Gangs sees NZ pitch

Indifferent is the best way to describe the attitude of the Indian team in the series. Richard Boock, who writes many of the cricket articles in the New Zealand Herald and even pretends to know a bit about batting, has been bitterly critical of the Indian lineup. He has conveniently chosen to ignore that batting on both sides has been dismal mainly due to poor pitches in a country that lacks financial resources for the game, and that NZ has edged out India fortuitously in most matches. Most games have been close.

Ganguly must not have been very patient with Boock in the post-match conferences from the way the disgruntled scribe has been criticizing the Indian skipper. The other writer, Martin Crowe - who led his country's team to only two wins out of 16 as captain - has been vehemently pushing for Ganguly's sacking as skipper, and the latter has fittingly responded to the unreasonable attacks.

The cricketing audience in New Zealand have voted decisively with their feet. Expressing disgust at the poor quality of pitches on which medium pacers like Tuffy, Oram, Adams, etc have farcically prospered against the best batting in the world, they have decided to stay away. New Zealand batting quality is as poor as one had heard before - only, given that they have grown up on these pitches and were facing pacemen who had never bowled in such conditions ever (only Srinath came here once several years back, but he came into these ODIs with no practice whatsoever), they were certainly expected to perform better. This does not bode well for their World Cup preparation. Add to this the losses to the Kiwi cricket exchequer, and clearly New Zealand cricket is the loser in the end. Their wins which have been achieved by paper-thin margins have not attracted much enthusiasm, bleeding the already weak infrastructure of the game in the country in more ways than one.

Next time the Kiwis visit India, if they were hosted on the cricket-playing gullies of the slums in Bombay, they would not make better than 10 runs all told - and they would deserve that in full after their lack of courtesy as hosts. The distasteful pranks in giving trouble to Harbhajan and Sehwag over their shoes, causing their cricketing kits to be "lost", not paying out the required ICC daily allowance of $50 per player, refusing to pay for laundry, refusing to help obtain a visa for Mongia at short notice to their island during a weekend, circulating spiteful and concocted stories about the captain, forcing them to play a bastardized form of the game as soon as they landed, and last but not least watering the pitches continuously in spite of heavy rain instead of covering them up, and later illegally attempting to dry the pitch to help their own batsmen, should all be noted and paid back in full during their return visit to India next year. The mood in India over NZ's mistreatment of Indian players is ugly at the moment and it's just as well they are not visiting India soon because they would receive a very unpleasant reception when they go out to the center. The treatment being meted out to the touring Sri Lankan cricketers in Australia would look positively polite by comparison to what the black caps should expect to face in India.

The Malcoms, in the meanwhile, have been served with a legal notice by Dalmiya, acting on behalf of the Indian players, in the matter of ICC player contracts for the World Cup. One can only say that if the Malcoms covet Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag, and the rest of the Indian stars as much as they clearly appear to, then they should have been more careful of their behavior towards these cricketers. The truth is that 95% of the world cricket audience watches games only involving the Indian team, and the ICC should have gone out of their way to accomodate them.

The ICC is bound to lose the legal battle being waged on them. Meanwhile, the World Cup sponsors, most of whom are Indian companies, have come down heavily on the Malcoms and warned them that anything short of the agreed terms would imply re-negotiation of the $550 million which they had agreed at a time when the economy in India (and the rest of the world) was doing far better.

But why should we pay attention to any of this? Even the Indian media has been spineless and scathing in its attacks on Indian cricket. I say we Indian fans unite to boycott the World Cup. This would achieve two things:

• Give much-needed rest to the weary Indian squad which has been travelling non-stop for over a year now.
• Hammer much-needed lessons into the heads of the ICC, which would lose 80% of incomes if India stays away. Many South African businesses would also encounter severe and heavy short-term losses.

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