'Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause' Ramachandra Guha

Social historian Ramachandra Guha can easily cast a spell on the listener with his deep knowledge and his spontaneity. Guha, who was briefly, in 2017, a member of the Committee of Administrators appointed by the Supreme Court of India to oversee reforms in the BCCI, has written a cricket memoir, The Commonwealth of Cricket that traces his relationship with the sport from the time he was four. He says it will be his last cricket book, but as he reveals in the following interview, he will continue his love affair with the game - despite the way it is administered in India. Courtesy Cricinfo

This is your first cricket book in nearly two decades, after A Corner of the Foreign Field was published in 2002. Why did you decide to write it now?
Two things. One, I wanted to pay tribute to my uncle Dorai, my first cricketing mentor and an exemplary coach and lover of the game, who is still active at the age of 84, running his club. I knew at some stage I would like to pay tribute to him.

Paying tribute to people I admire, respect, have been influenced by, is something I have done through my writing career. I have written about environmentalists, scholars, biographers, civil liberties activists. So I also wanted to write about this cricketer [Dorai] who had inspired me.

And I did my stint at the board. That kind of completed the journey from cricket-mad boy through player and writer and spectator to actually being inside the belly of the beast. So I thought that the arc is complete and maybe I should write a book. 

In the book you have defined four types of superstars: 1. Crooks who consort with and pimp for bigger non-cricket-playing crooks. 2. Those who are willing and keen to practise conflict of interest explicitly. 3. Those who will try to be on the right side of the law but stay absolutely silent on […] those in categories 1 and 2. 4. Those who are themselves clean and also question those in categories 1 and 2." Bishan Bedi, you say, is the only one you can think of in that last category. Why is that?
Because he is a person of enormous character, integrity and principle. He never equivocates, he never makes excuses. And he calls it as it is. These kinds of people are rare in public life in India. They are rare in the film world, they are rare in the business world, and virtually invisible in politics. They are rare also in journalism, if you go by the ways in which editors in Delhi, for many years, have been intrigued with politicians, sought Rajya Sabha seats or favours, houses for themselves…

To find someone like Bishan Bedi, who is ramrod straight in his conduct, in any sphere of public life in India today is increasingly rare. He is also an incredibly generous man. When I first met him, at my uncle's house for dinner, he gave a cricket bat to my uncle - because he never wants to take freebies.

Bishan always has given back much more to youngsters he has nurtured. He is very blunt, he is abrasive, like me. He makes enemies because he sometimes says things in an indiscreet or impolite way. But it's really the quality and calibre of his character that compels admiration in me today. When I was young, it was the art and beauty of his spin bowling. Today, it's the kind of man he is. 

You write that the superstar culture "that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures". How does that start?
Your question compels me to reflect on a time when players had too little power. When Bedi once gave a television interview where he said some sarcastic things, he was banned for a [Test] match in Bangalore in 1974. Players had to get more power, they had to get organised, they had to be noticed, they had to be paid properly, which took a very long time. The generation of Bedi and [Sunil] Gavaskar was not really paid well till the fag end of their careers.

But now to elevate them into demigods and icons… one of the things I talk about is [Virat] Kohli and [Anil] Kumble and their rift [Kumble was forced to step down as coach after the 2017 Champions Trophy]. How essentially Kohli had a veto over who could be his coach, which is not the case in any sporting team anywhere.

[MS] Dhoni had decided: I'm not going to play Test cricket. He was only playing one-day cricket. And I said [in the CoA] that he should not get a [Grade] A contract. Simple. That contract is for people who play throughout the year. He has said, "I'm not playing Test cricket." Fine. That's his choice and he can be picked for the shorter form if he is good enough. [They said] "No, we are too scared to demote him from A to B." And more than the board, the CoA, appointed by the Supreme Court, chaired by a senior IAS officer, was too scared. I thought it was hugely, hugely problematic. So I protested about it while I was there. And when I got nowhere, I wrote about it.

Is it the fans who create this culture?
Of course. They venerate cricketers. That's fine. Cricketers do things that they cannot do. It's the administrators who have to have a sense of balance and proportion. And not just with cricketing superstars who are active but also superstars who are retired. Again, to go back to one of the examples I talk about in my book: that [Rahul] Dravid could have an IPL contract, but other coaches in the NCA couldn't. Now, you can't have double standards like this. Cricket is supposed to be played with a straight bat.

It is not Dravid's fault. He just used the rules as they existed for him. It was the fault of the BCCI management that it created this kind of division and caste system within cricketers, within coaches, within umpires, within commentators. It offended my ethical sensibilities. So I protested. 

You recently told Mid-Day that "N Srinivasan and Amit Shah are effectively running Indian cricket today".
It is true.

Are they really running the board?
Yeah, that's my sense. Along with their sons and daughters and sycophants. That's what it is. And [Sourav] Ganguly [the BCCI president] has capitulated. I mean, there are things he should not be doing, given his extraordinary playing record and his credibility, whether he should be practising this shocking conflict of interest. The kind of example it sets is abysmal. I say this with some sadness because I admired Ganguly as a cricketer and as a captain. I'm glad I'm out of it and I'm just a fan again. I can just enjoy the game and not bother about the murkiness within the administration.

Things were meant to change under Ganguly.
Again, I go back to what I said about Bedi: people of principle are rare in any walk of life. And in India, particularly, there is a temptation for fame, for glory, to cosy up to who's powerful. It's very, very, very sad, but it happens. Maybe it's something to do with a deep flaw in our national character, that we lack a backbone in these matters.

In the book, where you address the topic across two chapters, as well as during your tenure in the CoA, you say you were frustrated by how deep the roots of conflict of interest have grown, not just in the BCCI and state associations but also across the player fraternity. Why is it so difficult for both administrators and players, some of whom are former greats, to understand conflict?
Because it's ubiquitous and everybody is practising it. Woh bhi kar raha hai, main bhi karoonga. Kya hai usme? [He's doing it, so I'll also do it. What's the big deal?] It's hard to resist, you know, especially [when] the moral compass of people around you is so low that you just kind of go along with it. 

Sunil Gavaskar is another person who said had multiple conflict of interests.
To Dravid's credit, he saw the point and gave up his Delhi Daredevils contract relatively quickly. He exploited the rules as they were and once I protested and it became public, he realised that he had probably erred and done a wrong thing. Maybe Ganguly could have learned from Dravid in what he's doing now. Cleaning up Indian cricket is a lost cause.

In 2018, the Supreme Court modified its original order of 2016, passed by Chief Justice TS Thakur concerning the Lodha reforms. In 2019, immediately after taking over, Ganguly's administration asked the court to relax key reforms, which would virtually wipe out the reforms. Is it now the responsibility of the court to decisively put the lid on the case?

I'm not losing any sleep. Cricket lovers have to live with a corrupt and nepotistic mode. We should just move on and enjoy the cricket.

In the book, you say you write on history for a living and on cricket to live. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
When I started writing this book, I had just finished the second volume of my Gandhi biography. It's a thousand pages long, inundated with millions of footnotes. And when you write a properly researched work of history, you have to have your sources at hand. So you compile a paragraph, which is based on material you gather, and then you have to scrupulously footnote that paragraph. One paragraph may be drawn from four different sources - a newspaper, an archival document, a book - and you have to put all that in.

Whereas I wanted to write this freely and spontaneously. I could only do that in the form of cricket memoir. So that's how it happened. I wanted a release from densely footnoted, closely argued, scrupulously researched scholarly work. And this came as a kind of liberation.

You call yourself a cricket fanatic. For me, on reading the book, it's the romantic in you that comes to life.
Yeah, I think I am more a romantic than a fanatic. I'm cricket-obsessed. I've been cricket-obsessed all my life, but more in a romantic way; "fanatic" may be slightly wrong because that assumes you always want your team to win. And that's certainly not the case with me anymore.

You write in the book about a fanboy moment you had: "On this evening I did something I almost never do - take a selfie, with Bishan Bedi and the coach of the Indian team, Anil Kumble." Can you recount that incident?
It was the BCCI's annual function. One of the few things I was able to do in my brief tenure at the board was accomplished on that day: to have [Padmakar] Shivalkar and [Rajinder] Goel, two great left-arm spinners, get the CK Nayudu [Lifetime Achievement] Award - the first time a non-Test cricketer had been honoured. And also to have Shanta Rangaswamy get the first Lifetime Achievement Award for Women.

So it was a happy occasion. It was in my home town [Bengaluru]. Bishan had come from Delhi. Kumble was then the coach of the [Indian] team. I know Bishan well and Anil a little bit. I don't know that many cricketers, actually. All these years running about the game, my only friend is really Bishan Bedi, apart from Arun Lal, who was my college captain.

Kumble, of course, would admire Bishan as a kind of sardar [chief] of Indian spin bowling. I saw them and I said I'll take a selfie. What I don't mention is that the selfie was taken by Anil, because he is technologically much more sophisticated than either Bishan or me. He took that selfie very artfully, which I would not have been able to do. It came out nicely. It is the only photograph in the book. 

I am a partisan of bowlers and of spin bowlers. For me, Kumble has always been underappreciated as a cricketer. To win a Test match you need to take 20 wickets. And, arguably, Kumble has therefore won more Test matches than Sachin Tendulkar. As I again say in the book, in 1999, when Tendulkar was about to be replaced as captain, they should really have had Kumble - he is a masterful cricketing mind, but there is a prejudice against bowlers. So in a sense, [the photo was with] someone who was a generation older than me, Bedi, and someone of a generation younger than me, Kumble - both cricketers I admire, both with big hearts, and both spin bowlers, as I was myself.

That's why the caption says: "two great spin bowlers and another" - kind of implying I was a spin bowler, but a rather ordinary one.

Is it true that this possibly could be your last cricket book?
Almost certainly. It would be, because I really have nothing else to say. This is a kind of cricketing autobiography and it has covered a lot. This is my fourth cricket book. I will watch the game. I will appreciate it.

Why don't more Indian cricketers write books?
I think Dravid has a great book in him because he is a thinking cricketer. So might Kumble. But my suspicion is, Kumble will not write a book. Dravid just might. He could write a book called The Art of Batsmanship. Bedi could have written a book because he is an intelligent person. He writes interesting articles, including on politics and public life. By the way, books don't sell. That's another reason. Occasionally, cricketers have thought, I will write a book and I will make Rs 30-40 lakhs (about US$50,000) on it. But cricket books don't really make that much money.

Was Greg Chappell really a terrible coach of India?

Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters writes Karthik Krishnaswamy in Cricinfo 

The leaked email, the crowd that cheered the opposition, the punch at an airport: Greg Chappell's tumultuous, two-year tenure as India's head coach contains every ingredient you could wish for if you're writing cricket's version of The Damned Utd, the David Peace novel - later adapted into a movie - that tried to get inside Brian Clough's head during his ill-fated, 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974.

Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters. The coach was one of the game's great batsmen and enigmas, upright and elegant but also cold and sneering, a man who once made his brother bowl underarm to kill a one-day game. This man takes over a team of superstars and attempts, perhaps hastily and certainly without a great deal of diplomacy, to remake them in his own image. He precipitates the removal of a long-serving captain who commands a great deal of adoration within the dressing room, and challenges other senior players to break out of their comfort zones without preparing, perhaps, for the inevitable resistance. There are successes, but there's one massive, glaring failure, and with that the entire project comes crashing down. 

If you wrote it well, there wouldn't be heroes or villains, just the universal story of proud and insecure men trying and failing to connect with each other. But it hasn't usually been told that way, certainly not in India, where Chappell remains a hugely polarising figure.

Of those who played under him, most of the prominent voices who have written or spoken about Chappell have had almost nothing good to say of him - Sourav Ganguly, needless to say, but others too. Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag have all stuck the knife in at various points, and all of them have laid one major charge at Chappell's feet, that he was a poor man-manager.

"Greg," Tendulkar wrote in his book Playing It My Way, "was like a ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players without showing any signs of being concerned about whether they felt comfortable or not."

Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that Chappell didn't know how to get the best out of a diverse group of players, and that he lacked the instinct to be able to tell whom to cajole and whom to kick up the backside. But while one group of players has been unsparingly critical of Chappell's methods, other prominent voices - Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, and above all Rahul Dravid - have largely stayed silent on the matter. Irfan Pathan has rejected, on multiple occasions, the widely held notion that Chappell was responsible for his decline as a swing bowler after a promising start to his career. Pathan was one of a group of younger players heavily backed by Chappell, alongside Yuvraj, Dhoni (whose leadership potential Chappell was one of the first to spot) and Suresh Raina.

Of course, players are the last people you would go to for a dispassionate appraisal of their coach's ideas and methods. If Chappell wanted Zaheer Khan dropped, you wouldn't ask Zaheer Khan if he thought it was a good idea. You wouldn't ask Harbhajan or Sehwag, two players whose early careers Ganguly had a major influence on, whether it was right to strip him of the captaincy.

Let's look, therefore, at some numbers.

The Ganguly question is the easiest to answer. Chappell put forward the idea that he step down from the captaincy during India's tour of Zimbabwe in September 2005. From the start of 2001 to that point, Ganguly had averaged 34.01 in 61 Test innings against all teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Excluding matches against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Associates, his ODI numbers in the same period were just as poor: an average of 30.71, a strike rate of 72.32. Since the start of 2003, he had fared even worse against the top eight ODI teams: 1077 runs in 45 matches at an average of 25.04 and a strike rate of 67.39.

There were performance-related issues behind other players' disagreements with Chappell too. Take Khan, for instance. From the end of the Brisbane Test of December 2003, where he bagged a first-innings five-for, to the Karachi Test of January-February 2006, he took 39 wickets in 15 Tests at 42.41. In that Karachi Test and right through that tour of Pakistan, he was visibly pudgy, bowled off a short run-up, and struggled to move the speedometer needle past the 130kph mark.

Khan's fitness - and Sehwag's - had always been a sticking point with Chappell. Left out of India's next two Test series - against England at home and in the West Indies - Khan signed for Worcestershire and enjoyed a tremendous county season, during which he grew fitter and rediscovered his bowling form. He was a rejuvenated force when he returned to Test cricket on the 2006-07 tour of South Africa, and Chappell, writing in his book Fierce Focus, noted that Khan and Ganguly - who was also making a comeback - were two of India's best players on that tour. "Whether they had improved in order to spite me or prove me right, I didn't care. It cheered me greatly to see them in much better shape than they had been when I started in the job."

In ODIs, India were a poor chasing team when Chappell arrived - their last 20 completed chases before he took over had brought them just five wins, four of those against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh - and they realised the best way to become better at it was to keep doing it. They kept choosing to bowl when they won the toss, and eventually became so good at chasing that they won 17 successive matches batting second.

Before Chappell and Dravid joined forces, India had been hugely reluctant to play five bowlers even when conditions demanded it. Under them, it became a routine occurrence. India were lucky, perhaps, to have an allrounder who made it possible, but it's a telling statistic that the highest Pathan batted in 32 ODIs under Ganguly was No. 7, and that was just once, though he scored two half-centuries from those positions and regularly showed promise with the bat. Dravid regularly used Pathan at No. 3, suggesting either that this was his idea in the first place, or that he was far more willing than Ganguly to take on board one of Chappell's. (Pathan himself has suggested it was Tendulkar's idea.)While one group of players has been critical of Chappell's methods, the likes of Dravid largely stayed silent Getty Images

Under Chappell and Dravid, India often played five bowlers in Test cricket too, showing a willingness to risk losing in order to take 20 wickets and win games. It meant leaving out the sixth batsman, and while Ganguly was the first casualty, the rise of Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif as ODI regulars knocking hard on the Test door put a bit of pressure on Laxman as well. He was left out of two home Tests against England in 2006, and also had to move up and down the order a fair bit, especially if the batsman left out was one of the regular openers.

This led to the insecurities that Laxman has since expressed in his book, 281 and Beyond, and Chappell, perhaps, didn't do enough to allay them. Chappell admits this failing himself in Fierce Focus, calling his mistakes the "same kinds […] I'd made as captain in my playing days. I didn't communicate my plans well enough to the senior players. I should have let guys like Tendulkar, Laxman and Sehwag know that although I was an agent of change, they were still part of our Test cricket future."

That old man-management thing again. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong with asking a senior player to occasionally sit out games or bat in unfamiliar positions, in order to execute a larger plan for the team's good.

Playing five bowlers, being willing to leave out established players, making fitness a non-negotiable, encouraging players to come out of their comfort zones: if the broad ideas of the Chappell-Dravid era, and the tensions that came out of implementing them, seem eerily familiar, it's because you've seen it all happen - though probably allied with better communication - under Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli. And that, perhaps, is Chappell's biggest legacy.

Great coaches can get entire teams to buy in to their ideas, and even they - as Clough showed, either side of his Leeds misadventure, at Derby County and Nottingham Forest - need to be at the right place at the right time. Chappell and the India of 2005-07 weren't necessarily made for each other, and the early exit from the 2007 World Cup made that relationship untenable. It may not have lasted too much longer than that in any case, given the breakdown of trust within the dressing room that Chappell contributed to with his tendency to air his criticisms of players to the media.

There isn't a huge deal of evidence from the rest of his coaching career to suggest Chappell had the makings of a great coach anyway. But good ideas are good ideas, no matter how well they're communicated, and Indian cricket continues to benefit from the ones he left behind.

‘Superstar culture afflicts Indian cricket,’ writes Ram Guha as he resigns from panel

Dear Vinod,

It has been a pleasure working with Diana, Vikram and you in the Supreme Court Committee of Administrators. It has been an educative experience, spending long hours with three top-flight professionals from whom I have learned a lot in these past few months. However, it has been clear for some time now that my thoughts and views are adjacent to, and sometimes at odds with, the direction the Committee is taking as a whole. That is why I eventually decided to request the Supreme Court to relieve me of the responsibility, and submitted my letter of resignation to the Court on the morning of the 1st of June.

For the record, and in the interests of transparency, I am here listing the major points of divergence as I see it:

1. The question of conflict of interest, which had lain unaddressed ever since the Committee began its work, and which I have been repeatedly flagging since I joined. For instance, the BCCI has accorded preferential treatment to some national coaches (read Dravid) , by giving them ten month contracts for national duty, thus allowing them to work as IPL coaches/mentors for the remaining two months. This was done in an adhoc and arbitrary manner; the more famous the former player-turned-coach, the more likely was the BCCI to allow him to draft his own contract that left loopholes that he exploited to dodge the conflict of interest issue.

I have repeatedly pointed out that it is contrary to the spirit of the Lodha Committee for coaches or the support staff of the Indian senior or junior team, or for staff at the National Cricket Academy, to have contracts in the Indian Premier League. One cannot have dual loyalties of this kind and do proper justice to both. National duty must take precedence over club affiliation.

I had first raised this issue to my COA colleagues in an email of 1st February, and have raised it several times since. I had urged that coaches and support staff for national teams be paid an enhanced compensation, but that this conflict of interest be stopped. When, on the 11th of March, I was told that that there was a camp scheduled for young players at the National Cricket Academy but at least one national coach was likely to be away on IPL work and might not attend the camp, I wrote to you:

No person under contract with an India team, or with the NCA, should be allowed to moonlight for an IPL team too.

BCCI in its carelessness (or otherwise) might have drafted coaching/support staff contracts to allow this dual loyalty business, but while it might be narrowly legal as per existing contracts, it is unethical, and antithetical to team spirit, leading to much jealousy and heart-burn among the coaching staff as a whole. This practice is plainly wrong, as well as antithetical to the interests of Indian cricket.

I would like an explicit and early assurance from the BCCI management that such manifestly inequitous loopholes in coaching/support staff contracts will be plugged.

Yet no assurance was given, and no action was taken. The BCCI management and office-bearers have, in the absence of explicit directions from the COA, allowed the status quo to continue.

2. I have also repeatedly pointed to the anomaly whereby BCCI-contracted commentators simultaneously act as player agents. In a mail of 19th March to the COA I wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

Please have a look at this news report:

http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/pmg-signs-up-shikhar-dhawan-for-3-years-2776329/

Sunil Gavaskar is head of a company which represents Indian cricketers while commenting on those crickters as part of the BCCI TV commentary panel. This is a clear conflict of interest. Either he must step down/withdraw himself from PMG completely or stop being a commentator for BCCI.

I think prompt and swift action on this matter is both just and necessary. COA’s credibility and effectiveness hinges on our being able to take bold and correct decisions on such matters. The ‘superstar’ culture that afflicts the BCCI means that the more famous the player (former or present) the more leeway he is allowed in violating norms and procedures. (Dhoni was captain of the Indian team while holding a stake in a firm that represented some current India players.) This must stop – and only we can stop it.

Yet, despite my warnings, no action has been initiated in the several months that the Committee has been in operation.

As the mail quoted above noted, one reasons the conflict of interest issue has lingered unaddressed is that several of the game’s superstars, past and present, have been guilty of it. The BCCI management is too much in awe of these superstars to question their violation of norms and procedures. For their part, BCCI office-bearers like to enjoy discretionary powers, so that the coaches or commentrators they favour are indebted to them and do not ever question their own mistakes or malpractices. But surely a Supreme Court appointed body should not be intimidated by the past or present achievements of a cricketer, and instead seek to strive to be fair and just.

Conflict of interest is rampant in the State Associations as well. One famous former cricketer is contracted by media houses to comment on active players while serving as President of his State Association (read Ganguly). Others have served as office-bearers in one Association and simultaneously as coaches or managers in another. The awarding of business contracts to friends and relatives by office-bearers is reported to be fairly widespread.

Had we been more proactive in stopping conflict of interest within the BCCI (as per Lodha Committee recommendations, endorsed by the Court), this would surely have had a ripple effect downwards, putting pressure on State Assocations to clean up their act as well.

3. Unfortunately, this superstar syndrome has also distorted the system of Indian team contracts. As you will recall, I had pointed out that awarding MS Dhoni an ‘A’ contract when he had explicitly ruled himself out from all Test matches was indefensible on cricketing grounds, and sends absolutely the wrong message.

4. The way in which the contract of Anil Kumble, the current Head Coach of the senior team, has been handled. The Indian team’s record this past season has been excellent; and even if the players garner the bulk of the credit, surely the Head Coach and his support staff also get some. In a system based on justice and merit, the Head Coach’s term would have been extended. Instead, Kumble was left hanging, and then told the post would be re-advertised afresh.

Clearly, the issue has been handled in an extremely insensitive and unprofessional manner by the BCCI CEO and the BCCI office-bearers, with the COA, by its silence and inaction, unfortunately being complicit in this regard. (Recall that the Court Order of 30 January had expressly mandated us to supervise the management of BCCI.) In case due process had to be followed since Kumble’s original appointment was only for one year, why was this not done during April and May, when the IPL was on? If indeed the captain and the Head Coach were not getting along, why was this not attended to as soon as the Australia series was over in late March? Why was it left until the last minute, when a major international tournament was imminent, and when the uncertainty would undermine the morale and ability to focus of the coach, the captain and the team? And surely giving senior players the impression that they may have a veto power over the coach is another example of superstar culture gone berserk? Such a veto power is not permitted to any other top level professional team in any other sport in any other country. Already, in a dismaying departure from international norms, current Indian players enjoy a veto power on who can be the members of the commentary team (read departure of Harsha Bhogle). If it is to be coaches next, then perhaps the selectors and even office-bearers will follow?

5. Ever since the Supreme Court announced the formation of the COA, we have been inundated, individually and collectively, by hundreds of mails asking us to address various ills that afflict Indian cricket and its administration. While many of these issues were trivial or clearly beyond our purview, there was one concern that we should have done far more to address. This concerns the callous treatment to domestic cricket and cricketers, namely, those who represent their state in the Ranji Trophy, the Mushtaq Ali Trophy, and other inter-state tournaments. The IPL may be Indian cricket’s showpiece; but surely the enormous revenues it generates should be used to make our domestic players more financially secure? There are many more Indian cricketers who make their living via the Ranji Trophy than via IPL; besides, for us to have a consistently strong Test team (especially overseas) we need a robust inter-state competition and therefore must seek to compensate domestic players better.

And yet, shockingly, Ranji match fees have remained at a very low level (a mere Rs 30,000 odd for each day of play); moreover, cheques for match fees sent by the BCCI are sometimes not passed on by the state associations to the players. We need to learn from best practices in other countries, where domestic players are awarded annual contracts like those in the national team, while their match fees are reasonably competitive too.

Several months ago, the experienced cricket administrator Amrit Mathur prepared an excellent note on the need for better and fairer treatment of domestic players. Both Diana and I have repeatedly urged action, but this has not happened.

6. I believe it was a mistake for the COA to have stayed silent and inactive when the Supreme Court judgment was being so flagrantly violated by people clearly disqualified to serve as office bearers of state and even BCCI run cricket bodies. The disqualified men were openly attending BCCI meetings, claiming to represent their state association, and indeed played a leading role in the concerted (if fortunately in the end aborted) attempt to get the Indian team to boycott the Champions Trophy. All these illegalities were widely reported in the press; yet the COA did not bring them to the notice of the Court, and did not issue clear directions asking the offenders to desist either.

7. I believe that the lack of attention to these (and other such issues) is in part due to the absence of a senior and respected male cricketer on our Committee. Allow me to quote from a mail I wrote on 1 February 2017, before our first full meeting:


Dear fellow members,

I much look forward to meeting you all later today. I know Vikram already and greatly admire both Vinod and Diana for their remarkable work in their chosen fields, and am truly honoured to be working with them as well.

I presume apart from discussing IPL, etc, with the BCCI representative we will get some time to discuss the way forward separately. I have several ideas which I wish to share with you about our collective responsibility, and wanted in this mail to flag what is most important of these. This is that we must incorporate into our committee of administrators, either as a full member or as a special invitee, a senior male cricketer with the distinction and integrity that Diana has. That will greatly enhance both our credibility and our ability to make informed decisions.

The absence of a respected male cricketer in the COA has attracted a great deal of criticism already, much of it from important stakeholders in Indian cricket. It must be addressed and remedied. The amicus curae had suggested two outstanding names, Venkat and Bedi, both of whom were rejected because they were over seventy. However, there are some cricketers of the right age and experience who fit the bill. Based on my knowledge of the subject, I would say Javagal Srinath would be an excellent choice. He is a world-class cricketer, was a successful and scandal-free Secretary of the Karnataka State Cricket Association and is an ICC match referee, and comes from an educated technical background to boot. I strongly urge the Chairman and the other members to consider approaching him in this regard. He would complement Diana perfectly, and the combination of these two respected and top class former cricketers would enhance our credibility and effectiveness enormously.

While Srinath is in my view the best choice, there are other alternative names too. I hope we can set aside some time at our meeting to discuss and resolve the issue.

With regards
Ram

p.s. Needless to say, I have not discussed this with Srinath or with anyone else.

I raised this issue in a formal meeting of the COA as well, but unfortunately my proposal to invite a senior male cricketer to join the committee was not acted upon. We should have approached the Court to take necessary action, or else incorporated a senior, respected, male cricketer as a special invitee. With such a person on board the COA would have gained in experience, knowledge, understanding, and, not least, credibility. Indeed, had we such a person on board, the BCCI management and the office-bearers would have been compelled to be far more proactive in implementing the Lodha Committee recommendations than they have been thus far. As the only cricketer on the COA, Diana’s contributions have been invaluable; on many issues of administration and the rights of players she has brought a perspective based on a first-hand experience that the rest of us lacked. A male counterpart would have complemented and further enriched her contributions; but perhaps it is not too late to make amends.

8. While all our meetings were held in a cordial atmosphere, between meetings perhaps there was not adequate consultation, and there were several crucial decisions made where all the COA members were not brought into the loop. For instance, a capable, non-political Senior Counsel representing the COA and the BCCI in the Supreme Court was abruptly replaced by another Senior Counsel who is a party politician. Surely other COA members should have been consulted by email or by phone before this important change was made.
I have taken too much of your time already, but permit me to make one last suggestion. This is that the place vacated by me on the Committee of Administrators be filled by a senior, respected, male cricketer with administrative experience.

Let me in conclusion thank you for your courtesy and civility these past few months, and wish you and the Committee all the best in your future endevours.

With best wishes

Ramachandra Guha

Hashim Amla did the honourable thing by jettisoning his burden

Mike Selvey in The Guardian

It may be unusual to change captains at the midpoint of a series but Hashim Amla has chosen a good moment to concede his position and drop back into the ranks. A resignation after the massive defeat in Durban would have represented capitulation even if he had been contemplating it for a while.

Now though he has done so on the back of a stirring fightback from the side he led, and an emphatic return not so much to form (he had not looked out of touch in the second innings in Durban) as to relentless run-gathering. It is a little too strong to describe the outcome of a Test that had yet to complete its third innings as a “winning draw” for South Africa. With the conditions finally giving the bowlers some lateral movement on the final day, we can only surmise what the England bowlers might have managed had they been defending, say, 200 and their colleagues rediscovered the art of catching but at least we know there will be an almighty scrap now up on the highveld.

Hashim Amla resigns as captain of South Africa after drawn second Test

 

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Sometimes it is only in the aftermath of such a decision that the extent of the burden is revealed. Those who were there in the dining room at Edgbaston remember the red eyes of Nasser Hussain, that most passionate of England captains. There were Michael Vaughan’s tears at the ECB centre of excellence at Loughborough. Such is the responsibility, beyond simply a job, that comes with captaining one’s country or even just playing. It is only around nine months since Jonathan Trott, a man whose implacable demeanour hid inner turmoil, was lbw in what was to prove his final innings for England. He positively skipped from the field and sprinted up the pavilion steps, a man clearly content it was finally over. So there should be no surprise that in Amla’s case, he conducted a press conference that was a long way from the soul-searching of others and simply that of a man happy in the decision at which he had arrived and itching to get on with the job at which he truly excels.

There is absolutely no question of Amla being coerced into applying for the job in the first place on account of his ethnicity. With Graeme Smith’s retirement, he, as a senior player, put his name forward with others, including AB de Villiers. He did so because he believed he could make a difference, and after due process, was installed. It would also be wrong though to assume that, all things being equal, this was not the choice that would be made, convenient for South African cricket that he had applied.

It would also be erroneous to deduce that after the strong rumours in Durban that things were in some disarray on and off the field that he had been pushed out of the job. There was some fierce external criticism, most prominently from Smith in his role as media pundit, to which the response of Cricket South Africa was to invite him into the camp. But Smith’s remarks, while trenchant, would surely have been taken on board by Amla, a trusted colleague in Smith’s teams: there is a difference between being pushed and being encouraged.

A decade ago, when England were in India, I went to stay with their then coachGreg Chappell, and conducted an interview with him, which in part resonates now with the situation in which Amla found himself. At the time, Chappell had been dividing opinion in the country because of his fractious relationship with the former captain Sourav Ganguly, who had been struggling desperately for batting form with one Test hundred, in Bulawayo, in two-and-a-half years. He had been replaced as the captain by Rahul Dravid and the coach was portrayed as the man who sacked him, which was far from the truth.

“We clashed,” Chappell told me, “because his needs as a struggling player and captain and those of the team were different. I’m not the hard-nosed control freak that I have been portrayed. I’m thorough, a realist, a pragmatist and I’m honest. Much has been written and said, a lot of it misleading, but in essence I told Sourav that if he wanted to save his career he should consider giving up the captaincy. He was just hanging in there. Modest innings were draining him. He had no energy to give to the team, which was helping neither him nor us. It was in his own interest to give himself mind space to work on his batting so that it could be resurrected.”

Here we have in Ganguly and Amla two captains at opposite ends of the spectrum: the one desperate to hang on to his position at all costs; the other understanding his leadership may not be in the best interests either of the side or himself. Serene and understated, Amla had taken over a side who were in inevitable transition after the loss of some of the greatest players the game has seen. So a downturn in performance was not entirely unexpected. But he has nonetheless presided over the longest winless streak, eight matches, in South Africa’s Test history, mitigation coming only in the state of the Bangladesh weather and the pitches in India. Certainly in this, Amla has seen the broader picture.

Where they share a common theme is the impact, as Chappell said of Ganguly, that it was having on his batting and the team. Until his redemptive double hundred in Cape Town, Amla’s previous 13 matches as captain had brought him an average of 40.76 against a career average 10 points or so higher. Since the start of the tour of India that preceded the current series, nine innings had brought him five single figure scores and a top score of 43.

Whether, like Ganguly, his tribulations with the bat were impacting on the team in a manner other than simply the lack of runs is doubtful. If the captaincy itself, and all that it entailed, was affecting the capacity to do the job at which he truly excelled, then Amla is understanding enough to be able to arrive at the conclusion he has. It is an honourable thing to have done, which may well be to the detriment of England. That he has been able to do so on the back of a momentous innings, played perhaps with the release that comes with already having made a decision, merely serves to highlight it.

Cricket: The game is about dealing with failure

MS Dhoni wasn't cocky but there wasn't any false modesty either: Greg Chappell

Jonathan Selvaraj Posted online: Sun Oct 06 2013, 01:51 hrs

In Visakhapatnam with the under-19 team, Greg Chappell talks about Australia's changing cricketing mindset and his eventful coaching stint in India. He opens up to Jonathan Selvaraj as he revisits the dressing room that had ageing seniors, an out-of-form captain and a rookie wicket-keeper who was a natural leader.

In what capacity are you connected with the Australia under-19 team?
I’ve come in as National Talent Manager. I’m chairman of our youth selection panel. I’ve been in charge for three years now and I normally travel with the U-19s as a youth selector and manager. But when Stuart Law took up the Queensland job, then we had to do some reshuffling. And that’s why I came back as the coach.


Of late a number of Australia U-19 players have been blooded into first class cricket and the senior team ...
Five years ago we came to the conclusion that it was taking on average four years for the U-19 players to get on state contracts. That was too long. So the Second XI competition was changed to a U-23 competition (Futures League). I think it has been quite successful. Twelve of the players who played the 2010 Junior World Cup went on to get state contracts as did 13 from last year’s World Cup. That’s considering three of our best bowlers — Pat Cummins, Ashton Agar and the wrist spinner James Muirhead — were injured. Those three boys also went on to state contracts and of course Cummins and Agar have played international cricket.


Why do you have to give them a push?
The international programme has become busier and T20 cricket has made it busier still. International players don’t play domestic cricket. And after professionalisation at our domestic level, those players don’t play club cricket. That’s had an impact on the younger players. We have come to the understanding that our club cricket and our domestic cricket can’t do the job that it once did. So we have to identify the ones we think have potential and invest in them.


So doesn’t domestic cricket and the experience that comes with it count?
Playing for ten years doesn’t necessarily give you 10 years’ experience. It could just be that you had one year’s experience ten times. If you are not getting better, then your experience is useless. Performance in domestic cricket up to a point is important but once somebody with the skills that you require shows the ability to score runs or take wickets at that level, the sooner you get them to the next level, the better.


How different is it to coach a U-19 team from a senior team. Are the players scared of you?
No, they are not scared. They are respectful but they are not in awe of me. I am a resource like the rest of our support staff. My role at this level is different from the role at state level and the role at international level.


What is it that you look for in a young cricketer?
It is about assessing their potential. Have they got the skills that historically do well in Test cricket. Can they bowl fast? Are they someone who gets bounce? Can they swing the ball? Do they put some revs on the ball? The first thing I’m interested in, in a batsman is can they read lengths well because that means they are watching the ball. If they are going forward to balls they should be back to then there is a problem. How do they read the game on the field? I am looking for things that the scorecard can’t tell me.




Could you give an example of someone you noticed who read length well during your stint as India coach. What about MS Dhoni?
MS Dhoni came into the one-day team just before I joined as coach. Most people saw him just as a front-foot hitter. One day I saw him batting against Ajit Agarkar on a very slow wicket at the Chinnaswamy Stadium and he was very comfortable on the front foot. Ajit has a very good bouncer and I thought I would like to see how he responds to that. So Ajit bowled him the perfect bouncer and the next thing you know he had hit the ball to the top of the roof. So I said 'Ok he reads length well'. It wasn’t as if he was constantly looking to get to the front foot and that was his only skill.


Was that the only thing that set him out?
His reading of the game was incredible. He had a calmness and an inner strength which wasn’t something I had seen a lot of in other cricketers. He was very confident. He wasn’t cocky but there wasn’t any false modesty either. If he thought he could do something, he would go ahead and say he could do it. Both in India and Australia you have a lot of players who are afraid to stand up because they feel they might be thought of as being ahead of themselves or setting themselves up for failure. He had no concerns about that. He was supremely confident in his own ability. He had some work to do with his wicketkeeping but you could see he had the basics. I saw him as far more than a one-day cricketer. I could see him as a Test cricketer. And I could certainly see him as a captain.


Why do you say that?
His ability in the Indian dressing room to move between the seniors and the juniors was unique. There was nobody else I saw that could compare. Even some of the seniors struggled with other seniors. Not just physical strength but also an emotional strength … a spiritual strength. He knew who he was. He didn’t have any doubts about his ability to play at that level.


It wouldn’t have been easy for him. He comes from a state not really known for its cricket.
That’s interesting. We had a camp in Bangalore early on. I wanted the guys to talk about themselves. I had come in knowing some of the senior players because I had seen them play and I had met many of them before. But I wanted to know about their life and cricket. And it was an amazing story of where he had come from and how he had learned his cricket playing on the streets with his friends and at each level how he had to prove himself again because each time he came in he was the new boy. He talked very well about how each of those steps had given him something. Some confidence, some experience, some knowledge.


What were you looking for in these sessions?
I was looking not just for cricketing talent but also something extra which would help them succeed. Not everyone was cut out for a life as a professional cricketer. These guys are on the road for ten months of the year. You are separated from your friends, family and support structures. Not everyone can cope with it. I was looking for that inner strength. That ability to be able to be self-contained. Also you have to have a sense of humor.


Why sense of humour?
This game is about dealing with failure. Bradman batted 80 times in Test cricket and he only got 29 hundreds. So he failed 51 times. The rest of us have had a huge struggle. It’s only those who accept that they are going to fail a lot and have a belief that their method will work will be able to keep at it. Dhoni’s method was and is unique. Not many people play like him, but he has immense confidence in it. And that’s all that really matters.


What did you see in Suresh Raina?
There was an X factor there. He had the ability to score runs quickly. He read length well and he had shots all around the wicket. He was a brilliant fielder, a more-than-useful all-rounder. I saw him first at a camp in Bangalore. This was simply a way for me to see some talent. We had a camp for the bowlers and for the batsmen. There were a lot of good players but only a few had that X factor.



Anyone else with X factor?
Another one was Sreesanth. I was standing on the far side of the ground and I moved to second slip where I had fielded my whole career and that’s a good place for me to get my look at him. And I kept seeing the ball coming through to the keeper. He had a very easy action and there was some pace there. And as I said before, genuine pace excites me. So I spoke to others and they said 'oh no he is from Kerala and he doesn’t get wickets'. So I talked to other people and they said he doesn’t get a lot of wickets but he gets a lot of nicks. He just never had players who could catch the ball. So as I have said before, it isn’t about wickets, it’s about how many times you beat the bat. How often do you get the outside edge, how many times do you hit them on the pads. It could be how many times you can draw a false stroke.



How do you remember your time in India?
Far from regretting the experience, I look back at my time in India with great fondness. Most of my experiences here were very good. There were parts that I could have done without. But that happens. When I look back it was overwhelmingly positive. It was a wonderful opportunity and a great honour to be asked to coach someone else’s country. I couldn’t coach Australia. Coaching India wasn’t the next best thing, it was the best thing. India is the hub of cricket in the world these days and to work in that environment and try and understand it a bit better… I consider myself very fortunate.


How did you try to understand the culture? You read a lot. Did you go through books?
I have a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. I read it, I still read it. I have a copy of the Koran. I read that as well. I’m interested in all of that. (Ramesh) Mane the team physio was a Brahmakumari (follower). We went with him to the temple in Bandra. My wife went to the Hare Krishna temple in Bangalore where they serve meals to thousands of kids. When we went to Pakistan, Saeed Anwar took me to a teaching mosque outside Lahore. I wanted to understand that a bit more because we had Muslim players in our team — Wasim Jaffer, Mohammad Kaif, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan. I felt I needed to understand something. I mean I couldn’t speak the language, and I just wanted to understand their world a little bit better, in the hope that that would help me, help them.



Did the players appreciate that you were trying to understand their world?
They might not have been aware of some of it. I went to Irfan’s home in Baroda and of course they couldn’t speak much English and of course I couldn’t speak any Urdu. But you look into someone’s eyes and you can understand. Irfan’s mother spoke to my wife and she said “thank you for looking after my son". And we got a thrill from the fact that they appreciated that we were looking after their kids. And they were like our kids. Because they were young, they were vulnerable and they needed someone to look out for them.



So what were the high points of your stay?
My only interest in the time that I was in India was what was best for the Indian cricket team. The whole thing was a spiritual experience. The education point of view was one thing that we really focused on. India was struggling in one-day cricket, particularly chasing. And we made a process of getting the team to understand how to chase. And when we had seventeen wins in a row that was an enormous achievement. And it wasn’t an achievement for me, it was an achievement for that group. They had to buy into it. Rahul Dravid as captain had to buy into it. There were a lot of risks. There were criticisms we were changing the team, we were changing the batting order.. And the fact that we got the guys buying in was tremendous.


What went wrong when you were coach of India?
AS you know in that role, the spotlight is such that nobody wants to understand what is going on underneath. All they saw was what they wanted to. If it had worked, you would be a hero and if it hadn’t, you would have been a zero. Generally what I have found in life is what you see isn’t necessarily the whole story. But no one was really looking at what Greg Chappell the coach was saying, and try and understand Greg Chappell the person. I tried to explain what we were trying to do, but in fact, it was counterproductive. People just used it against me.


Have you made your peace with not just what happened but some of the people involved?
I haven’t spoken to some of them, but you move on. I was in Kolkata earlier in the year and I learned that Sourav’s father had passed away and I rang him and spoke to him at that time and passed on condolences.


Was he surprised?
I’m sure he was a little surprised but he said he appreciated it very much. As I explained to him at the time it wasn’t anything personal (about the decisions I made). I rather liked Sourav and I admired him as a cricketer but at that point he probably wasn’t the best person to be in that position.




Could you have avoided some of the decisions?
When you take a decision, you go with it all the way regardless of what happens. I believed and it was agreed that this was the best team for Indian cricket and the team at that stage. Sections of the media wanted to portray that it was me against Sourav. But it was nothing to do with that. It was purely to do with the cricket. In fact I quite liked Sourav and I have had some great experiences with him. He had been with me in Sydney before the tour of Australia in 2003, and it was a wonderful experience. And I said it before and even subsequent to the issues that we have had that Sourav considers me the best batting coach he ever had. So we had a mutual respect but I hardly expected him to agree with some of the decisions I made. But our relationship was separate from our job. If he had been my brother I would have done the same thing.