The system that was set up to run the game is now ruining it

As Ajinkya Rahane was leading India to a rout of Afghanistan at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, Virat Kohli and others were being put through their paces in a fitness test at the B Ground not 200 metres away. Did Kohli, whose back gave him enough trouble to have to skip a stint with Surrey in preparation for the England tour, pass that fitness test? The long and short answer is that nobody can, or will say.

Journalists who attempted to get access to the venue were kept out and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has put out no official communication one way or another. In a world where all things were equal, Shanker Basu, the trainer of the Indian team who oversaw the fitness tests, would let the public know — through the media or other means available to the cricket board — what happened at that fitness test.

But, in the world of Indian cricket and cricket administration, reduced by the courts to a group so small it can’t even be called skeletal, it is impossible to ascertain whether Kohli passed the YoYo test — currently the singular criterion for cricketing fitness in India.

Curiously, Rohit Sharma, who has been selected in the Indian T20I and ODI teams for the tour of England, was nowhere near Bangalore when this allegedly mandatory fitness test was conducted.

After throwing the first pitch in a baseball game in America not long ago, Rohit made his whereabouts known through an Instagram post where he is proudly holding the tricolour outside a football stadium in Russia.

It emerged later that Rohit had obtained permission from the BCCI to attend a sponsor engagement in Russia, and was scheduled to take the fitness test on Sunday, June 17. But, once again, the question of why these things are treated as matters of national security, and not made public, remains. Unless of course the BCCI prefers speculation to fact-based reporting.

Indian cricket administration was never at the cutting edge of running the show, but a system that evolved over the years had many checks and balances built in. A BCCI president might be all-powerful, but even he had to answer to state associations and derived his power from the votes they cast. A selection committee was appointed by the BCCI, but even when they discharged their duties independently, the secretary of the BCCI convened each of their meetings and had the power to veto a selection, if it came to that, though it rarely did. The coach never had more say than the captain, but agreeing with everything the captain said was not his remit.

If an outsider such as Greg Chappell could drop an icon like Sourav Ganguly, it was because there was a BCCI in place to ensure that player power was not the be-all and end-all. There was a selection committee that knew it could count on the support of those who put them in office, as long as they acted in good cricketing faith.

In 2018, kneecapped BCCI officials are required to take permission from the court-appointed Committee of Administrators before they so much as book a flight or a hotel room. What player will respect, or fear, a BCCI official, whose hands are handcuffed behind his back? Why must a selector be answerable to the BCCI when he knows they do not, and can not call the shots?

In India’s last tour of South Africa, Rahane, the vice-captain, was dropped, because Rohit apparently had current form to back him. Now Rohit, in whom so much was invested, is out of the Test mix, with Karun Nair taking his spot in the squad.

Nair, who became India’s second Test triple-centurion in December 2016, in only his third game in the format, has appeared three more times in the same format in the two years that followed, the last of which was more than a year ago. Does this suggest long-term planning? When Kohli was ruled out of the Afghanistan Test, Nair, a middle-order batsman, was brought into the squad, but it was KL Rahul, one of India’s three openers, who played, batting in the middle-order.

Many questions can be asked, but doing so is treated akin to treason in the current Indian cricket set up where, to borrow from George W Bush, you are either with us or against us. Where not long ago players of the calibre of Tendulkar, Dravid, Kumble and Ganguly understood that they were answerable — to the BCCI, to the media, to the public — and took criticism, when it was constructive, in their stride, accepting that it was an inevitable trapping of all the good things cricket gave them, today’s cricketer knows he is not just above the law, he is the law.

In the 2018 Indian cricket landscape, it is cheques and (bank) balances that rule.

How that can be good for anyone in the long term, is a question that cricketers do not need to ask, for their place in the sun can only be short- or medium-term. Just as the politician knows there is little point in thinking beyond his five-year term, a breed of Indian cricketer has emerged that does not believe they are custodians of a great game, with a responsibility to pass the baton on to the next generation in a better place than when they were given the honour and privilege of representing a cricketing superpower.

Anand Vasu is a freelance journalist. He tweets @anandvasu