Aug 24: As a nation we have many faults, but there's one thing at which we are better than anyone else: banning.
There's no other liberal democracy in the world that bans as much as we do.
Last week too we went on a banning spree.
The BCCI has declared that from now on girlfriends will not be allowed to accompany players on overseas tours.
Kerala has announced a prohibition policy. It seeks to become a completely dry state within the next decade.
And in Punjab, a film about Indira Gandhi's assassination has been banned from release.
Girlfriends are banned. Alcohol is banned. Books are banned.
In Goa, a minister wanted bikinis to be banned from beaches. Where else does one wear a bikini? On Mount Everest? What do we ban next?
Mutton and chicken maybe.
The most bizarre arguments are hustled in support of these bans.
There is little discussion. Only swift action.
Isolationist
Take the ban on girlfriends and wives.
Wives will now be allowed on tour but only for a limited period of time.
The reason for this clampdown?
The disastrous performance of our cricket team in England.
As always, we look for causes where there aren't any.
What a player does in his personal life has no bearing on his performance. Rarely do we look at how other countries and sports handle the issue.
We have a curiously isolationist approach to our problems.
We want to be at home in the world, we want to take on the world on its terms, and then we go and say: what works for them, doesn't work for us.
We are different.
So Greg Chappell was evil because he didn't understand something called 'Indian cricketing culture'.
Really, a winning cricketing culture is a winning cricketing culture.
There's not much that distinguishes world-beating teams from each other. They play the same sport.
Skill, talent and mental strength are what matter the most.
In cricket, the most successful teams – South Africa, Australia, England– allow wives and girlfriends to accompany players on tour.
Top tennis players Andy Murray, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic always travel with their partners.
In the recently concluded football World Cup, teams like Germany and Holland fared much better than teams like Russia, which disallowed players from taking along their girlfriends and wives.
The real problem of course lies somewhere else – the way cricket is administrated in India.
It lies in the dead wickets on which our players grow up playing.
It kills our fast bowlers.
Then we complain we don't have fast bowlers. Our batsmen cannot handle green wickets with pace and bounce, and where the ball seams around.
The best players are often not in the playing XI. What do we do? We go after the girlfriend.
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