It's not the passport

Now then, has John Geoffrey Wright, that infernal Kiwi, the Canterbury interloper, that foreign fellow, prostrated himself before our own BCCI president, just got right down on his arrogant knees and thanked His Dalmiyaness for giving him a one-year extension? I mean, there he was, sometimes on a two-month extension, unsure about his future, just how we like it, and we go and give him 12 months. Talk about indulgence.

We Indians are hospitable to the point of hysteria, still hauling along our tedious colonial baggage. So many pontificating pundits and garrulous gurus with Indian passports, and we still choose Wright? So what if these former cricketers have no real coaching resumes; so what if they can go three days nonstop without a pleasant word to say about the team (and then they expect the players' respect!); so what if they promise us a retreat into a cricketing stone age? They're Indians, aren't they?

What does Wright know about us Indians? ask some former players. Indeed, what does he know? Instead of Aamir Khan videos to relax with, he bungs in tapes of opposition batsmen at work (what bhai, they don't see enough of them on the field?). Instead of a chai piyo first and a Kapil Dev-like `Enjoy, boys', he runs them into the ground and has them dirtying their whites (Remember Chris Evert who said no shot was worth diving for? Well that's us). Instead of players looking for the nearest Indian restaurant when they enter a hotel, they're first checking if it has a good gym.

Our Indian way is going to hell.

What were we thinking?

Wait a minute, hold your horses and those Dilip "Why do we need a foreign coach?" Vengsarkars for a moment. Maybe we're finally thinking.

Maybe we figured it out (or we should have): this guy is good for us. This guy whose father is dying of cancer in New Zealand, but who still finds the concentration and courage to not just hang with his team at the World Cup but help take them closer to the promised land than we dared imagine, really cares.

This guy, who embraces everything Indian, who Javagal Srinath says "thinks about the team all the time, his focus is 100 per cent, and that sort of dedication is rare", may be the real McCoy.

This guy, who strangely enough retreats from headlines; who Rahul Dravid says has made a difference in planning and organisation and has "created an environment where everyone is made to feel comfortable to give his best, and that only an attitude to improvement will be tolerated", has had a telling effect.

This guy, who former player Arun Lal says "has with the support staff brought in professionalism, is first at the nets, sees the wicket is okay, the nets are okay, knows what to do with each player and is tremendous for the team", is doing a decent job. Maybe that's the problem.

He was supposed to fail. He was supposed to be proof (to some of us) that we know best. Forget the fact that the Indian team's an improved side; forget that they actually win Tests abroad these days; forget that they won the NatWest Trophy while under pressure about contracts, and also the ICC Trophy. What's incredible, says Lal, is that at the World Cup, after an indifferent start, they didn't fold like a cheap pack of cards as Indian teams usually do, but found the nerve to scrap their way back. Still, the foreign coach is no good? (No one's forgetting Sourav Ganguly's considerable contribution; it's just that this isn't about him).

So sure, there are lacunae, and we're about a million miles away from Australia in consistent excellence, and the players are sometimes overtly touchy; but the incremental improvements are obvious. Running between wickets, fitness, focus, discipline, attitude, shouldering responsibility. A once-disparate team full of cliques and cabals is now actually huddling, and not just to decide which sponsor pays most.

Funny thing is, ask the former Indian coaches and players, some who slag Wright off, and they say they never had enough time with the team to put their plans into action. Yet Wright doesn't deserve any? They want him to turn a team arriving from an amateur system into world-beaters by tomorrow - something they knew they couldn't do. But they've had their chance; now let Wright have his.

As Ravi Shastri says flatly: "No one else but John Wright should be coach. No one (in India) has the qualifications or delivery (and follow-through). No Indian is a patch on him. He comes without baggage, he's honest, he's sincere, the boys like him and he has done wonders. If there's a criticism - but I know his hands are tied - it's that I'd like to see him crack the whip more".

You think every former player in Australia likes their present team? You think everyone in the Australian team is so cuddly-close they'd marry their sisters off to the next guy? Still, they understand that the cause they're fighting for - i.e. Australia - is bigger than any pettiness. They pull together. We tear each other apart.

So these fellows, KD and gang, great players no doubt, who see no value in Wright, do they ever think, `Maybe, instead of shooting from the lip every time I see a microphone, I could contribute a few original ideas, travel to Australia to do a coaching course, ask John, "Hey, is there any way I could help at the nets?" ' Or is Anshuman Gaekwad saying that the boys are swallowing some illegal elixir the best we can do?

How many times should we say it: great players don't necessarily make great coaches. Coaching is not about grandstanding; it's not about how many Tests you played or the continent-sized reputation you own or the fact that you can come up with seven cringe-inducing similes in five minutes flat. It's about interest and detail and humility and ideas and homework and subjugating your ego and patience.

But what bothers me most is why some people don't like Wright. If the statistics showed we were going backward, then okay. If the team said he sucked, then fine. But that's hardly the case. A former player says there are agendas at work, that people are pulling Wright down because they want the job. Earning the post is clearly too time-consuming. But more worrying is this. Could it be that some of us, the very same people who feel discriminated against by western nations (and we're not always wrong, mind you) are now guilty of an ugly xenophobia? How pitiful that would be.

No one's saying Wright's beyond criticism, or that he's some messiah, but let's treat him like any other coach. And that's the key. Don't judge him on colour, passport, accent; judge him on performance. Thing is, are these former players who are doing the sniping primarily concerned with the primitive idea of a foreign coach showing us up, or are they interested in us being a better team, whatever it takes?

Let's remember why so many of us thought foreign coaches might be a good idea. Not because they're better, but because they're different. Because a foreign coach might bring a fresh mindset; because we're high on flair but need discipline; because he wouldn't care if a player was from Mumbai or Meerut; because too many Indian coaches have come and gone without any effect; because we want a system and direction, not platitudes. And, oh yes, because the team thought we should have one too. They were reasonable reasons and they've been borne out.

We live in a time of internationalism, where a Swede coaches England's soccer team, an Australian was asked to help the West Indies cricket side, and an American baseball coach works with the Australian cricket team. Sport is a better place for such exchanges, for knowledge should never have borders. John Wright is learning every day about, and from, our country and he will be a more rounded man for it. To not learn from him (Why isn't he coaching coaches, he feeding off them, they feeding off him - like maybe Ashok Malhotra hopefully did as assistant coach?) would be arrogant.

One day, sooner than we think, Wright will be gone. And the greatest compliment we can pay him is by not missing him. By having a bevy of trained, ambitious, humble, dignified, tough, literate-in-modern-cricket Indian coaches ready to take his place. Endless pontificating and uselessly undermining him is not the prescription; hard work is. Alas, that's something we're not always too familiar with.