Rift gets cosmetic touch

Coach Greg Chappell and Indian captain Sourav Ganguly who were on a collision course, have been cleverly veered away and put on course by a panel comprising three former captains, the incumbent president and a former president and heavyweight of Indian Cricket.

Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Srinivas Venkataraghavan, Ranbir Singh Mahendra and Jagmohan Dalmiya who made up that panel had asked Chappell and Ganguly to mend fences and work for the sake of the national team.

Well, it would be interesting to watch how the two combatants Chappell and Ganguly would go from here.

Chappell had told the BCCI that if he were to stay, then Ganguly must go. Having said that, it is obvious that the former Australian captain and batting great would find it difficult to be on the same wicket with the skipper.

Ganguly too who has some teammates supporting him and with tremendous fan support would only be pretending to go along with the coach, and in my opinion they cannot click. The scars would remain and it would not be long before they open up and fester the moment the Indians keep losing.

Ganguly's form and indifference warrants that he cannot command a place as captain and batsman according to the coach. His laborious final Test hundred in Zimbabwe is no qualification to hold his place.

Had the committee recommended the removal of Ganguly as requested by the coach, there would have been an uprising by Ganguly's supporters, as they indicated when they torched Chappell's effigies in the skipper's home town.

Had the panel who preferred Chappell to Sri Lanka's coach Tom Moody, told Chappell that they had no need for him and that they would stick by Ganguly, then that would have closed the doors tightly shut and no foreign coach would have ever volunteered to take up a coaching stint in India.

So it is apparent what the committee has done it to give the rift a cosmetic touch.

In this whole ugly and unwarranted incident, the men who would finally be between the devil and deep sea would be the selectors who would soon sit to name the captain for the heavy schedules ahead.

The selectors had named Ganguly captain only up to the Zimbabwe series. Would the selectors continue with Ganguly or would they have the guts to tell him that he has had his innings and that it is time that they put, apparently Rahul Dravid at the helm with the 2007 World Cup in view?. If that happens it would mean that Chappell has had his way.

Moody who was turned down by the Indian panel must be saying a prayer in thanksgiving for landing the coaching job in Sri Lanka where he has a very good and supportive squad to work with.

Top wicket

Although a bit belated, I must congratulate Sri Lanka Cricket curator Anuradha Polonowita for laying out one of the best cricket wickets for the final Test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium.

It is not often that curators come up with wickets that are favourable to both, batsmen and bowlers. That wicket had something for everybody. It had pace, it had bounce and spin and the two teams could not have played on a wicket that was better.

Sri Lanka lost their four top batsmen early, not due to any early terrors in the wicket, but to bad shot selection.

Sri Lanka's three most consistent performers Thilan Samaraweera, Tillakeratne Dilshan and Chaminda Vaas showed the trueness of the wicket by the way they timed their shots, that left the fielders standing while the ball sped to the boundary.

If not for this dream batting paradise Sri Lanka could not have run up a huge score of 449 on the first day.

The Lankans batted and bowled cleverly on this wicket. That the Bangladeshis could not follow suit, was due to having some very poor cricketers. Their cricket is in disarray.

The fielding is poor, the bowlers don't bowl line or length or to their fields and the batsmen don't seem to want to learn. They play a bad shot, and instead of learning from it, repeat the shot.