Mukul Kesavan says it's Greg's fault (not in so many words...but...you know what, you should read the whole thing and decide for yourself). His theory:
Ajit Wadekar, the senile old man of Indian cricket, decides to sound statesman like and for once eschews his garbage about "gora" coaches. One can peek into his psyche in this column. The column says: 'First find the cat you want to bell'. Right. Instead of talking about the causes/reasons of the bad show put on by India and how to go about correcting them, Wadekar, wants to pin the blame of this bad show on somebody. If that's the mentality 'esteemed' former captains have, there is no hope for Indian cricket.I think we lost because Chappell, with the best possible intentions, tried to shake the team out of its settled routines by recruiting new players and rotating their roles. He bet on youth and fitness, on developing the all round skills of players like Dhoni and Pathan, and on undermining notions of seniority and hierarchy. He made an example of Ganguly to this end, made his indifference to slow-moving specialists like Laxman obvious and built up players like Raina on the strength of their fielding skills.
All of these policies are theoretically defensible: the problem is, they didn't work. Raina wasn't ready for prime time as a batsman, Pathan's bowling fell away, the experiments at the top of the order failed and by the time the World Cup came round, the Indian team looked remarkably like the one John Wright had handed over. Ganguly was back and he rejoined a team that had been stirred and shaken so hard that it was an anxious bunch of individuals with no esprit de corps
Javagal Srinath says that Chappell's approach contradicted Indian way. We respect Srinath so we won't editorialize his column. Read it for what it is worth.
Confirming the fact that it is the best newspaper in India, The Hindu mentions that Polly Umrigar was inducted into the Legend's Club.
No comments:
Post a Comment