"Donkey"-gate!

After "monkey-gate" in 2007 comes "donkey-gate" in 2011. Despite their volatility, there cannot be two more different characters than Harbhajan Singh and Nasser Hussain. Having said that, I am frankly tired of the fuss made out of Hussain's remarks. To dilute the pointless rage a bit, here's a funny take on the issue - some fictitious reactions from real people who have a stake in Indian cricket.

Shastri's words accuses Hussain of one of seven sins; and an eighth - envy towards his own commentary: 

"Nasser Hussain is jealous of everything in Indian cricket - their former number one ranking, their present status as World Champions, the IPL, attractive (read ear-offending) new words that have been contributed to the Queen's Language like DLF-er, the BCCI's stand on the DRS, Mumbai cricket, Sachin Tendulkar and most importantly the way I say tracer bullet. All of Indian commentariat will take up issue against anyone calling Indian cricketers by name... beg your pardon, names!"

Navjot Sidhu as always delights us with his word play:

"You remember the 2002 Natwest final my friend? Two young Turks using their bats as if they were bazookas and the English team were terro...," - and quickly checks himself remembering Dean Jones' fate after calling Hashim Amla a terrorist on air - "terrace players on tiny little lanes in Tate Square?"  NJ  probably added that for alliteration but how a Square can have streets is beyond us! "Hussain's paying back through words now. But as they say," - as always Sidhu does not say who? - "a man who pays for deeds with words is like a mirror that does not reflect."

Kris Srikkanth is, well, Kris Srikkanth:

"Arrey yaar! I am the Chief Selector, not the team manager - yes, yes Chennai Super Kings won the last IPL and will win the next one too. Anirudha is a class player, man. This Naaser," - pronounces it acutely like the name of an actor from the south - "bhaai no, when he was a boy he was fond of Chepauk but after going to England...," - and as always jumps topic without giving us a clue - "Yes, yes to call any Indians a donkey is not right yaar especially when we have Tendulkar who has scored a double-hundred." Some journos try to inform him that SRT was not in the ODI team in England but Kris has a call - either a fake one or from N. Srinivasan.

Lalit Modi tweets:

"As fmr bs of IPL I'd v hd Swn, Brd, Ck playing. Husn wunt hv cld us Dada not donkey." Mr. Modi. One clarification: even if you were the boss of IPL, you didn't pick teams, or did you?

N. Srinivasan (after his call with Kris Srikkanth):

"Bearing in mind the professionalism we want to bring to the running of the board and the team, we have just advised everyone in the selection committee, team coaching committee, present and past and future, team and organised groups of fans to never issue press statements. We will definitely conduct a lexical and legal enquiry into Hussain's use of the offending word," - Mr. Srinivasan is too uppity to even bring himself to say it -"but we continue to be in consensus over the fact that the team's performance in England requires no investigation, that the ICC is right in removing the mandate on DRS and that Gideon Haigh is... never mind. We also do not have any conflict of interest," concludes the BCCI President heading to a court hearing. 

We just hope James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia, does not hear Srini speak; he's quite elaborate as it is.

Viswanathan Radhakrishnan (cricket host and expert, Neo cricket):

"It's incredible isn't it how the Indians, the World Champions, have sl...umped to no. 5 and England have played some outste...nding cricket haven't they?" Arun Lal tries to say something but Mr. Radhakrishnan goes on. "However, the question is: is Nasser Hussain justified in claiming that the Indian team... has... some..." Fans wonder why there cannot be a blackout like the one in the Sky studio.

Shahrukh Khan, part-time actor, owner KKR:

"Heyyyyy, hey, hey, chill guys. I am Bollywood's Baadshah and I say every Indian in the Indian team is a superstar. Take KKR...," tapers off remembering that KKR's most successful player has been Jacques Kallis. What is with South Africans and other countries? ;)

   

Mandira Bedi:

"Ajanta Rahane," - ma'am that's Ajinkya -"what a player he is! I cannot understand how Hussain can call Indian players donkeys." Indeed, just like we do not understand how you have been allowed to host or co-host cricket-related shows for so long.

Barkha Dutt:

"Gentlemen, the point is at a time like this, when the Indian team was already facing a huge crisis such as the loss of key players, the loss of number 1 ranking, the loss of the World Cup gloss," -strictly in that order it appears - "and, of course, the 4-0 loss in the test series, was Nasser Hussain morally right in calling Indian fielders donkeys? We will first go across to our cricket correspondent in Chennai..."

Rajdeep Sardesai (threatening the glass panel on TV screens as always):

"We have completely run out of time. The verdict: 88 % says Hussain was wrong 11.5 % says maybe and .5 %... well. Mr. Hussain... you owe... the aam aadmi, the commoner in the street, the fans across the country shouting whenever an Indian takes a wicket or a catch," - well that was the point of Hussain's comment wasn't it? -"you owe them an apology. On that note, it's goodnight."

Rahul Dravid:

"Look there's not much you can do about it. We just have to go there and do what we are good at and let the others do their job. I dropped a few dollies myself in the test series," - smiles -"and we have to work really hard on our fielding. I sometimes wish fielding is like batting, it would help me concentrate more."

As diplomatic as ever, Dravid does not mention either Hussain by name or the donkey remark. After a polished statement, he signs off with a repetition of his success mantra.

Dravid's fellow test debutant of sixteen years ago and these days a refreshingly honest voice in the commentary box, Sourav Ganguly is precise - but confuses his pronouns as usual:  

"That's the Indian team at its worst. This is Hussain at its best!"


h. i. s Dada, "his", not "its".

Nothing in Indian cricket is every complete without a gig and/or a word from our Prince from Kerala. This is what Santhakumaran Sreesanth had to say repeating his famous line, and in the process giving the former English skipper some advice:

"Silence is the speech of the spiritual seeker. I hope Hussain goes to the Himalayas or Dharamshala to get some inner peace. After all, even the great Tamil superstar Mr. Rajnikanth does it!" 

Akhtar's book (and why BCCI is wrong again!)

After a vacation of sorts from this space, during which time I did pen paeans for Dravid elsewhere (among other things for fear that if they were penned here my lovely friend, co-author and critic would ambush me!), Shoaib Akhar's Controversially Yours and the media circus surrounding it has given me something to write about. In this connection, I find myself mostly in agreement with Kamran Abbasi when he says Akhtar is the victim of his own inferno, despite his lines that hardly veil his attempts to show Indian batsmanship as second to others'. More on that though for another day.

The former Pakistani paceman from 'Pindi has evidently said in his book that Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid are not match-winners in their own right. As far as statements in general go and as far as Shoaib's words, not very different in consistency from Shahid Afridi's retirements or Ijaz Butt's decisions, go, that is hardly a shoulder-high bouncer let alone a beamer. Others have said similar things in the past and truth is seldom judged by the loudness of the chorus anyway. But what made the Indian spectators, BCCI, the fans and their uncles - and also Wasim Akram - irate is the reference to "fear" in the eyes of the little master at a test match in Faislabad. As absurd and foolhardy as the claim seems, lifting it out of context and aggrandising Akhtar's stature as cricket's primordial bete noire is a media stunt intended either to make the book sell or to attract more prime time viewership given that there is no bigger idol in India than SRT. Thus what should have been treated as a joke, an attention-seeking ruse or at the very least a rather parochial opinion has been blown out of proportion. I can bet that half of the bandwagon, comprising media personnel, ex-cricketers, garrulous cricketing pundits and others participating in opinion polls, would not have even seen the book cover before delivering their "expert" opinions on the matter.

As always, Harsha Bhogle's tweets on September 26 about Akhtar's book breathed commendable moderation and commonsense. I completely agree with Mr. Bhogle when he says that Akhtar, much like you and I and the rest of the world, is entitled to an opinion albeit "[he] is not a saint". I also tend to concede that there is, in our part of the world, an almost tetchy wait to feel offended and at the slightest of provocation we get ready to hurl our verbal repertoire against any opinion that is in discord with our own. Admittedly, a headline like "Akhtar says Sachin feared me" is not something that will go down well, even as an opinion, in a cricket-mad nation like India. And yet when Tendulkar himself said that it is beneath his dignity to respond - a response arguably as clean and firm as his back-foot cover drive - I fail to understand the ambient fuss.

Of all responses to Akhtar's remarks, what surprised me most, however, was BCCI's demand for an apology from him, as if his remarks have hurt the reputation of a young tyro, or have devalued and brought down Dravid's and Tendulkar's colossi of runs overnight, or have hurt BCCI's fiscal underbelly. From a board which does not allow its selection committee (or coach) to be accountable - by gagging its members from speaking to the media - whose selection committee does not know the difference between a raw fledgling and an emerging player, or even between a fit and an unfit one, which thinks there is no need for an inquiry into the Indian team's zero-international-win debacle in England recently, and which acts holier-than-thou at the slightest sign of governmental or other interference when its internal structure seems more daunting than the notorious iron curtain, the reactions to a controversial character's rants and the demand for an apology are as befuddling as they are amusing. If BCCI's response is out of anger, and there is little to suggest that, the anger is as misplaced as its priorities are. No wonder the board is headed by a hardliner whose interests in cricket seem like a mere extension of his business interests. 

I am not making a case for Akhtar or his book. However, the fact that we spend loads of vocal decibels, paper and new media space and television hours on a remark made somewhere in a book is quite annoying even if the tendency is not new and may be a sign of the times. I will close with yet another remark made by a former player about Sachin Tendulkar a few years ago in his autobiography titled True Colours: the  substance of it was that Tendulkar would never be around for "shake hands" whenever India lost a game. We could have said, "I see" or politely interjected with a "So what? He plays only to win which is not criminal!". Instead, we and our media again blew the issue up, throwing in the reference "loser" for good measure and attributed it to the author who, at least in my opinion (even with his flaws during Sydneygate which he acknowledges and which he provides an unapologetic perspective on), is among the fairest gents to have played the game: Adam Gilchrist walked - and not just his talk - and we blamed him for his observations about "our" Little Master. I would in no way liken Akhtar to Gilchrist - or their books to one another - but the upshot is this: if every response we have to an opinion is coloured deeply with our own -isms (among them nationalism), how is it that we feel self-righteously fair in criticising others for their opinions, the way they play the game or their lack of sportsmanship?

The jury, Ladies and Gentlemen, is still out.    

No.1: who cares?!

Sourav Ganguly is a passionate man, if his playing days, the Lord's shirt spin and the way he got into the face of Australian teams and Steve Waugh are anything to go by. Off the field, however, those close to him claimed that you could not meet a man of greater equanimity: if you took the reactions of the Kolkata fans to Ganguly's being dropped as representative of reactions from Ganguly's own cricle, you are bound to get his personage wrong for Bengal is a passionate state and had to wait several decades to get its own superstar. Why am I saying all this? Because the man formerly referred to as the Prince of Calkootta is the one former cricketer who has got his reactions to India's bruising defeats to England dead right: accept it and move on!

I don't mind admitting pride over Team India's number one status in test cricket  - I am prouder of it than the 2011 World Cup victory - despite my recurrent emphasis on the fact that the ranking arrived by default and that it has been sustained not by ruthless greatness but by coming-back-from the debris performances characterised by basic grit. Great teams do not thrive on playing catch-up, though; they just happen to be better at catching up as well should it be required. None of this is to insult the contributions made my present and past greats in ensuring that India has built up a strong front at home and overseas in the last ten years. It is only to put things into perspective - the perspective that when the focus is on the process, as the Australians like to belabour and often rightly, other things will follow. That is exactly the perspective that is missing in the reactions to India's two consecutive defeats down in England. What is sad is that past players, who you would expect not to be drawn into superficiality, make a mockery of themselves by drawing the ranking into everything they discuss - including DRS - and leave out the question marks behind the dismal performance. The reverse pattern would be better recommended.

If Dhoni's own observations over what he felt went wrong after Lord's still had a hint of humour about them, the post-Nottingham responses seemed more like excuses from a brilliant leader who was expecting sympathy. But what could the poor man do? Being hamstrung by your premiere fast bowler's hamstring injury, not having your first choice opening firm - only to see the other half also ruled out by contingency - and having to respond to questions from an eccentric media about your own form with the bat (and less notably the glovework) can affect the blithest of spirits. But therein lies not the answer, but more questions, questions which I am sure Messrs. Srinivasan and others at the BCCI will not have Duncan Fletcher - or others - answer directly.

Does the over-reliance on Zaheer with the ball - and a lesser one on Sehwag with the bat, never mind four others average over 45:00 in that most enviable of line-ups - itself say something about how the Indian cricket is still a constellation made of some bright stars, at best, never mind the rankings? Dhoni says injuries do happen - we know that! We also appreciate - as much as a non-player can - that a fast bowler's craft entails by many counts the most tangled use of the body in sport, but why is it that fitness regimes elsewhere are better ? More to the point, why is our bench strength invariably second-grade and why is one other swing bowler - someone like R.P. Singh - not travelling with the team when we have taken a substitute keeper?  A more telling question - and it had better be - is why does someone like Sehwag need to 'show himself up' for Delhi Daredevils before he undergoes a surgery but miss two important tests? This is in pathetic, sometimes shameful, contrast to how Michael Clarke and Mitchell Johnson have opted out of the Big Bash League in Australia to focus on getting their country's test team perform better. (If there is something that does not look the eye as far as Indian players are concerned, such as volitional priority towards your franchise - or worse, compelled priority -, then the powers that be have some answering to do). We in India are used to excuses and when a player passionately says, "Nobody would demean playing for the country," we accept it. But is the passion in the words translated into action, the planning and the prioritisation of one's time and fitness? Is a Pragyan Ojha or a Rahane getting the right sort of signals from the behaviour of seniors? I leave this case here.

BCCI's handling of test cricket raises a different issue. While the Indian board's sudden enlightenment to play more tests since two years ago is a welcome sign for test cricket in the country - and test cricket as a whole what with India being modern cricket's Mecca - the reason for this shift in priority is as parochial as it is wrong. The wrongness comes to the fore precisely when the weather becomes rough. It is clear for all intents and purposes that the BCCI wants Team India to maintain the no. 1 status - but it is commonsense, let alone reason, that that can happen only if we win games. With the sort of scheduling (that always includes the IPL!) the Indian players have - and how some are free to take breaks - we are going to find it difficult to barely stay in a test match against good teams in alien conditions let alone win any. I may sound hyperbolic. The apocalypse has not yet come; but it may well do so sooner than later (and this is regardless of the timing of the stalwarts' impending retirement).

Ultimately - I say this as a cricket fan as well as someone who knows a bit about what people generally feel - I would prefer to watch a Team India that is up for a scrap, one which can fight for 140 overs in an attempt to bat 160 and still lose, rather than a team which is top of the tree because of accident, coincidence, its captain's nouse (and good fortune!) and the deteriortation of other teams in the circuit. It is the spirit with which a team plays its sport that reveals its nature and workings.

Australia have not been "harassed" even on their worst days, which is a sign of a good team, until their recent Ashes campaign - a coincidence that their opposition, too, was England? I think not! - because doggedness has been their trade mark for decades. Flair (the other spelling would do just as well!), as Sangakkara said in his glorious MCC Spirit of Cricket Lecture, is the signature of cricket in Sri Lanka. It is that - or any - spirit which, by its absence, was appalling about India's cricket in the tests at Lord's and Nottingham. But one unlikely figure, who might not have been even in the frame for this series two months ago, quietly infused whatever spirit he was capable of into his seemingly one-dimensional game. He may never be the heartthrob of female fans or threaten the sleep of test batsmen but men like Praveen Kumar bring value to a team that can never be counted or commodified. He has got wickets to show for himself, too. A few others could learn a thing or two about lifting for the occasion from the young man, the praise for whom is always accompanied by the irritating phrases "despite his lack of pace" or "in England he'll always bowl well." May be, the pundits are right but cricketers with a will have a way of succeeding anywhere and the heart they bring to the game enriches it in a big way. Besides, If cricket has to be made up only of Steyns and Shane Warnes, it will be a game for the elite in terms of talent. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth as cricketing history shows time and again. And as for now, nothing could be less important than India's number one ranking. If imagining that it is lost would inspire them to fight without a cluttered mind, it is just as well.  

BCCI's power and cricket's health!

Although there might have been inklings earlier, the Mike Denness incident in 2001-02 demonstrated the Board of Control for Cricket in India's augmenting control in international cricket . The match referee, Mike Denness, who was officiating the India-South Africa series in South Africa imposed match bans on prominent players including Harbhajan Singh and the then Indian skipper captain Sourav Ganguly. Controversy turned into outrage as Tendulkar was in the lengthy blacklist, too, having been accused of ball-tampering. BCCI wanted another match referee for the final test of the series at Centurion but ICC stood by Denness. The United Cricket Board was caught in a fix but decided to support the BCCI (headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya at the time!) and so Denness was forced to stand down in the final test. The Indians did not fare all that well and given the besetting storm the lukewarm performance was only to be expected and ICC declared the test unofficial. Some said - and I agree - that the match referee's punitiveness went overboard. "isms" were traded as always, "racism" figuring prominently: in some sense, it was brutal irony that all this was happening in South Africa, which had been admitted to international cricket only ten years ago following a couple of decades of exile due to the Apartheid policy. 

Six years later, another conflict arose - again in the Southern Hemisphere, this time the locale being Australia. On the third day of the New Year test at Sydney (2008), the Bhajji-Symonds "monkeygate" erupted and the series would never be the same again. After the Sydney test, the sour moods turned downright rancid: Steve Bucknor, with a history of umpiring errors against India, had committed  howlers which everyone believed had turned the test in favour of the Australians. But Bucknor was not the vortex of Indian malediction. Michael Clarke who had hit the ball clear as daylight to slip earlier in the match had not walked but went onto claim a dicey catch of Ganguly who was batting like a dream in the second innings as India tried to save the test on the last day. "Integrity" came into the equation when the umpire asked Ponting who raised his finger as if to say Clarke had taken it cleanly. A few overs later, Ponting claimed a catch of Dhoni - which seemed like a "bump ball" - and though it was given "not out", India could not bat out Clarke's left-arm spin and went 2-0 down in the series. Anil Kumble said, "Only one team played in the spirit of the game" , a reportedly spontaneous reproduction of a line right out of the Bodyline closet. Ponting's headstrong churlishness at the press conference did nothing remotely to mitigate the rift but only exacerbated it. Peter Roebuck called into question Australia's  win-at-all-costs mindset, referring to the Sydney win as their ugliest performance and calling for Punter to be replaced as captain. In the meanwhile, Tendulkar was called onto testify at the Harbhajan hearing (after the latter had been handed a three-match ban which the BCCI appealed against)- and all hell broke loose. Cancellation of the tour was on everyone's lips and so was the status of BCCI beneath the veil. A series with India, member boards of the ICC know, brings a lot of money and goodwill. It is safe not to defy the BCCI. The series continued, more mutedly: India famously won at Perth - Adam Gilchrist's reflections on how the Aussies felt during the Perth test, as well as leading to it,  makes for an insightful, and arguably balanced, read for Gilchrist is a fair man - and the teams drew at Adelaide. While what happened at Sydney should not have and it infuriates me to this day - make no mistake about it - BCCI's "now-we-will, now-we-won't" tactics were clearly those of a domineering giant manoeuvring an ally using strength, subtlety and innuendo, analogous to the moral high ground U. S of A takes in issues of global importance. 

Around the same time, Zee and a group of former cricketers, among them Tony Greig, Kapil Dev and Dean Jones, were at the receiving end of BCCI's wrath as Indian cricket's governing body not only declared ICL  "unconstitutional" but also reportedly "influenced" (perhaps more than just that if Lalit Modi's recent comments are to be believed) other boards which also players contracted with the ICL. With the emergence of IPL - a child of BCCI's status, Modi's brains and the business world's glitz and money - the ICL was all but in the grave. Soon, it was buried. People who speak today of how IPL has given "opportunities" to youngsters must remember that it was ICL which was created with the intention and that IPL built itself on the debris, or at least the marginalisation, of ICL. 

More recently, BCCI's ludicrous wrangling with the ICC over the use of UDRS has once again shown who is the boss. Although it was reported after the meetings in Hong Kong that a compromise has been reached, I am not clear what the compromise is: if using it piecemeal like in the present series between India and England - only for catches not for LBW's - is that compromise, it is befuddling. While Ian Chappell  expressed disappointment, and rightly so, after the meetings at Hong Kong at how ICC panders to the requests of the BCCI and how its directive to de-politicise the game is solid in principle but absurd anyway - Chappell must have been thinking of BCCI, PCB and Sri Lanka cricket - Harsha Bhogle has indicated that BCCI's hesitancy over the DRS is not totally ill-founded. While Harsha is right - and so is Chappell - what cannot be dismissed is the fact that BCCI's power is seemingly doing more harm to the running of the game than good. Arm-twisting - read "threats of cancelling tours" (there are always ways to address issues diplomatically!) -, muffling voices - BCCI's treatment of Lalit Modi when everybody knows that BCCI's own house is far from clean - monopolising viable markets - read the IPL - and stalling important decisions - read "the DRS deadlock" - are definitely not healthy offshoots of the power BCCI wields.    

It does not seem to be just the BCCI but also Indian cricket in general these days that is triggering controversies: a side-note will clarify that statement. After the first test at Sabina Park between India and West Indies last month, the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni made an interesting remark about (allegedly Daryl Harper's) umpiring in the test saying that he'd have been in the hotel long ago had the right decisions been made. Dhoni has not been the fake professional type, so that remark can be dismissed as an amusement. In the second test at Barbados,  Dhoni had allegedly walked to Harper and said, "We have had problems (including, evidently, Harper's third official warning to debutant Praveen Kumar for running on the pitch at Sabina park, which meant Kumar could not bowl for one half of West Indies' first innings) with you before, Daryl..." a remark which could once again be interpreted anyway and one which Harper took offence for. Harper did not stand in the final test of the series at Roseau, which would have been his final test anyway as a test umpire, and has since indicated that Dhoni should have been punished even for his original remarks which Harper had considered inappropriate. While I don't agree with Harper on the call for punishment, I think anything that threatens an umpire's presence should be firmly dealt with to set the right precedent. Dhoni should have, at the very least, been reprimanded. Moreover, I think Harper was well within his rights to warn Kumar - debut test or 150th, rules are rules. Just because Indian cricketers, or Asians and West Indians to be more general, have borne the brunt of sanctions in the past while Englishmen and Australians have got away by far, it does not mean the former have the right to seek to redress the balance in offhanded ways. One may say: what's wrong with Indian cricketers giving it back? No problems - except that umpires, who in some sense "balance" the vagaries of the game, should not be the targets of ripostes. Call me old-fashioned but that is against the very premise on which the gentleman's game is founded.

  

The second has to do with the suspension of the Sri Lankan T20 league this year, the reason being BCCI's objection to allow its players to participate on the grounds that a private party, not Sri Lanka cricket, contracts players in that competition. If the grounds of objections are true - to be honest, they seem murky - I would have no issues but even if they are not I would not be surprised given BCCI's "handling" of the ICL, DRS etc.

Finally, the mutilation of the Future Tours Programme provides a compelling instant of BCCI's lobbying powers at ICC meetings. While many have welcomed the fact that India does not need to tour countries like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh (for a while) as good for both parties involved, Ian Chappell (in the same article linked above) is right in believing that the parameter, then, should apply to all good test-playing nations. The compromise with the BCCI seems to have, however, been struck to achieve balance elsewhere - on DRS and other issues. But what do you expect when ruthless business-minded gentlemen like N. Srinivasan - who owns an IPL franchise, is the President of the TNCA (does Srini, as he is fondly called, have partial amnesia towards the phrase/clause conflict of interest, or is he for all practical purposes immune to it?) and sits with Duncan Fletcher in the latter's first press conference as India coach to ensure that the BCCI's sacrosanct stances are towed at all costs - head the BCCI and politics-steeped persons like Sharad Pawar sit at the top of the ICC? However, Mr. Sambit Bal, editor cricinfo, finds it convenient to oppose John Howard's candidacy for ICC vice-Presidency on ethical and moral grounds. I don't agree with Gideon Haigh's one-sided Asia-bashing on the subject either and while Mr. Bal has a point is it just Howard supporters who got "the wrong end of the stick?" Is Sharad Pawar an inspiring ICC leader, is N. Srinivasan a great cricket administrator (even if he may be a good cricket administrator with a mind par excellence) and is Kris Srikkanth's son an emerging talent because Kris is Chief Selector at the moment? (poor young man, how 'split' must he be feeling?) Come on Mr. Bal, let us have some moderation, for a change, without its being coloured by contrived, or worse, compelled, loyalties .

For many young - those in their teens and twenties - fans of my generation seeing the Australians defeat team after team in the noughties created both a sense of ennui and anger. It is human impulse to want to see the Goliath slayed. India consistently played David and South Africa and England followed suit although by the time the Australians were comprehensively conquerred at home their powers had waned a good deal. I am sure non-West Indians who saw the marauding teams from the Caribean between the 1970s and mid-nineties felt the same way about their teams getting beaten, too. If monopoly on the field is an affair that cannot be tolerated, then monopoly off it needs to be immediately eradicated because it has far-reaching implications for the good of the game wherever it is played. BCCI's unbridled powers in cricket, which on the evidence of the last ten years are self-serving, manipulating and coffer-filling (most of the time), are far from good for the global game. If someone says it is, then I can probably try defending PCB's "decisions" and Ijaz Butt with a perfect forward defence.