Some interesting news developments on this Monday of July 2019.
1 So in the absence of Rahul Gandhi, his sister Priyanka Gandhi is trying to hog the lime light as a Congress leader. Last week when the news of tribal killing in Sonbhadra (UP) caught the eye of national media, she was first to jump in the fray from opposition leaders in criticising UP state govt of Yogi Adityanath of BJP. She tried to reach Sonbhadra but her group was stopped, and they were not allowed to go there, as that area was under section 144(assembly of more than 4 persons not allowed). UP Deputy CM on tweet said “ Priyanka Gandhi wanting to meet affected persons in Sonbhadra firing incident, when sec 144 is imposed there. If you want to fulfil your political intentions, then it is not right. No one should do politics on sensitive issue.” Then with Congress party workers she sat on Dharna, and rumour was floated that she has been arrested. Then DM of Mirzapur had to issue statement that “She was not arrested but was stopped from going to Sonbhadra since sec 144 was imposed. One of the family members of the victims Sonbhadra firing incident said “ we got to know that Priyanka did has come to meet us, but administration has arrested her ,so we decided to come to and meet her in Chunnar.” So after meeting the family members of the victim, Priyanka said “ my objective has been served as I have met them. Congress party has decided to give a compensation of Rs 10 Lakhs to the kin of person who died in the incident.” She further added that she is still under detention and do not know when she will be allowed to leave. Local administration responded that she was never under detention and she was free to leave whenever she desire. Administration had only stopped her from going to Sonbhadra.
In the end this total scene created by Congress leaders along with Priyanka Gandhi looked very filmy, and it only confirms that one more member of Gandhi family has entered active politics and will not be surprised in the near future Priyanka might take over the reins of Congress party.
2 What is going in MS Dhoni’s mind- after the end of World cup every cricket lover was thinking that Dhoni will announce his retirement from the cricket, as he is almost 38 years old and during this World Cup there was enough criticism about his capacity as great finisher of the ODI matches, because in some matches he played really slow contrary to the demand of the situation. But what he does, just one day before the announcement of team for the all formats for India’s tour to West Indies during next month, he issues a statement that he is taking a break for 2 months and should not be considered for West Indies series. An A grade centrally contracted player, with an annual retainer ship of Rs 5 Cr, has decided to skip an international tour. Is the BCCI offering him an option to pick and choose as he wishes? Isn’t it the selection panel’s job to not pick him if they think he is not in their plans for the future? Now if selectors feel that they need to groom someone to take his place, who is stopping them to communicate this to Dhoni? But in India, things work differently. Dhoni is being offered the advantage of being legend. When MSK Prasad, Chief of Selection Panel, briefed the media , he made one thing clear that he was not going to tell MS Dhoni to take retirement. As he said “Retirement is purely individual decision, A legendary cricketer like Dhoni knows when to retire.”
This has been always problem with BCCI when it comes to handling legendary players. Few years back it happened with Sachin Tendulkar, he also started to pick and choose the matches what he wanted to play. After 2011 World Cup victory, he stopped playing ODI matches, but never announced his retirement from test cricket. He started choosing which test series he wants to play and which he does not want to play. In the end he communicated to BCCI he will play his last test in Mumbai, which is going to be his 200th test match. Earlier even in case of Kapil Dev also, he lingered on with his test career, because he wanted to break the highest test wicket record held by Richard Hadlee that time, and in the end he almost took 10 tests to take the 5 wickets to break that record. In the mean time Venkatesh Prasad was kept out of the team, and at that time he was really a good pace/swing bowler, which was proved in the later matches. A player should realise that his time is getting over, and before people ask when you are retiring, the player should retire. Only few players have retired gracefully from the cricket, and foremost on my mind is legendary Sunil Gavaskar, who could have played more for one or two years but he retired even after scoring his only ODI century and century in last test match playing for World XI. And the second player to retired gracefully was Rahul Dravid.
Awaiting your comments/view/feed back.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, india
22nd July 2019