Selective use of the past

As you are all aware, I am sure, a historic series is being played in England by India. Equally significant is the fact that this may well be the last tour for four of India's great batsmen of the last decade: Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. Further, this is also India's first Test series against a non-minnow country after the WC07 debacle, and the "retirement" of the infamous Greg Chappell as India's coach.

In light of this, Cricinfo decides to publish a whole article about India's 1936 tour which was total disaster. You can read the details here.

The contents of the article are not of dispute here (I wasn't there and have no other information to judge the article's veracity), but the article itself. Why this article now? Why do it just after India had a comprehensive win over England?

How about writing an article on the 1971/72 series where Wadekar and his men trounced the mighty England on their own soil with BS Chandrashekar taking 6 wickets for 38 runs in the second innings of the third test to seal the test and series for India? Or how about the 2002 series where Ganguly and his boys came back after a defeat in the first test to even the series (with Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly all scoring centuries)? The 1971/72 series has not been mentioned on Cricinfo for a long time and the 2002 series is only mentioned in passing. Yet, the 2002 series would be the most relevant to discuss and analyze, since many of the players who participated in that series (on both sides) are still playing.

An article about a debacle (Indian or otherwise) is not necessarily out of place but its mention to the exclusion of all the others that could have been written indicates bias.

The motivation for doing so is not unfathomable. It is to create a mindset where it does not really matter how well India does, it will not be given the same prominence as its failures. Don't get me wrong. The bias is not so overt that the veneer of impartiality will be obvious and be called just that - a veneer. It is more insidious since the veneer is protected and polished. Let me explain.

For example, there is some coverage given to Zaheer Khan and his superior bowling performance however more attention is paid to Sreesanth and his failings to control his emotions. Another example, the jelly bean incident is labeled a childish prank rather than a flagrant violation of cricket rules which should have resulted in the banning of the perpetrators. If the ball had landed on those jelly beans and deviated from their normal course, at best it would have gotten the batsman out and at worst caused bodily harm to a tailender ill-equipped to handle it.

The Sreesanth bouncer and no-ball are given extraordinary prominence by comparison.

That's all for today. Next, my take on Sambit Bal and his editorial skulduggery and more episodes of the Daily Dump from Cricinfo.