Also decided”. That is how they pick cricket captains these days, under the BCCI’s dispensation. Selectors get together to pick a squad for an upcoming tour and just as they are making a grab for the last samosa on the plate preparatory to winding up the meeting, someone goes, “By the way, let’s dump whatshisface, the captain, and pick this other guy.” <Insert facepalm emoji here>
Just a couple of days earlier, I had in a piece for The Morning Context discussed a few of the BCCI’s latest shenanigans. The Case of The Missing Ombudsman, for one; the limpet-like adherence of Sourav Ganguly and Jay Shah to their posts though their official tenures ended in mid-2020; the insane amounts of money the BCCI is spending on court cases to overturn part or whole of the Supreme Court-mandated constitution; and what appears to be end-run designed to gift-wrap the Ahmedabad franchise and hand it over to Gautam Adani. Now, this.
Where to start unpacking this? First up, selectors don’t pick captains as an afterthought, an “also decided” — meetings are convened specifically for the purpose. Here, they were picking a Test team, and casually tacked on a change in ODI captaincy as a postscript. Does that make sense to you?
Secondly, the incumbent is appraised ahead of time about the impending change. Here, Virat Kohli learned the news like the rest of us — via a throwaway Twitter post that was an afterthought to the team announcement.
Then came the BCCI’s damage control, with assorted “people on the inside” and “sources close” to the administration ventriloquising clarifications. Which should remind you of that aphorism by Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame: “A clarification, Minister, is not to make things clear — it is to put oneself in the clear”.
Here is one such story — put out by the Press Trust of India, without a byline. It says that the move to replace Kohli was in the making since India’s ouster in the World T20 Championship. Really? Kohli announced that he was giving up the T20 captaincy even before the World Cup. And when he did step down, he said in an official statement that he wanted to shed some of the burdens so he could concentrate on leading the ODI and Test teams. So what exactly does defeat in a T20 competition have to do with the one-day side?
The real giveaway is in this paragraph, which follows on the heels of one that talks of Kohli’s authoritarian, my-way-or-the-highway style of functioning. Followed by this (emphasis mine): “And then came a time when the traditional administrators were back in business along with a very powerful secretary and a president who knows a thing about being a successful captain himself.”
Note how the “very powerful secretary” precedes the titular head of the BCCI. Therein lies the story — of a petty “man, proud man, Dress’d in a little brief authority” exercising the power he possesses only because of who his father is.
In passing, consider the point about Ganguly having been a successful captain himself. Virat Kohli ranks fourth in the list of successful one-day captains. The three ranked above him — Clive Lloyd, Ricky Ponting and Hansie Cronje — are no longer active; the last named is dead. Eoin Morgan, widely credited with the emergence of England as a white-ball power, ranks second among contemporary captains, and eighth overall.
On that list, Ganguly ranks number 36. Ahead of him, considering Indian captains alone, are MS Dhoni, Rahul Dravid, Mohammed Azharuddin and Kapil Dev.
None of this is to undermine Ganguly’s record or suggest he was sub-par; the intent is to merely point to the ludicrousness of the BCCI’s planted storyline. And by the way, Ganguly hasn’t won a World Cup either.
The trouble with those who plant stories is that they don’t pause to think. The story linked above, with its narrative of how Kohli was running a one-man show till a powerful secretary and a, mmm, also-present president came along has this flaw: You can’t in one breath say the selectors made the decision, and in the next suggest that it owed to said “powerful secretary”.
The PTI story goes on to suggest that Kohli is not popular in his own dressing room, that he is not trusted by his mates, that he does not communicate, that his tactical acumen is questionable, and much more in that vein.
Right — these are major, even fatal, flaws in a leader of men. So why then is Kohli being retained as the captain of the Test team?
Here is another “insiders say” story. A quote, emphasis and parenthetical asides mine:
“The first signal about Kohli’s shaky position in the hot seat came about when BCCI brought in MS Dhoni as the team mentor for the October-November T20 World Cup. (Oh? And how did that masterstroke go? Amazing results?) Kohli’s inability to win ICC events was a concern for the Indian board. Insiders say that India’s performance at the T20 World Cup was to decide Kohli’s captaincy future. However, in a move that surprised even BCCI officials, Kohli made public his decision to give up T20I captaincy even before the tournament started. (Another way of putting this would be to say that Kohli didn’t wait to be pushed, and that piqued the entitled brats running Indian cricket?) What piqued the officials was his desire to continue as Test and ODI captain. (So of course the “officials” took Kohli aside and told him that they would decide who would lead in which format, did they? No? Why not? No “insider” said anything when Kohli made his announcement, remember?) With India hosting the 2023 50-over World Cup, Kohli didn’t wish to give up the ODI captaincy. (And you know what was in Kohli’s mind, how?) In a way, this was Kohli throwing down the gauntlet to the BCCI – remove me as ODI captain if you want. (Or could it be the case of a player beginning to feel burdened by responsibility and shedding part of the load, particularly when he knew there was a very able candidate in the wings to replace him?) On Wednesday, the BCCI did exactly that.”
“A form slump also didn’t do Kohli any favours. Over the past two years, he has scored 560 runs in 12 ODIs without a century. His average during this period is 46.66, well below his career average of 59.07. In 20 T20Is during the same period, he has scored 594 runs at 49.50, while in 13 Tests in the last two years, he made 599 runs at an average of 26.04.”
Brilliant! So the argument is, Kohli’s performance over the last couple of years is worst in Tests, therefore he has been retained as captain in that format? Where is that facepalm emoji when you need it?
I am no fan of Kohli’s captaincy, particularly in white ball cricket. To repeat a point I have made often in the past, I believe that he is invariably chasing the game, rather than staying a couple of steps ahead of it. Not a fatal flaw in Tests, where extended lunch and tea breaks, besides the usual drinks stoppages and change of gloves no one asked for, provide time for analysis and suggestions to come from the think tank, but crippling in the shorter formats where games can turn on a single bad decision in the field.
All that said, Kohli has filled a void that was left by the exit, first, of Sachin Tendulkar and then by MS Dhoni — that of a totem for the team to rally around, of a magnet that put butts in the seats.
For all his faults, real and imagined, Virat Kohli did not deserve the cavalier treatment meted out to him by the petty men who now run Indian cricket. People came to see him bat; no one ever bought tickets to see Jay Shah and Sourav Ganguly, in that order, administer.
(The cover image, courtesy Times of India, is worth a thousand words)
PS: Shortly after I’d published this post, I came across the BCCI’s attempt to add gratuitous insult to needless injury. Like, so:
Update – 07:20 PM: The BCCI, as my friend Sharda Ugra pointed out just now on WhatsApp, is in fire-fighting mode. Sourav Ganguly has been fielded to put a good face on things — only, he ends up screwing with the established narrative. Speaking to ANI, that favourite of the ruling regime, Ganguly says:
“It’s a call that the BCCI and the selectors took together. Actually, the BCCI had requested Virat not to step down as the T20I skipper but obviously, he did not agree. And the selectors then did not feel it right to have two different captains for two white-ball formats”
Nice, but what does that do to the earlier narrative that the BCCI wanted Kohli gone from the T20I captaincy and was shocked when he announced unilaterally that he was giving up the captaincy? What about all that stuff “insiders” have been saying about how the dressing room has no love for Kohli?
Ganguly also says he had spoken to Kohli, as had the chairman of selectors. Cannily, he does not say when the conversation took place. Meanwhile, the BCCI continues to leak like a sieve, vide this India Ahead (wait, when did this site come up) piece which says the decision came as a shock to Kohli, who was informed just hours before the axe officially descended.
I’m always a bit sceptical about stories that rely on “sources” — both as a political reporter and as a cricket reporter, I’ve seen too many examples of such stories being planted to serve some particular agenda. That said, a couple of things in this India Ahead story — quoting “sources” — resonate. And the bit that resonates the loudest is where it says Kohli’s “bickering” about whether or not the South African tour should go ahead didn’t go down well in the “corridors of power”.
Kohli has consistently raised the possibility of burn-out. Back in March, just ahead of the third ODI against England in Pune, the then ODI captain said players should be consulted on schedules. Also from March, some strong words on how difficult players are finding life in the bubble.
But what could have really stuck in the BCCI’s craw was Kohli’s pointed statement in October, just ahead of the T20 World Cup (emphasis mine):
“But going forward, I understand we’ve lost some time without cricket [during the pandemic] but in trying to cover that up, if you lose players then world cricket is not going to be better off. So there has to be a balance in the future. Players also have to be spoken to. In a bio-bubble, you can’t say which player is in what situation. Just because five-six players are laughing around , doesn’t mean all the 15-16 are feeling the same. It’s important to have communication with players and give them a period where they can mentally refresh themselves and come into such an environment once more to compete.”
That was precisely what the BCCI was doing — trying to cover up for lost opportunities. (While on that, read this piece). Remember, this is the board that scheduled a three-ODI T20I (Corrected, thanks to reader Amit Sahasrabudhe for catching the error) home series against New Zealand to begin three days after the final of the World T20 Championship. And if it hadn’t been for the latest Covid variant, the Indian team would already have landed in South Africa by now. For Kohli to repeatedly call out the BCCI for not taking into account the mental health of players, and for not consulting them, could well have been the final straw for those particularly sensitive camels.
In passing, a friend who read the first version of this piece pinged me on WhatsApp with a question: How could this have been done more gracefully?
Well, simple. If you take Ganguly at his word, and say that the BCCI wanted one white-ball captain and that the board had tried to persuade Kohli to withdraw his resignation, then once Kohli said no to that, the board could have told him it was averse to splitting the captaincy in the two limited formats. This would have prepared Kohli for what was coming.
Failing that, remember the ODI squad for the South African tour hasn’t been announced yet. If the selectors decided, at yesterday’s meeting, to give Rohit Sharma the captaincy, they could have kept the decision under wraps, spoken to Kohli, told him this was coming, and announced the decision when naming the ODI squad.
Either way, there was plenty of time for the board to let Kohli down gently, with grace and courtesy. In the event, they just bulled through with the decision and, faced with a fan backlash, has now gone into damage control mode.
On my way out the door, a link to a piece I wrote for The Morning Context back in October, on Kohli and the BCCI’s insane scheduling.
Update: December 15, 6.00 PM: On the eve of the Test team taking off for South Africa, Virat Kohli addressed a press conference. When asked about the confusion surrounding his sacking as ODI captain, this is what he had to say:
I was contacted one and a half hours before the selection meeting on December 8 for the Test series. There was no prior communication to me at all from when I announced the T20I capaincy decision until the eighth (of December) when I got a call before the selection meeting.
The chief selector discussed with me the Test team to which we both agreed, and before ending the call I was told the five selectors have decided I will not be the ODI captain, to which I replied ‘Okay, fine.’ And in the selection call afterwards, we chatted about it briefly. That’s what happened. There was no communication prior to that at all.
There is more, and it is worth reading. Overall, what this press conference does is show the finger to a multitude of people. First, to the sections of the media that were happy to run with the stories planted by the BCCI. Second, and more egregious, to none other than BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, himself an ex-captain, who when the BCCI’s action was slammed by the fans came out to present the board’s point of view — and flat out lied about every single thing.
Just another reminder that absolute power corrupts absolutely — and that even former players and captains are not immune from the seductive lure of the power and the pelf (and the money to be made) by toeing the official line.
The full text of the press conference is here. And the video, here. A Twitter thread I’d done when the story broke, here.
PS: Writing is hard work. Wanna buy me a coffee?
8 comments
Brilliant piece Prem.. absol loved it. Our corridors of power does not know word Grace
Thats SAd
Absolutists throughout history have a common trait — a lack of empathy, an inability to make space for opposing points of view, of seeing everything in terms of the “I”, and of reducing all interaction to my way or the highway terms. Grace does not flourish in that kind of a mindset.
Really like the analysis. But the why remains unanswered. Virushka are definitely pro swachhata, make in India (sui dhaga) and had their wedding blessed by the powerful. What went wrong? The no fireworks for diwali? I am guessing it is not that petty.
Also, wish you could read bengali newspapers. Annadabazaar patrika calls BCCI as “Sourav’s Cricket Control Board”
Why? Who ever knows with this lot? The BCCI was bad enough in the Dalmiya days. This regime is an extension of the ruling party and that makes everything a 100 times worse. The one thing you know about authoritarians is that there is no limit to their pettiness, or logic to their actions. VK teeing off on the BCCI’s insane scheduling? Standing up for Shami and calling out the haters on the Right? Saying no to the administration which wanted him to continue (if you accept Ganguly’s version of events)? Or just being outspoken? Anything or a combination of many things could explain this, I guess.
This is what too much of cricket does 🙂 You wroteIndia played a three ODI home series against NZ right after T20 WC ended – when it was actually three T20I we played against NZ.
Finding meaning from bi-lateral T20I has always been a challenge — not just to test cricket purist but for everyone following the game!
LOL
Thanks for the catch — will correct. And yes, the only time bilateral T20Is make a modicum of sense is in a run-up to a global tournament, if you want to test yourself against tough opposition and fine tune your various batting and bowling combinations.
Those of us with long memories are reminded of the GAVASKAR-KAPIL captaincy siwtchovers in the 1980s. I don’t recall those being handled any better. Gracelessness seems to be part of the administrative culture.
Not to mention the ducks and drakes games played between Azhar and Sachin and Azhar again. Yeah — lack of class and grace is a feature, not a bug, unfortunately.
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