Good Kohli spoke, and why it should matter

Bless MS Dhoni for taking politics out of Indian captaincy. Immediately before him, captaincy was a poisoned chalice that was used by officialdom to manoeuvre players, like pieces on a chessboard. Dhoni was cerebral and intense as a leader — yet patently un-covetous, too. He always said he didn’t care much for captaincy — ‘I don’t need a Bentley, I’d just go back to Ranchi and play Ranji Trophy if I’m dropped,’ he said in an interview in early 2008. Dhoni went on to become a great captain.

Dhoni gave up captaincy quite freely — a little too freely, it must be said, in the Test format, resigning in the middle of a series in Australia. He made way for Virat Kohli as ODI captain when the time was right, giving the young dasher two-and-a-half years on the job before the 2019 World Cup.

Now, as the post-Kohli era looms, we’re back in the times of intrigue over captaincy. These are post-truth times, when a lie is magnified on social media and accepted as truth on voice vote — lie, unfortunately, often has the loudest voice.

Truth will out, goes the proverb. But does truth really matter?

Asked about the Virat Kohli-Rohit Sharma equation, after reports that Kohli had sought rest during Sharma’s first series as India’s regular ODI captain, Sports Minister Anurag Thakur said: ‘No one is bigger than the sport.’

Let’s examine this assertion, in the context of Thakur himself. He was a cricketer of modest abilities for Himachal Pradesh. When his father was the Chief Minister, he became president of the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) in 2000. A few months later, he selected himself into the state team — and became captain, no less. He led the state in his first First-Class match — a feat that has eluded even men such as Don Bradman, Garry Sobers and Sunil Gavaskar.

So, then, can anyone, with a straight face, tell the Indian fan that ‘no one is bigger than the sport’?

Yes, there are individuals bigger than the sport. They are the administrators. Most of them in India were princes, businessmen, politicians. They cared little for cricketers. Just read the biographies of men such as Gavaskar to get an idea about what players thought of the officials. Officials fight tooth and nail for posts in the BCCI and state associations. They get relatives, friends and personal employees on the list of voters. They create a fiefdom via sham democracy. In new India, those who get power create dynasties — as in old India.

In his new book, journalist Pradeep Magazine relates a fascinating story of how votes were managed in a BCCI election in 1990 — the election was tight and the margins slim, and Madhavrao Scindia sought the help of the Prime Minister’s Office to get the Indian Railways to vote for him. The PMO acceded the request, ‘persuaded’ the Railways Minister to vote for Scindia, who won by one solitary vote.

Such are the men who are bigger than the sport, who rule sports associations by winning elections through any means — or by the dint of being the brother, son or daughter of a powerful man. But they’ll always be smaller than the cricketers, who become skilful and rich after at least a decade of toil in the morning cold and the afternoon heat — and performing consistently at the top level for years.

Truth, honestly, does not really matter. Should, then, have Virat Kohli given the lie to BCCI president Sourav Ganguly’s claim that he (Ganguly) had asked Kohli to reconsider his decision to give up captaincy of the T20I team?

Ganguly said that it was only when Kohli refused to reconsider the decision that the BCCI sacked him as captain of the ODI team. “We had requested Virat not to step down as T20 captain but he didn’t want to continue as captain,” Ganguly said.

Kohli flatly denied this. No one spoke to him, he said. And he was sacked with a curt one-liner on the phone by chief selector Chetan Sharma, said Kohli. The last time an active Indian cricketer spoke so bluntly against the powers-that-be was, perhaps, 1989, when Mohinder Amarnath called the selectors ‘a bunch of jokers’. Amarnath never played for India after that. We don’t know what Kohli’s fate will be, but if what he said is true, it’s good he spoke — even if it does not matter in the end.