It’s time for Big Bang reforms in BCCI

The rebirth of hope may drive Indian cricket on for a while. It is a question of whether the real transformation will come soon enough to make a real difference. The best man is in the big seat and is expected to bring in the Big Bang reforms badly needed to resurrect the image of Indian cricket. Shashank Manohar has started well with his laundry list of things to be done and two months may be a short time for the dirty linen to dry out.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is an old occupant of the hot seat. He is certainly under pressure, not because a T20 home series has been lost even before the last of three matches is to be played.

As the philosopher king of cricket, Dhoni had long ago reconciled to the fact that his teams would be losing more than they would win across the formats until wisdom dawned on him Down Under for him to at least relinquish the Test captaincy, which seemed like a birthright under a despotic previous president.

While success and failure may be the twin imposters of Kipling’s imagination, it is in his unusual pronouncements on the bottle throwers of Barabati that Dhoni has betrayed the final signs of a kingdom in clear decline. Time passes and things never remain the same.

Teams get younger as the best men hang up their boots. It has been a while since the likes of Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar left the scene and Dhoni alone of the older generation is still left in the game.

Dhoni would need the wisdom of Canute the great to realise the inexorable tide of time will wash his feet and continue to rise as usual, dashing over his legs without respect to his royal person. And like Canute he should be thinking of hanging his gold crown and never wear it again. But then the T20 world cup is not far away and the great man is owed his last one tilt at glory. And so we carry on even as all men know “How empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name.”

It can’t be a good sign if Team India loses on a good pitch like the one in Dharmashala for the first T20 when the opponents chased down 200 and win and then the second T20, very predictably, is played on an Indian horror of a poorly doctored pitch on which you are put in to bat. Losing it both ways is suggestive of two major arms of the team not working well enough under pressure. So why blame the umpiring or the pitch when the results go the other way?

Dhoni is beginning to sound a bit like Jose Mourinho, Stick it to the ‘refs’ when the team loses and take in all the glory when it wins. The truth is his batting too is in decline and he wants others to put up their hand when it comes to shouldering the middle order responsibility. That is a fair call since the great finisher cannot all the time be firing on all cylinders when the skills are not responding to instant commands like before. Younger men must step up to the plate and perform.

The only point to be made is Dhoni has to be a bit more graceful about it all. To come out and try to justify the rowdy ways of the crowd in throwing objects at players, even if they are his own rather than the opponents. There is just no excuse for boorish behaviour and if a national captain goes out on air saying a bit of bottle throwing is fun, he is not only inviting scorn from the right minded but also encouraging others in the country to ape soccer hooligans.