Why does it feel like what has been ailing Indian cricket for the past decade has now permeated the ranks of the International Cricket Council (ICC)? Is it perhaps because of the entities of Indian cricket administration that held posts in the same period at the sport’s highest governing body?
It is ironic that on the one hand, the greater part of the cricket world is sharing the jubilation of the West Indies in celebrating their first Test series win over England in over a decade and India have scored over Australia for a first in seven decades. On the other hand, there is Shashank Manohar who jumped ship from the malaise-ridden Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to the ICC in the midst of a judicial review, who is now declaring that Test cricket is, to quote him, ‘dying’.
Euphemistic much?
It is starkly evident that either the current serving ICC Chairman is out of touch with the rest of the world or is tooting the same thing he and other Indian cricket administrators did under their regime to alter constitution and bend rules and allow nepotism and malice into the sport when eyeing the golden goose they perceived the Indian Premier League to be more than a decade ago. The IPL came about only after scuttling an eerily similar ‘rebellious’ enterprise – the Indian Cricket League (ICL)- that came into the picture following India’s unprecedented success at the ICC World Twenty20 in 2007. At the time, the BCCI through its strange bedfellows that included Manohar, N. Srinivasan who served as the Treasurer and Lalit Modi, the self-proclaimed czar of the IPL, shut down the ICL with all of their power, shunning the cricketers into a deep hole for their association.
Greed had obviously blinded them to the misappropriations they had committed and instead of taking responsibility collectively as a unit for having claimed to have served the interests of cricket without accepting a fee, they waited until the rot surfaced only to end up fighting a battle they knew they cannot win, each one throwing the other under a bus while shamelessly holding onto any semblance of power they found. Out in the open, instead of implementing the Lodha recommendations, Manohar, like Srinivasan, eyed a worldwide opportunity and promptly jumped ship.
Now it seems that instead of jumping at the opportunity of watching Test cricket enjoying an unbelievable year of attention and capitalizing on it, this even as the ICC Cricket World Cup looms, instead of rejoicing at the fact that social media has been ablaze with former Test cricketers chipping in with their two cents, the ICC Chairman, in his esteemed capacity, instead of lauding the effort and revival, is actual putting up excuses even before the ICC Test Championship has gotten underway.
If the sentiments of Manohar are reflective of the ICC’s own, perhaps they should not embark on the Test championship because it is like being shot in the foot even before taking the field. What chance does Test cricket stand when the cricket administrators who are supposed to be the custodians of the game take such a myopic, pronounced disdainful, no-hope view, plausibly dangerously, dare one say, with an eye on easy meal tickets instead of working to preserve the game?
If anything, the passionate cricket fans must now hold Manohar responsible on a larger platform. While Indian cricket administration finds itself in a world of turmoil as a result of the avaricious mess that these administrators have left behind, he must be held personally accountable for using word like ‘trying to see’ with regard to the Test championship which suggests, perhaps erroneously, that the ICC has not thought this new system through. Half-baked ideas rarely have a chance and if Test cricket is intended to die, perhaps there is a reason why enough effort is not being put in to promote it even in the new proposed avatar. It is alarming but every bit possible given that these administrators were at the helm when they pushed the IPL agenda to their own detrimental effect as well as that of Indian cricket’s perception around the world as a greedy, self-served, vested entity.
If this is the view with which he preserves the highest form of the game, perhaps it is not too much to ask Manohar to step down and ask a more deeply invested, passionate individual to take over the caretaking of the game.