Call for Overhaul

"Success has many godfathers, failure is an orphan!"

-J.F. Kennedy

Clobbered in the Caribbean, another one bites the dust. I heard some soundbites from my friends..."screw Rahul", "sack Greg Chappell", "play kabaddi now", "no hope", "its fixed". Is anybody listening?

For consistency, it is essential that we get 11 clinical men on the field. As things are right now we have a billion plus emotional people outside the field. Well...results are there for everyone to see, our World Cup campaign started on March 17 and it sank to abysmal depths on March 23. Media men, ex-cricketers all are calling for 11 new players and let me assure you, even if we do that the results are not going to be magical. A Tendulkar here, a Dravid & Ganguly there can only bring you moments of magic and not sustained brilliance/dominance in the sporting arena. Sporting glory(or for that matter any kind of 'glory') and discipline walk hand in hand. Poster *boys* are not the *men* for the job.

We have to plan fearlessly and execute remorselessly.. Form a National Sports Academy(NSA), I am fully aware it sounds dangerously close to National Defence Academy(NDA), but that is what we need. We need a regimental approach. I repeat regimental approach. For all this, the money has to come initially from BCCI(yes even for other sports), because it has to pay the price for marketing cricket to the billions without any results. And NSA should go on irrespective of which government is in power. At the outset we need to pick handful of sports that has the maximum fan following globally..Football, Lawn Tennis, Golf, Tour De France, Hockey, Chess, Formula 1 and Cricket for the obsessed billions.

Pick just few kids from orphanages from across the country. Ideal age should be less than five years. Hire the best trainers, coaches from anywhere in the world where they are available and blood new talent right from childhood for all the above mentioned sports. Give them the best, intense training. Manufacture lean, mean sporting machines on an assembly line. Have a 'rank' and 'yank' approach where there is no room for emotions. Cut out all the regional politics that goes behind team selections (Not too long ago a disgruntled individual in Orissa had hit Greg Chappell for not selecting Debashish Mohanty and Shiv Sundar Das! Educated opinion says, even these two do not possess any magic wand) Remember I am hinting at kids from orphanages who have no regional identity, no family background..Their only purpose of existence should be to bring sporting glory home. Also if the 'orphans' do not do well, angry fans have no homes to attack back home, which at best is a big distraction and nothing else.

With the current set up we have for sports in India do not expect anything spectacular for at least another 15-20 years. Mismatch between the public expectation and the competence of the people in the middle is ubiquitous. Olympics come and go, world cups come and go, reams and reams of newsprint is wasted but there are no medals/cups in the cabinet. I guess I am wasting a lot of cyberspace now. Passing thought..There is only one road to become a champion. Performance, performance...every time.