BRAND IPL: LOTUS DESPITE MODI AND MUCK?

Can someone explain this? How can the IPL be the "finest new brand of global value", as Shekhar Gupta calls it, when it is also being alleged by him and many others in the same breath that that the one man who created it and ran it single-handedly for three seasons seemingly perfectly, is actually a villain who has corrupted the very innards of the organisation he heads?

Thanks to one tweet that felled the fox-clever, arrogant and avaricious Shashi Tharoor, Lalit Modi has instantly become a ruthless dictator, a corrupt administrator, a money launderer, an inveterate philanderer - add expletives of your choice without a care - who, through a complex web of financial crookery and dubious deals involving ownership of various teams, broadcasting rights etc, has enriched himself enormously and brought disrepute to the game. Suddenly, people have discovered that, thanks to the IPL, he owns a yacht, a fleet of S Class Mercedes cars, a jet and havelis, is into orgies, has been rubbing people the wrong way, has been running the show as his private empire etc. In short, what we are being told by and through the media is that the man needs to be thrown out immediately from his job as IPL commissioner. The sub-text is that once he goes all will be well again.

Lalit Modi would perhaps not have expected that exposing Shashi Tharoor would generate the kind of Tsunami it has. He should have known that the Congress party has always successfully used/bought/arm-twisted people into hastily burying any scam, no matter how big, if it even as much as singes a powerful Congress leader. Shashi Tharoor was no ordinary Congressman. He was one of the star members of the new club of 'educated' and elitist Indians that Rahul Gandhi was crafting to get himself projected by the English media as the Great New And Only Hope for India, before the 2014 general elections .

By stripping Tharoor of the veneer that had made him very popular among English-speaking Indians and revealing his ugly, dishonest innards that were indistinguishable from those of the many dehati thieves that our flawed systems have thrown up as leaders, Lalit Modi committed an unpardonable crime. How could he dare to, when no else did, tell the world that Tharoor should actually be spelled 'Thugroor'?

It is nobody's case that Lalit Modi is a saint. By all available accounts - there is an avalanche now - particularly from those who proudly claimed, till that famous tweet, that Lalit Modi was "my friend", it appears that he did as much wrong as right as IPL commissioner. It is also being projected through selective leaks by India's infamous Raiders of the Income Tax Department that Modi is not the only one who stinks: the whole architecture does. Many team-owners and administrators, even cricket legends, who have been merrily enjoying the IPL windfall for three years are, we are being told, all guilty of sullying the 'fair' name of the game of cricket and that the rot is deep indeed.

In the middle of all this muck, we are also being shown a pristine lotus, the IPL brand, which we are being asked to unquestioningly accept is still a good product, an outstanding Indian global brand that we must be proud of. Is that possible? If the one guy who gave birth to it and has built it up as a one-man brand is the Devil himself, if the other administrators headed by the omniscient Sharad Pawar of many a 'fame', including the rot in the ministry he currently heads, if many of those who own IPL teams, are all dirty guys in the game to maximise their own earnings by every dubious instrument available, then is it possible to believe that the players who have been bought by them and are in their employ are not being used by them or others with the same objective?

How can we believe that there is no match fixing, that the 'integrity of the sport' has not been lost, if the rot is really as deep as is currently being made out to be?

Something does not strike one as being right here. Sure, a lot needs to be fixed in the IPL. But, either things are not as rotten as they appear now or, if they indeed are as bad, then one has to logically accept that the sport too has been fatally compromised. That very few are willing to accept. Which can only mean that it is a mean campaign that has been launched by the government solely to punish Modi for unmasking Tharoor and to politically weaken Sharad Pawar who is a painful thorn that cannot be removed by the Congress because the survival of the government in Maharashtra, even the Centre, depends on his considerable weight, pun intended. This may also be with a view to make Tharoor's crime look relatively benign so that he can be rehabilitated quickly.

Lalit Modi, despite massive pressure, has refused to resign as IPL commissioner. On April 26, a meeting of the governing council of the IPL has been called to remove him from the post. He has not only called the meeting illegal, as he says only he can call for it, but has also refused to attend it. To add fuel to the raging fire, he has launched a counter attack on, yes, Twitter again: "Wait for the ipl to finish - I will reveal the men who have tried to bring disrepute to the game and how we stopped them from doing it."

Modi, let us accept it, is no ordinary fly-by-night swindler or conman. He is proud of the product he has developed with a lot of hard work and also seems to have covered his flanks well. He probably had a fair idea that taking out Tharoor would unleash the might of the state against him. Which means he also calculated that, given the knowledge he has about every aspect of IPL and the men involved in it, at the end of it he would come out relatively unscathed and, more importantly, the brand would remain untarnished.

There is going to be serious egg on some faces over the next few days. But, there is hope that brand IPL will not only not take a hit but will also grow bigger and stronger. This hope has arisen not because of what people have been writing and speaking while keeping the brand distinct from Modi and others, but because of the manner in which Modi is taking on the state and its instruments, including the media, which suggests that he guarded at least the brand zealously.

If, however, everything been as putrid as the hysterical reaction to 'Thugroorgate' is making it out to be, then the muck is not going to go out with Modi. Then, no matter who replaces him, everything will, away from public gaze, slide back to where it was. And who knows, Tharoor the Mentor - fixer in plain language - might quietly get his ministership and IPL team back too.

Related reading: Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
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SHASHI THAROOR: MAKING A 'DIFFERENCE'

Let me say what mainstream media would have screamed had the man involved had not been a Congressman and, more importantly, one of the many PLUs (People Like Us - the media that is) who thrive and prosper, some at India's expense, primarily because of the manner in which the media protects, promotes and, in some cases, pays them to lead the good life when they should actually be looking for a hole to bury themselves in: the familiar stench of corruption is emanating from Shashi Tharoor, India's Minister of State for External Affairs.

As per records quoted by Indian Premier League (IPL) boss Lalit Modi, it is more than evident that Tharoor is no innocent, selfless 'mentor' who has put Kerala on the cricket map by helping a consortium buy a new IPL team for Kochi. At least one individual whom Tharoor admits to 'knowing well', Sunanda Pushkar, has been given undilutable sweat equity worth approximately a whopping Rs 75 crore. As per reports doing the rounds, based primarily on Tharoor's very public appearances as minister with Ms Pushkar, she is his lady love and is set to marry him. She has, quite expectedly, denied that she is acting as a front for Tharoor, as has he, feigning righteous rage. Only the very naïve believe that she is the only one through whom Tharoor will benefit; others involved too may have coughed up what is a straightforward 'cut' for services rendered by him to get their bid through.

Shashi Tharoor, a Stephanian, may have left Delhi and India when he was 19 and acquired impressive credentials in the US and UN. But, to take off from a cliché, the crafty desi politician - in the mould of the nearby badlands of Haryana and UP - could not be taken out of him. Still an infant in Indian politics, given what he has manifestly so cleverly 'achieved' in an absolutely 'dry' ministry in so short a time, one can only wonder what he would have done had he been given a 'wet' one. Even Dilip Cherian, a fellow Keralite, has been forced to admit that Tharoor has displayed political naiveté in the sordid Kochi IPL franchisee saga.

In 2005, the then Foreign Minister Natwar Singh was exposed for being a petty thief for helping his son make around Rs 75 lakhs through a dubious oil deal with Iraq. Natwar too was one of media's PLUs. Initially he stoutly denied any wrong doing whatsoever on his part, just as Tharoor is now doing. But soon, despite his best efforts, he found himself thrown out of the government because it was impossible to cover the trail.

During those days, Vir Sanghvi had jumped to his defence. Natwar, Sanghvi wanted the nation to believe, was an honourable man because he was well-read, had a well stocked library, had devoured a large number of books, even authored some, and also had an 'outstanding' career in the Foreign Service. It was almost like saying that the real crime was not what Natwar had done but the fact that it had been alleged that an Oxbridge was corrupt, exposing the uncomfortable truth that, shorn of the sophistry that enabled guys like him to remain distant from and above Bharat, as far as integrity was concerned, the Natwars of the world were no different from the Laloos and Reddys. Sanghvi is at it again, a bit mildly this time, though. He has tweeted that if Tharoor goes, so should Modi! See how cleverly the spotlight is being shifted from Tharoor, and his offense sought to be obfuscated, by all kinds of hyphenations? The latest is that Lalit Modi and Narendra Modi are working together! No wonder many believe that, as far as corruption at the very top is concerned, journalists and politicians are like Siamese twins.

When the Tharoor story first broke, the reaction of Rajdeep Sardesai was almost similar. The manner in which he questioned Lalit Modi on CNN IBN made Modi, not Tharoor, look like the villain for exposing the latter! How is Modi's motive even relevant here? The stark issue is that a minister of the Union government has manifestly done something that can only be described as disgraceful and unacceptable. Journalists should have been focusing on that and asking for Tharoor's resignation. Instead, some of them are still trying to make it appear as if nothing really serious has happened. What is new that Tharoor has done, they ask, that other politicians have not been doing? Who knows, may be some guys from the media too have done a Tharoor-Sunanda, or are planning to, to get their teeth into the very lucrative IPL or similar circuit!

It is more than evident from the interview that Shashi Tharoor gave to Barkha Dutt that when he got into the 'mentor' game, he figured that his real role would remain under wraps because of the confidentiality clause about the identity of the owners of a team; since no details of the ownership of other teams had been made public till then, Tharoor reckoned that the 'hamam' effect would ensure that the extent of his involvement and the 'pay-off' of Rs 75 crore worth of sweat equity to his girl friend and possibly future wife would not become public. That, and not naiveté, emboldened Tharoor to misuse public office.

Can anyone believe that Tharoor did not know why those guys approached him to be their 'mentor' (notice also how he has re-defined the meaning of yet another word!)? Would they have looked his way had he not been minister? As per his own admission, in the consortium that includes Sunanda Pushkar, there are some people "I haven't even met or am aware of". Why, then, did he agree to 'mentor' a lot whose identities, much less credentials, were not known to him? Was it because Sunanda was from the beginning a part of the consortium or was it only after they agreed to bring her on board on Tharoor's 'suggestion'?

What exactly did Tharoor's 'mentoring' translate into in a competitive bidding process? Modi's allegations and Tharoor's own admissions make it clear that he used the weight of his appointment during the bidding process to influence its outcome. That was his only real role to help a group of people, most from outside Kerala, who wanted a slice of the IPL pie. And as it turns out, Tharoor's lady love was rewarded obscenely for the value she is supposedly going to bring to the franchisee with her unheard-of-even-till-now expertise in event management etc!

Ah! Tharoor must surely love Kerala, a state that he probably would not have even looked at had he not been compelled to return to and seek respectable resettlement in India following his failure to become UN Secretary General.

Surely, Tharoor, with his vast experience in the UN, will know only too well how lobbying and influence works, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, like it happened with his own bid to head the organisation. Did he write that almost demeaning piece in Time magazine in praise of Sonia Gandhi because he actually worships her or was it to win her favour and himself a ministerial berth? Just before he formally joined politics, he also wrote columns in The Times of India, some of which were skillful exercises to further his own political goals by projecting how India needed more politicians with his kind of background, his in-depth, though distant, knowledge of this country, his type of accomplishments etc, and not the groin-scratching, nose-digging, non-English-speaking, corrupt lot that India has in plenty. He never was a naïve babe in the woods, as he wants us to believe now.

Tharoor may have perfected the art of saying in 140 words or more of sometimes convoluted prose what can and should be expressed in 140 characters or less. But his skill with words, his command over the English language - the master key that still opens many locks in India - his 'erudition' and his Natwar-like arrogance cannot wash off what he has been caught with on his hands this time.

A couple of months back, in response to questions on Twitter about why he had joined politics, he had tweeted, briefly for once, that he had done it "to make a difference". BRP Bhaskar had then tweeted back asking, "difference to whom?" Tharoor has not yet answered that question. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for India, Lalit Modi has.
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AZHAR, SANJAY, CRIME AND POLITICS

Former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin who is facing a life ban from cricket for his match fixing activities has joined the Congress party. Film star Sanjay Dutt, son of Congress MP Sunil Dutt, has, on the other hand, joined the Samajwadi Party, having failed to get into the Congress. Sanjay Dutt was earlier convicted of illegally possessing arms by the TADA court and has appealed against the conviction in the Supreme Court. While Azhar's entry into politics has been quietly accepted by almost everyone, Sanjay's foray has been greeted with loud protests, particularly in the blogosphere, because he is a "criminal".

Recently a dejected Sanjay ran into an elated Azhar in the house of a common friend. This is how their imaginary conversation went:

Sanjay: Azhar bhai, why is every one calling me a criminal? I did not harm anybody, did I?

Azhar: That is why you are being called one! How can anyone speak up for you?

Sanjay: I didn't get you bhai.

Azhar: Had you fired those weapons and killed someone, no one would have called you a criminal.

Sanjay: Why?

Azhar: You are a really simple fellow. See firstly, the human rights guys would have starting shouting about the violation of your human rights by the police and your innocence 'till proved guilty'.

Sanjay: Go on.

Azhar: Then, you would have got yourself one of those magicians who are officially known as lawyers to defend you. And he would easily proved that your life was in grave danger and that you had fired in legitimate self-defence and that the one who was killed was probably a terrorist! And that the weapon also belonged to him!

Sanjay: And instead of the murderer that I would have become by killing someone, I would have actually wound up becoming a hero with sympathies of the whole nation behind me!

Azhar: Now you are getting it, after so many years. See you have criminally failed to do anything really "criminal" for people to rally behind you and treat you with respect, even awe.

Sanjay: Is that why they treat me like a loser and call me "Sanju baba" condescendingly?

Azhar: What else do you expect them to do when you can do nothing better than panic and destroy arms that you had got only for your self-defence ?

Sanjay: I should have been tougher, man.

Azhar: Gandhigiri works only in films; in real life it is dadagiri that pays dividends.

Sanjay: Why is no one calling you a criminal? You made millions by cheating the whole country, fixing matches as captain of the Indian cricket team.

Azhar: That is exactly why. And that is also why I have been welcomed into politics with open arms!

Sanjay: You are confusing me. How can that be a qualification?

Azhar: Have I not conclusively proved that I am capable of getting what I want?

Sanjay: Yes. Whatever it takes. Where have I heard that line before?

Azhar: That was my original match fixing line. Now CNN-IBN uses it.

Sanjay: Wow!

Azhar: There was another one too, which you might have forgotten about.

Sanjay: Arrey yaar, I find it difficult to remember my own lines before the camera!

Azhar: It was: "There's nothing official about it"

Sanjay: About what?

Azhar: That was the other line for my match fixing activities. These Pepsi guys liked it so much that they used it in their ads for the World Cup when they lost the official sponsorship to Coke!

Sanjay: Still Azhar bhai, everyone knows you have cheated and made millions doing that. You are the real criminal, not me.

Azhar: We are not living in the times of Mahatma Gandhi, Sanju baba. I have the badge of honour that many politicians flaunt with great pride these days. Remember, people respect you for your creativity in generating money.

Sanjay: C'mon. I have made much, much more money than you.

Azhar: You haven't got the point yet? Every one gets paid legitimately for the job he is doing or the service he is rendering. There is nothing heroic about it, no matter how much you are paid.

Sanjay: Then?

Azhar: It is the "ooper ki kamai" (additional illegitimate income) that determines your real worth and respect.

Sanjay: My dad was highly respected. He did not have any illegitimate income.

Azhar: He belonged to another age. Do you think all these bright guys who are dying to join poorly paid government jobs are doing so for the salaries that they are going to get?

Sanjay: Is that why am I not getting the kind of respect I should be getting...the kind you are?

Azhar: Now you are beginning to get the hang of it.

Sanjay: And I was actually beginning to believe in Gandhigiri...

Azhar: Had you believed in and done something more practical, you would have been welcomed into the Gandhis' party like I have been and not left to suffer the likes of Amar Singh.

Sanjay: And no one would have called me a criminal too.

Azhar: Exactly.

Sanjay: I have really blown it like a fool. And now I can only repent.

Azhar: Not necessarily.

Sanjay: What do you mean?

Azhar: Well, if you really want to get things "fixed", you don't have to go very far...
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ATTACK ON SRI LANKAN CRICKETERS: NO ROOM FOR PRETENCE NOW

The inevitable has happened. This morning eight to ten terrorists armed with rockets, AKs and grenades attacked the bus carrying Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's largest state Punjab. In the attack, five security persons were killed and three were injured. At least six Sri Lankan cricketers were injured too. The tour has been abandoned and the players are flying back home.

As per the driver of the bus in which Sri Lankan cricketers were travelling to the Gaddafi stadium, a rocket was fired at the bus but it missed it because the bus was turning at a roundabout. A hand grenade thrown at the bus went under it. After that, facing small arms fire, he drove the bus quickly to the safety of the stadium, due to which further casualties were prevented. Had the rocket hit the bus, the entire team would have been eliminated. In what appears to be a providential escape, Mahela Jayawardane, Kumar Sangakkara, Ajantha Mendis, Thila Samaraweera, Tharanga Paranvithana and Chaminda Vaas escaped with injuries. All are out of danger.

Another fact that has emerged is that the terrorists targeted only the Sri Lankan and not the Pakistani team. The attack lasted nearly half an hour after which all of then simply disappeared. Till now, no arrests have been made. Naturally, there are questions being raised that the terrorists had detailed inside information about the movement of the players. They also probably had support from elements either in the police or the military that enabled them to get so close to the stadium and then effect a clean get-away too.

As this is being written, there are unbelievable live visuals on the TV screen showing a military helicopter, not players, on the pitch of the Gaddafi stadium. It is there to fly out the Sri Lankan players straight to the airport. No one in Lahore is willing to take the risk of taking the players out of the stadium by road.

This is not Taliban country; this is not Swat or FATA or NWFP. This is the very centre of Pakistan, as it were, its Punjabi heart. This has been hit by terrorists in as dramatic a manner as was Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The dress and modus operandi of those who struck in Lahore today was chillingly identical to that of those who attacked Mumbai. Does the state of Pakistan have no clue about who they are and who their backers and trainers and ideologues are? Are they too isolated and undetected "non-state" actors like the Mumbai attackers were? Are these too "rogue elements" within the establishment that the establishment is blissfully unaware of?

There are some experts who are saying in TV studio discussions that this attack has the hand of the Pakistani Army behind it. The Army is going to use this incident, they believe, along with the mess that Zardari and Sharif have created between themselves like dim wits who should have remained in prison/exile, to get back into power. That may perhaps be correct. But what does the Army want to come back to and rule over? What will this attack do? It will ensure that all sporting contacts with Pakistan, in Pakistan, are broken by all other countries of the world. That is not what the Army should be looking forward to, if indeed this attack has been orchestrated just to impose military rule.

The message of this attack is perhaps far more dangerous and fundamental. Today it is sport, tomorrow it will be other symbols of a modern, progressive Pakistan. Finally it will be the sharia in full force in the whole country, if it still is one, just as it is in Taliban land today.

The deal between the Army and the Taliban in Swat to hand over that valley to the latter who are imposing the sharia there needs to be viewed in conjunction with what has happened in Lahore today. The slide is dangerous and it is gathering momentum. Pakistani President Zardari was not bluffing when he said that his country was in danger of being taken over by the Taliban. There is no room for pretence now.

There are clearly dominant elements in Pakistan Army and its subordinate organisation, the ISI, who are in favour of the talibanisation of the whole of Pakistan. They have grown up on that extremist ideology and have overseen its implementation in Afghanistan before 9/11. Like the terrorists that they are creating and training, they believe that the whole of Pakistan should follow the 'pure' Islam that they earlier had put in place in Afghanistan and that is now functional in large areas in the peripheral parts of Pakistan. It is also safe to assume that the these elements in the Army are not low ranking officers or men. They have to be senior officers with some serious clout and reach. For all you know Army Chief Kiyani might be one with them. Since the US is sitting on their head, they have to move undetected and with caution and then surprise the Americans somewhat like they did in Swat.

Make no mistake: the attack on the Sri Lankan team will be followed by attacks on cinema halls, music shops, girls not fully covered up etc. Radical Islam is now aiming for the very heart of Pakistan, for the state of Pakistan itself. There is an internal war brewing there, a war that will have a profound and lasting impact on the world. The world has a responsibility to ensure that the jihadi elements that have infiltrated large parts of the state of Pakistan and its structures are not allowed to consume any more of Pakistan than they already have. The rest of the world will be next.

It is time to back the retreating moderate and progressive elements in Pakistan so that they develop the stomach and the ability to fight and defeat those who are trying to turn Pakistan into a very dangerous fundamentalist Afghanistan. No matter what the cost. The world cannot just afford their defeat.

This post has featured in the News blog page of The Guardian
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CHAK DE INDIA, SECOND BEST MEANS NOTHING

Centuries of rule by invaders who came to this country both by land and sea, has left what seems to be an indelible impression on the psyche of the inhabitants of the Indian sub continent, irrespective of their religion or the country they belong to today.

First, we Indians saw invasions from across the Hindu Kush Mountains, which resulted in the invaders establishing their kingdoms almost all over the country. Most of these invaders, however, gradually adapted to the Indian way of life and were accepted and even assimilated as Indians, not foreigners. Some of their cultural influences were also absorbed, giving rise to uniquely Indian composite cultures.

Then came the invasions form the sea by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and the British. These were different to the extent that the Europeans, particularly the British who conquered the whole of India, never tried to acquire the ‘Indianness’ that the earlier invaders had, to be permanently accepted as an integral part of Indian society. On the contrary, they asserted their racial superiority on the basis of their white skin, and attempted to rule India as alien masters who were many notches above the ‘natives’, on almost all cultural, political and social parameters.

When the British were made to leave in 1947, unshackled India and Indians had the opportunity to once again realize their long suppressed potential and greatness that had ensured the survival of what is arguably the oldest living civilsation in the world. For that to happen, the first thing that needed to be done was to reawaken the realization that Indians were second to none and that so many invaders had been repeatedly attracted to this land simply because it offered them much more than what they could ever get in their own countries. India was the original El Dorado, the enchanting, flourishing, prosperous sub continent which beckoned, almost enticed, men from lesser lands.

That spirit and confidence had been kindled by Mahatma Gandhi, and its power and sophisticated simplicity gently blew the British away before they could realize what had hit them. That was the power which should have been fanned, protected and nurtured to make India great again.

Unfortunately, the first blow to that awakening was dealt by Partition, as some sections of society chose to give primacy to religion over the commonness of a shared past, ethnic bonds and cultural similarities. As I understand it now, they chose in a way to identify with their invaders over their countrymen, religion becoming the determining factor, the justification. Those Indians were unknowingly so happy to be ‘second best’ that they willingly shed their Indian souls and have ever since then been unsuccessfully trying to find a new one to call their own as Pakistanis. Bangladeshis were partially able to reclaim theirs in 1971, when they broke away from Pakistan.

In the India that remained India in 1947, perhaps Mahatma Gandhi would have been the guiding light as the nation awoke to meet its tryst with destiny. But he passed away a few months after Independence, leaving India in the hands of inexperienced leaders who were not blessed with his exceptional vision. When Gandhi was alive, their limitations were hidden in the glow of his guidance. But with the beacon gone, they proceeded to simply find the easiest available methods of governing Independent India. What better than the known and in place methods by which their colonial masters had governed them as their subjects?

Thus, every single organ and structure of colonial rule was left untouched and adopted gleefully almost in toto by the Indians who became the new masters, happy to enjoy and employ the very power they had fought against. Adoption of the British type parliamentary form of democracy completed the process. Colonial rule thus continues, without any break, to this day; only the skins have changed colour.

This complete adoption of the ways of the colonial rulers had a subtle but very powerfully debilitating impact on the collective psyche of India. It gradually began to seep into Indian minds that the British, their civilization, their language, their bureaucratic practices, their system of justice, their method of policing etc, were all superior to anything the Indians had ever done before the British came. It was almost as if our Indian rulers were telling us that we actually were no better than uncivilized aborigines before the Englishmen landed here. The loud message they conveyed with deathly silence was that India had nothing worthwhile to contribute to its own existence as a nation. Isn’t that exactly what the British were saying when they were here?

The only things Indian our rulers found worth adopting were the flag and a couple of symbols used by Emperor Ashoka, who lived before the Christian era began. That they did because there was no choice but to replace the Union Jack, the British crown and the Lions which were the omnipresent symbols of slavery. But, not one single structure or element of administration, governance, justice, or military was even considered for discarding.

Surprising isn’t it considering that before the Europeans landed here, there were many kingdoms and empires, many larger than most countries of Europe, which had successfully been administered for far longer periods than the British Empire lasted? In fact vast empires have flourished in India for thousands of years. Yet, our new rulers found nothing that any one of them ever did good enough to be adopted by Independent India.

So, we continue to have the colonial police and bureaucracy whose structure and attitude were designed for exhibiting the might and superiority of the Empire to subjugate inferior subjects, not move in step with fellow citizens. The military also continues to be in a time warp, giving blind precedence to its colonial history and traditions.

This seamless continuation of almost all elements of the Empire by brown men has generated a new class of ‘colonial’ Indians and is largely responsible for creating the two disconnected ‘Indias’, which are almost as removed from each other as the British were from natives.

Members of the First India, one would logically argue, should be in the vanguard of leading India’s revival as one of the great countries of the world; of leading Indians into again becoming the pioneers that they were in many diverse fields for thousands of years. Paradoxically, exceptions apart, they are the ones who are retarding India’s march, and they don’t even know it! If one looks hard, the situation is not much different from what it was during the Raj. Even then, citizens of a similar ‘First India’, happy with pompous titles and other forms of colonial ‘bribery’, were the main pillars of the Empire.

Then, as now, First Indians identified with foreigners who they thought were superior, and were content to copy their ways to be close and second best to them. What mattered then, as it seems even now, was that these Indians gloated at being above and ‘better’ than their fellow country men. That was the limit of their ambition. They had arrived.

That is perhaps why India has produced outstanding American citizens who have done their adopted country proud. ‘Fulfill your individual American Dream’; this is the magic mantra that is chanted the most by First Indians; this is what almost every educated urban Indian kid wants to achieve. See how the nation celebrates this dream when the feats of Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams and Bobby Jindal are blown up as if they are our national achievements?

Somewhere, we have lost the plot. We do not want to be reminded that such achievements are of the American nation, not of India, notwithstanding the fact that Americans who have migrated from India are involved. I don’t think you will find, say Germans, or other self respecting people going ballistic if someone originally form their country does something for the US as a US citizen.

We somehow do not seem to realize that by encouraging Indians to believe that the best they are capable of achieving is becoming great Americans, we are reinforcing the belief that Indians are still no better than second best and that they should not even strive for more.

Is it any surprise that the two most outstanding ‘world beaters’ that Independent India has produced do not come from this First India?

Lakshmi Mittal is the product of a Hindi medium school. Dhirubhai Ambani was truly from the Second India that, to First Indians, is somewhere else. In their formative years, they were never exposed to the ‘dream’ of becoming Americans. Fortunately for them, being second best was not the best and only option that they were subtly brainwashed into accepting.

There are many more such Indians who have dreamt of being world beaters and are trying to be so in their spheres. The Infosys pack led by Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani is another such example of Indians not debilitated by the ‘Be American’ slogan. Almost all are homegrown Indians who have been relatively insulated from the influence of First India.

Is it also a mere coincidence that the new lot of fearless, confident and aggressive members of the Indian Cricket team are all from small towns, largely untouched by the pervasive westernization afflicting and enfeebling the First Indians living mostly in the metros? Is it because, not having been psychologically defeated by the ‘Superior West’, even before they faced them on the battlefield, they are able to take their opponents on in a manner never displayed by their ‘soft predecessors’ (exceptions apart)? Why only cricket? See what poor boys from Delhi and Bhiwani (Haryana) have done in wrestling and boxing in the Beijing Olympics despite rudimentary facilities. How can one forget what the relatively affluent Abhinav Bindra has done with his rifle thanks to the pains taken and money spent by his family on his training.

Yes, First Indians will turn around and quote the achievements of Indira Nooyi, Rajat Gupta, Vikram Pandit, Fareed Zakaria etc, to name a few. Again, most of such Indians have been outstanding ‘Americans’, living out their personal dreams. I admire them as individuals, no doubt, but the issue that we as a nation have to address is larger.

Haven’t we seen many Indian students, who are not good enough to get into the IITs, IIMs and other top educational institutions in India, go to the US and excel there? Doesn’t that show that perhaps we have an even greater pool of unexploited talent within the country than the US which consciously makes up that critical deficiency by attracting it from around the world?

That nation is focused in its resolve to ensure its continuance as the strongest and most powerful nation in the world. It knows it wants to be the best and it knows best how to get the best to be the best.

Can a country ever be a world beater, when its cream is happy being second best? Is it not disgraceful for a nation of such intelligent people to not even collectively think of creating a country better than America?

With such an abundance of talent and resources, Independent India should have actually been racing to the top of the international heap in double quick time. It is no stranger to that spot. Long before other peoples were beginning to get civilized, India had attained unparalled heights of scientific and philosophical achievements, still living and some even unsurpassed to this day. The memory gene pool of that intellect is either lying relatively wasted or is being exploited by other nations.

It has been said by many that you don’t win the silver medal, you lose the gold. ‘Chak De India’ is the current clarion call which seems to have had an electrifying effect on Indian sportsmen to set new standards of excellence and go for nothing less than the gold, as it were.

It is time that as a nation we realized that it is not good enough to get the silver medal by trying to ‘Become America’. We have to start trying to ‘Beat America’, metaphorically speaking.

That is the motivational call that needs to be given to fire up this nation again. For that, the ills that beset the small but influential and debilitating lot of Indians belonging to First India have to be addressed holistically. They have to begin feeling the feeling that being second best means nothing. Only then can the march of Second India, the Real India, begin unimpeded in full earnest.

Chak De will truly begin to happen only when Indians start getting angry being second best.

I wrote this post over a year ago and have pulled it out of the archives because in these trying times after 11/26, there is a need to positively channelise the anger that has gripped all of us. It is to remind us that we as a nation can and must strive to be the best and not lose our focus due to the obstacles that our enemies have placed and will place in our path.

DHONI THE DON: DESTINY'S DESIGN?

Anil Kumble, India's highest wicket taker and Test team captain, resigned from Test cricket today. The indomitable fighter and gentleman of unimpeachable integrity and quiet dignity, bowled his last ball for India after making the sudden decision which was announced towards the end of the day's play in the Test match at Delhi. An injury to his left hand a couple of days back while trying to take a difficult catch was the final signal to him that he had played his part and that it was time to leave the stage.

616 wickets in 131 Tests, 337 One Day wickets from 271 matches, over 2500 Test runs and even a Test century. This is an awesome record that places Anil Kumble in the league of the all-time greats of Indian cricket like Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar. Captaincy, which had eluded him for no real reason for most his long career, also came to him befittingly at the fag end after Dravid suddenly quit the job in the wake of the World Cup disaster.

However, when he did become captain, not even he would have known that his reign would be so short, and that perhaps destiny had a design to make Dhoni the undisputed king of Indian cricket in a hurry.

Within hours of Kumble announcing his retirement, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was appointed the captain of the Indian Test team. He is now the captain of the team in all the three versions of the game. He is also the captain of the IPL Chennai Super Kings Team. K Srikkanth who is from Chennai has just taken over as Chairman of Selectors. In short, Dhoni is now the undisputed boss of Indian cricket. In fact it would not be wrong to call him the 'don' because of the kind of unchallenged power he has. And this even before leading an Indian team in a Test match as a full fledged captain.

It all started for Dhoni when the big three of Indian cricket, Sachin, Saurav and Dravid decided to skip the inaugural T20 World Cup. On Sachin's suggestion Dhoni was appointed the captain of that team. No one then gave India even an outside chance to win that tournament considering the disaster that had recently struck India in the One Day World Cup and the fact it was a young, untested team without the big guns. And then, the unbelievable happened. India won that cup. Dhoni's stature instantly shot through the roof and he was appointed the One Day captain too. Was there a choice?

Even in those early days, Dhoni had started calling the shots with some arrogance. He dropped an in form Ganguly and did not play the picked Sehwag in the Tri Series in Australia. India won that tournament too. That set him up as the only claimant for the job of the Test captain after Kumble. In fact, an increasing number of voices started demanding that Kumble should retire immediately and make way for him.

Kumble, however, had no such retirement plans. But he did not know that the wheels of destiny were working overtime to push Dhoni up and him out.

Virender Sehwag was at one time India's vice captain and had looked certain to take over as captain in time. But fate had something else in store. He suddenly lost form and and had an extended lean run, resulting in him first losing his vice captaincy and then his place in the team. Yuvraj was another talented player who flirted with captaincy similarly but his inability to convert his awesome talent into performance saw that prize rightfully slip away from him.

Sehwag did get back his form and his destructive match winning ways. But, fatefully, that happened only after Dhoni had, as captain, won the T20 World Cup and the One Day series in Australia. So while his place in the team is now secure and he is well on his way to joining the ranks of the great players of the world, captaincy is out of question at this point of time.

In the ongoing India-Australis Test series, Kumble had to miss the second Test at Mohali because of an old shoulder injury. Amit Mishra replaced him and took five wickets on debut, increasing pressure on Kumble to make way for him. Dhoni captained the team and India beat the Aussies by the biggest margin ever in terms of runs. The man with midas touch had done it again, as Kumble watched from the dressing room.

In the Delhi Test, when India posted a mammoth score of 613 for 7 declared in the first innings, India looked set for a big win, Kumble leading the team well and looking good enough to continue captaining India for another series or two. But, fate intervened again. India's fielding suddenly turned sloppy and, thanks to three dropped catches, Australia posted a total of 577, snuffing out all chances of a once certain Indian win.

But, not taking willing to take chances, destiny had Kumble trying to take difficult catch to injure his left hand in the process, necessitating 11 stitches. That injury did Kumble in completely. Although he returned to the field to bowl and take three wickets, it was clear that he would not be fit for the next match at Nagpur. It would be Dhoni captaining the team there, once again.

Two personal setbacks in quick succession in conjunction with the success of his successor succeeded in making Kumble see that his track had reached its end station. And the never-say-die warrior quickly laid down his arms with great dignity and without any rancour, to get a rousing send off, fittingly from the venue where he had taken all ten wickets in an innings against Pakistan. And who carried him on his shoulders for the last time at the Kotla? Yes, the man on whose shoulders the fortunes of team India now lie.

Destiny's hand appears to be playing an almost visible hand in the rise and rise of Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Indian cricket. Destiny got his ball rolling by asking the Big Three to skip the T20 World Cup; destiny has now literally pushed Kumble to make way for him to become the very powerful 'don' of Indian cricket, without a challenger in sight.

India has gone from strength to strength under Dhoni's leadership, notching up win after win. Does it mean that the future of India's cricket is safe and bright in his hands? Or is this that peak before the big fall? Whatever it might be, if past events are any guide, there is little doubt that destiny will continue to show its hand as it has till now.

SACHIN AND SAURAV: MILESTONE AND MILLSTONE!

First, let us blow that trumpet again: Sachin Tendulkar has become the first batsman in the world to score 12,000 runs. Speaking after his stupendous achievement, 19 years on, Sachin responded to his critics by saying "when people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones." As Sachin reached his milestone, there was another almost forgotten but no less significant milestone being reached at the other end of the pitch.

On October 17, 2008, Saurav Ganguly became only the fourth Indian batsman to score more than 7,000 runs, behind Sachin, Gavaskar and Dravid. Ironically, it was Sachin who spoke of stones even though he has had many more flowers than stones thrown at him all through his career, making him virtually the unquestioned king of Indian cricket, beyond all scrutiny and questioning by any one who is someone in the world of Indian cricket. Saurav, on the other hand, has had a lot worse than stones throw at him, particularly ever since Greg Chappell took over as India's coach.

In many ways, Saurav Ganguly's milestone is much more significant than Sachin's. Sachin's was India's Captain before Saurav took over from him, because it was clear that Sachin did not have it in him to take the additional pressure that captaincy demanded. Saurav not only took to captaincy as if he was born to it but he transformed forever the attitude and approach of Team India to the game and to its opponents. As a result, he went on to become India's most successful captain ever.

If in the seventies Sunil Gavaskar taught a weak Indian team how to draw matches and not lose them, Saurav Ganguly taught it to play hard, aggressive cricket and win. No Indian captain had ever done that before; all captains will try to do that in future. That is an achievement which is far greater than any individual milestone in a team game. If you add 7,000 runs to it, the enormity of his contribution is a complete standout, no less.

Before the series began, Saurav Ganguly, fed up and disgusted with sustained, malicious attempts to throw him out of the Indian team, had announced that he would retire after the ongoing India-Australia series. No other Indian player has faced and survived such hostility and double-faced treatment that has refused to recognise ability and even current form. No other player has made the kind of comeback that Saurav made after he was relieved of captaincy and thrown out of the team by Chappell, setting in motion a series of developments that saw India disgraced in the World Cup. Yet, Mahendra Singh Dhoni dropped him from the One Day team when India toured Australia, on the Chappell inspired excuse that India needed to pick players for the 'future' and the next World Cup! And later, when he failed in just a couple of innings in Sri Lanka, he gave his detractors just the excuse, however dishonest and petty, to call for an end to his career.

Saurav Ganguly has just got out after scoring a century, his 16th, reaching yet another great milestone in his outstanding career. Already he is the highest scorer in this series. His gritty performance in both innings in the first Test helped India save the match. His brilliant century in the second Test has not only held India's innings together and help Sachin achieve his milestone, it has also put India in a very commanding position in the match.

Sachin's milestone had every one gushing and asking him to continue playing for India for many more years, even though at 35 plus, he is about as old as Saurav. Saurav's milestone, on the other hand, seem to be becoming a millstone around the necks of his known detractors. Ravi Shastri, commentating on the match, has had little choice but to grudgingly acknowledge Saurav's effort with the bat. But, to belittle the effort, he has been deviously intent on promoting Mahendra Dhoni as player and captain. Also, he has been repeating ad nauseum that this was Saurav's last series, as if mortally afraid that he would have to see Saurav coming out of retirement and continue playing for India! In fact, the only person who had the courage to talk about that possibility was Peter Roebuck yesterday on CNN-IBN.

See the double standards and the murky politics that have come to occupy centre-stage in Indian cricket? While no one even talks of Sachin's retirement despite his middling performance of late and his recurring injuries, they all want Saurav out despite his sterling performances ever since he made a comeback to the team in South Africa. No one wants to even acknowledge that had there been a rookie in the team in place of Saurav, India would have most likely lost the first Test and would have been already defending a poor total in the ongoing Test. They just want to see his back.

Krishnamachari Srikkanth has become the new chairman of the selection committee. He is from Chennai and Dhoni is the captain of the Chennai Super Kings IPL team. Dhoni is responsible for pushing Saurav out of the team and injecting politics of the Chappell variety into it. He is clearly intent on becoming the unquestioned king of the team. For that he needs unknown midgets, not tall knights. That is why probably Saurav was provoked to say that " now every Tom, Dick and Harry is playing for Team India." Every one is backing Dhoni now and extolling his leadership qualities. My sense is that, blinded by their aversion to Saurav, they are being even more blind to what Dhoni is really up to, and the damage that he will do to the team in the long run.

Saurav's continued brilliance with the bat clearly shows that all talk of dropping him has been motivated, parochial and completely unjustified. But, with Dhoni now securely positioned as the unchallenged leader of Team India, his selection in future is all but ruled out. It is the time of the 'Tom's' of the world who suck up to Dhoni to get into the team. In the face of the seemingly unbreakable wall that he faces, conventional wisdom suggests that Saurav should stick to his retirement plan. That is what all the guilty blokes want him to do.

They don't want the millstone of his milestone around their necks; it is too heavy.

But, may be Saurav should draw inspiration from Sachin who, in response to a question as to when he would retire, told the person who had asked the question that he had come to the wrong press conference. He deserves much better than he has got and his opponents deserve worse than they have. And, to top it all, Team India needs Saurav more than all the Toms, Dicks and Harries of Dhoni and Shastri and others put together. Only the blind cannot see that.
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Readers may also read:
1.The Bengal tigers roars again and how!
2. Dhoni beginning to divide and destroy Team India
3. Dhoni needs a long break
4.T20 Juggernaut gathers speed, crushes F50

T20 JUGGERNAUT GATHERS SPEED, CRUSHES F50

It was going to happen one day. But so soon, after just one IPL tournament? The T20 juggernaut is gathering speed faster than anyone had ever imagined and is fundamentally changing the way in which cricket is administered and played.

Close on the heels of billionaire businessman Allen Stanford announcing a five year $100 million T20 tournament between his team, Caribbean Super Stars, and England, comes the news that an English T20 Premier League has been proposed by two members of the ECB management board. This tournament is likely to start in June 2010 and will be a 25-day, 57-match affair between nine teams. Players will be auctioned like they were in the IPL, with a salary cap. The EPL will be financed by private backers and owned by a company called New T20 Ltd.

The money that this format of the game has given and promises to give to players in future is breaking down national and ‘patriotic’ boundaries already. The dates of Sri Lanka’s Test tour to England next year clash with the those of the IPL. As many as 13 Sri Lankan players feature in the IPL. This clash of interests led to a virtual revolt by players who did not want to miss out on all the fun, excitement and, above all, the money that was theirs for playing in the IPL. They, in fact, went to the extent of meeting Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse and asking for his intervention to get the dates of the tour of England changed so that they could play in the IPL.

As a result, something that was unimaginable less than a year ago has happened. Sri Lanka have allowed their players to choose self over country and play in the IPL next year at the expense of the Sri Lanka England Test series. The justification given for this unprecedented step, surely the first of many, is that the “players were already committed to play in the IPL for three years(2008-2010), but they have assured us that they will give the 2011 tour of England top priority ahead of the IPL”!

By 2011, the way things are moving, traditional Test cricket between nations may well become a four yearly affair, a sort of World Cup, for which the existing and future power centres of cricket will find it extremely difficult to find time for more than a few matches only. This lollypop given by the Sri Lankans about 2011 has not been naively accepted by the ICC which is alarmed at the possibility of its own early demise/irrelevance, something that I had foreseen and written about during the IPL after Vijay Mallya and Shahrukh Khan had started flexing their muscles as the new, emerging centres of power in cricket.

ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat is afraid that the Sri Lankan decision to give priority to IPL will set a dangerous precedent. “ If we don’t manage this situation we could be threatening the lifeblood of all member countries. International cricket generates revenue that is essential to our survival”, he says. Make no mistake. At stake is the very survival of the ICC and its member boards.

Earler, when it had became clear that the IPL was a roaring success, everybody thought that the BCCI had become more powerful than ever before and that it would dominate world cricket completely in future. I was perhaps the lone voice then who saw that the IPL had altered the basic dynamics of the power structure of cricket and would actually weaken the BCCI.

The rich and the powerful already own teams and players in India, thanks to IPL. Something similar will soon happen in England and will be replicated on a smaller scale elsewhere too. Thanks to the powerful T20 motor, these owners will not only power their way into decision making but will also take cricket to other parts of the globe so far untouched by this beautiful game. If the players are with them, as they will be due to the lure of big bucks, the ICC and other boards will be left helpless and, as Lorgat fears, penniless too.

Therefore, rather than bemoan the fundamental changes that have begun taking place sooner than anyone expected, and expose itself to the real risk of being marginalised completely, the ICC family needs to get its act together and look and plan ahead for the sweeping changes that T20 will bring about within the next couple of years. Nobody should have any illusion that this time they will be able to do what they once did to Kerry Packer.

Another immediate casualty of T20 is F50, the One Day Match. The signs were visible in the Tri-nation tournament in Bangladesh, even though India and Pakistan, traditional rivals, were involved. Then came the Asia Cup in Pakistan which conclusively proved that One Day cricket is all but dead. The recently released TV ratings of these two tournaments provide official confirmation of the fact that the T20 juggernaut has simply crushed One Day cricket under its giant wheels. The highest ratings for the One Day tournaments in Bangladesh and Pakistan were 2.3 and 2.62 respectively. Compare these with the rating of 15.9 for the T20 World Cup Final, 6 for each of the IPL semi finals and 9.8 for the IPL final, and you will get a clear idea of the fatal hit that One Day cricket has taken.

The fast paced, three hour T20 game has caught the imagination and convenience of spectators and viewers alike. The One Day game lies in tatters as too long and too slow for this fast paced world of today. Rather than gracefully accept this fact and bid this format goodbye, administrators are desperately trying to resuscitate a clinically dead body. Some are talking of reducing the game to 40 overs while others want it to be a 25 over, two innings a side affair!

Some people simply can never read even very bold writing on the wall. May be it is their desperation to keep at least some control over the game and the players that is blinding them. Surely there are better and more imaginative ways to remain relevant in the fast changing scenario that T20 has unleashed. Unless the ICC and member boards discover them quickly, they may also find themselves under those huge juggernaut wheels, to re-appear as part of the history of this glorious game.

DHONI NEEDS A LONG BREAK

The irony could not have been more telling. The Asia Cup Final in Karachi saw the Sri Lankan innings being powered by the ‘old man’ of international cricket, Sanath Jaisurya, while the response of exciting youth brigade preferred by Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was not good enough once again.

This is the second time in a row that the brat brigade has choked in the final. That is what happened to them against Pakistan in Dhaka too. Earlier, when India had beaten the Aussies in the One Day series in Australia, I had written that the it was not the youngsters but the veterans led by Sachin Tendulkar who got India to victory. Obviously, Dhoni does not want to learn. He continues to stubbornly insist on keeping the likes of Sourav Ganguly out, clearly for reasons other than cricket.

And, the excuse to keep Ganguly out is the same that was trotted out ad nauseum by Greg Chappell when he was India’s coach: he wants to pick a team for the future. Who has seen the future? Has anybody ever played in the future? Who is accountable for losing the tournaments you are playing today for the vague promises of victories tomorrow? This nonsense about giving a “chance” to youngsters at the expense of team performance needs to stop. Dhoni and others may not be comfortable in the towering presence of Sourav Ganguly in the team. But that cannot be reason enough to ignore him.

Let Dhoni and the selectors put their hands on their hearts and say honestly that the like of Uthappa, Raina or even Yuvraj are better One Day players than Sourav Ganguly is today, on current form. While 39 year old Jaisurya is continuing to blast all misplaced notions of youth over experience, just like he did during the IPL, our selectors are ignoring Ganguly and offering him a ‘farewell’ series! On current form, he is as good as Sachin Tendulkar in the One Day format of the game. Also, as he showed during the latter half of the IPL, Sourav has mentally sorted out the challenges and requirements of the T20 format too. Those in doubt are heading for a big surprise in the next IPL tournament.

The IPL has affected the psyche of many players, including the highest paid captain of the Chennai Super Kings, Dhoni. After the glitz, glamour and moolah of IPL, the youthful and tough Dhoni is finding it difficult to keep himself motivated to play for his country in old fashioned tournaments. During the Asia Cup, he moaned that too much cricket was being played and that it was difficult to continue to play so many games. What he probably meant to say was that too much of ‘under paid’ cricket was difficult to play and that if there was no solid smell of money, it was not possible for him to focus on the game!

The old and bald Sanath Jaisurya does not seem to be suffering from any match fatigue whatsoever. Nor are other players who have been and are playing as much cricket as Dhoni. Is Dhoni’s complaint really about physical fatigue or is it something else altogether?

Reacting to Dhoni’s wish to take time off cricket, the BCCI has rested him for the upcoming Test Series in Sri Lanka. Not the One Day Series. Notice something here? The captain of the Test team is Anil Kumble. Perhaps India’s One Day and T20 captain does not want to play under another captain at all any longer. That too in a team where he has to rub shoulders with the senior players, the big guns, that he has summarily discarded from the teams that he leads. So, this talk of fatigue due to too much cricket is little more than political positioning, in addition to the money factor. This also indicates that, come what may, Dhoni is not going to take Ganguly in his team. Dravid, of course does not stand a chance even otherwise.

It appears that this whole drama of Dhoni avoiding the Test series in Sri Lanka has been orchestrated in sync with the BCCI. Dhoni is the current indispensable mascot of the board. Everyone is again happily going along with a ‘work-in-progress’ team that has lost two back-to-back finals. Dhoni’s policy of trying to divide and destroy Team India, something about which I had warned months back, is being backed to the hilt, just like Chappell’s identical policy was. The results will be disastrous, as is already is evident.

As this is being written comes the news that Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid do not figure in the list of 30 probables picked for the Champions Trophy to be played in Pakistan. No further confirmation is required to prove what I have been saying all along. The BCCI and Dhoni are both more interested in the politics rather than the game of cricket. So focused they ostensibly are on the World Cup that they are willing, even eager, to avoid picking the best available team that can win the Champions Trophy for India.

If the BCCI were really interested in picking a team ‘for the future’, a team for the next World Cup, then they would have looked at more options for the captain's job too. Why have they firmed in on Dhoni as the captain so soon? Why has the idea of Sehwag leading the team no longer being considered? Why is Yuvraj also not being given the job for some matches?

If the BCCI really wants to pick the best team led by the best captain, at least these two players need to be give a meaningful stint as India captain and allowed to choose their teams with the same freedom that Dhoni has been given. With the comparative strategic and tactical abilities of Sehwag, Yuvraj and Dhoni being better assessed on the playing field, the country will finally wind up getting the best possible team combination led by the most capable captain. Equally importantly, it will put and keep in place Dhoni who thinks right now that he is indispensable to the team both as player and as captain.

Dhoni needs a long break. For mental rather than physical reasons, he should not be considered even for the One Day series that follows the Test series. Dinesh Karthik and Parthiv Patel are just waiting for a chance to don the wicket keeper’s gloves. They may well outperform Dhoni as ordinary team members under a different captain. So be it, in the overall interest of the team.

Even when Dhoni does return to the One Day team subsequently, it should not be straightaway as captain. It will do him and Team India a world of good to have him concentrate on his individual performance and place in the team. There is no point in having a dysfunctionally divisive captain with a bloated ego trying to be some sort of a ‘mentor’ to chosen youngsters at the cost of the performance of the team.

MIGHT OF T20 JUGGERNAUT BEGINNING TO SHOW

The unexpectedly stupendous success of the inaugural tournament of the Indian Premier League(IPL) is already beginning to impact the world of cricket like nothing has since the game was first played.

The ongoing Fifty50 Tri Series between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is the first one to be hit by the IPL hurricane. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, speaking after India scored a 140 run victory over Pakistan - India’s biggest ever over the country - admitted that 50 overs felt a bit longer than usual. To viewers watching the match on TV, they were not just a bit longer but too long. In fact, after 20 overs had been bowled, some of them exclaimed with some frustration and boredom that – yawn – 30 overs were still left!

Not only has the Fifty50 version, played over an entire day, begun to look overstretched and slow, the intensity and excitement that viewers were hooked on to addictively up during the IPL, is clearly missing in this version of instant cricket. And it is not just the spectators who have been spoiled by IPL. Even the players seem to have been affected. Pakistan’s big defeat drew the ire of the Pakistan Cricket Board(PCB) chief Ashraf who shot off an angry email to the team, which was leaked to the press. Ashraf lambasted the attitude of the players who he said were smiling and joking even as they were being thrashed on the field, as if they were happy to be just playing against the top team in the world.

In the background of the very fierce and intense rivalry that has traditionally marked all matches between the two countries, this observation about the attitude of the players is an unstated acknowledgement of the fact that the IPL has set in motion long lasting and profound changes that will change the face of cricket forever.

As always happens, change is being resisted, even not being acknowledged in its full magnitude, particularly by those who have played the game for long. Former Australian captain and Indian coach Greg Chappell believes that notwithstanding the IPL storm, too much of T20 will harm the game:”The golden goose will only be able to lay so many eggs”, he says, in a column in the Times of India of June 13, 2008. Present Australian captain Ricky Ponting blames the decline in the charm of Test cricket to the deteriorating nature of wickets worldwide, and is opposed to the proposal for a World Championship of Test cricket. Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar has been opposing greater use of technology to assist umpires in decision making mainly to preserve the sanctity of the traditions of the game. The many human blunders of umpires which sometimes alter the outcome of a match are there for the world to see on TV but that has yet not prompted the cash rich ICC to develop/use technology so that such critical decisions don’t go wrong as far as possible.

The success of the IPL has surprised all. But clearly many still do not either acknowledge or realise the power and might of a star studded T20 juggernaut. While the format itself is the exciting base on which the whole IPL tournament was based, let there be no doubt that it would not have been even half as successful had it been organised between cricket playing nations, the only format in which international cricket has been played since inception. Top national and international players played in all the eight teams. That was the heavy duty star power that got everyone excited and involved in the tournament, start to finish. Had they not been around, IPL would have gone the ICL way; a middling success whose power and potential would have remained covered a bit longer. Let us also not forget the power of great marketing and glamour that the owners of various IPL teams brought in to make the tournament a huge success.

Billionaire businessman Allen Stanford has already spotted the golden goose in this new form of cricket. He believes that T20 cricket can replace football as the world’s leading team sport. T20, he says, combines almost all the elements of all sports: soccer, basketball, baseball, even track and field. Putting his money where his mouth is, Stanford has announced a five year $100 million tournament between his team, Caribbean Super Stars, and England. In this winner-take-all $20 million a year format, players on the winning side will get $1 million each, losers not a penny. On a smaller exploratory scale, owners of various IPL teams are also planning on getting their teams to play matches with other teams outside India. Modi, the brain behind IPL, has also called for making IPL a biannual affair from 2011.

This is only the beginning of the T20 juggernaut's journey which will majorly impact all versions of the game. More big names are going to get in to get a piece of the action in the coming months and years. As mentioned in a previous post , I foresee even Test and Fifty50 cricket going the IPL way. Mixed teams full of top international players and owned by ultra rich individuals and/or corporations will emerge in these two formats too. ‘Club’ cricket will dominate and the traditional international cricket between teams representing their countries will reduce drastically and will most likely be reduced to four yearly world cups only eventually.

The balance of power in the world of cricket is also going to shift decisively away from the various cricket boards and the ICC to the moneyed owners of teams and organisers of tournaments. With the kind of names already in business and those that will undoubtedly jump in to get their share of the golden eggs, it is no longer possible for anyone to do to them what was done to Kerry Packer, the first guy who tried to shake cricket and its ‘traditions’ out of their deep slumber in the 70s.

With so much of money and star power involved, cricket will finally break into countries where it has never been able to find a following, thanks to the almost disinterested and lackadaisical attitude of the governing bodies of cricket which have remained stuck in a time machine. Perhaps the slow pace of the game affected their minds, as it did of the players too! Privatisation of teams and T20 are the ideal break in weapons to make the game truly global in a short time. Paradoxically, they may well help in popularising Test cricket too in the next phase. Fifty50 cricket is probably going to suffer in the long run because it does not have either the pace that blossoms in T20 or the fine art of cricket that blooms in Test cricket.

The IPL T20 tournament is that huge shot of adrenaline that has energised cricket like never before. At long last, players, the real stars responsible for getting eyeballs and dollars to the game, are beginning to get due monetary recognition for their toil and sweat and ability. Their compensation is going to get only better and the day when some of them start getting the kind of money footballers like Ronaldo and Beckam command is not too far.

Above all, thanks to the revelation that the IPL has proved to be, sport lovers around the world have unexpectedly got another truly “beautiful game”, arguably cleaner and more exciting than soccer, and that too for 180 non-stop, breathtaking minutes!

IPL: BIGGER THAN BIG AND GETTING BIGGER

The inaugural Indian Premier League tournament has ended in a befitting climax. A last ball win for Shane Warne led Rajasthan Royals over MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings in a carnival like atmosphere has left millions of Indians thirsting for more.

In an earlier post, I had written that the future is ‘Glamricket’. This heady, win-win mixture of glamour and cricket, christened ‘cricketainment’ by CNN-IBN, has proved everybody wrong: the future is already here. No one, absolutely no one, ever imagined the kind of impact the very first tournament based on an untried format of privately owned mixed city teams would make. Doubting Singhs and Sharmas, which included cricketers, were many while those who thought that this T20 format would be an instant hit were few. The general consensus was that IPL would become big over a period of time only.

44 days, 59 games 17,937 runs, 689 wickets later, with high drama and a heavy dose of top stars and leggy cheerleaders thrown in for free, no one is in any doubt that the IPL is already bigger than big. Already the mother of all Bollywood blockbusters – move over Gabbar Singh – IPL will not only get bigger than can be imagined but will also spawn a revolution in the way all forms of cricket will be played in future.


Even before the final was played in a jam packed stadium on June 01, 2008, Lalit Modi, the commissioner of the IPL, was talking about having the tournament twice a year, in May and September, from 2011 onwards. Then he was called greedy and mad by some followers of the game for trying to milk the IPL cow to the death of ‘normal’ cricket. Even Virendra Sehwag, captain of Delhi Daredevils warned that this would lead to premature retirement of many players. There were also many who felt that too much of T20 cricket would lead to viewer fatigue.

Now that the tournament has ended, leaving millions of viewers who had got used to their daily dose of glamour and exciting cricket in an unprecedented vacuum, there is little doubt that Indians are more than willing to watch a lot more of such ‘reality shows’. If 44 days have not bored or fatigued them, 88 days will not. On the contrary, that may excite them even more. For the team owners, this almost insatiable demand is great news with the smell of a terrific amount of money and publicity. They are set to rake it in really big time, much to the glee of players as well as the BCCI, the other beneficiaries of this rather unexpected rain of big bucks. So, don’t be surprised if the IPL becomes a biannual affair well before 2011.


The balance of power in cricket has changed decisively forever, as I had mentioned in an earlier post. The ICC and BCCI will no longer exercise absolute control over the world of cricket as they have done quite unimaginatively till now. Why, the BCCI was actually against the IPL to start with. It was the rebel ICL’s T20 tournament that compelled the BCCI to start one of its own in a jiffy, simply to beat competition. Again, BCCI President Sharad Pawar was quick to shoot down Modi’s proposal for having the IPL tournament twice a year on the ground that the ICC’s crammed schedule had slotted IPL only once a year for the next seven years.

Who can understand this fundamental shift in the structure of world cricket better than Sachin Tendulkar? Not yet fully recovered from an injury, Sachin turned out to play for the Mukesh Ambani owned Mumbai Indians team in the latter half of the tournament, with his team missing out a semi final berth after three heart breaking last ball defeats. After the Mumbai Indians were eliminated, Sachin ruled himself out for playing for the country in the forthcoming series against Bangladesh and the Asia Cup. He also gave a thumbs up to the IPL because he believes it will help globalise cricket.

It is not just the IPL which going to get bigger, better, more frequent and a lot more glamorous. Test and One Day cricket, played so far between nations is also set to go the IPL way. Mixed teams, owned by ultra rich individuals like Mukesh Ambani will emerge in these two formats too. Rules of the game may also be substantially altered to make it more exciting and fast paced. This will be accompanied by an unprecedented push to take the game to many more countries.

With more and more money at stake both for the owners of teams and an increasing number of players not restricted to those playing for national teams, international cricket between teams representing their countries will drastically reduce and will most likely be limited to four yearly World Cups only eventually. The ICC’s present schedule is going to be thrown out sooner than one might imagine now. ‘Club’ cricket is set to change the world of cricket forever.

With the benefit of eye popping hindsight provided by IPL, it is clear that the unimaginativeness of the ICC and cricket boards of member countries is responsible for the almost total stagnation of cricket since it was first played. Thanks to them, cricket is no longer the main sport in the country of its birth, England, and is losing ground to other sports in other cricket playing nations too. In fact, the game has survived only because one billion Indians have continued to support it enthusiastically. And they have done so because there is no other sport in which India matches up to top international levels and because, somehow, Bollywood has always provided the dash of glamour for which Indians clamour.

The floodgates of change have been opened by the enormously successful inaugural tournament of the Indian Premier League. Cricket looks set for unprecedented, explosive growth. Ossified purists may say whatever they may want to in their isolated towers. But henceforth, almost all changes will be determined mainly by spectator and viewer feedback and pushed through by alert and dynamic team owners, the new centres of power. That is the way it should be, for a game is played for the enjoyment of those who pay to keep it going and not for those who are stuck in a time machine.

CRICKET'S NEW POWER CENTRES PROMISE MUCH

Move over ICC and BCCI. Your time of absolute power and control over cricket is over. Thank God for that.

The inaugural Indian Premier League tournament is not just changing the way cricket is played and watched but is set to change the power structure of the game forever. The new owners of players and teams are beginning to demonstrate that they have not put in huge sums of money just to let the ossified ICC and the BCCI to continue to run the game as they have been for decades.

Vijay Mallya, the owner of the Bangalore Royal Challengers had sounded the first bugle heralding the emergence of a welcome new culture of accountability when he sacked the CEO of the team, Charu Sharma, after the team suffered a string of defeats. He had also rued the fact that he had let Sharma and team captain Rahul Dravid pick the players for the team even though he had wanted some other players who he thought were better suited to the T20 version of the game. Next year onwards, you can bet that Mallya will call all the shots in quite the same manner that he does in his business empire.

Shahrukh Khan, owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders, has got very closely involved with his team. He visits the team in the dressing room and its dug out, and rushes to embrace the players on the ground itself after the team wins a match. Now, as per ICC rules, only players are allowed there. So, the ICC in its usual commanding and arrogant manner, asked Shahrukh Khan abide by the ICC code of conduct and stay away in future. What did King Khan say in response? He said “ they are my boys and I will go and meet them. No one can stop me from meeting my boys. Neither the ICC nor the CBI.”

ICC, the supreme governing body of cricket, has probably never been rebuffed in so brusque a manner by anybody ever. So what does it do? It gives in with alacrity! One team owner per team is now allowed into the dressing room and on the ground!

Shahrukh Khan does not visit his boys just to give them a hug. He is actively involved in the selection process too and, as per reports in the media, has some differences with team captain Saurav Ganguly on this score. Ganguly likes to be totally in command. But Shahrukh has given John Buchannan, the coach, a leg up over him. He has put in a lot of money to buy the team and the players. Naturally, he is not going to sit by passively and let Saurav, purchased by him, run the show. The boss will actively interject and, with a little more experience, be the final authority in most cricketing matters off the ground. Shahrukh Khan is the new dada. The sooner people understand this basic change, the better.

The IPL has proved to be bigger than anybody ever anticipated. Shahrukh Khan, who was initially even willing to write off his investment when he bought the Kolkata team, says he has actually earned twice the amount of money he has put in already. No wonder, then, that Mukesh Ambani, owner of the Mumbai Indians is rumoured to have made an offer of $4 million to England’s Kevin Pieterson to play for his team next year. This amount is, yes, nearly three times the $1.5 million for which the currently most expensive player, MS Dhoni, was bought by the Chennai Super Kings!

Mukesh Ambani, the granddaddy of all team owners, has characteristically not made any loud, flamboyant noises. But be sure that he is the real heavy artillery that will make the maximum impact on the direction that the world of cricket will take in future. And we are not talking only IPL.

The stupendous success of the IPL and its huge revenue generating and advertising potential is going to totally alter the manner in which cricket is going to be played in the future. The scope and scale of IPL is going to grow dramatically in the coming years. Test and One Day cricket, played so far only between national teams of cricket playing countries is also going to undergo a major transformation.

Don’t be surprised if mixed teams, owned by ultra rich individuals like Mukesh Ambani, emerge in these two formats too. Don’t also be surprised if the formats and rules of the game are substantially altered to make the game more exciting and fast paced. Changes dictated solely by the demands of enhancing spectator and TV viewer involvement and interest will be put in place sooner than we might imagine now. This will be accompanied by an unprecedented push to take the game to many more countries. International cricket between teams representing their countries will reduce and will most likely be limited to World Cups only eventually.

Neither the ICC nor the BCCI will be in any position whatsoever to use the whip as they have been able to do till now. Kerry Packer may have lost the first ever battle with the ICC in the 70s. The rebel Indian Cricket League(ICL), promoted last year by the Zee Group, may have been successfully stymied by the BCCI. But they are no longer unchallengeable.

The IPL genie that has now been let out by the BCCI to beat the ICL is simply too strong and powerful for either the ICC or the BCCI, or both, to tame or control. On the contrary, the new centres of power released by this great genie are going to put these two institutions into the bottle, should they even try to assert their unimaginative supremacy that has seen little growth in the game ever since nations started playing it.

Nothing better could have happened for cricket and the millions who already love the game, as well as the millions who are going to be attracted to it across the globe in the coming years. Thanks to the powerful and committed owners of IPL teams, the future of world cricket is full of promise and excitement. And big bucks, of course.

IPL: THE NEW HEAT OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The Indian Premier League, so far hogging media space due to leggy cheerleaders and some blistering action on the field, is now in the news also for the first heat of accountability that has claimed the CEO of Bangalore Royal Challengers, Charu Sharma and almost did its coach, Venkatesh Prasad.

As I had written in my previous post on the subject, given the financial stakes involved and the names of those who now own various IPL teams, matches so far have been, and are going to be, fiercely competitive. The other heartening change that the sacking of the aforementioned gentlemen has brought in is that from now on, the axe for poor performance will not fall on the players alone while the administrators laugh all the way to a number of banks, visible and hidden, no matter how teams fare.

It may be recalled that when India performed dismally in the last World Cup, nobody got sack orders, nobody. Even when coach Greg Chappell resigned, there were powerful voices in the BCCI praising his services and requesting him to stay on or take over the National Cricket Academy. Soon, he was rehabilitated with honour in a lucrative position with Rajasthan cricket and brought back to India, where he still is. Favoured team captain Rahul Dravid and the BCCI brigade of politicians, bureaucrats and others living life king size on ’honorarium’ continued unscathed as if nothing had happened!

The same brigade later had no qualms as it elbowed out players and took centre stage to claim credit for India winning the inaugural T20 World Cup. But this is nothing new in India. Whenever the money or organisation does not belong to you, it is considered your right to make best personal use of it, no questions asked, till someone smarter or more powerful gets you out!

Vijay Mallya, the owner of the Royal Challengers, thought he had bought a great set of players in consultation with Charu Sharma and team captain and icon player Rahul Dravid. Then he gave the team a huge dose of glamour by getting skimpily clad American cheerleaders to travel with and cheer for the team in all the matches that it was to play. Mallya the industrialist is used to getting what he wants, be it great liquor companies, airlines, F1 teams, yachts, jets, or the prettiest of women. He hates to lose or have losers in his camp.

So, when the Royal Challengers lost five out of the first seven matches to find themselves most unexpectedly at the bottom of the table, heads had to roll. It is rumoured that coach Venkatesh Prasad was also in the firing line but was retained only because Dravid made it clear that if that were to happen, he too would quit. In the meantime, the team went on to lose its eighth match also to the Kolkata Knight Riders, to be virtually out of the tournament, save a miracle, the impossible kind Indians love!

The new heat of accountability has not been about the firing alone. Shahrukh Khan, owner of the Kolkata team with its dramatic black and gold dress and the catchy team song, had said after his team suffered a defeat that to him losing was not an option. One important player who had been bought by him was Pakistan’s Rawalpindi Express, Shoaib Akhtar. But, before the tournament started, he was given a five year ban by the Pakistan Cricket Board which ruled out his playing in the IPL.

Had the Knight Riders kept on their winning ways, Shoaib would still have been languishing in Pakistan today. But, with the team losing match after match and with only two wins after six matches, something extraordinary happened. The ban on Shoaib was miraculously suspended for a month, enabling him to play in the IPL. This dramatic development took place after intervention at the highest political level in Pakistan, reportedly by Zardari himself. Shahrukh Khan does take his team very, very seriously indeed!

Although team owners have paid a great deal of money to buy some players, including the icons, whom they have contracted for a period of three years, the unexpectedly poor performance of some of them has prompted some owners to consider selling them prematurely, before the next edition of the tournament, even if it means incurring financial losses, (remember, the money belongs to the owners only) to best ensure better performance by their teams.

Next February, when the trading window opens, there will be strange spectacles, depending on the performance of players in the ongoing tournament. You may find, for example, Rahul Dravid being sold off by Mallya but not being bought by any other team, or being bid at such a ridiculously low amount that he may not get himself bought at all, forcing Mallya to pay the entire three year contract amount, just to see him go!

IPL is set to destroy some big names and create new heroes, based solely on what they do in the current tournament. Non-performing officials are also going to find themselves in wilderness soon. The era of the players being almost completely at the mercy of the whims of selectors or other BCCI officials may soon be history as the influence of the owners of various IPL teams is not going to be limited to this T20 extravaganza only. For once, BCCI is going to begin to feel the heat of accountability singe its comfortable and untouched backside.

The present management of the BCCI may have earned a lot of money for the board, if not for its members,(you believe that?) in creating this mother of all show stoppers, the Indian Premier League. Ironically the very success of the tournament and the names and money that it has attracted will ensure that the BCCI will never again be the unaccountable monopolistic behemoth that it has been till now.

That is perhaps even better news for Indian cricket than the IPL itself.