Cricket Tales - Sachin Tendulkar, A Name Forever Etched With Cricket In Commonwealth Games

Cricket Tales - Sachin Tendulkar, A Name Forever Etched With Cricket In Commonwealth Games. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman went along under the leadership of Ajay Jadeja to the Commonwealth Games 1998

Sachin Tendulkar (Image Source: Google)

Harmanpreet Kaur-led Indian team will be participating in the Commonwealth games as cricket returns to Commonwealth games. Prior to this, the men's team participated in 1998. Even though it has been a common occurrence that two teams to represent India in cricket at times, but the first incident of this experiment is attached to Commonwealth Games. Back then, India had sent a team to Kuala Lampur to participate in the Commonwealth games while the other team went to Toronto - to play the Sahara Cup against Pakistan. The reason for this was due to a clashing schedule between the two tournaments and a team had to be sent to play at both places. Why this happened is a different story altogether. This controversial act by BCCI is counted among 'Flop Show'. Here, we'll talk about an incident related to forming two teams.

Two teams had to be formed and both should have big players - hence, BCCI distributed the top players. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman went along under the leadership of Ajay Jadeja to the Commonwealth Games were for the Sahara Cup, Mohammad Azharuddin led a team comprising top names like Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad. Here comes the real tantrum:

Commonwealth Games: In group B, there were Antigua, Australia and Canada along with team India. A defeat against Australia, a win against Canada and a washed-out match against Antigua resulted in favourites India being eliminated in the group stage. Everyone believes that the kind of team sent for the Commonwealth Games, an occurrence like this was inevitable. As the team couldn't move past the group stages, most of the players had become 'idle'.

Sahara Cup: Team India wasn't performing good here as well. Amidst this, BCCI decided that Sachin, Jadeja, Kumble and Robin Singh will play the last two matches of the Sahara cup and sent them to Canada. Pakistan camp was infuriated with this and demanded that no such changes should be made mid-tournament without any concrete reason. After a long argument, it was decided that only Sachin Tendulkar and Ajay Jadeja would join the team in Canada. Amidst all this, unknown from these developments, Jadeja and Tendulkar were vacationing and a search started to locate them.

Jadeja was found and was sent via the very next flight - the player played in the 4th match of the Sahara Cup. Tendulkar was nowhere to be found. It came to light that Master Blaster had gone out with his family to Khandala to spend his time off. He was found after great difficulties, got late due to rainfall and was sent to Canada without any prior preparations - Tendulkar played the 5th and last match. This was to no avail as Pakistan had already won the cup. Tendulkar scored 77 runs. 

With this, the experiment by the Indian team to field two teams was controversial. An incident like locating Sachin Tendulkar made a fuss out of this. If we deep dive into this, we'll find that the truth is despite the absence of mobile technology back, BCCI would have avoided this fuss. How?

Theory 1: Tendulkar was wrong to go out on a holiday. The question is why did his search begin at the time when Pakistan had agreed to his participation in Sahara Cup? As soon as BCCI decided to send Tendulkar to Toronto, Tendulkar should have been promptly alerted to be 'available' for the same. 

Theory 2: There are a number of people who believed that all this was done purposefully. An influential person in BCCI didn't want Tendulkar to go to Toronto - Tendulkar himself was hesitant. The reason to believe this theory is the money which came from Television/Commercial Contract, which was casting its dark shadow on cricket. Try to understand this equation. 

Tendulkar's contract was with WorldTel and the Sahara Cup was being hosted by its competitor IMG (International Management School) and Sahara Group of Industries were the sponsors. In this fuss, in the end, IMG threatened that they will break 4 lakh dollars yearly and hence the process of sending Tendulkar was speeded up. 

At the time in the context of cricket, the two biggest television players in India were Transworld International (IMG Group) and Mark Mascarehnas' company WorldTel. Transworld had a 5-year contract with BCCI. There was fierce competition between these two to control the Indian Cricket market and hence, cricket had to suffer many times due to this. 

The theory states that WorldTel had tried their best to stop the mega-star cricketer Sachin Tendulkar from going to Toronto and play in IMG's tournament. Apart from the contract, Tendulkar and Mascarehnas' friendship wasn't hidden to anyone - at the start of the very year families of both of them went out to spend their holidays together in America. Inside the board, who was with which lobby - exposing this would bring light to many other incidents. 

Ultimately, only team India suffered amidst this fuss.