When the coronavirus burst on to the headlines in a purely home context, which was quite a long while ago, it was Sourav Ganguly, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, who said, very emphatically, that the Indian Premier League, the midsummer summer show of Twenty20 matches, would be held on time.
The statement risked widespread ridicule ~ and duly copped it too, in limited segments of the media. It feels faintly amusing now, so many weeks later, that he has resigned himself to the all-pervasive uncertainty in the wake of the outbreak, to the extent of saying that this is not the time when you prattle about sport.
Saving localised humanity ~ starving, in need of a lot of things a world away from bowling, batting, fielding and a little jiggerry-pokery along the way ~ is now the name of the game. But speech may have been divinely given to the board to hide its thoughts.
The IPL, frankly speaking, was never really given up on. And, even after the second instalment of the Centrally announced lockdown, the BCCI, however distressed by the plight of the virus-afflicted millions of this land, worked assiduously for its own purpose, regardless of how inopportunely, even cynically timed it might have seemed, to be fulfilled.
And we all know why. The IPL is the goose that lays Indian cricket’s golden eggs. If the coronavirus were to cut it open, scuppering a season’s lark, things would have been really hard to bounce back from. So far so bad. There is more to it than just this, to be sure.
The television company that holds the telecast rights to the IPL is also to show the Twenty20 World Cup this October-November in Australia and the Asia Cup, somewhere, some time in 2020. There has been talk that for the IPL to be held ~ with or without its usual retinue of overseas stars, going on for its customary length or finding itself abbreviated ~ one of the two other tournaments will have to be shelved.
But the International Cricket Council can scarcely welcome any attempt at tinkering with the World Cup with a whoop and a holler, given that it happens to be its own tournament.
If Indians mind being dubbed so insular as to be maniacally mindful only of their own interests, they might not want to skip the Asia Cup simply because this year was Pakistan’s turn to host it and the Asian Cricket Council shifted it from there only to ensure the participation in it of Virat Kohli and his compatriots.
So it now happens to be a three-way overpass descending bang into the middle of a dreadful mess. The choice before Ganguly is quite clearly between tact and vision. The whole of India waits for him to show the path out of the confusion, hoping he fits the bill.