The mob is back with cans of paraffin and lighters with the usual scapegoats tied on bamboo poles. Sanjay Manjrekar is the principal campaigner, gyrating around the scapegoats, screeching and chanting mumbo-jumbo, supported by his mob of news correspondents and a few quondam cricketers. His hair burnished with gel; impish eyes wide open, filled with Schadenfreude; mouth open and crooning; head swinging left and right; a flambeau in hand, drooling to burn the scapegoats like they were the witches of Salem.
There is nothing new in the scenario: whenever Indian batting line up fails in a series, Dravid or Laxman are picked as the scapegoats. Rahul Dravid is temporarily spared due to his excellent run on the tour of England, though he is the next to be lynched. In point of fact, the fiascos in England and Australia cannot be imputed to an individual. The team has lost because of a comprehensive batting failure. Gambhir has been patchy in the last two years and hasn’t scored a hundred thenceforth. Everybody’s favourite Sehwag — a brilliant batsman, nonetheless — has struggled outside of Asia since 2009 with a meagre average in twenties. The skipper Dhoni has been downright inconsistent in Test cricket for a long time. Yet the mob hasn’t uttered a word against them and singled him out as the culprit.
The same experts talked about grooming youngsters in place of Laxman when he was only twenty-eight years of age. Their paedophilic eye only saw his place in the team as a blockage for young talent like Kaif and Yuvraj. (It’s hard to imagine how they would have accommodated two players in place of one.) They cried for his exclusion when the entire middle-order failed in Sri Lanka in 2008, even though he had done better than the other stalwarts. And he went on to play memorable match-winning knocks both home and away in the subsequent years. The rants stopped and an ephemeral admiration grew when his runs continued to flow in 2010; the moment the flow stemmed, out came the cans of paraffin.
After purging the scapegoats following the tour of Australia, the scene will shift to the dead-pan, flat pitches of India where the mob will eulogise the replacements’ red-painted buttocks. Eventually the frenzy will end when the most important tournament of the world begins in April.
There is nothing new in the scenario: whenever Indian batting line up fails in a series, Dravid or Laxman are picked as the scapegoats. Rahul Dravid is temporarily spared due to his excellent run on the tour of England, though he is the next to be lynched. In point of fact, the fiascos in England and Australia cannot be imputed to an individual. The team has lost because of a comprehensive batting failure. Gambhir has been patchy in the last two years and hasn’t scored a hundred thenceforth. Everybody’s favourite Sehwag — a brilliant batsman, nonetheless — has struggled outside of Asia since 2009 with a meagre average in twenties. The skipper Dhoni has been downright inconsistent in Test cricket for a long time. Yet the mob hasn’t uttered a word against them and singled him out as the culprit.
The same experts talked about grooming youngsters in place of Laxman when he was only twenty-eight years of age. Their paedophilic eye only saw his place in the team as a blockage for young talent like Kaif and Yuvraj. (It’s hard to imagine how they would have accommodated two players in place of one.) They cried for his exclusion when the entire middle-order failed in Sri Lanka in 2008, even though he had done better than the other stalwarts. And he went on to play memorable match-winning knocks both home and away in the subsequent years. The rants stopped and an ephemeral admiration grew when his runs continued to flow in 2010; the moment the flow stemmed, out came the cans of paraffin.
After purging the scapegoats following the tour of Australia, the scene will shift to the dead-pan, flat pitches of India where the mob will eulogise the replacements’ red-painted buttocks. Eventually the frenzy will end when the most important tournament of the world begins in April.
