'It's black, it's white...'

Prem Panicker & Faisal Shariff

Michael Jackson, confronted with the current situation, might well have been tempted to break into an encore of 'It's black, it's white...'

Or chalk, and cheese, if you like.

Consider that on the one hand, a focussed Australian selection committee has begun its preparation for the 2003 World Cup, a good 12 months ahead of time. And how!

Biting the bullet hard, the Aussies have in quick succession axed skipper Steve Waugh, the man who led the team to a back from behind win in the last World Cup. And, for good measure, also chopped Mark Waugh, the fourth highest scorer in ODI history.

We did not see the Waughs as being part of our plans for the upcoming World Cup, the selectors explained.

Meanwhile, the Indian board and its motley crew of selectors continue to move in mysterious ways their blunders to perform. Take, for instance, their insistence on being present, en masse, in Nagpur to watch the Indian Test team play Zimbabwe while, elsewhere in the country, the Deodhar Trophy was in progress.

The Deodhar is the country's premier one-day tournament. You would therefore have thought that the selectors would find it pertinent to visit the venues of those games, to check form of the upcoming players. But that is you. The selectors think differently. Travelling with the national team means being put up in five star hotels, pampered in the VIP box of the stadium in question, wined and dined in the evenings. Going to a small town to watch Deodhar Trophy games is, to put it simply, a drag.

But let's leave that lie, and assume for the moment that the selectors perform an important function by watching the national team playing Zimbabwe. Assume, too, that the selectors make notes of performances. As does the team coach. It leads one to ask -- do the selectors communicate with the coach?

You would on the basis of available evidence have to say that the answer is, no. Take for instance the presence in the side of Deep Dasgupta.

When the selectors were asked why a keeper who, on an average, has missed at least three catches per innings during the course of his career thus far remains in the side, the chairman of selectors put the onus on John Wright. 'Wright thought he was improving, and deserved a chance,' Chandu Borde said.

This is a flat lie. John Wright had, prior to the selection of the team to play Zimbabwe, suggested that Ajay Ratra is the best available choice as wicket keeper and that if Dasgupta made it to the side, it had to be purely as an opening batsman. The selectors cleverly took the last part of Wright's assessment, twisted it around to fit their needs, and persisted with the Bengal keeper -- who, for his part, produced his predictable three-plus chances spilt per innings.

The same was the case with the naming of Saurav Ganguly as captain for the just-ended Zimbabwe series. Every single selector, privately, said that in his opinion, it was time for change. And yet in public, they sang the lyrics of the song written by Jagmohan Dalmiya who, from Calcutta, over-ruled both his coach, and his selectors, and insisted that Ganguly continue.

Ask them about this, and the selectors say that it is all John Wright's fault. That the coach is not 'assertive enough' in selection meetings, that he does not provide qualitative feedback.

The flip side is that Wright, who spent the lull before the Zimbabwe series running around the country watching Ranji matches, did not bother to travel to Delhi for the team selection. "What is the point?" a senior team member asked. "They don't listen to him anyway."

Vide Dasgupta.

And now the board has come up with its latest gimmick -- a change in how the teams will be announced. Till date, this was the procedure: The board secretary would convene the selection meeting and once concluded, he along with the chairman of selectors and the coach (and occasionally the captain) would face the media, read out the team, and field questions.

From left: Madan Lal, Ashok Malhotra, Chandu Borde and Sanjay Jagdale

That system has been junked. From now on, the secretary will merely read out the team list. Neither he, nor any of the selectors, will field any questions.

Why? "Well, Australia doesn't do that, why should the Indian selectors address the media?" is the response.

Interesting -- are we now taking our cues from Australia? The ACB has for years had a contract system in place. Do we? No. The Aussies permit their players to talk to and write for the media. Do we? No. The Aussies drop their most successful captain, and their most successful batsman.

Do we? No. The Aussies... Never mind, you get the idea. We follow the Australian model only when it suits us.

But why did this become necessary?

Two incidents were responsible. After the selection of the team for the Nagpur Test, Chandu Borde faced the media, and was grilled mercilessly. He waffled, seemingly out of his depth when answering questions about Dasgupta. "He has improved a little," a clearly harassed Borde said on that occasion. Asked about the team fitness, he said there were no worries on that front, that the team was fit, that fielding had improved.

And then, at the end of the first Test, captain Saurav Ganguly and coach John Wright faced the media -- and the latter dropped a clanger. Flat out, Wright said, "Some of our best players aren't the best of fielders."

Wright, during that press conference, was equally scathing about a few other issues that plague Indian cricket.

It is of a piece with his current attitude. Following his retention, this September, as coach of the Indian team, Wright told us that he did not think it was worth continuing in his post unless he could really make a difference. "If I can't bring about improvement, I might as well quit," he said, during a casual visit to the rediff office a little over a month ago.

Judging by what he said then, and how he acted during that press conference in Nagpur, the coach appears to have figured that as long as this conspiracy of silence lasts, as long as selectors and BCCI officials continue trotting out time-worn cliches to disguise the fact that the team has problems, nothing will ever improve. And hence his decision to play an activist role, to throw light on the issues he believes need to be highlighted.

The BCCI realised it had a problem. On the one hand, Borde was clearly unequal to the task of coping with the media's sharp questioning. And on the other, Wright has begun to show what, for the board, is a distressing tendency to tell the truth out loud.

How to solve the problem? Simple -- suddenly discover that Australia's selectors do not address press conferences after each selection exercise, and immediately adopt that plan here.

It is a different matter that the Australian selectors routinely spell out their actions and the rationale behind them; that the ACB's publicity arm sends out a half dozen emails a day to all media, informing them of everything of significance in Australian cricket. Heck, we at rediff get these mails from the Australian Cricket Board every day -- but we are yet to get a single update from the BCCI!

But then, how does it matter? The board saw a problem, the board solved the problem. When it comes to solving its own problems, the board acts with lightning speed. When it comes to solving the problems of Indian cricket... But never mind; let's not even go there.

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