The world cup is won, the country is in euphoria and the winning team is rolling in money. What with sports cars, lump some cash prizes and facilitations from every tom dick and harry without any regard to even see if the person being facilitated even got to play a single match.
Case in point, Maharashtra government has given an extra 5lak prize to Rohit Sharma and Ajit Agarkar. While the former was totally justified and i dare say too less for a young talented player who can be a great hope for future. The same cannot be said for Ajit Agarkar. Exactly what was the reasoning in giving cash to anyone who frankly was below par and so much so that the captain lost faith in him midway through the series, let alone the fact that he was also removed from the ODI team by the selectors who have shown too much faith in him for too long a time before this is baffling. The only reason can be to be not left behind in a game where cricket has little to do and politics takes center stage. No government wants to be seen as the one not facilitating the cricket team and the players from its own state as these players are in national spotlight. The country knows about Jogindar Sharma today and his state has made him a national hero(god forbid if Haq had connected yesterday, i can't even imagine what would have happened to Jogindar, most probably a career finishing over). Haryana government announces 21 crore cash prize for him which almost everyone will agree that his actual bowling was pretty ordinary. Rudra Pratap Singh gets the first International sports person of the year award from UP government, but wait its actually "Manyavar Kanshiramji International Sports Award". To further show how far politics plays a role in the cash prizes, the deserving Irfan Pathan has not been given any prize by the Gujrat government. Considering the fact that people like Agarkar are getting bonuses, you would expect the final's man of the match toget a sizable booty too. Unfortunately Modi government doesn't quite know what can be the political implications of rewarding a player of a community it was waging war against 4 years back. They might still reward him as the story is now starting to do the rounds of blogs and internet, but the point is that the intention ofcourse is not reward the players but to see how political milage can be obtained from the distribution of such. The cash prizes is immaterial. Whats there to see in almost every case is that its more to get into national headlines over an issue that captures peoples imagination today. Take the case for example of hockey. When the sport is not in the limelight, the prizes announced for Dilip Tirkey for winning the Asia cup was the grand sum of 20000(thats twenty thousand, you read it right). And the grand sum of scoring a goal,
1000 bucks. So there are different yardsticks for sports in India, we already know that. Cricket is the prime sport and you get the moolah in that. (Just one problem with that, there is no point shouting we don't do well in any sports with these kind of cash prizes doing the rounds for international events, one only shudders at what would happen to the soul who competed at the national events)
Unfortunately putting in the cash doesn't do cricket any good too. BCCI, rattled, bruised and on the back foot with the ICL controversy, was so overjoyed by the Indian performance at the T20 world cup(more because it completely hijacked all media attention over ICL which was making more headlines in the media than BCCI ever did) announced a string of prizes for the players even before they actually won the world cup. While India's performance has been commendable considering no one even gave them a chance to reach the semi's before the world cup, the better idea would be to reward them when the finals are over. Otherwise the only impression that was is given that we are perfectly happy with being the second best. Unfortunately thats not with this series alone. That impression has been given too many times in the past too. Thats exactly the reason why our players are too happy winning and performing once in a blue moon, becoming heroes in the eyes of BCCI and the nation and then delivering a string of flops. One blitzkrieg by Sehwag is enough to forgive his past and make him a national hero while one bad over from Sreesanth gets a call for Agarkar in the national squad, the state of affairs is all too common in Indian cricket. Its as if everyone is sharing the loot without a damn for consistency. What i would want to see is people getting rewarded not for one off wins and shocks but for regular consistent performance, people who are made heroes and remain so over a period of time not based on vagaries of day to day performances. Thats why the coming series against Australia will be crucial. If at the end of the day the same people whom we have put on the moon with this win and given crores of rupees flop there, the world will only call this a fluke and effigies will be burnt again and commentators will put it on the fickle Indian fans. Indian cricket will remain where it has remained for the last 30 years.
Unless you start rewarding performances and winning performances at that, Indian cricket team is always going to be the 4th-5th team in the world, more happy at delivering a shock or two in the middle(be it performing like a 10th place team on some occasions or a 1st place team one day) but the law of averages will always catch up and they will remain the team that has a lot of potential and strength on paper but never the tenacity to perform like champions consistently on the field.
Prizes, Politics and the future..
