Most committee’s are known to work as well
as a piece of cheese in hammering out the dents in a militarized tank, i.e. not
very well. (But might provide some useful results if persisted with over a long
period of time. For e.g., the cheese might melt on the metal body, thereby
providing you a hot plate on which to cook delicious continental food, or in
inventing the tastiest tank ever, the use of which shall be in the battle
against obesity. Generally though, its contributions towards fixing dents might
be minimal.) They sit around, wasting financial resources on obscene amounts of
caffeine and generally twiddling of thumbs. However, Cricket Australia (CA)
employed such a committee to publish a report that would save Australian
cricket through well thought out critique and provide direction to its administrators.
And it did so by quite unequivocally stating that the Australian cricket team
“can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field.”
Somehow, this had been exactly what the CA
needed to hear about a cricket team which, quite specifically, needed to learn
how to play cricket. So they sacked a lot of people in administration, brought
in a bunch of other people, sacked a batsman with an average of 50 over the
last three years, kept a batsman with an average of 29 over the last three
years, refused to let go of a keeper who has still not learnt how to bat,
managed fast bowlers on the basis of whoever is not injured is picked, finally
coming back to a bowling attack that is similar to the one that was told it
can’t bowl, but have now drawn two series and are on the cusp of winning one.
That is on the go dynamic administration for you.
However, their success cannot be argued
against. To draw a series against the current world no.2 and now on the verge
of winning a series against the current-current world no.2 is not an easy task.
Sure the Indians have been as likely to pull together 2 full innings without a
batting collapse as a person smelling a cricket ball with his teeth (unless of
course you are a certain Afridi, in which case the normal standardized organs
for smell detection are nothing but a rule meant to be broken), but the
Australians have capitalized and in no small measure thanks to the effort of
Captain Clarke, who apparently never misses a trick when on the attack, are now
looking to steamroll the side that was no.1 as well as no.3 in the world this
year.
So the big question is, do committees make
better cricketers? The answer, quite obviously, is apparently, yes. Thus, from
now on, all cricket boards should form committees that are given guidelines to
tell the players, in no uncertain terms, that the only way to win cricket
matches is to play better cricket.
