Playing it Sachin’s way

Sachin Tendulkar has lashed out at Greg Chappell for destroying the spirit of the Indian cricket team when he was the team’s coach. His comments may relate to events of seven years ago, when a massive failure at the World Cup in the Caribbean saw the outpouring of opprobrium on a cricket team with the largest following. But there are man-management lessons to be learnt from it.
The world’s greatest run-maker has named his wife Anjali as having been a witness to his interaction with Greg when the Aussie promised to snatch the captaincy from Rahul Dravid and give it to him.

Sachin has also accused both Chappell brothers of dissembling and Indian cricket of paying too much attention to their maverick opinions. In taking such a nationalistic stance, Sachin is bound to find many more supporters.

While controversies cannot be bad for book sales, the cricketer’s assertive words, in what is the first occasion on which he is speaking up on the game, constitute a more significant happening.
His autobiography, Playing It My Way, is anyway guaranteed a brisk run up the bestseller lists.

The book may give us more insights into the mind of a cricketer who was also gracious enough to admit his failures as a captain. In not nursing for too long an ambition that has consumed many cricketers, he set an example of a team man that had its apotheosis in India’s victory in the 2011 World Cup.

At a time when cricketers are so beholden to the BCCI that they have given up the habit of speaking up, by virtue of his outspokenness now an icon has put the spotlight on the suitability, or otherwise, of appointing a foreigner as coach.

While a few retired cricketers, like John Wright of New Zealand and Gary Kirsten of South Africa, have been enormously successful at handling Team India, the experience with Chappell and Duncan Fletcher has been a very mixed bag with the negatives far outweighing what expertise they brought in by way of improving game skills and man management.

It appears the Indian team has outgrown the concept of hiring foreigners. Such management skills are abundantly available in the country itself, as we see in Ravi Shastri’s open approach to motivating the team.
Sachin Tendulkar’s nationalism should set the cricket establishment thinking at a time when it also has to address issues like gambling since the Mukul Mudgal panel report to the Supreme Court would have had a lot to say about some murky goings on that have brought disrepute to the game.

He may not have spoken much when he was still playing, but Sachin’s book is a timely reminder to the BCCI that all is not well in its world. In that sense, too, the little master may have served Indian cricket some more.