Virat Kohli is thinking of his squad for the T20 World Cup next year, while Sourav Ganguly is worried whether he would get an extension to his nine-month tenure without facing the mandatory three-year cooling-off period.
Kohli talks his mind on selection before the selectors sit down to deliberate. A year before the 50-over World Cup this summer, he said he had found the No 4 in Ambati Rayudu and everyone knows what happened.
Now, on the eve of the three-match T20 series against West Indies in Hyderabad, he says there is only one vacant slot for a pacer, revealing without actually saying that Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah are certainties.
Plenty of cricket is still to be played and everyone thinks the next edition of IPL will throw up new probables and like Vijay Shankar, someone might force his way in. The West Indies are a better side in T20s than in Test cricket. In fact, they made the shortest format — if one is already talking about Ten10 — truly exciting.
India then play Sri Lanka in a three-match series next month, following it up with five against New Zealand. By then Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri will have a fair idea about the strength of the side.
The final shape of the World Cup squad is a fair distance off. The immediate concern of the board is about the future of its president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah. When the two got elected, their tenure was to end after nine months under the new BCCI constitution framed on the recommendations of the Lodha Commission.
Even before the election, some board members confided that the two would serve out their full term, but it is not clear who promised them when it is for the Supreme Court to decide. The board is approaching the court to allow Ganguly and Shah to stay on till effectively the cooling-off period comes in after two terms.
It is the same Ganguly, who said that the tenure of selectors must be fixed afresh as it was in the pre-Lodha time and not five years as suggested by the committee headed by the former Chief Justice of India. The present selection committee should have continued for another year. For good measure, Ganguly thundered "tenures are finished. You cannot go beyond tenure," forgetting that he himself was seeking an extension by asking the apex court to water down the Lodha recommendation on tenure.
The court-cleared constitution stipulates an office-bearer has to have a cooling-off period of three years after serving two terms of three years each at the board or the state unit. But the new board wants the cooling-off after two terms of six years each at the state unit and the board separately. The board is confident they would be able to convince the Supreme Court to accede to its request.
The board is back to its old ways. Actually, it is back with the careerist administrators who had a hold on it for decades. It is basically a proxy rule, with the kith kin of the old cars running the show. It will again be sending its politically powerful secretary to the International Cricket Council meetings, not its professional Chief Executive.
What has changed in the board, nothing. It is still run by the politicians as puppeteers from behind the screen. President will decide. So the first pink-ball Test had to be played at Eden Gardens, though that cannot be faulted. Then the IPL auction has to be shifted to Kolkata. The National Cricket Academy will have a new look, giving full powers to Rahul Dravid, and that’s good for cricket.
Ganguly should not act only as a façade of the so-called new dispensation, allowing the same old groups to surface again. The men who propped Ganguly may try to control the board, unless Ganguly can control them.
(The writer is a veteran commentator. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at sveturi@gmail.com)