Whose Loss was it at Headingly?

 Whose Loss was it at Headingly?

BCCI head coach Mr. Gautam Gambhir really knows how to say things without meaning anything. In this vein, he said, “The best fielders drop catches.” He did not seem to have realized what he was conveying: The qualification to be a best fielder is to drop catches! Yes, I am deliberately twisting the meaning of what he said without meaning, and how I interpreted. But, that is how sharp one has to be while speaking not on behalf of oneself but justifying what happened due to the errors of others.

That was just the beginning of this post. “The lower order batting was a BIT [my emphasis]disappointing.” A bit disappointing? No, it was an appalling collapse. Would you blame the tail-enders? That is not merely useless but also nonsensical. Why would the team head coach not take the captain aside and whisper in his ears to ask the tail enders to stay at the crease for as long as possible? It appears to have been not the case. Or, the players did not listen to the captain. A matter of indiscipline? A report in ESPN said that the tail-enders fancied themselves as stalwart batsmen (I have taken the liberty of paraphrasing!).

The head coach was indulging in counterfactual rumination: “If we had made 600 in the first innings, we could have dominated.” What kind of a response is this to whatever might have been the question? Or, was it merely lazy musing by the head coach? Does not bode well for the next test match, at Birmingham. No matter how the toss turns out, the head coach and the captain have to draw a line in sand that cannot be crossed. 

This drawn this line shall be drawn, not in terms of runs or wickets, but in terms of errors, for example, in not leaving a ball that is truly wide to itself, thus gaining a ball and a run; there are, of course, times when a such balls have been dispatched to or over the boundary, then those runs shall be marked with an asterisk; a bowler not signalling to the keeper that the delivery is going to be a wide, on the off or on side, resulting in byes; learn from baseball and the elaborate signals employed by the head coach to the pitcher on the mound, or the batter. One can create many such instances to avoid errors.

Yes, cricket must learn from baseball. The score line used to read (I do not know what it does now), “Runs, Hits, Errors.” It is the last listing, “Errors” that has lessons for cricket. There are so many useless statistics on the screen in a telecast of a cricket match (in any format), it would not add too much burden to list the errors a cricketer (in batting, bowling and fielding) makes during an inning. I would admit to one additional requirement: each stadium must have a designated “scorer”, just as baseball does. A specialist but hired only for the duration of the match.

Yes, the above methodology is susceptible to corruption. Then, do what is being done through TV Referee/Third Umpire! Possibly reducing the bias.

Now back to the head coach and his further comments. The unctuous statement: “We lose together and win together.” He could have added, “As the head coach I cannot be shaking a rattle to encourage motor skills in the baby players!” When the team wins, the players who do contribute significantly get inches long mention in newspapers. OK, we can mention, briefly, the critical errors by any player in any of the three aspects of playing cricket−batting, bowling, fielding. Just balance.

The last item: “We take pride in winning each and every game for our country.” Ouch ...Tell the head coach that BCCI is a private organization and has nothing to do with the Government of India. The head coach seems to have been taken in by the “patriotic fervour” the crowd shows instead of requesting it not to wave the national flag, as their fervour is misplaced. They should be waving the flag of the BCCI, if it does have one! No, the pride in the cricket team’s win is NOT “for our country”.

The cricket establishment is complicit in attaching the National Flag of India to the cricket matches owned by BCCI. I will tell you what it looks like. Look below, the US President Donald J. Trump hugging the US Flag to show his patriotism.

Raghuram Ekambaram