Why the BCCI understands us best

Haroon Lorgat

In a sense we were fortunate as this was exactly the time we had the likes of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag, Zaheer, Kumble and Harbhajan. Most of these players had transitioned from failure to success – this Indian side now knew how to win.

We, the tax paying public, were overjoyed. But our inner demons were still lurking around. We had risen too high; a fall from this height would be shattering.

And like all other inevitabilities, this too happened. A shocking loss to the same Bangladesh which the BCCI had nurtured over the years meant that India crashed out of the 2007 World Cup even before they got a chance to enter the proper league stage. A billion hearts were broken; India had travelled full circle from 1983 to 2007.

At this time a visionary (co-incidentally called Subhash Chandra) came up with something called the Indian Cricket League. Based on Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket format, the idea was simple – use the newest format of the game (Twenty20) to get international superstars down to India to play along with domestic cricketers around the country.

This was the first challenge the BCCI had received in a long time – its immediate response was to ban everyone associated with the league from having anything to do with anything in Indian cricket. Twenty20 was a format not too favoured by the BCCI – in the run-up to the 2007 World T20, they had played only one T20. In fact, so strong was their contempt for the format that they sent a side of rank greenhorns to compete in what was an international trophy.

And like their predecessors in 1983, these no-hopers came back home with the trophy. The BCCI suddenly saw a business opportunity like no other – a Twenty20 championship to ride on the recent success which would have the best players of the world playing in India. And creating strong domestic loyalties would mean that not everybody would go back home unhappy – in other words, an ideal situation for the BCCI.

And thus the IPL was born. Cashing in on the Indian public’s sentiments for short term satisfaction, this tournament brazenly proclaimed itself as “entertainment ka baap”. Cricket was now just a medium to deliver entertainment and nothing more than that.

With its bottomless cash reserves, the IPL lured the best players of the world – and hence their boards too. These players had now become mercenaries who put their boards to the swords provided by the BCCI. Players are the heart and soul of any cricket team and the boards had no option but to meekly resign to the fact that they had fallen far behind in the race.

In the last five years, there hasn’t been a single ICC decision which the BCCI hasn’t controlled – be it its stand on the DRS to its toying around with the Future Tours Programme to it asking for early morning matches in West Indies during the 2010 World T20 so that the Indian cricket fans could watch it at a convenient time. The IPL has been the iron maiden through which the BCCI has been twisting the arms of the ICC over and over again – indeed, it is hard to believe how a domestic tournament could have its pride of place in an international calendar.

The latest of these transgressions is the Haroon Lorgat case – one which ideally we should have no business of poking into. The Boxing Day and New Year Tests in Durban and Cape Town are part of South Africa’s cricket history; by altering the schedule, India has passed this piece of history through the paper shredder.

So whose fault is it at the end of the day? Ours. We always want to see India win. If they aren’t, then we are okay with Mumbai Indians winning. But when Mumbai Indians doesn’t play, our thoughts come back to India again.

Let’s face it – we aren’t man enough to accept India’s defeat. Throughout the 80s, as Allan Border’s team rebuilt on the debris that was Australian cricket, they had the support of millions of Fosters-guzzling Aussie fans. The South African fans bristle on their team being labelled as “chokers”. Even the West Indian fans have gloriously accepted their team’s decadence with a lot of honour and they turn up for each game with calypso and pina colada even if to see their team lose. The odd success like last year’s World T20 is celebrated as if it is the last day on earth.

And what do we do? We use social media to castigate a losing team which is in transition and which a couple of months back had delivered us the biggest prize in the game of cricket. We tear a bowler to shreds who has lost us a match on a flat batsman’s deck but who had won us an international trophy with 10 wickets in the tournament and two crucial death overs’ strikes only a few months back. Poking good natured fun is a different issue; our barbs are seeped with the poison of malice.

It is good for us then that Sachin Tendulkar plays his 200th Test match on a steam-rolled road of a pitch at home against the eighth best side in the world. If he signs off with a century, we will not be deprived of a momentary high which would probably not be available if he had to face Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel on a Durban pitch. And even otherwise, the mental agony that might have been inflicted on us by seeing the likes of Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina foundering against the short ball has been reduced to a length of two Test matches and three ODIs.

We have to thank the BCCI’s far-sightedness for that.