Who's mentoring the players? - Harsha Bhogle

[Temujin Khaghan]

So there is too much money in the game. Young men with hormones on fire, and inhibitions left behind at the last stopover, find temptation at every corner and the wherewithal to yield. They toss more away on one purchase than their parents made in a couple of years, in a lifetime at times. And we look on from the sidelines tut-tutting, as the elders of our generation did at us. Surely, we say, they need to be mentored, need to be reminded of what it means to play for your country, need to be told of the responsibility they carry, of the inequities in our society... it's a long list. The need for mentorship makes for an interesting debate. As the game grows bigger, as opportunities increase, as a tug on the shoulder seeks to drag young athletes away from the path that brought them success, surely they need someone to nudge them back, to drag them back sometimes? I strongly believe in the need for a sounding board, something that reminds young men of why they started playing this game, of what they can achieve through it, and of how they can grow as people, which is why, the best time to mentor players is in their late teens. It is not always necessary that growth as a player and as a person must go simultaneously; sometimes you can be a giant in one area and a dwarf in another, but it helps if the two go together. It is especially useful because with Indian cricket, and cricketers, there is a history, even a legacy, of arrogance. The message, sometimes subliminal, sometimes direct, is that the world needs them more than they need the world. As some of us know, that is but a momentary high, but it can be a devastating high. The role of a mentor can also be overstated; the need can be felt more in the mind of the mentor than by his ward, as every parent has experienced at some point. The day a player feels the need to be disciplined and respectful to his craft from within himself, he acquires a work ethic, and then nothing can stop him from being as good as he can be. If he needs to be reminded, then he hasn't felt it, and he will at best smile and nod at a mentor. In course of time he will realise that living with fame and money is a challenge similar to learning to play the short-pitched ball. Both can be career-threatening. Indeed, the bouncer has sometimes been conquered more easily than fame! The argument, therefore, that young men shouldn't be offered too much is simplistic and impossible to deliver. These men possess skills that command a price, and you cannot insulate them from buyers, just as you cannot a fine equities trader or a magician or a winger who runs like lightning with the ball at his feet. It has often been said that they need the likes of an Alex Ferguson to groom them. It is a fair thought and it works in football, when it does, because the manager has the power to drop a player and endanger his future if he doesn't fall in line. That is why, in the Indian context, the selector is a critical and vastly under-exploited resource. If the selectors are men of integrity, and are seen to be putting the team's interest first at all times, they can be the agents of growth and progress that mentors sometimes cannot be. But we do not always look at it that way. The position of a selector is often a whimsical appointment, where before and after his term he wants to be seen to be close to the players he is now expected to adjudicate over. It cannot be like that. A Ferguson or a Mourinho or an Ancelotti work because of the nature of the system, where you play for a franchise and for money more often than you do for your country. If you don't toe the line, you lose your contract. It is something that a national body can rarely implement, and yet it must. We have often had this debate in India and we return to the one-from-each-zone approach, even though with the new Ranji Trophy pattern the zonal system is obsolete. When the Duleep Trophy is disbanded, as it should have been a decade ago, even that vestige will vanish. We should then, strictly speaking, be able to appoint the best man for the job, but we won't because it has never been seen as a critical appointment. There is also this flawed theory that there is so much cricket that three people cannot see enough. Another reason to put limits to the ridiculous amount of first-class cricket played in India. As has been increasingly shown up, the quality of our cricket simply isn't good enough, and so under-skilled players get overpaid. It is imperative that all selection, including that of selectors, be attitude-based. It could well mean that a team loses a dazzling talent, but inevitably the team will emerge stronger. Sadly the BCCI is too understaffed, and not committed enough, to focus on issues around the playing of cricket, and till such time it will be each man to his own. A show-cause notice fewer and one more player-care notice will do them no harm. ============== http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/461830.html

[SJS50]

Someone needs to tell Mr Bhogle that what the players needs is not mentors (ooficially appointed or otherwise) but a sense of responsibility which does not come to humans easily in anything they do which does not have "enforced discipline" to start with. From our childhood we need to be disciplined first - not by any "stick" as some may misunderstand my suggestion to mean, but by a clearly understood and effectively managed regimen under which all institutions need to work. From our childhood we are made to understand this. There is a set of do's and don't's at home and a clear hierarchy. The parents are our seniors and we follow a set (unsaid at times) of unwritten rules at home. The homes that fail to do so or where parental authority is missing are more likely to have children going astray. Same follows us to school and onto our work places. Stop deducting leave entitlements and even salaries (or the threat of the same) and the number of people reporting to work on time (or even at all) will drop dramatically. This isn't rocket science. In India we have slowly eroded the power structure and hierarchy. The cricket/team managers were never considered to be good for anything except carrying the bags of the senior cricketers anyway . The coaches were appointed to equitably distribute favours amongst old cricketers (or inequitably if you please). When we finally got a professional coach who was determined to assert his authority on a bunch of undisciplined youngsters (in some cases goaded on by a captain wallowing in the authority vested in him by a billion strong fans besides media and parliament if you please) he was shown the door. The choice of a new coach was repeatedly stymied by vested interests including some senior (including some playing) cricketers through tactically placed sound bites in the ever obliging electronic media till a good but 'soft' candidate, acceptable to all (including those most needing to be brought in line) was found. Now there wont be calls for his head because everyone loves a 'nice' guy in our country even as we admire the 'tough' Australians and their handling of wild cats like Symonds. Sorry. I do not think our youngsters need mentors any more than they already have in the form of seniors with hundreds of international games behind them. They need to be put into a system where they are NOT the final arbiters of what is to be done be it discipline on tour, clauses in the WADA contracts and what have you. I dont blame them. I too have been a rebel and would have continued to be one had not the system showed me that if it was to always be "my way" then I always had the highway to chose. Every young (or not so young) man or woman is the same - well almost every. Coming to the specific problem of the failure of the youngsters representing India and the outcry for their heads (besides those of the selectors), I do not blame the selection of the squad or the resting of the big guns for the debacle as much as the failure of those responsible to understand what was required. There have been many occasions in the past when the stronger sides in the world (England being the most obvious example) have sent completely second-rate side(as against their current squads) to less important contests. They often sent to South Africa, for example, a whole lot of people who had not just never ever played international cricket but had played very little first class cricket (if any) ! What they did, however, was to have the sides led by a senior even a veteran. Including a couple of players who were senior statesmen in the game (even if they hadn't played for years in a Test match) gave them the maturity the side and (most importantly) the youngsters need. If the selectors had, for example, requested someone like Anil Kumble to lead the side and maybe, added another senior of the type like, say Dravid the youngsters would have known exactly what was needed of them. We are asking too much from Raina, still trying to cement his India spot, to do this job. We are al scandalised by what happened in India's innings in the first ten overs in that second game against Zimbabwe. Who knows what the players had been told? Clearly both were struggling before that innings and everyone was already shouting for at least one of them to be dropped (the other was slightly protected for want of another keeper). Raina himself was under pressure and would have been troubled by the thoughts of returning home in humiliation in what he thought was his great opportunity for glory when appointed captain. Where was the senior who had seen it all and had been through the travails and tribulations, to counsel the young man with soothing words which may have allowed them to play closer to their natural games as they clearly did not do. The same would apply to the handling of a bunch of young bowlers, thrown in the battle ground, and being asked to defend a small total with their limited experience. Wouldn't the presence of someone like Kumble been invaluable to the frayed nerves of Dinda and Yadav?