It is weird Mr. Srinivasan is attributing lack of foreign players as the problem for indian cricket. Just by virtue of being a foreigner some team can benefit it is by proper training and selection methods a team can!. What Indian team is lacking is proper selection procedures and scientific training at young age!. Even though India has a billion people, only a 200 million or so of them are playing cricket in their daily lives and out of which, probably a miniscule percent of them get good training!. On top of it india lack competetive spirit. Surely, governmental intervention is very high that must be removed as well. YOu know the very rule that only BCCI should control cricket itself is something of a overreach. India should be allowed to create private cricket clubs if need be and also allow players to be selected w/o government/political/nepotistic means and so on!.
The whole idea of colonial nation vs. colonies logic is again stupid!. The whole reason western nations do good is they shaped their economy much earlier than other nations that lead to good climate for everything. There are always winners and losers in any case even in western nations some win some lose!.
I appreciate your article and also agree that some affirmative action (reservation) is required to create a level playing field. But the question is at what level it is required? NFL do encourage smaller teams by providing them with funds and resources so that they can compete with "large teams". It doesn't have rules like- the smaller teams can enter super bowl by winning couple of games whereas larger teams have to win 5 matches. Indian government too have to provide some affirmative action so that the students can compete well at the competetive exams. Govt has to improve quality at the high school level, if possible provide coaching to make the students able to compete with so called "rich general category students" for IIT/AIIMS. But not for getting into IIT/AIIMS. That cripples the society doesn't uplift it.
What are you trying to say, Rajiv? I like your extreme opinions and statements, in general, but I think your article today is a bit wacko. If they had brought in, say, another thirty teams from across the former colonies and slave countries, including India, for one, I wouldn't have watched them play, and two, they would have played a few months of preliminaries. Likewise about the reservation for "oppressed classes". How much is sufficient, and how much of self-flagellation is enough and for how long, to compensate for earlier sins, that one wouldn't go the way of dinosaurs oneself.
Rajeev, Good Analysis. However the success of NFL cannot be replicated in cricket for a simple reason-cricket is international. For example, some of the money that the BCCI makes cannot be redistributed to Australia and neither can a small-town Australian player play for the Indian national side. That aside, however Indian team chance will certainly improve if we start dropping non-performing players more aggressively without overemphasizing their past performance.
ur logic and facts are totally off dude! europeans dominate soccer because they are good at it and they play with lot of passion and patriotism. But then, non euros have won more world cups like brazil, argentina. Senegal a small unknown country almost won the cup last time. This year, we saw lots of underdogs like ghana, ivory coast from africa giving hard time to the world favorites. Please get ur facts straight instead of making a fool of urself. U r critisizing cause u r partial to NFL. Contrary to what to stated, american football has more rules in favor of the corporates than the players themselves. In american football Players are like pawns who are spoonfed to do exactly what they are told to do by their coaches, game planners, owners, etc. While in soccer players play the game and rule the field (like in tennis/cricket). A game/match should be played by the players and not the coaches/owners. Soccer is a very simple yet very physical and spontaneous 90 min game. When was the last time we saw a truly 60 min NFL game? World cup soccer is truly a world championship game. NFL is not, even though the winners declare themselves to be world champions (??). Pl no more comparisons.
