BGT 2024-2025 rant - two weeks too late!

As I start to write this - I am thinking what if two adjectives married and what would they birth to?

What adjectives? Wait - I will give you.

Shameless weds Weak —> Our team under GG

Now here’s the question, you might ask, why these two adjectives? Let’s take these two adjectives and try to run with it.

1. Shameless
   
   Most Indian born in the early 90s have played more in the grounds and less on the mobile/desktop screens - reasons are numerous. Now when you are playing 6-overs game(6/7 a side) in the early 2000s - you could only squeeze 3 or 4 games in the 90/120 mins period until the sun set in the Eastern part of the country casting shadows longer than Joel Garner.

   

   For representation only. Could not find a picture from Bihar.

   If you were lucky, your parents would buy you stumps. I was not and nor were most folks around me or you for that matter - we would get red bricks either from a nearby construction or from a dilapidated wall and stack them.

   

   One of us would always have a fake Kashmiri Willow bought for INR 500 - which one of the relatives carried back from a Vaishnodevi Trip with MRF sticker on it and if you were lucky you could even get a Gray Nicolls sticker on the willow.

   

   Random Image from a Bat Shop in Jammu.

   Once the team was divided, either a used gutkha sachet would become our toss instrument or a matchbox cover, Homelite more often that not.
   
   Then we would begin. Who warmed up in those days!
   
   The bowler would take his mark(with a red Vicky ball) and start bowling right in and batters would try to hit it towards the midwicket or loft it down the ground. You would steal singles iff the ball went behind the wicket.
   
   Now the unsaid rule was if you weren’t able to score runs - the rest of your team would be sitting where the leg umpire stands and chide at you. And you would retire, only to come out to bat when the penultimate wicket fell! You could not argue to open in the next if you didn’t redeem - your delivery eating spree.
   
   Same was the unsaid rule for bowling, if you went for runs - you would not ask to open bowling in the next game!
   
   Didn’t matter if the bat belonged to you or your father was a rich man of the neighbourhood or if you went to a better school or spoke finer Hindi compared to others. The one who performed ruled the Gandhi Maidans of Bihar(nearly every large district has a few) - ever in the smallest of the towns and villages.
   
   Now I have not played cricket at any level other than at school. Am not even good at it - but I do understand this basic tenet of life. Walk away when it is not working for you.
   
   Think now of the ugly white elephants in the Indian Test Team which travelled down under this time around. If I were Virat Kohli’s friend, I would advice him to go back to the maidans of Delhi and think of the childhood Kohli - that kid would be disappointed in our so called King. Tell you what, as they say on long treks - you gotta go when you gotta go. If you have ever done a little bit of mountaineering - you would know what I mean. Now my very rich friend isn’t willing to leave - and I would be a fool to not notice why he isn’t he leaving? I remember listening to murmurs of loss of revenue on the first day of Perth Test when it seemed as if the game would be over in 6-7 sessions.
   
   Now Kohli endorses 50+ brands in some capacity or the other many of them are multi-year deals. And I am into advertising and filmmaking, so I understand how many of these deals work - there might be a clause where the renumeration is tied to Kohli’s place in the national team. You can check his DIN attached to the businesses for free of cost on Zauba - One8/restaurant chains - their sales would also fall. I am all in for capitalism and making money for oneself - what I am not ready to accept that how can you be shameless? It is not in the dark what is happening here. Go become a T20 mercenary - do what you want in every bloody league, just don’t give pain to a billion people! I am okay with a person going through a bad patch - Ganguly went through it - played Domestic games and made a comeback. Now Ganguly got dropped - Ajit Agarkar and their ilk don’t have what it takes to call BS and say good bye to the white elephant.
   
   I could write similar things about Rohit Sharma and the PR disaster post the 4th Test. But I will spare you the rant.

2. Weak
   
   In sports, there is a thing called temperament!

   

   Above is an excerpt from Mark Twain’s famous essay Taming the bicycle(1884). So the thing in any kind of sport is - you will win only if you are really trying to win! If you trying to arrest your downside - you will never win(playing to draw Test matches is also playing to win though - it is fight with the right temperament).
   
   Think of selections made in the later part of the series by the biggest weeper(he used to be an MP from Delhi) in Indian Cricket currently? While you think - read what I am writing next.
   
   Steve Smith, Khawaja & Marnus Labuschagne - they failed horribly in the first 2/3 games. Getting hit in the nuts, awkward leaves, getting beaten and what not! To be honest they reminded me of unpleasing style of Steve Waugh or for that matter Javed Miandad - what they lacked in grace they paid back in temperament.

   

   All of us know of this wagon wheel - now this is what a strong player can do! Not giving into Ugly Carnal Cravings of playing outside the off basis your past heroics. Now strong characters of the game, practice even when no one is looking or is stipulated. If you recall - Sachin hired Laxman Shivramakrishnan to bowl on wet surface to tackle Warne bowl.
   
   Who cares about your great fucking Cover Drive if you are getting out to identical deliveries in 8 out of 8 outings?

   

   Above image tells a telling story. Visuals of our King Vibhishan. You don’t need a rocket scientist to know what line the Aussies are going to bowl. One might say it is foolish to get out in similar fashion these many times - well I differ! It is a weak man’s doing. A man with weak temperament, a man with weak self control, a man who masks his weakness under unwarranted aggression. Think of the Mark Twain’s quote written earlier - you will find eerie similarity! Isn’t it the part of ass(19th century speak) which is put in all of us - and my King here is full of ass(19th century speak)?
   
   Now coming back to selections during the later part of the series! See I go by the dictum, when you come across a swordsman, draw a sword - don’t bloody recite poems. Coach of the Indian Cricket team happens to be the second most coveted position in the republic of India - I would argue, it is only marginally behind the PM! Gautam Gambhir and his lack of courtesy and demeanour makes me compare him to a terrible drunkard domestic abuser who is timid as fuck at his workplace. Think of the leaked dressing room conversations, being rude(read blabbering loudmouth lacking grace) to the press, unable to keep the house in order - and then shitting on the team! Now all fault can’t be players’; can you share some blame?
   
   Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Litton Das say:'I was dropped because I wasn't performing'. Similar was opined by Mitchell Marsh(who might have played his last Test in Baggy Greens) - and he went further wishing the best for Beau Webster. What wonderful guys! Mark of strong people.
   
   Think of what our skipper did at the outset of the Sydney Test. Saving face. Crying Wolf.

I am not a writer. Not in usual circumstances. Who has got time to relive all the BS which went by but sometime you let it out. It was good while it lasted.

There are 10,000 other things which I also want to talk about. Need to get back to work now.

*All images from the internet.