The curtain came down Saturday night on a crowded, contentious and controversial Indian cricket season with the final of the Indian Premier League’s fourth edition won by defending champions Chennai Super Kings. By all accounts it was a long and extraordinary season, with the World Cup final hosted by India and IPL-4 starting barely six days after the last ball was hit for six by home team skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
While Indians wore the biggest smiles after their team won the World Cup (50 overs) after 28 years, they were also left debating hotly over the amount of cricket being played these days in what is avowedly the real professional era of the game marked by the arrival of IPL and other such “big bang for your buck” kind of Twenty20 cricket.
In its most recent avatar, the game has been invaded by the club versus country argument that used to mark soccer in which the players were always beholden to their clubs while playing for the country was an attractive option only once in about four years — at the World Cup and its qualifiers. Injuries and sport inevitably go hand in hand, which is the reason why Gautam Gambhir, nominated to lead India in the Caribbean while Dhoni rested, was unfairly picked on and pilloried by a section of the media for appearing in Kolkata Knight Riders colours wherein he injured his shoulder and became unfit to take up national duty. At nearly `11 crores per annum, Gambhir is IPL’s most expensive player, which means he faces the greatest pressure to deliver for his franchise. However, in appearing for his IPL team, he is only playing official cricket under the aegis of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. While there is no cricketer who would not deliberately and without genuine reason refuse to turn out for his country in Tests and limited-overs games, the amount of cricket being played now is putting them under greater stress than ever before. The list of absentees from the Caribbean tour reads like a who’s who of Indian cricket — but no one blames Sachin Tendulkar if he opts out for personal reasons, seeking some balance between sporting commitments and family life. Why then does anyone have to pounce on Gambhir merely because he played cricket for money, which is what nearly 200 cricketers who have IPL contracts do every season? India Inc. does not stop selling products because some of them might go against certain national priorities and damage national health, nor does a country shy away from using energy sources which in the long run might contribute to global warming. Just as a balance has to be struck between means and ends in all things, so too must sport and cricket find ways to strike a balance between need and greed.
The Indian cricket board can help immensely if it can so much as plan its schedule to optimise its human resources in highly talented cricketers who, as a class, are looked up to by the nation. There is a pressing need for the BCCI not only to seek an international window for its glamorous T-20 league that combines cricket and entertainment, but it must also leave a clear 30 days after the event free for all its players to physically recover. It seems odd that the world’s top-ranked Test team must send a virtual second XI to the West Indies. The issue is not about players wishing to skip touring what in cricketing terms today is the wilderness, but about a greedy cricket board accepting to play international cricket in June. It’s not about club versus country but about the BCCI organising its calendar better and giving higher priority to its players’ welfare.