Bitching about cricket won’t get us Olympic medals

Great day for Indian sports & athletes. But why carry a grudge for cricket or cricketers? Whose fault is it if after being Olympic champs 8 times the people who ran hockey did nothing much for the game? Why did they never give India’s ‘national game’ anything more than lip service?

Like everything the governments of the past should have done for sports but it never did except mouth platitudes after every win. Hockey players did not even have shoes to play with.

Cricket admin too until the 1980s was not much to write home about. Test players were paid ₹50 per day for a five-day Test and if the match got over in four days, ₹50 less! After the watershed moment in 1983, the World Cup winners were paid ₹1 lakh each.

Thankfully, cricket had men of vision like Jagmohan Dalmiya, Inderjit Singh Bindra and others who saw the opportunity and grabbed it. Not just Indian cricket but the ICC owes a debt of gratitude to men like Dalmiya who showed the stuffed shirts in the MCC that cricket could be a money-spinner if they played smart. And to think they did their best to keep him out of the body!

A small state like Andhra built 14 cricket grounds and five cricket academies, including one for women in the mid2000s. Children were coached and educated here and went on to play for their state and country because there were men with vision. Why did a cricketer like MSK Prasad and an official like Dr. Ganga Raju drive around Andhra and look for places where they could build these cricket grounds and academies?

One wonders where Indian hockey and other sports would have been if it had some men of vision. If Indian sports has to become popular again start from the grassroots. Launch sports academies and stadia in every state. Spot talent from school, fund training and education.

Yes, it needs money and it needs a will and the vision to see the future and where Indian sports can reach. Hockey, for example, doesn’t need people with small mindsets. The game has moved on and so should Indian hockey if they expect the next medal at the 2024 Olympics to be a gold. The exact system needs to be replicated with women’s hockey.

Organise matches at Under-14, -18, -22 and then senior levels regularly. Have tie-ups with clubs abroad for player exchanges. Send your players to play there and bring their players here and watch how the game improves. It’s not rocket science.

A Bollywood movie is not the answer to problems in Indian sports whatever some in the media might think. And thank God we have a govt that is actively promoting disciplines besides cricket since 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi just announced a committee for future of Indian sports. Champions are not born overnight. Neeraj Chopra didn’t land from Mars. He slogged his way to a Gold.

Golfers like Aditi Ashok need to be encouraged even after coming 4th. Pay for her to play with the best. Don’t let the Indian men’s relay team waste away in frustration. Send them to race abroad for international meets. Secure their future.

Every single Indian athlete who took part in the Olympics reached there because he or she had talent, so nurture it. Don’t moan about how cricket is getting more prominence. It doesn’t help.

Their aren’t Tigers like him around anymore

Childhood memories are the ones that remain for ever. I was in the Eighth Standard, when India won their first-ever series against the West Indies and England in 1971, under Ajit Wadekar.

Holidaying in Ootacamund (now Udhagamandalam), at the Blue Mountain’s School, where my mother used to teach, I was told by her, one afternoon, that Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore were paying a visit to the school, because they were friends of the owners.

The two stars were shooting for Daag in Ooty and had consented to visit the school to interact with the children. The children, which included me, were agog at the news. I mean, who could imagine that they would be meeting the stars of Aradhana in the flesh? And Rajesh Khanna was then a rage.

By the time it was evening, the students were impatiently waiting for their favourite stars, and as the cars drew up to the school porch, the excitement knew no bounds! And then everyone got the shock of their lives. The more ‘senior’ of the boys, including me, let out a whoop of delight, because guess who got out of the car – little Gundappa Vishwanath and a rather dapper Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, accompanied by C.D. Gopinath, then the Chairman of the selection commitee.

Pataudi was extremely apologetic to the little ones for Sharmila and Rajesh’s absence (“they were very tired after a long day’s shoot”), but then went ahead and spoke to the students for over an hour on Indian cricket. Among the students, who listened to the two cricket legends were the son and nephew of former Indian Test opener Madhav Apte and the nephew of C.D. Gopinath – all three real chips of the old block.

I remember asking Vishy the journalist’s standard stupid question – ‘Did you ever think you’ll score a century after getting a duck in your first Test?’ But thankfully I left out the classic question: How did you feel after scoring the century? I guess, I was just destined to join the profession I am in!!

Pataudi was his usual suave self and I remember he referred to the Indian cricketer’s attitude of staying put in the team till he got the boot! Some things haven’t really changed much, have they?
He himself retired after the West Indies series of 1974-75, which India lost 3-2, after being 0-2 down.

I also remember watching Pataudi, leading the Rest of India against Ajit Wadekar’s Indian team that had returned from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1972 or 1973, at the Nehru Stadium in Pune. He spanked (and there is no other word to describe that inning) Wadekar’s India XI bowlers. Young Anshuman Gaekwad watched from the other end stuck on 44, as a rampaging Tiger blasted his way to 144, if I remember right, with 7 sixes, most of them off Paddy Shivalkar – and all into the crowd.

I also watched him race from long off to long on, pick up the ball on the run and throw it in, flat and hard, to shatter the stumps from the boundary ropes. I guess, that’s what made him (as a newspaper referred to him today as) India’s favourite Tiger. They don’t make ’em like him anymore. Goodbye Tiger!

Time to clean the augean stables

The problem with Pakistan is that it is so deep in the hole it has dug itself into that it has neither the will nor the inclination to pull itself out. You would expect any country to at least, make the right noises about acting against the players who have been named by The News of the World in the spot fixing scandal. But Pakistan has instead closed ranks and started to blame India and the rest of the world for it – and in the process, has slid deeper into the muck.

Right from the match at Sharjah in the 1991, it was evident that match-fixing wasn’t something that was going to go away in a hurry. Pakistan played India in that match and won in near darkness. The Indian team management asked Manoj Prabhakar and Sanjay Manjrekar to continue playing after the umpires offered light. Pakistan won the match in the last over and qualified for the finals of the trophy. Rumours were rife that large amounts of money had exchanged hands and Pakistan was allowed to win. Ever since that day, the spectre of match-fixing has haunted the cricket world. After the BCCI got into the act and decided to ban some of the players who were allegedly involved in the fixing, Indian cricketers (not necessarily Indian cricket) have been relatively ‘clean’. The spotlight has now moved completely to Pakistan.

But after all that has happened in the past week, one would expect the Pakistan Government and the Pakistan Cricket Board to do a clean-up act. But what they do from the first day is to say it’s an international conspiracy mounted by India! So the alleged photographer-cum-bookie is Indian, but the other bookies are Pakistanis aren’t they? Look at the ‘bright’ side, at least, there’s at least one thing we can work on together!

The Pakistanis should stop blaming the world for their problems and look within. The thing is that right from the top to the bottom the entire edifice is decayed and crumbling. When there is a President who is a certified crook and is derisively still known as ‘Mr Ten Per Cent’, where the entire democratic set-up is destroyed by greedy politicians with active connivance of the Army, one can hardly expect a concerted campaign against corruption.

The funny thing is when the story broke the officials looked to be doing something, even if they blamed India! A few days later, the government stepped in and everything changed. When ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat says it is the biggest scandal cricket has faced in recent times and Pakistan just clams up, it does make one wonder, whether the Pakistanis are really interested in getting to the bottom of things. It gives the impression that the entire Pakistani cricket establishment is in it neck deep and is hell-bent on engaging in a massive cover-up to save its butt. It does not bode well for the game in general.

I find it hard to believe that cricket boards everywhere, with the benefit of technology and their personal contacts in the media, do not know what their players are up to. And if the Pakistanis won’t do anything about it, it’s time the ICC cleaned up the augean stables. I guess it’s all a question of the will and the way. Right now the Pakistani establishment shows very little interest in either.