up big time in picking the squad for the first Test against South Africa? Much more than the goof-up, there is the CSK (Chennai Super Kings) angle being given to the chaos and confusion which saw Wridhiman Saha play as a specialist batsman in the highly forgettable match for world’s best Test team. (We are talking about the Indian team).
It is no secret that BCCI secretary Srinivasan is also the owner of CSK. Kris Srikanth has made no attempt to hide the fact that he is the brand ambassador of CSK. Dhoni, the Indian captain, is also the captain of CSK. And it’s also not a coincidence that Badrinath, Murali Vijay, Sudeep Tyagi, Suresh Raina etc are all from CSK.
So, why this sudden urge to give so many players from CSK a chance in the Test squad? And if Dinesh Karthik was going to comeback into the squad, why drop him in the first place and bring in Saha? And then why drop Saha after just one game? Why drop Mithun and Tyagi without giving them a chance? Why keep Yusuf Pathan entirely out of the reckoning for a Test place? Why……?
The questions are too many? And Srikanth perhaps has no satisfactory answers. The impression is that he just takes instructions from Srinivasan and with every goof-up of the selection committee that impression gains strength. After the first test, the reserves – who had no role to play in the loss – were dropped.
Young players like Tyagi, Saha and Mithun are as confused as the selection committee. These youngsters really do not know what the hell is going on. There is too much pressure, there is too much confusion and there is too much of a hurry to get everything done too quickly.
Just a short while ago, Ravindra Jadeja was simply a member of the India under-19 team that won the junior World Cup in Malaysia. He then got into the IPL, into the senior Indian team, into the business of lakhs and crores and now into the quagmire that he finds himself. But can we really blame Jadeja for all the mayhem and confusion that is going around?
Everyone is out there making money. Jadeja wants to make more money than Kohli. Kohli wants to make more money than Rohit Sharma, who in turn wants to make more money than Raina. Raina wants to make more money than… It is endless. Call it peer pressure or rat race. Both are OK with me.
Having seen the Indian players at close quarters, I have realized that much more than being aware of each others batting average they are more concerned about how many ads (TV commercials) the other one is doing. Is Dhoni being seen in more TV commercials than Sachin? How many ads is Yuvi doing? Or for that matter Harbhajan? This guy has just come in and already he is doing ads!
But the players cannot be blamed for thinking along these lines. The whole scenario has been commercialized. The game has become rich in money but poor in quality. How else can you explain the world’s number one Test team (according to ICC) suffering an innings defeat on home turf.
But even in this razzmatazz of commercialism there still exists a flicker of hope for the game. The best thing to happen to the game has not been the IPL. It has not been the immense wealth that has covered the players like some malignant rash. But, according to me, it is a simple thing like war-ravaged Afghanistan qualifying for the T20 World Cup to be played in the West Indies in April-May this year. And Afghanistan will be in the same group with India. The world’s wealthiest cricketers playing against poor cousins Afghanistan in the West Indies. This game knows how to find a way for itself to grow.
