Here, there and nowhere

So the Sahara Cup is off, as it should have been. Tauqir Zia, Javed Miandad and Imran Khan have made strong comments as they must and we should not grudge them that. For all that we know, had the roles been reversed, we would have been saying exactly the same things! However, it is very important to realise that our attention, in the immediate future, needs to be focussed elsewhere.

Pakistan is a very emotional issue for most and it is very handy for the politicians in Delhi and Islamabad, who make strong statements that serve as decoys for something else. We need to cut through that and cricket is no different. Our problems lie in what is being said and done in India, not in Pakistan. And the problems are huge.

Our attention, in the last few months, has focussed on matters related to the running of the game and on what cricketers do, or don’t, when they are not playing cricket. It has meant that we have taken our minds away from the playing of the game itself and that is what we should primarily be concerned with.

For all practical purposes we do not have a coach. To believe that Kapil Dev is coach of the Indian team is to believe in something that exists on paper, not in reality. It is like believing that we have a plan to save the tiger for example. It exists in dusty records, not in the minds of the people who matter.

The moment Kapil Dev says he wants to have nothing to do with Indian cricket, whether now or next year, he ceases to be coach of India. That, like Mr. Muthaiah’s, is really a fulltime job and a disgruntled, angry man cannot hold it. If he does, he will do Indian cricket a huge disservice and in spite of all that has been said and seen over the last three months, I maintain that it is still unlike Kapil Dev to continue.

To look for a respectable way out is not in itself a bad thing but the path has to be found quickly. If there isn’t one, it is best to bell the cat and that is where the BCCI is trying so desperately to evade the issue. It is clear for anyone who can see daylight that they do not want Kapil Dev as coach but the process for acquiring another one cannot be surreptitious. You cannot pretend to have one coach while you quietly look for another.

I mention this because when I was in Australia, the word was out that India were looking for a coach. I met a former Australian cricketer who told me categorically that Geoff Marsh (not Rodney as a lot of people are getting confused into believing) and Greg Chappell had been sounded out and had applied. And I met another cricketer who told me that he had been sounded out as well.

That makes it three already and if you put in the name of John Wright of New Zealand, that is enough to make it look like a full-fledged effort.

Why then, is the Kapil Dev issue alive at all? When we so desperately need stability, we go in search of a volcano. Does it make sense to you?

While all this was happening, I got to speak to John Buchanan and he told me that in the off season he has been speaking to the players about how they can get better. He has regularly been saying that Australia aren’t playing as well as he would like them to (and on the evidence of the three games at the Colonial Stadium, maybe he is right !) and he believes the key is to get them to analyse themselves better. He also said that he and Steve Waugh have had a very blunt talk to each of the players telling them what the management thought of them. The point here is that being coach of the national team is a full time job, not one to be messed around with.

Ditto with the trainer of the team who doesn’t know if he has a job either! Andrew Leipus struck a chord with the team but at a time when he should be monitoring off-season fitness development, he is sitting in Johannesburg wondering whether he needs to return. Now the coach and the trainer aren’t actors who can turn up, don make-up and start playing their roles. But that is exactly what is going to happen. And it shouldn’t surprise us at all because the president of the BCCI is cheesed off at having to spend 60 per cent of his time on cricket rather than on his factory. Don't forget though that his 60 per cent is probably much more time than that of anyone else.

Umm, it is a merry plot for the start of another season. And it is a very good illustration of why Indian cricketers learn very quickly to fend for themselves.

Harsha Bhogle

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