Post of Control for Blogging in India

What’s in a name? Quite a lot.

Names matter. There’s a reason a certain Feroze changed his last name to Gandhi. Names are a crucial part of branding things, whether they be cars, hairdresser, politicians or actors. (Yusuf Khan  is another case in point).

So, one should be able to see the clear intent behind naming the the body responsible for cricket in India. How come nobody ever wonders why it is called the Board of Control for Cricket in India. With a name like that, it sounds as though Cricket has run amok in India and needs to be restrained by a bunch of wise old men (which if you’ll note, is the PRECISE attitude the BCCI takes towards cricket). Was “The Indian Cricket Board” too much of a stretch of imagination? I don’t advocate going all flashy and copying Cricket Australia, but really, is being called The Indian Cricket Board a big deal?

One possible objection of course, is that so what if the name changes? Agarkar will still concede an average of 22 runs an over.

My response to that is no, he won’t. Names matter. When you call yourself the Board of Control, then that’s what you want to do. You want to control cricket. You don’t to do anything for its improvement, or benefit. You just want to control it.

Why?

(of course, being an FMF*, I will again say this is because of the effects of 50 years of Indian Socialism). It is a parochial mindset.

Compare ICL (Indian Cricket League) with BCCI. The name sounds much better (and has already managed to shake things up, at least as far as players’ earnings go), and this plays subconciously on everyone who is associated with it.

As has been reiterated many times before, India is still only partially free. There is a long way to go before India makes the shift from a “Freedom from ___” attitude to a “Freedom to ____” attitude.

*FMF = Free Market Fundamentalist, a term frequently used by the JagadGuru