Cricinfo - Blogs - Different Strokes - Whose line-up is it anyway?

The point I was trying to make (slighly loosely) in response to watching a bunch of players taking the field calling themselves an India XI, is that when people say "That's my country's team", they are referring to the group put together by the organisation 'in charge'. And the 'in charge' just means "doing it for long enough in a situation where they are (or have become) the only ones". And over that period of time, the entities in question, both the organisation in charge and their selected group become identified with the game in the 'national representative' sense. But that is a matter of established convention, not some otherworldly linkage, and they remain 'official' only so long as they don't face competition.

Had Kerry Packer's WSC stuck around long enough to fully permeate the consciousness of a generation of spectators, the confusion over which team was the 'real Australia' would have been pronounced and genuine. Indeed, by the time the WSC Australian XI went to the West Indies in 1979 for the Supertests, I had become seriously confused myself. What I seemed to be reading about in the papers sure as hell sounded like Test cricket to me. (And I still consider Greg Chappell's batting in the series one of the finest performances against the "West Indies team".) This thought experiment is well worth playing out.

Imagine the Packer dispute had not been settled. How long would it have been before fans would have started wondering which side- the Packer XI or the ACB XI -made claims on their allegiance and support? Perhaps they would have supported both but the intensity of their nationalist ardour might have been dimmed somewhat. The raising of the question of which team was the 'real' one would have brought the awkwardness of the answer to the fore. There is no 'real' 'official' Australian XI. But to expect one is to expect that anything could be more 'official' than what is already at hand: a bunch of players selected by the (hopefully only) organisation in charge of the game.

The moment there is more than one organisation in charge, the confusion begins. Witness the situation in boxing, where it is not clear who the 'world champion' really is. Surely there must an 'official' world championship (or there must have been one in the glory days of Ali, Frazier et al). But there wasn't. There was just the championship of the dominant boxing council (Good Lord, what was that alphabet soup again? IBF, WBC, WBA?) When it lost its dominance, we had the spectacle of multiple world champions and the urge to find unification champions. The chess world championship underwent similar confusion.

The existence of the ICL India XI served to remind me of the origin of the Indian National Team[tm], the BCCI and the linkages between the two. The BCCI is not identical with some mystical entity called "Indian cricket"; the 'Indian team' just happens to be their team. And I sure as hell support it like a good Indian fan. Why wouldn't I? But still, it's worth acknowledging the convention at hand. (And conventional arrangements are nothing to sneeze at; think of how languages got to be the way they are!)

The ICL might not survive but hopefully, it will have reminded people of how things got to be the way the things are, and how things could change in response. Because when organisations act like monopolies, they have the bad habit of displaying laziness, complacency and greed.

Nice piece, Samir. The difference between boxing & cricket is the national representative team issue. Where this does not apply, it is possible to sustain different federations, though there is still a tendency to monopoly - as in unified boxing champion, or the eventual merger of rival leagues in baseball & American football. National representation is a pure public good, and therefore a 'natural monopoly'. I raised this issue in one of my first pieces on Different Strokes: "To BEE or not to BEE", where I made the point you make at the end here - that the problem becomes one of accountability - of the monopoly national organisation (BCCI or CSA) to 'the public' (the fans), who have no effective means of influencing the organisation's behaviour - neither exit (shifting support to a rival organisation) nor voice (having the power to effect change from within) options are available. Sometimes governments intervene, as public representatives, but this often doesn't work out well either!

didn't the same happen during the commonwealth games in 1998 in KL? Around the same time, the BCCI had arranged for the Sahara Cup in Toronto. It had to send two squads and I distinctly remember it sent the weaker squad to the Commonwealth Games (albeit with Tendulkar in it). The BCCI went to great lengths to argue that it was not obligated to send its best XI to KL and that the team which was sent to Toronto was a BCCI XI and not an Indian XI.

Lets face it BCCI is our creation. It was borne out of interest in the game. Its bloated and filled with money minded individuals because of our collective apathy to not demand any better.

www.sportsnob.net

I agree but from a different perspective. The BCCI has assumed that it owns all cricketing activities in India and its vengeance on ICL-related matters is sad particularly where varsity players have been banned for ICL participation. The ICL came about primarily because of the shabby treatment of first class players by the BCCI. Rapacious greed is making the BCCI chase money wherever possible - This may soon extend to galli cricket where the BCCI may see a commercial interest that it may want to dip into. It's current acts benefit only 3 individuals, Pawar, Modi and Bindra; losers include the players, associations that are not friendly with the above mafia, the paying public, and soon, corporate sponsors. India lost a test series not due to Murali or Mendis but more due to Pawar and Modi - this can be rectified only a higher authority who represents the country's interests i.e., the government -cannot get worse than status quo.

I welcome ICL for the changes it forced in an existing structure, just like India's economy was opened up by a certain gentleman more than a decade ago. However, I'd be sorry to see the structure done away with...just as I'd have hated to see India done away with for the sake of a different economic philosophy.

Rebellion has served its purpose if it has ensured change...a course correction or a necessary impetus in a much-needed direction. Prolonging the rebellion following the achievement of goals is self defeating. However, what are the goals, one may ask. What defines the success end-point of a revolution, one may ask. Answers to these could be disastrously subjective.

Only someone who hates Indian cricket can think about the possibility of the Union Sports Ministry taking over the sport. There is no point in even referring to our fantastic performances at the Olympics down the decades. It is amazing and amusing as to how the BCCI is used by one and all as a punching bag. Tiger Pataudi recently appealed to all the sporting bodies in the country to regard the BCCI as a 'yardstick,' but most of them opted for the easier, 'punching bag' option. Nobody seems to have taken note of the fact that the BCCI has joined hands with the Union Sports Ministry to set up a corpus of Rs. 50 crores, to help train sportspersons in five disciplines - Swimming and weightlifting being two of them - for the next three years.

Regarding the Olympics, I wonder if the boards will allow their best teams to go to the Games. I knows that in the soccer, the Australian Ollyroos team is made up of players who've never been capped by the "Socceroos" team which represents Australia everywhere else. If that were to happen with cricket, then residency may not even be a requirement. It wouldn't be without precedent, would it? Ivory Coast's goalscorer in the Ivory Coast-Ollyroos match plays for Manchester. Zimbabwean swimming star Kirsty Coventry lives, trains and works in Texas. So what would stop the South Africans from recruiting their olympic cricket team from the Kolpakers in the English Counties, thus giving their Test regulars a break?

One way or the other, if cricket makes it to the Games it'll be very interesting to see what happens.

There has been enough talk about ICL. There is nothing wrong in not selecting players frm the ICL. Banning the ICL will be restrictive trade practice. The BCCI has not done that. It only says that it will not select players under its setup if they are with the ICL, which is perfectly legitimate as they have the prerogative in selecting the players thay want. Kapil dev says if mercedes and bmw can co-exist, so can the ICL and BCCI. Right kapil, but an employee of mercedes cannot be an employee of bmw at the same time and vice versa. So how can a cricketer play for two setups simulataneously. Similarly, you cannot take BMW or mercedes to court if they do not select you in an interview for any post. It is their prerogative. So is the BCCI's. The question is not of patriotism here at all. The question is whether ICL players can play under BCCI or not and the answer is a BIG NO. Anyway the ICL is not about cricket. If itg was they would have played 3 or 4 day cricket and not T20.

Though I don't think the article is nonsense, I agree with Sundar in all the other points he makes. The BCCI has not done anything wrong apart from flexing its financial muscle - and everyone who has muscles flexes them. That's life. If the BCCI decides it will not employ anyone who is playing for the ICL, I say it is their organisation and it's up to them to decide who works for them.

As for the point Samir was making in the article, can't the same question be asked of every sport in every country? Since it's olympic season, who made the IOC the "official" Olympic Committee? The answer is its members. And who made the members the official committees in their countries?

Besides, what is official, anyway? In business, whoever has the most dough is "official" (think of official sponsors), so going by that criteria, I think the BCCI has earned the right to be "official".

Maybe we're just philosophizing too much :-)

Sameer Chopra digs up yet another hoary old shibboleth which makes little sense.

Just as the BCCI is a private, non-governmental (?) body, so too are bodies like the IHF and the AITA, and for Ashish Bajaj to "get mad" when the Indian cricket team wears the tricolour is weird. Going by the rather simplistic argument that Bajaj provides, it is like saying that only teams that are selected by the SAI are truly representative of Indian sport.

It just so happens that the BCCI is the most convenient whipping boy around, and hence that sudden discovery of patriotism. I guess the result of the SL series does not help matters much either.