By no stretch of imagination has 2018 been a bad year in Indian cricket.
The men’s team may have not won more than they lost in Tests, but in 39 limited overs matches across the year, Virat Kohli’s side tasted defeat just eight times.
In the women’s game, the prime focus for the past 12 months was on the shortest format, with this being a World T20 year – and the Women in Blue won 16 out of 25 T20Is, while also returning to the WT20 semis for the first time since 2010.
But Indian cricket’s troubles this last calendar lay largely away from the field: from an oft-angered captain and a verbally trigger-happy coach in the men’s setup, to an ungainly clash of egos in the women’s, and from a sexual assault charge on a BCCI supremo, to unresolved mess in cricket administration.
Five controversies from 2018 which Indian cricket could have done without:
1. Kohli’s ‘Leave India’ Remark
It’s almost second nature for the Indian captain to respond heavily with the bat when he’s incensed on a cricket field. But this year, we found that Kohli – even as he touched 30 – had not made himself as steely to opposing views from the outside as you may expect from the captain of the Indian cricket team.
“He is an overrated batsman. Nothing seems special in his batting. I enjoy watching English and Australian batsmen more than these Indians.”
This comment on social media drew the ire of Kohli, inviting an almost hyper-nationalistic response:
“I don’t think you should live in India. Go and live somewhere else. Why are you living in our country and loving other countries? I don’t think you should live in our country and like other things. Get your priorities right.”Virat Kohli
Even as he continued his record-breaking spree of breaking records on the cricket field, the Indian captain’s remark was blasted by many observers.
2. Trigger-Happy Ravi Shastri
‘The next 18 months will define Indian cricket.’
‘We will take no prisoners.’
‘(Virat) won’t take his foot off the gas.’
Sweeping statements are a constant fixture in Ravi Shastri’s existence. But the Indian coach took over-arching comments to another level during his team’s 4-1 Test series defeat in England.
“I can’t see any other Indian team in the last 15-20 years that has had the same run in such a short time, and you have had some great players playing in those series.”Ravi Shastri
Calling the present unit the ‘best Indian team in 15-20 years’ may have been pushing at the edges at any given time. That the ‘verdict’ came when the world number one ranked team had been fairly beaten in two successive away series gave enough fodder for past stars of Indian cricket to launch into Shastri.
3. Mithali Raj’s WT20 S/F Exclusion
Excluding your senior-most batter for a crunch knockout game against of the top teams in the world is a questionable decision, which worsens with the hindsight of losing the contest.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem pertaining to Mithali Raj’s exclusion from the Indian XI for the World T20 semi-final against England.
The ‘controversy’ lay in the weeks that followed.
Raj wrote an e-mail, supposedly in confidence, expressing how ‘humiliated’ she felt. Coach Ramesh Powar, when summoned by the BCCI, said Raj was ‘aloof’ and ‘difficult to handle’.
Both these statements, somehow, were leaked to the world. The dirty linen of a dressing room was out for the world to see.
That the drama unfolded after a tournament where India touched highs rarely seen before – and left all the good on the field forgotten – only leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
4. CoA vs CoA
A ‘team’ constituted by the country’s apex authority is down from an original four to two people; the two making up the ‘team’, visibly, don’t look each other in the eye.
The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators was supposed to be the balm – and calm – to a seething, smarting BCCI, tasked with overseeing activities till the board got its house in order.
Instead, the one constant of Indian cricket administration in this decade – chaos – has engulfed even the fault-correcting mechanism.
Vinod Rai and Diana Edulji showed through the better part of the year that they agree to disagree on more than a few matters. That their disagreements, more often than not, were publicly worded, reflects the board in poorer light still.
From team selection to coach selection to the Rahul Johri #MeToo case, Rai and Edulji rarely found each other at a similar wavelength.
5. Rahul Johri’s #MeToo Case
Not quite a proven controversy, since Rahul Johri was subsequently cleared of sexual harassment claims, but the Indian cricket board didn’t find itself immune to the #MeToo wave that gripped the country in 2018.
An anonymous e-mail implicating Johri was later dismissed as ‘mischievous and fabricated’ by a three-member independent panel – although one of three investigators, lawyer-activist Veena Gowda, recommended counselling on the grounds of ‘unprofessional and inappropriate’ behaviour on part of the BCCI CEO.
The CoA, unsurprisingly, was a house divided on this count too; while Chairman Rai approved of Johri being reinstated into the board, Edulji demanded his resignation.
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