Is India's connection with fans failing?
Tanya Aldred, in the Telegraph, ponders how the BCCI's stringent control of players talking to the media is hurting the fans from connecting with this new Indian team
27-Aug-2014
India, at least in the latter stages, barely played the kind of cricket that would attract crowds during their recent tour of England. As much hold as the sport has in the country, the efforts of the BCCI to control how much the players share with the media and by extension their fans has resulted in a deterioration of their bond with the people, writes Tanya Aldred in the Telegraph.
And yet for what? It means that Indian fans and the cricket-loving public overseas with a romantic soft spot for India no longer feel such affection for their cricketers. Aside from M S Dhoni and poor Virat Kohli, who could not get a run this summer, how many of the current touring side do people know about? Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a bowler from the scissor-factory town of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, who did not even have a pair of cricket boots before his under-17 trial and who as a young man bowled Tendulkar for his first first-class duck in Indian domestic cricket? Cheteshwar Pujara, the teenage triple-century sensation who has tried to make his way in Test cricket the old-fashioned way? Without knowledge, will fans support their side when the going gets tough?