15th of May'2008. It's primarily a rant, a rant against the commercialization of the game of cricket and it's ill effects in general and Mr.Mallya,the embodiment of this curruption , in particular. IPL was on and Royal Challengers Bangalore, led by Rahul Dravid was staring at the prospects of finishing at the bottom of the league having lost 7 out of the 9 games it played at that stage. This had infuriated the businessman in Dr.Mallya- the franchise owner and he went public with his grievances regarding team and team management. He even sacked Charu Sharma, the CEO of the franchise mid way through the tournament. I had been listening to his nonsensical whinings for a few days and this rant came about when I couldn't take it anymore. Here is it how it went..]
"So what? No one died."-Lance Klusener, reflecting upon his suicidal run for glory at Edgebaston in WC'99 Semi final against Australia.
Well, I am fully well and truly aware that it'd be futile to expect a hardcore businessman like you , Mr.Vijay Mallya to be able to even comprehend, let alone agree with this most philosophically profound of observations about the game. Still, I wasn't expecting the man behind Kingfisher- the best damn beer in the world- to be so stupid & cricket illiterate as you've shown yourself to be over the last few days.
It's simply pathetic the way you, Mr.Mallya have gone public about your grievances over the poor performance of your franchise RCB. I mean come on man !..Just because you have churned out a big amount for buying a certain franchise doesn't mean that you've bought the very game of cricket itself. It's a sport for pete's sake. You win some you lose some. If all the teams were meant to win then what's the bloody point in conducting a tournament ?! It's just a game after all and at the end of the day some one HAS to lose. Some teams are bound to lose more than the others. Agreed that the franchise owner, by the virtue of his investment, has a right to express his dissatisfaction in case of repeated failures of his franchise but making a public TAMASHA of it !! Sorry Sir, it's just not on. You should realize that all that your
disgruntled whining in media about your team's failures is gonna achieve is some further demoralization for an already beleaguered side & nothing else. You should learn something in this regard from the owners of Deccan Chargers, who have shown tremendous class while dealing with disappointing results of their franchise-Hyderabad Deccan Chargers. Or for that matter, Mr.Mukesh Ambani-the owner of Mumbai Indians who remained calm personified while his side was losing match after match, besides facing other off field problems like the prolonged absence of it's icon player and the banning of another key player as a result of a shameful slapping incident. Hell..even Shahrukh Khan-The owner of Kolkata Knightriders has proved to be more classy & graceful in defeat than the self proclaimed 'King of good times' !
It's hardly a surprise then, to see that 2 of these 3 sides blessed with a compassionate, supportive & understanding owner have been able to stage an inspired comeback in the competition from a stage of utter despair and are now competing for a spot in the semis.
And what really gets my goat, Mr. Mallya, is that you are trying to justify your stupidity under the garb of the ‘corporate side of IPL.’
Let's see..In the business you've invested upon for a period of ten years, you sack the CEO and go public with your dissatisfaction with the Captain and Coach after merely a fortnight or 20 days of disappointing performance !! Is this a ‘corporate’ manner of building a team ?
Make no mistakes, I am all for a result oriented approach and I, too, believe that accountability is one of the pillars of any corporate undertaking. But applying these yardsticks on a mere 20 days performance of your enterprise, that too, in the middle of its first season !! What kind of corporate leadership is that ?
And while we are at "accountabilty", L'emme ask you a simple question, Mr.Mallya- if Charu Sharma was sacked for selecting the wrong men for the job, What 'bout the person who chose Charu Sharma and Dravid for the job of chosing the team in the first place ???
Is he above accountability ?
No one can deny that whoever picked the players for RCB at the players auction made some big time blunders. For instance buying a geriartic like Sunil Joshi & some clear cut T20 mis-fits like Shivnarine Chanderpaul & Waseem Jaffer etc.(though Jaffer's performance till he was ruled out due to an injury had been pretty decent as compared to the other openers in IPL barring Haydos,Gambhir n Veeru). But then..getting a positive result in a T20 game is not just about picking the right set of players during the player auction. If that had really been the case, a team like Hyderabad Deccan Chargers boasting of some of the most feared hitters in the business like Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symmonds, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi, Rohit Sharma etc. wouldn't have been languishing at the bottom of the points table giving constant company to RCB.
There's much more to winning regularly in IPL T20 than mere smart squad selection during the players'auction. If anything,a smart squad selection is just the preliminary stage of the process of winning, certainly not the be all and end all. Positive results can still be achieved despite a not so gr8 squad and one doesn't need to look any further than Rajasthan Royals for a proof of that.
There are so many variables that play a role in deciding the final outcome of an IPL T20 game like the toss, the pitch, the weather, availability of foreign recruits, fitness n form status of the key players, bonding between the local & foreign recruits, commitment & intensity levels of the foreign recruits etc..And last but not the least, Luck.Whether we like it or not- Luck does play a big part in the eventual outcome of the game-positive OR negative, more often than not. One close look at the 9 games that RCB has played so far in the IPL will confirm that out of the 7 matches that they've lost so far they could've won atleast 3 of 'em had a l'il bit of luck gone there way at some crucial moments.
But it wasn't meant to be.
So in such a scenario, it's advisable to move on with it. No use crying over spilt milk. There's always a next time, as the saying goes. And it's certainly not like this failure alone is gonna turn YOU into a bankrupt overnight or anything like that. Is it ?
Then why to resort to such cheap antics like washing your dirty linen in public ? Such cheap behaviour doesn't befit a mature n successfull person as you, Sir. So..Plz Stop whining and be a sport. And if you can't then it'd be much better that you stay the fuck away from sports cause as it is, in order to succeed in sports one requires a Sportsman spirit and this spirit is very different than the "bottled spirit" you specialize in manufacturing. In any case, as it is, with due respect to your business acumen, it (your business acumen) appears to be shit (to put it mildly) as far as your sporting ventures are concerned, be it the Royal Challengers Bangalore Or The Force India team that you've invested in.
It's sports for fuck's sake, not your pet liquor trade where the profits are assured !
Oh and by the way, extremely sorry for addressing you as just "Mr." everywhere in the post. I forgot that you have the honorary "doctorate in philosophy in business administration from the University of South California".
Sincerest apologies, "Dr."Mallya.
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