How the Champions Trophy can save Indian cricket

When asked about the spot-fixing scandal, captain MS Dhoni in his own unique manner answered that he would rather not talk about it and would speak up when the time was right. Of course, this drew a lot of flak as does everything related to Indian cricket today, but the fact of the matter remains that Dhoni at the time of this questioning was in England, preparing for one of the bigger tournaments of the year and he wished for his mind to stick to the cricket rather than the off-field controversies that perennially hound Indian sports.

The pain caused by recent revelations especially hurts because of the fact that cricket is a religion that every Indian is born into, regardless of caste or creed. The power of cricket in this country is so extraordinarily massive, that we will blindly thrust all our faith into Sachin Tendulkar, yet keep one eye open when it comes to the people we vote into power. And when such faith is betrayed, you turn to reason, which is why my Facebook and Twitter feeds constantly display words of vice against the sport with the same intensity Christopher Hitchens would against Jesus Christ and the rest.

Indian cricket is in shambles. Power-hungry megalomaniacs were always slowly murdering the sport, but now the blood-bath has begun and it has no intentions of leaving any survivors. N. Srinivasan has acted in a way our politicians regularly do, refusing to give up power and accept mistakes. And the mere fact that we draw comparisons between politicians and BCCI members is a worrying sign which needs to be mended with immediacy.

But if you swim through all the muck, however hard that may be, reach out as far as you can, and pull yourself on to shore with all your strength, you’ll realise that there is cricket to be played. The ICC Champions Trophy has always been considered a bit of a waste, an over-indulgence by the ICC to give teams the opportunity to add silverware. But this year, the Champions Trophy is what could save cricket from all the garbage that rots within it.

Ironically, as the final four teams prepared for a showdown, the ‘cricket’ in the IPL (if any) took a backseat and the off-field stuff is what we began caring about most. Mumbai Indians won, we pondered about if for a couple of hours, then went back to it after hearing about Mr. Meiyappan’s involvement. Forget your saas-bahu serials, this was what prime-time entertainment was all about.

But here’s what we must remember. The likes of Sreesanth and Mohammed Asif are the villains of cricket, and wherever there are villains, there are also a bunch of guys dedicated to doing something bigger and better than themselves. Those guys will take field in England and Wales and, whether Indian, Pakistani, or Aussie, they are the representative sample of cricket as a whole.

Dhoni not answering questions related to the incident was perfectly all right as his team was preparing for a tournament which could shut out all such questions forever after that. At the end of the day, this is their job. Every now and then a loose nut will be caught out, but you can’t let that affect your work. The morale in the dressing room may already be at a record low. Talking about it to outsiders does not help the situation. Dhoni did assure us that he’d speak when the time is right. Let’s trust him with that.

With that being said, India began their tourney positively with a strong win against Sri Lanka. While the bowling left buckets to be desired, Virat Kohli and Dinesh Karthik confidently stepped up to the plate and swung away to lead India to a very good win. The players have no say in the working of the BCCI (rather surprising, and definitely a topic for another time). To think about things out of their control instead of refining what happens on the field is is a useless exercise, and something for which they have strangely received extreme abuse by the media.

In the current scenario, the ICC Champions Trophy is the biggest platform where faith can be won back solely on the basis of the game of cricket, rather than a change in power. With belief lying terrifyingly close to the edge, this tournament in this scenario is as important, if not more, than the World Cup.