Chetan Sharma’s Can of Worms

On a high from pulverising Australia in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, even Australia could not have dug a pothole this large. Caught in a viral moment, the rants of Chetan Sharma, India’s chief selector, has taken the Indian cricket world by storm, particularly his allegations about doping.

On the face of it, what the chief selector of India had to say was not altogether shocking. Yet one had to blink twice to recognise this was not a page out of fiction. What made it appalling though was the fact that Chetan Sharma was not in accordance with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (B.C.C.I) norm of not speaking out in public.

The irony of the situation is not lost twelve hours since the unsuspecting interview was broadcast. While there is a case undoubtedly going to be made that this was merely sensationalism for sensationalism’s sake with no grain of truth, the B.C.C.I are going to have to back that up by firing Chetan Sharma from the post.

Extreme measures are not what was on India’s plate in the midst of a high contest Test series that will decide the finalists of the I.C.C World Test championship in June.

One suspects like in the past instances of match fixing, even senior cricketers will not get on board to commenting on the matter. That will apply even to contemporary cricketers, undoubtedly under the umbrella of the B.C.C.I. This will mean that Chetan Sharma, even if there is more than a grain of merit in what he had to share, will be hung out to dry, with Indian cricket carrying on its business as usual policy.

Although the B.C.C.I has not yet come out to confirm or deny what Chetan Sharma had to say, there are several broad ranging matters that are worth debating nonetheless.

Chetan Sharma, one of India’s yesteryear cricketers and current chief selector, was caught in a candid moment where he spoke on several pernicious matters including the friction between Virat Kohli and Sourav Ganguly, the deference of players to selectors and their unfettered power and even more insidiously, about the idea of Indian players allegedly using banned substances to achieve match fitness levels.

On the face of it, it would appear to be earth shaking facts. While the tremors of the fallout between Ganguly and Kohli have been essayed to the ages with India worse for wear in terms of settling down with a more stable captaincy across formats. What is of significance to note is Chetan’s insinuation that it was an entire coterie and not just Ganguly behind Kohli’s ouster as team captain, confirming what many felt that this was an orchestrated ploy and not something that came out of the blue.

None of this should come as a surprise because unless there was collusion, even with the power in the hands of someone as powerful like Ganguly, the former Indian captain who was the B.C.C.I chief at the time, he could not have done such extensive damage to the now former Indian captain whose place seemed largely unchallenged. It was an open secret that Kohli’s disassociation with Anil Kumble as India’s coach was the reason behind the reinstatement of Ravi Shastri who stepped in as coach from director of cricket when Duncan Fletcher failed to connect with the players as the foreign coach, which now seems like an era in itself.

What does add fuel to the fire, instead of consigning the matters to flames, is Chetan Sharmas’s allegation that despite what has been said by Kohli at the hastily arranged press conference on the eve of India-South Africa Test series, Kohli was lying for reasons best known to him when it came to the matter of his being stopped from resigning from the captaincy.

On another matter, highlighting the power struggle and ego battles within the halo of the B.C.C.I, Chetan Sharma claimed that the selectors held the power as far as Indian cricket was concerned. To emphasise the point, he went as far as to state that while Kohli did not cow-tow to such tradition, players like Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya and a handful of others were frequent visitors at his place.

None of this would seem out of place, given that there was much to be stated even when Mahendra Singh Dhoni was hailed as India’s greatest contemporary captain of the time. His proximity with the then B.C.C.I chief, N. Srinivasan, was stated as the reason why someone of the stature of Mohinder Amarnath was dropped as selector simply because he had suggested Dhoni was no longer captaincy contention or even player contention in Test cricket, which was not his opinion alone at the time. Dhoni stayed. Amarnath was booted out.

But what is of particularly disturbing nature is Chetan’s revelations that players often used banned substances, assuming with masking agents to avoid detection, to improve their fitness levels from 80 per cent to 100 in an attempt to clear the tests for selection.

If what Chetan alleges is true, then not only is this practice wide prevalent but also, detrimental to the Indian cricket in the long run given that such players, coming back prematurely from injury recovery and rehabilitation, are likely to break down and often at the most inopportune times when they services might be virtually indispensable to Indian cricket’s cause.

On a deeper implication, Chetan Sharma’s admission speaks to why the Indian cricket contingent has been a hurdle to cricket’s entry into Olympic and world sports events for one reason in the past: their reluctance to come under the canopy of W.A.D.A (the World Anti Doping Agency). Deep debates ensued about N.A.D.A (National Anti-Doping Agency) versus W.A.D.A and cricket’s preference to remain elusive and their cricketers not subjecting themselves to random testing as is the norm for all sports athletes around the world under W.A.D.A.

What this does is turn the pages backwards, not only pointing fingers to the current state of affairs in Indian cricket but also, more diabolically alleging that irrespective of the current support staff set up, this has been the practice for decades, if not years.

That this is being done in the full knowledge of the selectors who, as Chetan suggests, are in full power of selection matters is disconcerting because it does also point to favouritism where a particular player that the selectors favour might have even been nudged in the direction of using masked agents and banned substances. The street goes both ways and it makes everyone culpable.

There have been debates for aeons about whether there is even substance to cricketers having an unfair advantage for consuming banned substances whether for health reasons or intentionally. It has even been stated that cricketers are not athletes and therefore, do not enjoy that much of an advantage from performance enhancing drugs, even when recovering from injuries.

The long term effects must be considered, whether it is the health of the player or the health of the governing body. If what Chetan Sharma has stated, whether inadvertently intoxicated on power while being the centre of attention of this sting interview or embellished facts in the face of that bravado, it is likely to take a quiet hit as is already evident in how there is already concerted effort to hush the matter, stating it was in the hands of the B.C.C.I and more importantly, in the hands of Jay Shah, who it has been stated in the recent past for also responsible for Ganguly fall from power at the B.C.C.I itself.

The fallout is not up for speculation. There can only be one fall guy in this matter. Else, there would have been more debates and furious discussions, more skeletons out of the closet and nefarious inferences by all and sundry.

If there is one thing the cricket world should have learnt after the match fixing saga of 2000, it is that it is much harder to shake off unfair insinuations than it is to bring the truth to light.

Instead, the silence is deafening. Voices that should rise to nip the problem in the bud, even if there is an iota of veracity in the matter, are conspicuously quiet. And it is disturbing, for the health of Indian cricket as it stands today, aspiring for ultimate greatness.