Please Baba, be sensitive!

 Rohit mahajan

Last night, the cricket media received a mail from Dr Redhill Baba, media manager of the Indian team. These were the contents of the mail: “Duncan has left for Cape Town to attend the funeral of his Father in law. Sent from my iPhone”

In the history of public communications, this is surely the nadir. The coach of the Indian team has suffered a bereavement, and he’s travelled away from the country to attend his father-in-law’s funeral. This matter requires some sensitivity. But the BCCI — through its representative dealing with the media — is shown to be amazingly indifferent. The BCCI offers no word of sorrow or condolence through a press release. Through Dr Baba, it doesn’t even inform the media that the coach’s father-in-law has passed away. It doesn’t reveal when the coach would be back.

“What does your media manager do?” asks the media manager of another team. “All day during the nets practice, he’s running after the balls like a ballboy. Today, we saw him jogging with the Indian team! Just what’s going on?”

No one knows. Also, no one knows as to why a highly educated man — a doctor, no less! — is unable to string together a line of communication in his mails without spelling or grammatical issues. Oh, perhaps it’s because he’s not a trained media professional?

Dhawal, a player or part of team management?

The ICC’s rules on the restrictions on the number of players with a team are just one big sham. This is clear from the accompanying photograph. This shows Dhawal Kulkarni, the pacer from Mumbai, is officially part of India’s team management. Is Kulkarni in Australia in the role of a coach/trainer, then?

The ICC rules allow only 15 players in a team. Due to Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s injury, Kulkarni was asked to stay back in Australia. This took the numbers in the Indian squad to 16. The Indian team found a very Indian solution to this problem — it named Kulkarni as part of the team management. Kulkarni bowls in the nets, and it’s clear for the rest of the world that he’s an active player who’s helping out in the nets. The ICC, however, accepted that he’s part of the Indian team management. If it’s not a farce, showing up the ICC as the BCCI’s sub-division, nothing is.