Let's Talk Cricket With Sense!

In India, people do not talk about anything else for much longer other than cricket or politics. Now, for a while, they are talking cricket, but not with much sense in it. Saurav Ganguly’s recent six-match ban by Chris Broad is making rounds around the coffee tables in India and the cricketing fraternity (in India) has reacted with the expected ambivalence. However, the moot point is whether the ban is a double –edged sword cutting the India captain from both ends.

There is no opposition in thinking that Ganguly has repeatedly strained the warnings, precisely five times in a row since 1998, for rule violations with over rate; a rap was only long overdue. He loused it up last November as well, when Clive Lloyd hastened a two test ban on him, which luckily did not hold up. This time the ban imposed after the Motera ODI against Pakistan came seemingly more heavily upon him because his performance, for over a year now, has been genuinely low, scoring a meager 48 runs in this series and a test-hundred from 2003. Had this been not so, many of his fans would not even bother a pout of doubt about his recall to the eves.

All things considered, the question remains if dada deserved the indifference of his colleagues and the wrath of BCCI. As the skipper of the team, certainly not; and as a player who contributed to the cricketing success of India, again a clear naught. Although, the likes of Charu Sharma, Ranbir Singh Mahendra, Bishen Singh Bedi and Navjot Siddhu have upheld subjective rulings against Saurav with pent-up ire, one could not miss the breath of blatant provincialism
coming from their concerning attitude. Their concern: Ganguly should not be reinstated in the team eleven.

Historically, Bengal or the East Zone has always been sidelined from the center of cricket consciousness in India. I’m not going to indulge in too much of remoteness here, but just a casual sneak in the last decade would make my point clear. Utpal Chatterjee, Subroto Banerjee, Lakshmi Ratan Shukla, and Debashish Mohanty- all victims of politicization of convenience. Again, the point is not about investigating their cause of expulsion from the national cricket scene but about realizing an operative bias against players from this part of India.

Saurav became the captain in February 2000, and since then he came under unprovoked attacks from almost every angle of the selection committee or the critics who sweated their lives over to find fault with the ‘prince of Calcoota.’ As such, a recent show of no-support was not unusual to perceive. On the other hand, men who had moved their arms on the field a wee bit more than Charu Sharma et al, have voiced their displeasure and concern at the present way Ganguly is being treated. Among them are Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Kiran More, Waquar Yunus and Inzamam Ul-Haq.

An unprecedented six-match ban is still sufferable, especially when coming from a man whose career is better known for a match referee than an opening English batsman, but a fifth-column act from our very own people is heartbreaking. A man who has given his team so much, a man who has always led from the front and a man who took the team into the World Cup final (first since 1983) deserved better than that.