JOIN USIndian skipper takes mediamen for a ride again
It appears there is no love lost between the Indian media and the Indian cricket team. The Indian cricket team believes the Indian media is always unfair to them and it makes no bones about the disregard it has towards the fourth estate.
While there has been a blanket ban on speaking to the media on practice days – Indian team holds only the mandatory pre-match and post-match press dos unlike most other teams that provide a player or member of the support staff for an interaction whenever they turn up for training – Dhoni kept the scribes waiting for close to 45 minutes as he went on to play football along with his team-mates after their win over the UAE here on Saturday. The reason given was that the match had ended three hours and 20 minutes before the scheduled finish and so the media could wait!
While it is a protocol that the person designated to address the media – in this case Dhoni – shall not take more than 30 minutes after the finish, the Indian cricket team gives two hoots to such conventions. This is not the first time that Dhoni has shown such an attitude towards the Indian media.
In August 2010 in Sri Lanka, he made the reporters wait for more than one and half hours after a humiliating loss to the hosts, forcing a boycott of the press meet. In November 2009, too, Dhoni kept honing his football skills at the end of a Test match against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad for more than an hour.
While Dhoni has every reason to feel aggrieved with the kind of reportage that goes on back home with regard to the team, this is no way to deal with it. It’s not just the Indian media that’s waiting for him, this is the World Cup and there are journalists from various parts of the world and as the captain of the Indian team, and by extension the ambassador of the country, he has a duty to present a fair image of the nation and not of some person with a bloated ego that comes with the immense power that the BCCI enjoys.