After having delight of watching some good battle between bat and ball for 9 days, the media has been divided by the press release sent by BCCI Team Manager and statements made at Press conference.
Lets go through the points raised by manager and captain as concerns/reasons for failures on field due to off field and on field activities.
Umpiring standards have been questioned by Captain in the press conference after the batting collapse in Second innings of Second Test as one of the reasons. Whom are we complaining against here? Umpire's call if DRS was implemented or the umpiring errors? If its for the Umpire's call of DRS, then its technology and all the teams have come to terms with it. If BCCI says, we entertain and support fair game, then the rule is simple : Follow DRS as all teams do. If the statement hints to umpiring errors, not to forget, Second Innings of First test, when Murali Vijay was dead plumb when Kohli just walked in. Taking it into the pressure being applied ,the match situation and history of batting collapses with the Indian team in past series, match would have ended much earlier. What would it have done, the confidence of the team with which they have batted in First Innings of Second Innings would never exist. DRS is for correcting the umpiring errors which can be corrected.Blame has to be at BCCI and not at umpires or the hosts.
Practice pitches and Food has been another point of concern for team. The worn and torn pitches are the worst a test match wicket could get and practicing on them should be taken as positive and batsmen should try correcting their techniques rather than complaining. We can never forget Indian pitches which are totally different to what one gets to practice. Even the pitch gets rolled with heavy roller, even though its not supposed to be and never have we seen any visiting team complaining about it. This is because they accept that their batsmen have flaw in their technique and return back by correcting the flaws to succeed. Come on guys, you are here to play and not for food. The MoU between the team manager who has agreed for menu should be questionable and not the organizers.
Another point raised, was batsmen were not ready for batting as the overnight batsmen was hit in the nets. This is almost like a school boy complaining that I dint know that I had to show my home work even before the first bench students have shown. Agreed that a batsmen needs time to prepare to come and bat in a match. When in between an innings, if no.3 and no.4 are out the consecutive balls, can no.5 complain that I was not prepared to go and bat? A batsmen has to be ready to bat at any point of time, he is required to. No excuses accepted when you are being handed fat pay checks for playing.
My humble request to ICC is to take an action on BCCI for rejecting DRS and also stop getting bullied by the monetary power of BCCI. ICC did survive when BCCI was present or not. Cricket is a game which needs to be played fair and everyone has to play with same rules and without any variations. Accept DRS or reject to play.
Hoping ICC take a decision on such off field activities and tantrums being played and have a fair series.
