Country Cricket Vs Club Cricket

This subject is steeply debated these days especially when Chris Gayle turned his back to West Indies only to play Bangalore Royal Challengers in IPL 4. As a matter of fact Chris Gayle along with Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo failed to sign the central contract for West Indies few months ago only to play IPL and other big buck leagues ahead of national duty.

The story of Chris Gayle could be interpreted differently when WICB dropped him for the one off T20 and the first two ODI’s against Pakistan. WICB’s idea of building a team for future did not sufficiently justify Gayle’s omission. After all Gayle is only 31 years and he still has good 4 – 5 years of cricket left in him. Poor Gayle wasn’t even communicated beforehand by WICB about his omission.

Gayle, being a smart lad quickly decided to cash on the opportunity. With Nannes out of RCB line up due to injury and Dilsan likely to leave on national duty, something must have triggered between RCB and Gayle. There you go; Gayle will be playing remaining part of IPL 4 for RCB.

However, after Gayle decided to play IPL, WICB came off with the explanation that he was dropped on fitness grounds. As a matter of fact the board was only waiting to evaluate Gayle’s fitness before including him for the remaining part of the series. This sounds insane. If this is to be true, then board should have intimated its intentions first to Gayle, then to the media before announcing the squad for the early part of the series. Even if it were to be assumed to true, it really did not explain why the other senior players like Sarwan and Chanderpaul are dropped from the squad.

Since the board is keen to play politics ahead of cricket, I’m surely behind the player here for giving up country for the sake of club cricket.

If you think this was fun, there is even bigger fun awaits you.

Today I’m certain that the Sri Lankan cricketers selected for England Tour are bound to leave IPL on or before May 5 reluctantly. Mind you in the 2008 edition, Sri Lanka’s tour of England were cancelled sighting IPL and SL board chose to honor player’s interest to play the big bucks league. Today political differences between the two boards and nations had forced Sri Lankan board to call off their players from IPL ahead of the originally agreed date of May 20. BCCI talks with SL board to hold players only went in vein. I’m pretty confident that this will not go well and BCCI will surely revenge by snubbing a Sri Lanka tour sighting player exhaustion or security threat.

It is almost certain that Tendulkar, Dhoni, Gambir, Zaheer Khan are likely to pull out of the ODI leg of the West Indies tour that commences immediately after 7 days of IPL conclusion. Sehwag is likely to pull out of Test leg too. In this case the board itself is going to back the player’s decision and give them much needed break for playing club cricket and over look the national needs. Since West Indies is supposedly a weak team no one cares to create any fuss, after all it is going to create opportunities for few youngsters. Had it been for Australia or England Tour, I wonder what would have been the boards stand.

Bottom Lines: Who cares if it is country cricket or club cricket? Ego clashes and the power of money continue to rule cricket. Some players are pawn to these battles. Some powerful personalities could make the system work their way. For ordinary human beings like us, we find few more stories to debate.

Dinesh

Cricket Lover