Mumbai, May 27: I think we need to call up Geoffrey Boycott’s mum from heavens for our tour of West Indies. We all know she can bat and who knows she could well be a good captain too. And that’s because after Gautam Gambhir’s shoulder injury we don’t really have an opener to open innings with Murali Vijay. Mind you, Geoff Boycott too was an opener so his mum may just be able to do some justice to this slot. After all, so many women in India are successful captains in various fields.
But before we get serious about Gautam Gambhir’s injury let me ask a simple question: Why have Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sehwag and MS Dhoni been rested from our tour of West Indies starting on 04 Jun11? We may say that they’ve been given rest after a very long and hectic schedule of IPL and Sehwag needs surgery for his injured shoulder. Moreover, West Indies is not exactly a force to reckon with in any case. Well, while that may indeed be correct to some extent, after Gautam Gambhir’s injury our left over team may now find it extremely difficult to trump West Indies in West Indies. As you can see, five most important players out of eleven have been excluded from national duty primarily because of IPL.
Gautam Gambhir’s injury episode has once again fueled the club versus country debate. There’s little doubt in the fact that if anyone is NOT to be blamed for this ugly mess it is Gautam Gambhir. The man was bought by Kolkata Knight Riders for more than a million dollars and he had to justify his price. Moreover, he says that he didn’t really know the extent of his injury before the match. So you can’t really blame him for giving his best to his team. KKR though, is a different matter altogether. Their physio Andrew Leipus knew very well about Gautam Gambhir’s injury but still did not stop him from playing in the match against Mumbai Indians even though he himself had written to BCCI that Gauti should not throw, field or bat for at least four to six weeks. It is rather obvious that this was not his decision at all. The fingers are now justifiably being pointed at Shah Rukh Khan for his duplicity in this entire imbroglio, for extracting his pound of flesh or rather shoulder, in return for the kind of price he paid for Gauti. But it’ll be rather ridiculous for us to expect a businessman to think of the nation when BCCI itself will not, the agency whose job it is in the first place. But SRK too is not the only one who has extracted his pound of flesh, just the more glamorous one.
What has missed the headlines is that Virender Sehwag too was suffering from a shoulder injury before the IPL began but still played eleven matches for Delhi Daredevils. Who knows if he’d got himself treated immediately after the World Cup ended he’d have been ready for our tour of West Indies. But he did not. Like Gauti he too had to justify his retention by Delhi Daredevil’s owners, the GMR consortium. And it is inconceivable to say that GMR came to know of Sehwag’s injury after he had played eleven matches for them. They may say that this injury was not really serious enough before IPL began but even then fact is that it has now aggravated to such an extent that he cannot play for the country, for sometime now at least.
The aim of IPL when it began was primarily to counter Subhash Chandra’s Indian Cricket League (ICL) which threatened to undermine the authority of BCCI in India. It was only sometime later that they realized that it is actually a cash cow which is there for the taking. Just to put matters in correct perspective IPL is today worth nearly four billion dollars. This year alone they’re likely to rake in nearly 1000 crores for the BCCI, out of which our govt would get 350 odd crores as taxes.
Given these numbers you can see why our tour of West Indies was given a low priority as compared to IPL by the BCCI. Also, we can now appreciate the reasons why BCCI will never scrap IPL, come what may. And it is for this very reason that I’m not exactly suggesting that IPL should be entirely scrapped either. What I’m indeed suggesting is that inclusion of national players in IPL squads be curtailed or even barred. If IPL teams have city based fan following let them build on it and capitalize on the same. Let them not draw their revenues at the cost of the strength of our national team. As for the players in the national team are concerned, they already earn millions by being there. Yes, IPL may not generate as much money initially if national players are not involved but that’s something we’ll have to live with because if we let this continue the way it is, after sometime the situation may well be that our best players are playing for IPL whereas our national side would just be second string in comparison to them.
The IPL’s history is proof of the fact that though it does generate money it has become a den of many things which are not only anti social but anti national as well. Be it the ownership patterns, conflict of interests, sexual harassment charges, match fixing, large scale betting etc etc. The list is endless. Theoretically, all the other charges can be effectively dealt with except for player fatigue and the effect that it has on our national team’s performance. That’s where we need to stop caring for only money and start putting the nation’s interests first. Unless, we’re happy with Geoff Boycott’s mum’s inclusion in our team instead.
–Source:makesplash.com