BCCI – Wolves in sheep’s garb!

Most sort after cricket team bite the dust and bitten it pretty hard. The media celebrated their part quite brilliantly by all sort of criticism and disparagement to the BCCI and cricket team as whole. One can’t deny this uncanny ability of press to make a hero to zero over night. The poster boy Dhoni became a whipping boy, raising star Suresh Raina turned out to be flat pitch bully, rocket launcher Ishant Sharma converted in to run scorer for the opposition! What else, the whole “Dhamaka” we saw last time around with glossy smiles and bhangra steps are settled down like a tempest? Now it is like loser’s battlefield. One can hear and feel the agony and grief if sharpen the ears and mind.

Every defeat and glory has the reason. We applaud and cheered MS Dhoni last time when he won the T20 World Cup and now here after two years we are looking at same MS Dhoni in revulsion for his amateurish way of playing cricket and numerous mistakes he made in the field. Fair enough, the Indian captain made some silly mistakes that even a 5^th grade would hesitant to do but the culprit is not only him, there are few behind the scene hiding and grunting like a beast – still itching for more… BCCI!

IPL was big success, the mercury of over all excitement and anxiety had rose to the top and broken the tube. In IPL we were in a specific comfort level despite of all those hoopla and hype that surrounded the game, whoever wins the cup stays in India! We are late to realize the fact Indian Premiere League is only to entertain us public but in world level cricket we can’t afford to stop raising our bar, need to work harder and better to stay in the competition. South Africa lost the match in semi final, but I would still believe in their ability to beat any team in the world, to evaluate my view look how fast South Africa evolved from ondeday match winners to T20 specialists!? Pakistan came back strongly to fetch the cup this time; washed off all the sin they did in 2007 final match! Srilanka proved to be a tough team to beat. While other countries were preparing for the T20 World Cup Indian team was in a dream zone where they had flower path all the way from Mumbai Airport to the Wankhede stadium the place where ultimately politicians took central stage. It supposed to be felicitation function for jubilant Indian cricket team; the shrewd politicians with special kind of genes in their blood never miss an opportunity to utilize the situations to magnify their own brilliance. The millions of people watched that function all over the world had this kind of bewilderment; did India win the title because of ruling party?

Instead of ridiculing Dhoni and company for the embarrassing defeat let’s try to look at things in a different angle, India was having full of fresh players last time, all of them are young and enthusiastic, few of the old players got chances to show their merit as well. Indian T20 team was real underdogs in 2007. Won the title and lived in the dream, when players were busy receiving appreciations along with some ad endorsements tempt to ignore a simple fact that other nations are practicing and sharpening their skills in T20. Wake up call rung twice, by the time the players realized they are too far behind the team is out of the race!

Fatigue factor is a main issue that Coach Gary Kristen rightly touched up on. But right after making this statement coach turned to look over his shoulder to see how many players are behind to support him faced the reality in its worst form. None of them! Instead Captain MS Dhoni came up to contradict coach’s view “too much cricket is not an issue here” as expected few former players too came forward to support Dhoni. We witnessed it in IPL and T20 World Cup, players are really tired of over cricket, it shows in their body language and the way how they are playing cricket, but the smiling villain BCCI is not convinced yet or pretending to be not aware of this whole situation, they send Indian team straight from England to West Indies. Only for four oneday matches. Trying to be good BCCI extended the helping hand by saying if anybody needs rest they can opt out from the team. The players in their right frame of mind will never dare to do that! Not even Dhoni this time, he is smart enough to pulse the change of tide, add to the misery not everything he does turning out to be just right now days! While pocketing a lot of money from all directions; some one should remind BCCI about a story of a goose that lays golden egg!!!