Diwali wishes

Sujata Prakash

There are very few events interesting enough to draw an Indian fans' attention away from his team when it's in action, particularly when the action's been pretty riveting all things considered.

One of them, I'd wager, would be England's tour of Pakistan. Nasser Hussain and his men might not understand Urdu or Punjabi, but they will no doubt get the gist of what slip is trying to tell them, and it won't be greetings from Shakoor Rana. The love is so lost between these two sides that it makes the India/Pakistan animosity look meek by comparison. The English have come with an air of being on Her Majesty's Service - rather like they have to quell a mutiny armed with only a cricket bat and a stiff upper lip. It should be a jolly good show!

The other event which is disturbing the attention of the cricket follower is the Honorable BCCI and the selection process of the same. No longer is this follower prepared to feign amnesia whenever the team records a win or two, hoping that perhaps happy days are here to stay only to see a return to B2B - Back to Basics. I know because I am being exhorted to write less about the recent on-field wonders and more about off-the-field blunders. Now what does that tell you? There's a very real, tangible fear that unless steps are taken to eradicate all this zonal bickering, implement a process to hone in on deserving talent and give them early breaks in international cricket, remove most existing board members (I hope I'm alive to see that happen) and revamp the whole thing, making it a truly professional outfit, we might as well save our excitement for another age.

Repeating all this ad nauseum is like bread upon the waters. You throw one loaf after another, it floats for a while and then sinks without trace. To lighten the mood, here's a quote from a former Warwickshire secretary on cricket committees: "A body of the unfit, elected by the unwilling, to do the unnecessary. A committee is like a bunch of bananas. They start green, go yellow and in the end there isn't a straight one in the bunch." Just proves that we're not the only ones who are suffering, although you could question the degree.

Coming back to the selection, the inclusion of Vinod Kambli is mystifying. Now, there will always be a few die-hard fans of his who will challenge this, but just how many comebacks should he be allowed to have? His last 4 scores read: 18/26, 12/21, 1/4 and 0/1. The graph shows steady improvement but for a player privileged to hog up 9 per cent of the national team quota it's not enough. You would think a selector would have asked himself at the halfway stage, if I have newcomers who have shown such promise that the world is writing about them, then the one sitting on the bench seems to be no less and so he should be out on the field NOW. But that would mean being politically incorrect and dropping a player who has been struggling for form for a long time.

And that is where the tragedy lies. Lesser players being given chances and better ones getting that much older, that much disheartened, by the seemingly interminable wait. Remember how an eager Yuvraj Singh was impatiently hopping around to get out and bat even while Ganguly and Dravid were still at the crease against Sri Lanka? He's lucky to have got that precious blue cap sooner rather than later.

Oh, and a very Happy Diwali to all of you. Here's wishing for all the light and wisdom needed to have a great year of Indian cricket!