BCCI is a sham!

My last blog in December was about Saurav Ganguly making one of the most amazing comebacks in Indian cricket. Now, after a month, I post my next blog, and it is ironical that this time it’s about Saurav Ganguly being dropped from the Indian One-Day side! Kudos to BCCI for making the beginning of the end of Dada’s ODI career.

After all the “tamasha” of the last fortnight, just when Team India had begun to bond beautifully after the Perth victory, BCCI has ensured that the camaraderie is short-lived.

I was amazed when I first came to know that Saurav Ganguly had been excluded from the ODI side. I can understand Dravid’s and Laxman’s exclusion, but how can a person who has had an average of about 66 in the last year in ODIs be dropped. It’s just a mockery of the selection process.

BCCI says Dada was dropped because he is “not the best of fielder” in the team. Then what’s BCCI’s yardstick for keeping Sachin Tendulkar in the team? Does he get younger with every match he plays or is he one of the best fielders in the team? Sachin is a great batsman, no doubt, but by no means is he a great fielder. He is not anymore athletic than Dravid or Ganguly.
BCCI is nothing but a set of morons. It’s a sham.

I’ve always maintained that Indian selectors are a bunch of jokers. However, what I admire about them is they keep proving this fact time and again. That’s one thing consistent in Indian cricket.

Cheers once again to the (B)oard of (C)ontrol for (C)ircus in (I)ndia.

ICL juggernaut is all set to crush BCCI

Poaching is the name of the game. Well... that is the message the new Twenty20 Indian Cricket League, better known as ICL, seems to be conveying to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The Indian Cricket League, which is set to debut in October 2007, has hired ex-international cricketers like Kapil Dev, Tony Greig, Dean Jones and Kiran More as its board members.

A few days ago, it signed up Brian Lara by offering him a contract reportedly far more lucrative than the sum he earned while playing international cricket for the West Indies.

And now with other big names like Australian greats Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, the “sleeping Pakistani giant” Inzamam-ul-Haq, the greatest New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming and “the master blaster” from Sri Lanka Sanath Jayasuriya on the verge of signing contracts, the cricket world is finally paying attention to the Zee Group’s venture.

Feeling the heat the most is BCCI because ICL is well on its way to pursue a form of the game that the governing body was not interested in. For long, BCCI had maintained that the Twenty20 version was a “handy tool to revive the game only in places where it had lost appeal”. The board was not even in favour of the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa, but had to embrace the format after it was outvoted 10-1 at an ICC meeting in Dubai few months ago (which means except BCCI, every other member was in favour of the Twenty20 World Championship).

Now, I guess, BCCI wants to admonish ICL as it realises that ICL has already got some ace its sleeve... or maybe they are worried that the argument they had put forward in the court a few years ago that “the Indian team does not play for India, but for BCCI”, may not hold good anymore.

We have seen for years the cricket run by BCCI. Now, it is time to give a chance to ICL.

The way ICL has gone about its task so far, I have no doubt that once it takes off, Subhash Chandra’s enterprise will not just run parallel to the existing cricket league managed by BCCI, but will overtake it.

In 1977, when Australian media baron Kerry Packer launched World Series Cricket, purists and even the Australian Cricket Board had derided his tournament as “Kerry Packer’s Cricket Circus”. Looks like this time it is going to be the other way round—people may soon start referring to BCCI as the Board of Control for “Circus” in India.