The Hindu Business Line : In the grip of filthy lucre

At the moment, one more effort is underway to purge Indian cricket of the pernicious influence of `filthy lucre', and it is to be hoped that it will meet with more success than has been the case in the past with similar exercises. The long and the short of the subject is: The Indian cricket team plays for the country, and everything, including the financial dimension, must be subsumed in this larger task.

What this fundamentally means is that if members of the Indian cricket team have to play for the country without being paid a single paisa then they should clearly do so. Membership of the Indian cricket team is not a job, which has to be performed on the basis of payment of money (in whatever form). This is a very basic concept which is integral to donning the national colours (as with any other aspect of sport at the national level) but one that has been gradually discarded by players as well as the organisers of the cricket during the past 25 years.

Why monetary return?

Indeed, why must the organisers of cricket in the country (the Board of Cricket Control in India) pay any money at all to players for representing their country? If there are players who are extremely poor and cannot look after themselves or their dependents because of the time spent representing the country, separate and specific arrangements should be made to look after their monetary requirements during the period they represent the country and even afterwards (for example, fund-raising matches, a special dedicated fund, etc). For other players who do not find themselves in such straightened circumstances, there should be no question of a monetary return in whatever form for donning the national colours.

If one is part of a national team, the sole objective is to win — in the process fulfilling the sole aspiration per se of any sportsman worth his salt and also (in the case of a national team) enhancing the reputation and image of the country at the international level. This is essentially what one plays for, and certainly not for a monetary return. Indeed, it should be underscored that any injection of a monetary `reward' will almost certainly weaken the intrinsic `sportsman's goal' in any true sportsman, namely, playing for the sake of winning, which is not desirable.

Look Elsewhere

If there is the lurking danger of the national cricket team losing talent because players will not join such an outfit due to the associated pecuniary loss, then they should be asked to shun the national team and look for greener pastures elsewhere. The problem for these people is that in Indian cricket there is no money to be made anywhere else except at the level of the national eleven, the inference being that non-payment of `salaries' will not automatically mean a depletion of talent for the national team.

If Indian cricket is cleansed of the scourge of `filthy lucre', a whole lot of problems plaguing the game at the national level now will disappear. True, this will be a huge task to undertake and accomplish not least because of the deep inroads which cash has made in the entrails of the game. But there is no alternative if the myriad self-centred vested interests disfiguring national cricket just now are to be fought effectively. One has not mentioned anything about sponsorships but, clearly, it is a vital part of the national cricket scene, which ought to be looked at closely for the contribution it has made to the relegation of the game to the level of a roaringly successful business operation.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury