Irresponsible News Media Plummet To Even Lower Depths

You know, I keep watching these guys and think that they’ve finally reached a nadir that cannot be bettered (or worsened?). I’m always wrong about them. In case you haven’t watched Arnab Goswami’s Newshour “debates”, where he badgers some poor sod to death pushing forward whatever agenda will shock viewers into staying hooked to his sensationalist rubbish a little longer, I recommend you watch one or two here at their youtube channel. Its hilarious. This is the same guy who played, replayed, replayed, replayed and replayed another hundred times a clip of one of the Indian Marine Commandos pulling back a curtain, all the while asserting that that was in fact a terrorist, during the despicable terrorist attack in Mumbai last November. Smart. Responsible.

Soulberry has written an article about their “cricket expert”, alleged cricket historian Boria Majumdar who would do better to find a role as an enthusiastic driver in the Wind and the Willows, getting all worked up about Dhoni’s captaincy. Today Times Now had another one of these pantomime News Hour Debates focussing on whether Dhoni deserved to stay as captain of the cricket team. In line with their sensationalist agenda, the guest who was selected to “counter” Boria’s assassination of Dhoni would be none other than Bishen Singh Bedi!

During the course of the debate a number of crass statements were made, some even by Bishen who has built a reputation around them. Bishen kept reiterating that Dhoni should not be hung for this. He said Dhoni did commit a few blunders, something Arnab leapt at as if his stand had been vindicated. Then Bishen dropped one of his famous bombshells and said “You must not forget, you see everyone likes to think Dhoni is a good captain, but he is actually a local boy from Ranchi, so his thinking is street level. He is not a big (I think my brain went numb at this point, I certainly didn’t want to hear anymore of this bullshit)” or something like that. As long as we’re playing stereotypes Mr Bedi, pardon me while I reach out for my Santa-Banta joke book. Senile Man is Senile.

But this isn’t about Bishen Singh Bedi. This about the “cricketing expert” Boria Majumdar, who just hours before the match had written this, at his blog for Espnstar:

However, as we have seen on many occasions in the past, cricket has this uncanny habit of making you look like a novice. Only in this case it will mean Indians are on their way home and the tournament losing its biggest draw. And if that happens Dhoni’s mythic folk-hero status would take a serious beating back home. Not in the best of form on and off the field, Dhoni, for the first time in his career, looks under pressure.

At the same time, it is only natural for even the greatest of the greats to have one bad day. Such one offs can be ignored as aberrations and one solid performance can transform things dramatically. Perhaps no modern player knows this more than Dhoni, who has made it a habit to thrive under pressure. Dropping the seniors in Australia and following it up with a win in the CB series, winning the inaugural ICC World T20 with a team most critics had written off and beating New Zealand in New Zealand, his list of achievements keep growing.

In an amazing turn around, Boria chose to vent his spleen at the subject of that quote. Dhoni had disgraced the nation, the tricolour and every Indian cricket fan, we were told. Dhoni was made to look like a selfish person who had put his interests before the team. Prior to the “debate” Times Now played one of their propaganda videos on Dhoni’s five big blunders. Here they are:

1. Dhoni chose to field after winning the toss: Lots of people have different views about this one, but I honestly don’t think it was a decision that cost India the match. To have lost by the rather small margin of three runs would back up my argument. If the toss was so crucial the margin should have been larger, though I do understand all those arguments about England chasing under pressure.
2. Dhoni chose to bowl Ishant Sharma instead of RP Singh: A good point.
3. Dhoni didn’t prepare his batsmen to play the short pitched deliveries: Excuse me? In struggling to find the extra points to meet the nice figure of 5 blunders, they come up with this lame and almost slanderous accusation. This is so laughable that I’m at a loss for words to even try and understand how someone could honestly say this out loud, let alone broadcast it on a news channel.
4. Dhoni sent Ravendra Jadeja out at number 4: Been spoken about a lot and a valid point
5. Dhoni took singles instead of going for the big hits: Oh right, thats correct, I wonder if the “cricket historian” can point out the number of times in the history of the game that a yorker has been smashed for 4 or 6. Dhoni finished with 30 off 20 balls, perhaps the “cricket historian” can tell us how someone who only looked to take singles managed to end up with strike rate that was 50% quicker than a run a ball? Check out his blog again, he has specifically mentioned that Dhoni looked out of form prior to the match. Now that the game is over, they insinuate that Dhoni wasn’t trying to win and maybe even deliberately didn’t try to hit a four or a six.

So out of their 5 big blunders, only two seem to be valid. But you can’t press for someone’s resignation, someone who has built a reputation as the “cricket historian” himself has acknowledged, with just two blunders, not on a channel that makes up the story as it goes along and builds so much fictitious bullcrap that the quantitative data they have is voluminous enough to overshadow the paltry qualitative analysis.

Both Arnab and Boria did bring up the issue that had obviously led to the creation of this woefully constructed case. Arnab noted that if you brought out the entire team and showed “you were the captain and in charge of things” then you should be held responsible when things go wrong, not the team management as Bedi tried to counter once. Boria made an even more stunning claim, one we have never heard before, which went something along the lines that Dhoni took all the credit for the 2007 victory, got a deal worth 1.5 crores (I know, its 1.5 million USD, but he was fuming so we’ll let him get away with that one)  and countless other accolades. So now that his team has done poorly, he should be willing to take the blame as well.

It is worth noting that almost 12 hours earlier Dhoni had made an apology to the Indian fans, something many, including me, think was unnecessary. But its not as if they were going to let facts get in the way of their witch hunt. Still in those two sentences that both “professional” journalists let slip, we got a glimpse of what is really irking the irate Indian cricket press. Isn’t it ironic that they ask for Dhoni to be responsible?