The Caribbean Lesson - 1

I don't want to waste even a single bit of my blogspace ridiculing Indian performance in WC. And I am not going to do that. What I want to discuss here is something more fundamental. And it applies to not only cricket but to all other sports in country. Our performance in no sport can be considered world class despite of the fact that we are one billion plus in number.
Why cant we produce a thousand world class player from this big lot?
There are many important aspect of this problem. Let me discuss one of them here.

Poor management
Most of the sports authorities like BCCI, IHF (oops I cant even remember name of football association) are run by boards which are totally incompatible for this work. Most state cricket control board are presided by Netas. I doubt if there are state boards for other sports. In no other country, except may be Pakistan, these posts are occupied by political leaders. The fact that there are elections for such a post where political parties support one or the other candidate, itself is the mockery of the system.

How can we ever expect a Neta to decide about a field in which he may never have put a foot. So once the top is nincompoop middle and bottom layers really become unimportant. So even if they have the potential to perform, they are not able to do so. Everything from selector, coach to team then will be just average (or actually below that) performers in this system. Expecting good results from them is almost like a miracle.

Our oldies and experts from sports are not doing their bit too. May be they are frustrated from this system. But if they don't do anything for the system, they don't have any right to blame it. So while most are busy doing their own businesses, no one is coming forward to take the real challenge to fight within this system. A Sunil Gavaskar shows his guts to comment about Australian team but he does not say anything or does anything for Blue Billion. Nobody opposed election of Sharad Pawar for BCCI. If these experience players had taken their responsibilities seriously, we would not have got Dalmiyas and Gills.

Next comes how we learn from our failures. Netas are inherently opposed to this philosophy of life. They always follow the round about route to reach dead ends. So after every failure they need some scapegoats for sacking. Coach, team members, selectors - anything will do. Imagine the scene in Indian Hockey where teams and coaches change with each season. Or with Cricket where big changes are in offer in near future (as promised by Sharad Pawar).

Management lessons always tells you to have a two pronged approach to a problem. A short term solution and a long term solution. And if you can keep a backup plan ready along with these two, then chances of success are very high. How much these sports authorities follow these? I think to no extent at all. Their solutions are so impulsive that they can not be even termed short terms solutions. Their effectiveness is debatable.

Its high time we start running our sports as business. There is lot of money involved here, and more importantly a nation's pride is at stack. Give it it's due respect.