Testing the Board

A good run ends with a bang,not a whimper. In Birmingham,as India keeled to an innings and 242 runs defeat and got rudely stripped of its No 1 ranking,it ended an extraordinary reign in whites that began at the end of 2009. Another loss,in the remaining Test at the Oval,would push the team a further notch down to No 3. For doomsayers,theres enough in the England tour to make money over M.S. Dhoni and his boys. But a defeat need not a disaster make if the Board of Control for Cricket in India find it in themselves to take away the right lessons from the score sheets.

For,what this tour has done is point to the gaping holes in cricket management. Even as the game robustly evolved into a three-tiered format,the sportsmen were left holding the vestiges of an old calendar that hadnt been imaginatively tweaked to accommodate either their concerns or the priorities of various stakeholders. There was a lot riding on this tour the fable quality of the 2,000th Test,the possibility of a hundred 100s for Sachin Tendulkar,and an opponent waiting to wrest the No 1 ranking from India. Yet,the team that left for England with unfit players not just exposed the shocking lack of bench strength but also calls into question the BCCIs investment in the longer format. Theres a need to go back to the basics of cricket rigorous training schedules and practice matches,lay-off and rehabilitation of injured players and the art of grooming a second rung. Theres also the need to adapt the best practices of scheduling from sports like soccer where domestic,league and international fixtures are taken into account to create a seamless calendar.

The importance of Tests,and the allure of an away win,is something the BCCI has to grasp.