Hacking at the jungle

"What the IPL did was to debunk some myths and the biggest of them all was about the infallibility of the Australian coaches. The franchise owners are not fools and unless they have an inferiority complex they will soon be issuing pink notices to most if not all these freeloaders masquerading as consultants or cricket officers or some such fancy designations."

Sunil Gavaskar
Jun 16, 2008

Not-so-surprisingly, Sunil Gavaskar managed to make his feelings clear about the money that was spent on Aussie "coaches" in the IPL. For a long time he has been anti-Australian in his diatribes and this particular one did not surprise me one bit. Delving deeper into the target of the attack reveals just who is the subject of Sunny's ire.

Here are the Australian-born coaches in the IPL:
Delhi - Greg Shipperd (reached semi-finals)
Punjab - Tom Moody (reached semi-finals)
Rajasthan - Shane Warne (winners of the IPL league)
Kolkata - John Buchanan

It is patently obvious who Sunny hates so much. I wonder if he even thought about the words he wrote (highlighted in bold in the comment above) before he submitted his article. I have great respect for Gavaskar as a cricketer but not much for the commentator or the writer. A few more uninformed comments like this and I will not be in the minority.

Gavaskar prides himself on calling a spade a spade. If so, why does he not come out in the open and declare that his grudge is against Buchanan. But no, this is not the way he operates. He makes bold statements but does not give the entire information. Some time back he said that some players in the Indian team abused John Wright. He brought this to light long after Wright had ceased to be the coach. Having done that, he stayed mum about who the players actually were. What was the point of raising that issue then? Either he should have named the players or kept quiet about the whole thing.

If trees had voices and you could hear them scream, would you be as callous about cutting them down? Yes, you would be if they screamed all the time and for no good reason. There's a lesson in there for Sunil Gavaskar.