LET me be completely honest-I did not expect Graham Ford, when offered the role of coach of the Indian team, to turn it down. A corner of my mind was aware of the fact that this is one of the most demanding, scrutinized, and high pressure jobs in any sport at any level, but at the same time I had imagined that Ford would be lured by visions of becoming a demi-god by giving our cricket crazy nation a taste of success. I suppose the BCCI also carried this sort of overconfidence, because at no real stage did they look too interested in any alternative candidates. There was only one alternative candidate, John Emburey, and they never seemed to consider him too seriously. But now Ford is not coming, and as the tough tour of England looms large, there is still no coach. Quite a desparate situation to say the least. The BCCI is in a fix because of it's own stuborness and overconfidence.
I have not been among the coverage on what exactly the "senior" players of the team have been saying, or their take on who should be coach, or why they preferred Ford as coach. We could give them the benefit of the doubt- since senior players have more experience they would know who is better suited for the job at the top level. However, there is still this dirty disgusting part of me which says that their opinion (it is indeed important, I am certainly not disputing that) is being given too much weight. I am skeptical about whether there are purely cricketing reasons behind the senior players' choice, or they are looking for a person who is not going to question them under any circumstances, and let them remain in their comfort zone of not being questioned.
Futile as it may be, I still wonder why Ford chose to quit after coming all the way from Kent to make his presentation. The straightforward way would be to accept that he was not willing to relocate along with his family to India, a land foreign to his wife and himself. However, he did know when he was applying for the job that his family would have to relocate or at least make adjustments if he were take up the coaching job in India, didn't he? Once again, the darker side of my mind seems to suggest that he might have been intimidated when actually came to India, and got a flavour what the BCCI actually is, and the complex people and situations he would have to deal with during his tenure which would ultimately limit his freedom. Perhaps he was also not able to get a sense of what a high-pressure job this was going to be, sitting in the relative serenity of Kent.
Whatever his reasons may have been, the fact remains that we do not have a coach now. We need to find a good one, and need to find one fast. We can only hope that the BCCI gets Indian Cricket out of this mess by going about it's job in a more urgent, sincere, organized, and yes, modest manner.
Otherwise we shall be dancing in the dark.
