Returns of Heroes

The ICC U19 Cricket World Cup winning Indian youth team is being prepared for a grand welcome on return. In addition, going with the current trend, considerable awards are being planned for.

I for one am not against it.

It is true there is always the danger of excesses and such going to the head. The past track record of youth cricketers progressing further isn't also inspiring. But I ask you why?

Besides the obvious reply of physical diffferences becoming more marked as one grows up, there is more to why young players didn't develop as expected. To begin with, no one took it all seriously earlier and accomplishments were rewarded with paternal pride rather than support.

As recent as India's only previous win in this form, Kaif's winning team, there wasn't a plan in place nor the infrastructure to support any nebulous one, if existing. India then still didn't have a sporting acumen as a society....sports still wasn't a career option except for the hard-wired.

Today, it is different.

The difference in perceptions is very young...for both Indian society as well as the adminstrative body of the game in India. Both have only recently awoken to wider potentials of the game. Parents are increasingly self-sufficient and confident with some surplusses to allow for a child who has a "lateral" career interest. They see a seriousness among the adminstrative body's approach and have now accepted that the industrial involvement of moneyed patrons is not just a fly-by-night whim. The past decade and a bit more has shown a consistent graph as regards that...a graph which is only growing taller. That assuages many parents of precocious talents.

What has the BCCI done to engender this confidence and leniency towards sport?

Not much till the past few years actually other than laying the foundations for consistent revenue income. Which is absolutely essential as a starting point. A look at other sports who have dithered on this aspect with distracted officials will make the BCCI's singlemindedness even more impressive and praiseworthy.

To institute a structure (or improve upon) one needs money. To ensure that those who take to the sport go back after retirement to encourage more than discourage, needs money.

There were days when we heard sad tales of sportsmen and cricketers. Other sports still revel in that tragedy rather than doing something about it for change...cricket decided not to. Despite internal differences, they stood fast, and as one, on certain crucial issues regarding the sport they administered. This was unlike the desultory methods of admins of other sports.

The pro-active methods of the BCCI brought money in and held them to it. The message conveyed to teams playing at various times over the past decade was clear - this is a mutually beneficial exercise - and the players responded with their bit to keep performances up to such a tantalizing level that moneybags couldn't turn away from.

That these tantalizing levels continue today rather than completely blossoming is the Indian way of doing things or the time and patience required to turn around a huge elephant as opposed to a spry supercat.

India could well have dawdled in a helpless mire of other sports or what some cricketing countries are facing today...India chose not to. The economic progress and BCCI's savvy foresight have seen the first bricks laid.

Kaif's team had a fraction of rewards or support as this team will now have. There will be some serious development programmes designed for these cricketers...Dave Whatmore is already on the job. This is the biggest difference between then and now. You can all see it, the second layer of bricks being laid to the foundation laid by finances.

Kapil's Devil's will have earned a miniscule fraction of what an Indian team would earn in a hypothetical situation of Indis winning the World Cup in future. If such were to transpire, the effects from top, down to the aboslute bottom of the cricketing ladder, will only be mindboggling.

It is thus that BCCI has first ensured that talent sticks with the game. It is for the talent to make the most of what BCCI has begun to provide for them.

It is not all set and in place...BCCI is moving alongside the players...setting up structures just ahead of them that can aid and assisst in this long haul.

Competition and demands have helped in all this....they have helped poke and prod a tight-fisted dinosaur to reveal its palm. Not yet to the extent one desires, but the same situation has arisen where BCCI and players see mutual benefit in doing their jobs well.

Whethere by design or compulsion, BCCI has at least responded to the changing atmospherics of cricket and has begun to to do what is needed. from here it can only build the next levels of the structure.

The returning heroes will remember this reception and will savor the rewards. The keener ones among them will remember the taste of those rewards. The inspiration for self-improvement is greater now, the incentive mighty, the platform more accessible.

There is a visible energy gripping the cricketing ethos of India today; from the top levels of players, BCCI and ICL, down to the coaching academies of pre-teens. All are gripped in the momentum of progress and change....there is a beckoning future now where there was not much before, and an assurance of it irrespective of how it was forced to come about. You can hear children talking cricket, not as gossipers but as potential participants at some time in the future.

This momentum, this germinal momentum, decalres that it is no longer going to rely on the lucky talent like say a Sachin coming to work for India. It still does work that way a lot...but we are talking of changes in infancy....five years down the line, we are going to talk differently.

India - BCCI and ICL - appear to have done well for the game in their mutual race for eyeballs and heartstrings....what this means for kids in the park is yet another job opening in this growing market of skilled employement called India. have the will, the rewards are yours, is the current mantra in this country today...cricket is just a part of it.

One other thing...it is clear than BCCI has opted against the Australian system of solely banking on veterans....India is keen to have a strong and young benchstrength to step up as and when required to do so. The vision of Dalmiya and Bindra is now being carried forward and expanded upon. The change has begun to happen and the next few years will reveal even more.

The NCA too is beginning to function after the hiatus it was in for long. Ravi Shastri? Perhaps the difference....