By Janak Raj Bhatta
Two incidents, with a huge roar and significance happened to the Nepali Cricket scene last week or so, which I feel shows our value for cricket.
- Daughter of Prime minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai was ‘almost’ appointed as the member of Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN). There were rumors of heavy pressures from prime minister reported in many of the daily papers, so that, the member secretary of National sports council Yuvaraj Lama recommended her to be appointed as the member of CAN.
- Nepal’s one of the first generation all-rounders (at least I think so), Shakti Gauchan, took four wickets including a remarkable hat-trick (first for Nepali national team) during Nepal’s victory over Denmark. Nepal was playing for a dream place in the ICC T20 World cup, and the Nepali team played fantastic, though they have been defeated. The highlight of the tournament for Nepal looks to be Shakti Gauchan as was the top wicket taker of the tournament.
These two incidents may or may not look to be significant for many of cricket experts (there are many of them) in Nepal, but I find them representative of Nepal cricket’s status. To be frank, Nepali cricket (except this tournament and some age group matches including u-19women’s Asia Cup hat-trick) is not performing too well (or maybe the senior team is not interested to win any big tournament before the constitution is promulgated!). The ACC T20 Cup, held in our own backyard, didn’t give us a platform to cheer as we were hardly winning matches against weak opponents and were badly washed by Afghan boys.
We are in the state of status quo, where we were in early parts of this millennium, winning some age group matches and still longing to find a good team at the senior level. And a question comes: Are we giving enough attempts to be the ‘winning side’? Are we in the right direction?
In the meantime, when it appeared in the media that Manushi was to become the member of CAN, the same question came in my mind: Are we in the right direction? Let’s leave the politics aside (I don’t have any problem with Manushi being Dr. BRB’s daughter), does Manushi really want to develop cricket in Nepal? What made her so interested in cricket that she wanted to enter in the governing body of cricket in Nepal? Isn’t she okay with being a political student union leader? Tanka Aangbuhang is the first elected president of CAN, but there was a popular joke in the pressbox during ACC T20 Cup at Kirtipur, everytime Nepal bowls or scores a shot, Mr President used to ask the assistant, “We won?”
He was politically appointed before being elected to this post, as he followed the footsteps of previous CAN President and members, JK Nath Shah and Binayaraj Pandey, less cricket and more politics. Why can’t we leave the game to be played by the players? Is it necessary to the politician to run the game and destroy the beauty of game as game has nothing to do with their politics?
Meanwhile, Shakti was making the country proud, with his awesome spin bowling in the ICC T20 World Cup Qualifying final round. He was dropped, he tried, worked hard and came back strong to leave a statement like ‘see, game should be played like this’. I am laughing at BRB’s decision (or someone else’s), to ‘almost’ appoint Manushi as the CAN member in the same time when Shakti, Chandra, Paras, Pradeep and all Nepali boys were making Nepali cricket proud. As BRB always talks about formulas, I don’t see any productive out of this equation working for him on and off the field.
Congratulations Shakti, you have shown how and where Nepali cricket should be played and what can these guys with ‘almost’ no facilities (facilities must have been spent on cricket research and cricket developers of CAN) prove at international cricket pitch to make Nepali cricket supporters jump off their seats with joy.