On the sidelines: After nearly two decades of being India’s leading batswoman, Mithali Raj faces her biggest test yet. Image source: 1.
“Today’s women can do anything that men can. Is the game of cricket slowly inching towards gender parity?”
Thankfully, the media have shied away from such ill-advised, snarky headlines after the explosive letter/email shot off by Indian legend Mithali Raj to the BCCI, was leaked to the media. The coach has shot back with an appraisal of his own. The matter threatens to undo the splendid progress that the women’s game has seen recently and needless to say, this situation could have been handled with a lot more tact. Ironically, it is due to the increased exposure to the women’s game that this issue has blown up so much; a few years earlier, this may not have made the headlines.
It would be tempting to call it a case of history repeating itself all over again. On the face of it, a coach and a star player at loggerheads—with some very dirty laundry being washed in public in the aftermath of the team getting knocked out of a major tournament—certainly has a nice (if you can call it that) parallel to the Virat Kohli-Anil Kumble saga that played out last year. But this matter isn’t a case of a team not liking a coach’s supposedly headmasterly methods; instead, it is the star player accusing the coach, Ramesh Powar, of selectorial prejudice and injustice. Perhaps the closest parallel to this is the Ganguly-Greg Chappell soap opera that played out in 2005 and 2006, and Ganguly hasn’t lost any time weighing in on the issue. (Psst! Chappell was right to drop Ganguly in the ODIs, but that is a matter for another day. Hush!)
In the midst of all this, there are two issues that need processing as fans all over are looking for answers. One, can the authorities (in this case, BCCI) step in to address the problem? And two, from an analytical perspective, how fair was it to axe India’s greatest batswoman for India’s most important match of the tournament?
The selection panel and captain reign supreme in team selection matters; it has always been this way. In some cases, the captain is part of the selection team as well. And in other cases, the captain can throw his/her weight behind a certain set of players during the selection meeting while picking the squad (which may or may not be agreed upon by the panel, depending on the setup). Once this is done, the matter of picking the eleven for each match is handled by the team management. So the captain Harmanpreet Kaur and coach Ramesh Powar were well within their rights to pick or drop any player as they deemed fit. Don’t we all remember the days when Dhoni was blamed for favouring Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja in the late noughties? Or when various other captains asked for players from their respective Ranji or zonal teams? Why, Karun Nair didn’t make the eleven in the England tour. This is not the first (and certainly not the last) time a selection matter has caused much consternation and heartburn, but the captain and coach are well within their rights to pick the team that they want.
Mithali Raj has written to the BCCI for “grievance redressal”, and there is no problem in that as well, but given the way cricket has always functioned, BCCI shouldn’t interfere in selection matters. The board can definitely look at the larger picture of Powar’s functioning and performance based on the feedback from the entire team (similar to what they did with his predecessor, Tushar Arothe), but once the selection committee has done its job, the baton of decision-making in team matters should be passed to the team management. There is an additional wrinkle to this issue as well. While Diana Edulji, a member of the CoA (which administers BCCI), has rightly said that CoA would not involve itself in selection matters, Tushar Arothe has alleged her of double standards, quoting a supposed instance which contradicted her present stance. If this is true, it is a fair criticism.
And now to the second part—was Mithali Raj holding the team back?
Since 1 January 2015, the average batswoman/batter (positions 1-7) has scored 19.14 runs per dismissal @101.16 SR against the top 6 T20I teams (Australia, England, India, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies). The evolution of the game over the last two 2-year periods (*until 28th November 2018) can be gleaned from studying the average and strike rate stats at each batting position.
Table 1: Evolution of WT20I batting stats since 2015.
“Today’s women can do anything that men can. Is the game of cricket slowly inching towards gender parity?”
Thankfully, the media have shied away from such ill-advised, snarky headlines after the explosive letter/email shot off by Indian legend Mithali Raj to the BCCI, was leaked to the media. The coach has shot back with an appraisal of his own. The matter threatens to undo the splendid progress that the women’s game has seen recently and needless to say, this situation could have been handled with a lot more tact. Ironically, it is due to the increased exposure to the women’s game that this issue has blown up so much; a few years earlier, this may not have made the headlines.
It would be tempting to call it a case of history repeating itself all over again. On the face of it, a coach and a star player at loggerheads—with some very dirty laundry being washed in public in the aftermath of the team getting knocked out of a major tournament—certainly has a nice (if you can call it that) parallel to the Virat Kohli-Anil Kumble saga that played out last year. But this matter isn’t a case of a team not liking a coach’s supposedly headmasterly methods; instead, it is the star player accusing the coach, Ramesh Powar, of selectorial prejudice and injustice. Perhaps the closest parallel to this is the Ganguly-Greg Chappell soap opera that played out in 2005 and 2006, and Ganguly hasn’t lost any time weighing in on the issue. (Psst! Chappell was right to drop Ganguly in the ODIs, but that is a matter for another day. Hush!)
In the midst of all this, there are two issues that need processing as fans all over are looking for answers. One, can the authorities (in this case, BCCI) step in to address the problem? And two, from an analytical perspective, how fair was it to axe India’s greatest batswoman for India’s most important match of the tournament?
The selection panel and captain reign supreme in team selection matters; it has always been this way. In some cases, the captain is part of the selection team as well. And in other cases, the captain can throw his/her weight behind a certain set of players during the selection meeting while picking the squad (which may or may not be agreed upon by the panel, depending on the setup). Once this is done, the matter of picking the eleven for each match is handled by the team management. So the captain Harmanpreet Kaur and coach Ramesh Powar were well within their rights to pick or drop any player as they deemed fit. Don’t we all remember the days when Dhoni was blamed for favouring Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja in the late noughties? Or when various other captains asked for players from their respective Ranji or zonal teams? Why, Karun Nair didn’t make the eleven in the England tour. This is not the first (and certainly not the last) time a selection matter has caused much consternation and heartburn, but the captain and coach are well within their rights to pick the team that they want.
Mithali Raj has written to the BCCI for “grievance redressal”, and there is no problem in that as well, but given the way cricket has always functioned, BCCI shouldn’t interfere in selection matters. The board can definitely look at the larger picture of Powar’s functioning and performance based on the feedback from the entire team (similar to what they did with his predecessor, Tushar Arothe), but once the selection committee has done its job, the baton of decision-making in team matters should be passed to the team management. There is an additional wrinkle to this issue as well. While Diana Edulji, a member of the CoA (which administers BCCI), has rightly said that CoA would not involve itself in selection matters, Tushar Arothe has alleged her of double standards, quoting a supposed instance which contradicted her present stance. If this is true, it is a fair criticism.
And now to the second part—was Mithali Raj holding the team back?
Since 1 January 2015, the average batswoman/batter (positions 1-7) has scored 19.14 runs per dismissal @101.16 SR against the top 6 T20I teams (Australia, England, India, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies). The evolution of the game over the last two 2-year periods (*until 28th November 2018) can be gleaned from studying the average and strike rate stats at each batting position.
Disclaimer: The image used in this article is not the property of this blog. It has been used for representational purposes. The copyright, if any, rests with its rightful owners.
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