Why Sachin Tendulkar's book row does a great disservice to cricket

A year before the Indian cricket team prepares for the World Cup 2015, Sachin Tendulkar seems to have split the cricket fraternity by alleging former Aussie coach Greg Chappell wanted Rahul Dravid dropped ahead of the 2007 World Cup. Now Sourav Ganguly has come out and claimed Chappell also wanted Tendulkar and other players dropped.

All these I-told-you-so revelations being flung around must make Ganguly feel vindicated about his anti-Chappell rants he has made all these years, but the controversy Tendulkar's book has generated is not good news for Indian cricket.

Much as Tendulkar is revered across the continents, his tell-all has the capacity to not only diminish some aura of the golden era of Indian cricket post 2001 India-Australia Test series (even though Dravid has kept mum on the controversy), but also spill bad blood among the top cricket-playing countries.  

Today, no one can doubt what Tendulkar has to say, but his criticism of Chappell after calling it quits is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Indian cricket, possibly why the would-be Bharat Ratna, apart from pointing fingers at the Aussie at the height of Chappellgate I, didn't do enough to stay out of trouble. 

It is not that Tendulkar has not expressed his views in the public on certain matters. In a rare public outburst, he had said on April 4, 2007, "It hurts when the coach questions about our attitude" - when almost the entire team had rallied against the Aussie, who had questioned the attitude of the senior players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag post the World Cup 2007 debacle.

While Tendulkar had said "Cricket has been my life for all these years and will always be", in hindsight he might be wondering now if the book's damning disclosures could have been made back in 2007-8 and put more spotlight on the goings-on in the Indian cricket apart from on the Sourav-Chappell controversy.

Also, the report about Sachin having wanted to control the Indian cricket, under an understanding with the BCCI, by sidelining Chappell ahead of the World Cup 2007, certainly puts a bad taste in the mouth of millions of his hardcore admirers, including yours truly, who would want him to be a player every inch not a cricket official while he played. The reason he quit his captaincy in the late 1990s was that he wanted to play, not lead that he believed was affecting his performance. Tendulkar had resigned after a 0-2 Test series defeat at home against South Africa, following earlier 0-3 beating in Australia and Sourav Ganguly had taken over as captain in 2000.

Sachin would not have lost much face as a player had he spoken the truth during the Chappellgate I and left it all to the discretion of the board and other veterans of the game to tackle the Sourav-Greg saga. It would have helped probe the alleged conspiracy on the part of the Aussie to destroy the Indian cricket as has often been said.

Chappellgate II no doubt will help soar the sales of Playing It My Way, but it is a moot question if our sports icons are falling to the trap of using post-retirement memoirs to settle scores.

Anyhow, what is done cannot be undone, but what is a book without some juice? I have pre-ordered my book. Have you?