The Great Indian Cricket Drama

As yet another Great Indian Cricket Drama unfolds. Heaps of useless print paper / time / blogs get created : I can already hear the critics of Cricket : Iqbal's father for one saying we told u so, it's a waste of time, and yet again they may have a point.

It never ceases to amaze me, the may the people who run cricket in India always manage to take people for a ride. The Indian cricket board is the richest in the world, but the facilites in the stadium's seem to be the worst. Instead of being greeted at the stadium with smiling helpers / adminstrators / people, (I pay for the ticket's I buy and upto Rs 2000 for an ODI once), U are greeted with Lathi Weilding policemen, who seem to be hell bent on confiscating everything u posses. Then u have the share of cricketing match betting scandals (I won't be surprised if there are bets taken if a match has been fixed or not).

And now this. Greg vs Gangs , Coach vs Capatin, Aussie way vs the Indian Way, or whatever you want to call it. And what I find surprising is that there are people who find reason to support the Indian captain.

I don't think India did needed a Greg to tell us that Ganguly was physically unfit. Anyone who had seen him on the field during the last 12 months, could see that. The constanst scowl on his face, replaced for sometime by the stupid smile after scoring an odds defying 100, during which he complianed slyly about his coach showed some but obvious signs of a bit of an unstability in his thinking.

We needed Greg to call a Spade a Spade. Someone with the guts and balls to write a frank open later to the board (and a nitwit on the board side to create a laughing stock of Ganguly by leaking the same). One would have hoped a Gavaskar to the same, but then Sunny has to live with Indian cricket, and he is as frank as he can be on TV.

Gangs was fun while he lasted and was younger. There was a funny side when he kept Waugh waiting at the tosses, maybe a strategy . But one expected him to mature into a fine leader , and not one who kept the coach of his side waiting at the airport for three hrs while he was busy celebrating the birthday of his wife. This reeks of unprofessionalism, of arrogance, of stupidity.

The Indian team under Gangs had it's peaks, there was time when there was a certain arrogance based on performance, the arrogance and gesturing is now based on the belief of being the 'Untouchables' (borrowed from Sunny), we can do what we want. It's the comfort zone and some people need to be shaken out of it. Sooner than never.

Greg is no doubt on a mission, to try and win the WC for India, to make Team India a real challenge to the Aussies or England. That is all he has to gain. Any obstacles to his plan / target need to go.

As a country I think India is looking for people like Greg, who are willing to take on the administrators head on. I guess the people who leaked the mail, were taken aback by the support Greg got. They would have hoped the Indian public (the same people who get shabby treatment at the stadiums, but still turn up match after match) would rally around the Prince. I think they got a rude shock.

I have a sneaky feeling Greg may have to leave, if he does he would leave with his head held high and hopefully a tell all tale of what actually transpired in his 3-4 months with the Indian team. Indian cricket will be poorer.