Charu Sharma’s Firing: Accountability in Cricket?

Royal ChallengersThe firing of Charu Sharma the CEO of Royal Challengers is probably the first and quickest instance of action being taken against cricketing management. There is no question that thus far the Bangalore Royal Challengers have been a dismal flop on the field. None of the young local players have fired. Jacques Kallis who has been persisted with throughout seems completely unfit for T20. Dravid himself is struggling to find his feet in this form of the game. Sunil Joshi who has a history of being a good all rounder is way too over the hill. His sluggishness on the field makes him completely unfit for T20. Misbah, Cameroon White, and Boucher the leading T20 players among the lot haven’t been utilized to the best. In short, the Royal Challengers have been in complete disarray.

Based on the performance so far, it appears as though the basic theory that experienced players can adapt to T20 was flawed. Rahul Dravid and Martin Crowe are the proponents of this theory and ideally one of them should have been taken to task. Charu Sharma on the other hand was just a visible celebrity face to lead the management. Charu Sharma was fired perhaps to send a warning to the rest of the team that poor performance could have serious repercussions (or he might have been the easiest to get rid off given the nature of the contracts). Unfortunately, the Royal Challengers losing streak continues and appears unlikely to turn around despite coach Venkatesh Prasad’s claim that Bangalore should be among the top teams!

The best news about this recent move by Vijay Mallya to fire Charu Sharma is that Corporate India might be bringing in much needed accountability to the world of Indian cricket. Hopefully, some of it will rub off on the BCCI which is badly in need of some professional management.

Author: Pran Kurup

Pran Kurup is founder and CEO of Vitalect, Inc.

6 thoughts on “Charu Sharma’s Firing: Accountability in Cricket?”

  1. Well, the inclusion of Charu to be a ‘CEO’ was laughable in the first place. I don’t think his commentary gave him any major credentials.

    Nice blog, find a lot of similarities to mine. Like your design better, though. 🙂

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  2. Yes, Indian sport does need a whole bucketload of accountability. So why not start with cricket. But I am not sure if that accountability should be brought in the Mallya way. He seems now keen to blame Dravid and Charu Sharma for all the ills. He fails to recognise that he sponsored a team with Dravid as the icon player. Now, anyone can tell that this was the first in a series of mistakes and Mallya needs to acknowledge that he is no great judge of cricketing talent. Much as he may claim that he had a different list of players, that is ‘Harry Hindsight’ talking not Mr.Mallya. How come no prior agreed strategy was drawn up to bid for players as most other teams had done (esp. Chennai Superkings – which had no Madras based icon player).

    All said and done Indian cricket needs several shocks to the system before it realises that all is not well. Being rich does not mean being healthy and this applies to the BCCI too. I do hope that such shocks are administered to administrators of other sports, in India, as well. KPS Gill is finally out of the Indian Hockey Fed. That should bode for some good news in future.

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  3. Jaidev, I am not defending Mallya’s style. I wish he had set these expectations upfront with the team management. Based on Charu Sharma’s comments I suspect not. Right now, Vijay Mallya is just reacting to a desperate situation.

    Rohan, I am glad you like the site! 🙂

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  4. Pran:
    I wasn’t differing with your views. Just adding to what you’d written.

    Jaidev

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