For the past few weeks my favorite website, CricInfo, has been all about the IPL, a league that I do not care about and, therefore, do not do anything more than scan the headlines before moving on. One of the headlines I scanned but did not read into was: Virender Sehwag to not play for Northants. Oh well. Whatever.
Today, on CricInfo's surfer page I came across this article by Dileep Premachandran, writing for the Guardian. (All emphases mine).
(...) And this is the BCCI, whose behaviour increasingly resembles that of the playground bully. Resting Sehwag is not an issue. But why revoke the NOCs granted to Piyush Chawla, Yusuf Pathan and VVS Laxman?
How pathetic is that?!!!
(...)
The most perverse case is that of Laxman. He hasn't been part of India's limited-overs plans for years, and it's doubtful whether he will get an IPL contract next season. To deny him a stint with Lancashire is nothing short of restraint of trade. In a recent interview, Dravid spoke of how difficult it had been to mentally adjust to not playing all the time after he was jettisoned from the one-day squad. For Laxman, who has played only Tests for years, any match practice is valuable. With (yet another) series in Sri Lanka scheduled for July-August, denying him a few hits in the early part of summer makes no sort of sense at all.
If, as some suspect, the revoking of the NOCs has something to do with the IPL viewing the Twenty20 Cup as competition, one can only laugh. That's as illogical as a multimillion-pound amusement park feeling threatened by the local summer fete. The England and Wales Cricket Board had the chance to put in place the game's premier domestic Twenty20 competition. But while they dilly-dallied, first the Indian Cricket League and then the IPL stepped in, and the opportunity was lost. The decision to try to jazz up the competition with imports such as Sehwag and Pathan is just a belated knee-jerk response to being left trailing by the IPL and even Australia's Big Bash.
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| Right about now, I like Laxman in these colors more than the "India blue". |
The BCCI and its accomplice, the IPL, is making me seriously think about switching my allegience to some other country or sport. Gah!
VVS, if the BCCI stops you, go play for Lancashire anyway, I say. Masters like this don't deserve the patronage of folks like you.
1 comment:
Agree entirely.
There is little more for VVS to achieve statistically in cricket.
Even in monetary terms, the genial Hyderabadi has done well for himself, perhaps not on the level of a Tendulkar, and is unlikely to do much more within the constructs of the cricket structure.
Time for him to shed his gentlemanliness and go for it and show up the BCCI for the hypocrites they are.
I want to see if Sachin and co have the gumption to speak up for Laxman's right to play county cricket if he retires from the shorter forms of the game.
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