Much ado about benign Kirsten comments

The hue and cry over Gary Kirsten’s comments on the captaincy issue is a commotion that could be done without. What the Indian coach uttered was a palpable observation rather than an irresponsible comment like is being made out to be. At the most, it was ill-timed because a tough home Test series against Australia is round the corner.

Kirsten only said that Dhoni, a success as skipper in the shorter versions of the game, was ready to take over from Anil Kumble in Tests. The coach did not want the job handed to him immediately. In fact, what he said was that the present Indian Test captain still had some time to go.

A cricketer or cricket official has to brace up and be ready to comment on such issues once he agrees to speak to the press. The only way such controversies can be avoided is with a blanket ban on comments, which is not desirable.

Why not take this in a positive sense? After all, it is not very often that you have a man capable of taking charge of the carriage in the future when the present one’s tenure still has time to go.

Kirsten, a man who likes to shares his thoughts with people on his website, no more updates it with comments because of directions from the BCCI. That was something he was forced to reconcile with and probably learned to live with. But he would not have imagined that this particular interview would be blown out of proportion when the content was harmless unless quoted out of context.