Greg vs The Guys: a tragicomedy

Another one by Nirmal . I am huge fan of his writing and still wonder why the man doesnt get as much adoration as he richly deserves. A gem of a writer and that still remains an understatement ......


Forget the World Cup in the Caribbean. Forget, too, the evergreen Sanath Jayasuriya's marvellous heroics with the bat and the ball. Pay no attention to the celebration of the great Glenn McGrath's final hurrah. Say goodbye to Guyana and Antigua and quickly turn your attention to our own Mumbai, a teeming city where nine-tenths of life is an argument.
For, Indian cricket's intriguing, never-ending game within the game has begun once again. And the stirring, unmissable climactic scenes of the Blame Game are scheduled to be enacted in India's commercial capital on Friday and Saturday.
Nothing validates Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence as convincingly as do the crises in Indian cricket.
In the context of the nation's sporting religion, the more things change the more they remain the same. "Life is but a dream whose shapes return," wrote T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land. Substitute `nightmare' for dream and you might get an idea of what it is like in Indian cricket.
But then, who cares in what shapes these nightmares return? After all, it is another round of riveting entertainment for a cricketing public still mourning the premature departure of Rahul Dravid's men from the World Cup.
Washing dirty linen
A complaisant audience will be treated to the latest episode of the long-running let's-smear-each-other-in-public tragicomedy. And this will be screened at convenient times, during daylight and early evening hours — you don't have to keep awake through the night to watch the drama and then land up slightly disoriented and bleary eyed at work the next day. Of course, we must thank Indian cricket for such small mercies.
One must admit that the sneak previews have been awe-inspiring. If they are anything to go by, we can look forward to seat-edge thrills on Friday and Saturday.
Then again, for all the seeming sameness, there is indeed a touch of variety these days. In the old days, the villains used to be men living across the border from us.
These days, the bad guys happen to carry Australian passports. Or, are they Indian passports? Are the bad guys home-grown ones? We are not even sure at this point. Not bad at all _ cricket is certainly doing better than Bollywood and Kollywood movies when it comes to plotlines.
So, welcome, then, to Greg versus The Guys, senior guys I might add. Forget a possible Australia-South Africa face-off on April 28. This — what is going to be played in Mumbai — is the mother of all finals.
And now, to the big question: who is right and who is wrong? Who are the heroes and who are the villains? It is no surprise, of course, that all these questions come up only when the team fails — which, these days, is often enough.
Collective failure
But the truth is, it is a collective failure — collective not merely in the sense of the coach and the players put together but in a sense that encompasses everything, even things that go beyond the sport in question.
For, it is a systemic malady. Poorly engineered leaky systems will always throw up situations in which such nightmarish scenarios arise time and again.
In a stimulating book The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, comes up with the argument that evil is not only about those who appear to cause it but, more importantly, it is about the situations and systems that let it flourish.
As much is true of all the stink in Indian cricket. For, it is not merely about individuals, their behaviour and attitudes; it is about the overall system that makes room for such behaviour and attitudes.
Surely, we can point a finger at Greg Chappell and say that the Aussie coach never thought it a virtue to keep his mouth shut, especially in the company of men and women whose job it is to make public such pearls of wisdom as may have been on offer.
After all, over the last two years, Greg Chappell-interviews have been as much a staple in newspapers and television channels as are weather reports. But the problem does go beyond Chappell's loquaciousness.
Surely, we can point a finger at some senior players for wanting to `own' their places in the Indian team, for living on past glory and believing that their celebrity alone would help them stay in the side forever. But, again, the problem goes beyond such selfish attitudes.
Clearer vision
To get to the root of the problem needs not only perseverance but also the willingness to cast away the old foggy spectacles through which we have come to view Indian cricket and its crises. It calls for vision in a business where visionaries are in short supply.
It is because of this, it is because a massive system-overhaul — something that shakes up the greedy, complacent and largely inefficient administration for a start — does not seem likely that I believe whatever comes out of the BCCI meetings on Friday and Saturday will make no big difference to the long term health of Indian cricket.
And life — and cricket — will go on as ever in this country. For, this is one product that has never witnessed any consumer resistance in India. Whatever the quality, tens of millions are ready to lap it all up.