BCCI should be severely reprimanded

BCCI and Warnings to Sehwag: Hitlers in Disguise - Disgusting

I do not really care whether one believes that Ganguly should have been left out of the team or not. There will always be diverging opinions about dropping a person who was previously deemed successful at the game to be dropped. In a certain sense, this will always be a part of your own interpretative framework. Nevertheless, there ought to be at least two ideals that one should up hold: (a) the dignity of a human being, whatever else his mistakes might have been, let alone failures in a gloriously uncertain game, needs to be recognized, affirmed and celebrated; and (b) that one should not prevent a person, irrespective of the particular contractual obligations, from affirming (a). Indeed our human quality is at stake, if we were to forsake either of the ideals. Forget about being human, we would not even be affirming our animal selves if we were to deny those two ideals.

If we were to take the above framework into perspective, then the warning of BCCI to Sehwag for his comments about Ganguly also comes into perspective. That probably ought to serve as a warning about a Board that has run amok on its own power and has lost all perspective and sense of values.

What did Sehwag do? He, if I am not mistaken (and my information comes from what I have read in the news), said that on occasions Ganguly is missed in the dressing room. He acknowledged that Ganguly's selection is a matter left to the discretion of the selection committee. And moreover, he expressed a yearning that Ganguly makes a come back and that Ganguly supported many players who have now come good. If that is the summum bonum of the comments made by Sehwag and the interpretative twist that one could put to this, what is the pin prick that caused the BCCI to admonish Sehwag? I am really at a loss here.

Was it wrong for Sehwag to acknowledge that Ganguly could be missed by some or all of a team? Is it so wrong to miss a former team mate, in whatever capacity? Isn't the whole team spirit also supposed to come from personal bonding? Isn't it human to express a sense of vacuum when a member of the team is missing, for whatever reason? Could the notion of team building ever overcome the human dimension of bonding at a personal level? Or is the bonding to be mechanical, such that when a person is dropped, one should not even feel a sense of loss? Can such a bonding ever lead to the right kind of team spirit? The last time when I heard that the team and the cause can be higher than even the human dimension of bonding was when I read the rhetoric of the Nazis. What was BCCI admonishing Sehwag for? For expressing a sense of binding with a former team mate? For missing another human being?

Now, one could at least exonerate the BCCI warning, if Sehwag were guilty of trying to instigate unrest. Unless there is something going on that we do not know of, then there is no reason for BCCI to have reacted in this high handed a manner. If there is indeed something going on, then, please let us know. Is the very name of Ganguly now a cause for distress in the team (or at least some of its members)? Should such a situation be tolerated? Is that really a basis for building a good team? That we allow negative feelings to overcome the most sublime of human feelings: a sense of loss and pity for a former team mate? Is that what a team is about? The issue is not about whether you can reveal those things or not. The issue is about whether issues that cannot be revealed are supposed to be in the interests of the team. Should we be justifying suppression of some very fundamental values of human life, of the desirability of expression of solidarity with another human being, on grounds that cannot be revealed? Would pragmatism permit this. I am not sure about that.

For the sake of argument let us even assume that Sehwag, for whatever unspeakable reason deserved to be rebuked. This can only be if Sehwag had used the cover of a fundamental human sensibility to foment trouble. Then air it out and punish him. If pragmatism were indeed the foundation of this BCCI outburst, I would at least have hoped that BCCI would not talk about it to the public. The very act of revealing such discourse is chilling: the revelations were intend to chill any human feelings, irrespective of whether they could be justified or not. STOP IT.