The Waning Dhoni Magic

Gone are the days when anything Dhoni touched on the cricket field turned gold. He was not always lucky with the toss, but for him that didn’t often matter either – it was always his style to salvage matches for India from points of absolute defeat. May it be his unique batting prowess or may it be his exceptional ability to read match situations as a captain, he always had that Midas touch in everything he did. But as they say, all good things must come to an end one day and it seems that the proverbial end is getting nearer for that Dhoni magic. If it is really not the end, certainly the magic is waning, and waning in an alarming rate for him and his team.

It had become a habit to the media and his fans, including this writer, to keep on boasting about the Dhoni’s magic as a captain. His decisions were always right, or in the medium term they turned to be right later, like persisting with Rohit Sharma in the team. However if one analyse how he made the decisions in the ongoing New Zealand series then one can find that they were mostly un-Dhoni-like. The most glaring of them all was the decision to promote the in-form Virat Kohli to open the innings and to put Ajinkya Rahane at No.3 in the 4th ODI at Hamilton. It defies logic why he made this obvious tactical error, when Rahane is an established opener and Kohli batting extremely well at No.3. And if he was really serious about trying out Kohli as an opener in the place of struggling Shikhar Dhawan, then why did he revert to using Dhawan as an opener in the 5th ODI at Wellington?

Every expert of the game, every fan of the Indian cricket team is scratching their heads, quite  unable to understand why Ishant Sharma is still in the Indian XI. Time and again the fast bowler (if he could be called so) has failed miserably and as Sunil Gavaskar had pointed out, Sharma is not all learning even after this many games to his credit. Even after playing so many matches for the country he hasn’t perfected bowling yorkers or slow balls at the depth. It seems that even a haircut can help him to better concentrate on the areas he aims to bowl at - but he is in no mood to change. It is high time to jettison him from the team and to advise him to play domestic cricket to get better, though chances seem to be less even for such a turn around.

Dhoni’s favourite spinner R. Ashwin is going through a bad phase in his career as well. There is no doubt that he is a talented cricketer and a thinking player. However as his personal coach Sunil Subramaniam says, many technical flaws have crept into his bowling. He has put on a lot of weight and he is not putting his body behind his deliveries and is bowling only with his spinning fingers, without any body involvement in it. He should also be made to go back to the domestic circuit, work on his technical flaws and come back as an effective offie. His batting has improved by leaps and bounds, but he and his captain must be careful about not losing his bowling prowess while he works more strongly in improving his batting. There are many bowlers who have committed this mistake - Irfan Pathan is a case in point. Even when Ashwin is struggling a great deal, Dhoni is not ready to try out Amit Mishra and the leggie has been travelling with this Indian team for a very long time without getting any match.

Dhoni’s CSK team mate Suresh Raina is another batsman who is struggling big time. Dhoni’s liking for his CSK team mates is well known, but he should not get tied down with them. It’s imperative that he thinks beyond them and look for other options. Vijay Sol and Sanju Samson are playing well in the under-19 level, Cheteshwar Pujara could be given a chance in ODIs too, Stuart Binny is another option he has got. When Dhoni gave a chance to Stuart Binny in the 4th ODI, we thought that the all rounder will get an extended run. But he was dropped from the team in the 5th ODI and even in the match that he played, he was not given a chance to bat and when he bowled, it was only for one over. These are not things that we associate the brave captain Dhoni with and these are surely signs of his withering  magic and waning self belief as a captain.

MSD was the kind of batsman who, when he was in the crease any target was achievable. He had the knack of pulling out India from every trouble, mostly single-handedly. But suddenly that ability is also missing from his batting. Yes he has been scoring runs recently, but his batting efforts are not yielding the same results as before. He is still making runs and doing everything in his hands to win matches for India, only that he is unable to work out the magic and bring success to his team. He is constantly getting out during a chase without completing his task, which is again quite un-Dhoni-like.

When one takes into consideration that the cricket world cup next year is in Australia and New Zealand, it is a matter of concern that the Indian team, the reigning Champions, are appallingly out of contention, if they are going about their tasks in the present day fashion. However it is also true that we cannot find a better captain that Dhoni now, as the world cup is round the corner. This writer still believes that Dhoni is the man. If Dhoni can get more flexible with his tactics, he can bring back the glorious days of this Indian team. We can only hope that Dhoni will someway get his magic back, which clearly appears waning now.

Who is Afraid of the Aam Aadmi?

One thing is for certain, and there could be no doubt whatsoever on it that the conventional political parties in India (read Congress, BJP, the leftists, other existing national and regional political parties) are shaken to the core with the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a force to reckon with in Indian politics. With simple slogans and principled stance on many day-to-day issues of the people, it has caught the imagination of many. Its enormous popular support has forced all other parties to have a rethink on their policies and their election strategies. It is quite a fun to see how leaders of many political parties are claiming that they themselves are already aam aadmi parties. This shows that the brand ‘aam aadmi’ is becoming hugely popular and hence every party is trying to get a share of that popularity.

As is often the case with anyone or anything popular, the aam aadmi phenomenon, if one could call it so, has its share of criticisers as well. It can be seen that many political party leaders and ordinary party workers of most political parties are hell bent on finding fault with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). They suffer microscopic scrutiny from their rivals online and offline. In the social media and in traditional media there are criticisms of all kinds against AAP ranging from how impractical their policies are to how impossible it will be for a political party to survive in Indian political scene without credible and well thought out policies on economic growth, caste equations, national security and counter insurgency.

However such criticisms appear rather naive as there has never been a political party in human history that entered a political scene with well thought out policies on all issues in that political system or in the state where the party is trying to establish themselves in. It is always so that when a new political party confronts an issue they will have an internal debate and will then create a policy on that particular issue, on which they will hold onto tightly from thereon. Karl Marx’s Das Capital didn’t had ideological explanation on globalisation for the leftists to bank upon and it was later when confronted with the issues of globalisation that the Marxist Communist parties the world over deliberated on it and created a concrete policy on it. Similarly, given time, AAP will also deliberate among themselves on the various issues when they confront them and will come out with a policy stance. 

The political parties and their leaders will do well to explain what policies of AAP they find to be problematic. Are they against AAP’s policy of fighting corruption? Are they against stopping VIP culture in India? Are they against a strong Jan Lokpal? Are they against improving education standards in government schools? Are they against improving safety of women in the country? These are the main policies of AAP and if you are against these policies then you are certainly against the people of India. These are the things that Indians want and the overwhelming popularity that AAP has in India is certainly because they stand for what the Indians want.

It is very important for the people of this country to understand that those who say that the AAP phenomenon is a bubble that will burst sooner rather than later - political parties and some section of the media – are those who stand for interests of the big corporates in the country. They know that if AAP and its popularity are not demolished sooner, more people will join it and its brand of politics, which will be detrimental to the interests of the corporates. 

In the economic front there is no considerable difference in the policies of Indian National Congress (INC) and BJP. The deregulation of petroleum prices by UPA government is certainly a move towards helping corporates in the oil exploration and refining sector. When Narendra Modi led BJP won in some states in the recent state elections, the Sensex soared and BJP supporters were gung-ho that it is a sign of how Modi’s rule could reinvigorate the markets and will lead to further economic growth. However it must essentially be seen as a sign of what Modi’s corporate policies will be if he comes into power. They know that Modi will give them a free reign and will give them enough authority to make profits, even if it means putting common man’s economic security at peril. Without doubt Modi’s government will continue with the deregulation policy of the present government vis-a-vis petroleum prices. If AAP comes to power they will bring back government regulation of petrol prices (or so they say), which would be unfavourable for the corporates and the parties that take their support. It is such type of people who are afraid of the AAP and are constantly in the look out for opportunities to decimate the good-will of the party. It is the same group of people - corporates, politicians and the media – who run around saying that great calamities have happened when Arvind Kejriwal moved in an Innova or when Prashant Bhushan spoke out his opinion about Indian Army’s involvement in Kashmir. Many times before politicians have made such remarks and many times before political parties have distanced themselves from such opinions by their leaders. No sky fell down then; no sky will fall down now.

It should also be noted that all the major political parties in India were united in passing a bill that will keep them away from the ambit of RTI act. By doing so they made sure that they keep all their financial records away from public scrutiny. An effort to bring in more transparency into the working of political parties and their financial sources was thus thwarted effectively. In comparison with other established political parties in India AAP voluntarily came out publically with all documents that show the sources of their income. That was an act that showed that AAP was ready to practice what they preach. But other political parties were not ready to take over that challenge, which apparently showed that they have something to hide from the public. When political parties accept donations from the public and when they claim that they work for the public, it is their responsibility to come clean on their sources of funding. 

AAP claims to be the political party that will jettison the ‘business as usual’ mode of working of other political parties in India. That ordinary model of political one-upmanship was on public view when AAP accepted the support of INC and created a government in Delhi. When AAP was reluctant in taking the support of INC and BJP, they were criticised for being adamant and obstinate for not accepting the support; they were criticised for pushing the state into another election, which was going to cost the nation more money. But once they accepted the INC support, the same people who criticised AAP for not taking the support, started crying foul and questioned the intentions of AAP and berated them as ‘opportunistic’. The age old political mindset of Indian politicians, the wretched ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’, was the emotion of the BJP there, who was sulking at its inability to form a government in Delhi. 

When INC’s dislike for AAP is a result of AAP’s claims that they will seriously pursue corruption cases against Congress leaders, BJP’s aversion stems from the knowledge that had it been not for the emergence of AAP, BJP would have reaped the seeds of anti-incumbency against Sheila Dixit in Delhi. Had AAP supported BJP to form government in Delhi, they would have been happy and would have kept on singing AAP’s praise till the next elections.

People in India are fed up with the unscrupulous political parties and politicians. As this writer had written in one of his earlier essays, politicians epitomise all the vices that human ingenuity could invent. What we need is a new brand of politics, where promises made in election manifestos are kept in their entire essence, if not verbatim. A new brand of politics that will comprehend people’s needs and will work towards attaining them. What we need now is an army of politicians who are honest, principled and hard working, who work not for themselves or their parties, but for the people they represent. AAP claims to be such a political movement and if it can remain so all its lifetime then it is the one that Indians were looking for to change their fortunes. Let us hope that AAP will remain a principled political party devoid of all the ills that beset traditional political parties in India.

Disclaimer: This writer is not associated with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in any way.