SAPTARSHI

This morning there was an article, quite naturally, in the media that the Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Mohsin Naqvi was unhappy with the team's performance and conveyed his displeasure to the team manager. And that one item explains the single largest reason, beyond the talent, beyond the money and the economics why Indian cricket today is far ahead of Pakistan cricket, and all other Indian sport. For the truth is that in the 21st century at least, whatever happened in the BCCI board rooms did not impact how cricket was run on the ground. I was in ESPN Star Sports when the BCCI was fighting a huge internal battle about broadcast rights, saw Sharad Pawar overthrow Dalmiya and his team, saw Lalit Modi and his vision for cricket. Through that period, the age groups game went on, the Ranji trophy was played regularly. If anything, some of the Challenger and other formats were tweaked for better results. And the IPL was born While at KKR, saw the IPL move to South Africa in a titanic battle between the BCCI and the home ministry. The change of IPL Commissioner, the fixing scam of 2013, the Mudgal committeee, the BCCI being run by an interim President from 2017, the return of the elected body. Through all that India kept playing top level cricket, won two World Cups, dominated the Champions trophy, the test team won in Australia and the IPL just went from strength to strength. There have been seismic changes in the BCCI, but the game on the ground remained unchanged, the show went on, and not one of the administrators allowed that to slip. Or allowed a President, be it Dalmiya or Pawar to dictate player selection for a tour, or saw a board member ordering the coach or captain to change a player. The BCCI endured finally because of its fundamentally strong structure which allowed the game to be insulated from the politics of running a game. And so while stars might come and stars might go, and administrators might come and go, Indian cricket goes on growing. Other Indian sports have done well when driven by either a star perfomer or two or a charismatic administrator, but always stumbled when they left or retired No other Indian sport has this powerful separation between the actual game and its administrators, and nor certainly does Pakistan cricket. And that perhaps is the real story.