Facing-saving formula

The last time I met Anshuman Gaekwad, he spoke to me with great feeling about how he was enjoying his sleep. "Full 12 hours every night" he said and if that isn't a reflection of what the job of the coach of the Indian team does, I don't know one.

Gaekwad suggested then, without actually saying it that he deserved better. India still didn't win away under him but they beat Australia in a wonderful series, won at Sharjah after that and produced some pretty good performances against Pakistan. The away bogey remained of course but I thought of what Gaekwad felt in the light of what followed.

Now, after the worst year you can remember, what would we give to have even the results we did in the Gaekwad-Azharuddin era !!

It helped of course that Sachin Tendulkar was playing some excellent cricket and it is easy, both to lead and to coach a side when the star player is doing well. A couple of the senior players weren't very excited by his presence but at least there was some continuity; at least the waves coming out were small ones; at least the rumblings weren't threatening.

Gaekwad will probably get the team till the BCCI announces a more lasting appointment. That, in itself, means that his coaching stint will effectively begin after his replacement has been named and you could imagine better scenarios than that ! And the "foreign" coach will inherit a team where the only continuity is chaos.

This represents yet another chapter of a ridiculously directed soap opera where everyone knows what is going to happen next but is waiting to see what words the scriptwriter will coat it with. And so, Mr. Muthiah will talk about meeting Kapil Dev who will issue statements from time to time; who will cause people to say something else and after ten days, we will be no closer to discovering who the national coach is. Now, you tell me, who loves Indian cricket when the first objective is to be portrayed in the best light even if it means further problems for the game?

Clearly this is a face-saving formula where Kapil Dev was sent a letter where the words meant one thing and the spaces between them meant something else. I suspect Kapil Dev would have talked the BCCI into giving him a letter of appointment so that he could turn down the job. If it was a route that satisfied one of our greatest cricketers, that is fine because sugarcoating a pill does it no harm.

But where does it leave the BCCI itself? After having been seen to have taken a tough stand on the "tainted" cricketers, the public would have thought they would adopt a similar posture on the coach. Certainly, initial statements pointed very clearly in the direction of a change when, all of a sudden there was this apparent volte-face. Now imagine that most people are unaware, as is most likely, of what might have transpired behind the scenes. Suddenly the BCCI is seen to be a dithering, inconsistent organisation and if they knew something like this would happen when they sent the letter to Kapil Dev, then we should not even be talking about image.

So, a year after Anshuman Gaekwad was asked to make way for a major new initiative, he gets the side he bequeathed; only it is depleted, trampled over, limping and completely directionless.

People talk of taking a step forwards and two backwards. I have no idea if we have taken a step forward in recent times but I do know we have taken many many steps backwards.

I also know that if Gaekwad had said no, Indian cricket would have looked even sillier.

I wonder if he will sleep well now.

Related report: Kapil resigns

Harsha Bhogle

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