Peter Roebuck's recent attack on Indian cricketers which appeared in a national paper condemning them as "pampered" among other things is the talk of cricket followers here.
Roebuck never played cricket for England though for many years he was captain of his county side, Somerset. He is also widely acknowledged as the most astute cricket writer around today.
With out boys having once again flattered to deceive by more losing in yet another final, Roebuck's words tend to carry more weight. Roebuck was in India with the Australian team and is now settled in Australia where he writes for the Aussie media.
Now comes the twist to his column. An almost identical one to what appeared in the Indian paper was also printed in the Australian media as well. This ploy has often been used by Aussie writers and cricketers traveling through India. They promise exclusives to the Indian media and then send home slightly altered versions. But in the age of the Internet this cannot be pulled off so easily.
In Roebuck's case though it is the variation in the two columns that is the most significant. Rightly so he condemns the hysterical reaction of the Indian public and the Indian board to minor wins and claims finishing second in the World Cup would not have fetched the accolades and riches the Indian cricketers received had they been Aussies-where only first place suffices.
Roebuck is also critical to the heroes' welcome accorded to the Indian Under-19 team for recently winning the Asian one-day championship in Pakistan. The boys walked across the Wagah border with the trophy held high and were of course mobbed by the now-ubiquitous TV cameras as if they were conquering warriors.
In his Australian version Roebuck says this reaction is due to their beating Pakistan in the tournament. "Perhaps beating Pakistan was enough, a feat important in a country whose government wants to turn the clock back to the days of medieval intolerance."
Fair enough, it's the writer's prerogative to express a point of view.
The burning question though is why this particular sentence was not part of his column in the Indian newspaper. Was it perhaps he was scared of the backlash and concerned about losing a lucrative Indian contact, such as our cricketer friends from Down Under appear to grab in our own backyard in much the same way a child plucks fruit off a tree? Coincidentally coach John Wright has also been pretty critical of the attitude of his boys in blue. The cricket fraternity in India really has to sit up and take notice when he refers to the "commercial trap" our players tend to fall into. For Wright has no axe to grind.
Ironically, the traps come into play only when the team does well, according to Wright. That is indeed a dilemma. "If players are not careful they forget the reason they are getting those rewards in the first place." Truer words were rarely spoken.
Coming back to Roebuck, surely all his words of righteous condemnation about Indian cricketers being greedy and unprofessional (with the rightful exceptions of Tendulkar, Dravid, Kumble, Laxman and Srinath) tend to ring hollow in the light of his double dealing act. However right he may be in his assessment.
Food for thought, Mr. Roebuck?

Gulu Ezekiel is the author of biographies of Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly

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