The great Indian dream got crushed

Its almost 48 hrs after the great Indian dream got crushed; Team India crashed out of 2009 ICC world T20 championship and media started milking on team India’s failure. Level of Dhoni’s detestation has reached to such pinnacle, that just now some makeup savvy big headed (so called intelligent) anchor on some ABCHT news channel called Dhoni’s bowling as reckless and offal no her 30 minutes cricket special show; I wonder what she must be asking her co-anchor during commercial break? ‘Hey, if batsman hold bat with both the hands, then why Mahi is right handed and Yuvi is left handed batsman?’ After listening to that self proclaimed cricket wizard, I thought of writing my first ever blog.

Jun 14, 2009: England held their nerve for a three-run victory which ensured that new champions would be crowned on June 21. As an Indian cricket fan I am dejected with team India’s performance; but by far I am hyperbolically nauseated with Indian media. Historically team India never performed well whenever they had been labeled as ‘championship favorites’. Though it proved no different in 2009 ICC world T20 championship, this time I candidly believe, the off field pressure caught Dhoni’s dear devil than anything else.

First let me put on paper my understanding of how Indian media works. In 21^st century where even teachers and preachers are commercial, one can not expect media to be non commercial. Whenever there is money evolved there will be definite competition. In this so called commercial world, everyone wants to be at least 1 step ahead of the competition. And when there are hundred plus 24x7 news channels and countless news papers one can just imagine the level on competition. In the quest of ‘How to go ahead of the competition’ some one thought of adding emotions to the news, some what similar to Bollywood masala movie. This masala way of reading news started working so much so that now a days most of the news channels do have sets of actors, directors, graphics designer and what not to recreate the scenes. As we all know it’s hard to mimic heroism and easy to sell failures, they started airing more and more negative news. Now come the interesting part, not only media started giving us negative news with lots of emotions but they started creating news. So here it stands, where media takes some non issue, throw the positive part away, add lots of emotion and masala to negative part, put the blame on well know person or post, publicize its as one big common enemy and create a never dieing monster out of it. It simply doesn’t matter what will be the adverse effects on the society.

With such a talent in kitty every one can create thousands and thousands of stories on cricket. We can easily make out the relation in stories like rift between Sunil Gawaskar and Kapil Deo to Azar vs Sachin to Sachin vs Gaguli to Gaguli till Dravid. This is going on for so many years. After Team Indian won the 2007 ICC world T20 championship media found new interesting story in so called rift between seniors and juniors. These series of short stories which took such an unfortunate turn that the most successful captain got a royal kick. Do you remember at that time who was the common enemy? Yes, it’s non other than Indian selectors. That time no one though of ‘rift between seniors and juniors’ and ‘Do we really need slow moving oldies’ stories.

Time passed by, Indian team under Dhoni started winning more consistently. Indian people got use to accepting T20 and ODI team without seniors. (As masses do not care for test cricket so true media folks never created series of short stories on test team) then came the biggest event 2009 ICC world T20 championship. With no senior around it was very difficult to generate story. Even new coach did not help by maintaining low profile. Media went back to its tested and trusted story, the rift between two popular senior in the team. They tried to establish difference between Yuvi and Mahi on captaincy issue but no luck. Then they tried again but this time it was Viru and Mahi and guess what it worked. It worked big time.

Tell me which captain will tell the world that I lost my trump card, just before such an important tournament? Remember 2008 IPL? Do you remember Shoun Pollock makeshift MI captain ever talking about fitness of Sachin Tendulkar? And when will be he fit to play? As true leader Dhoni never answered question related Viru’s fitness and Media successfully created doubt in minds of Indian people. Media started grilling MSD from left, right and center and finally poor person lost it and against whom? Against his own countrymen, the Indian Media. To rubbish the talks of a rift between himself and Virender Sehwag, Dhoni did what no one ever could have even thought. He went out with his entire squad, including support staff, for the pre-match press conference and lashed out at a "false and irresponsible" Indian media. Standing on the wrong side of media Dhoni forgot the media is like record player, It can play side ‘A’ as well as Side ‘B’. It was start of battle between Media and Dhoni. Hundreds of electronic and human eyes were looking for tiniest mistake of Dhoni.

Harassed by media, Dhoni made his only mistake, which reminded me the similar mistake that Ganguli did in 2003 finals, after winning toss he selected bowling against Aussies to protected Sachin from McGrath. Here Dhoni protected his best batsmen Yuvi and Yusuf by sending them down the order. The rest, as they say, is history. The media could have won the battle against Dhoni by proving him wrong. How did they achieve that? Simple, just by killing Dhoni’s ability to think aggressively. If it was not the motive of media than what else was it? How can you motivate team by airing the stories like ‘the rift between captain and vice-captain’, ‘Top 5 mistakes on Dhoni as a captain’, ‘the split in Team India’ and the list goes on and on and on. Any guess what was the outcome?

The great Indian dream got crushed but ironically the fat Indian media dream has come true.