 Salams, this is NewsClick and you're watching Leslie Xavier and myself, your playthings this afternoon, a very dreary afternoon, a drab afternoon in India's capital, New Delhi. We're talking about a week full of action on the sporting front and looking ahead to more that's happening in India in terms of sport on the field as well as off the field. First up, the biggest story of the week from many points of view was Virat Kohli stepping down as India's test cricket captain. Leslie, just before the news of Virat stepping down, you published a piece on NewsClick. Talking about, I guess, the idea of a test captain and certain bits of behavior that didn't perhaps go down too well in the days played prior to his resignation. Yeah, the incident that is in question, it sort of left as usual any incident related to anything in these days. It left the Twitter-verse, social media-verse, in splits. Plus, even the cricket world. I'm talking about ex-players, experts, everybody was unsure which stance, what is right, what is wrong, that kind of thing. But for me, the incident was a pretty clear cut one, straightforward one. So, if I can narrate the incident again, so it's a day for test testing in a critical balance South Africa facing for a victory. And the captain is judged LBW in the final session of play, and Dean Elger, and he reviews it. And in the review, it's shown that Ashwin was the baller. And in the review, it's shown that the bounce is higher, so he has been deemed not out. Onfield Empire was himself surprised, but I guess the software, Hawkeye, that uses the software, the algorithms decided that the bounce of the pitch is higher. So the ball is likely to go up. And of course, the Indian team, I mean, it was a big moment, Indian team was disappointed. And we're actually expressed this displeasure by going to the mic, stump mic and among many things saying that I mean expressing his anger at the broadcaster and saying that they should play fair. So basically hinting that Hawkeye is fixed. It's a very wrong thing to so because he's not, he's not an overnight skipper that way. Yes, I mean, we, when we, when we talk about this now, right, we are talking about the end of Virat Koli era in Indian cricket. He has been a stripper for that long. And so when I first saw that incident, I was just thinking, when will this guy grow up? It seems that he's stuck in his teenage years to start with. And the larger thing is that the resignation happened. But, but the discussion is not on the right things because the resignation happened soon after this incident. India lost the series in the lost the match in the lost the series. And then soon Virat Koli resigned and BCCI was silent when the incident happened. Of course, it is a diplomatic incident as well because the way I look at it when a when a test nation towards a country. It is considered that the bunch of players are considered ambassadors of the country to another country. It's a bilateral series we are talking about. And the skipper is the is the head of that. If you if I can call it. So you are expected to behave in a certain way you can't allege that the country the whole of country against us level that was in fact set by K. And I feel himself also said said some things. So the larger thing here is that we are totally known for such acts as sets so much of an example that is players also think that they can say whatever they want and they are they are unafraid because they think that they can get away with it. If it was 10 years back 15 years back this would have attracted the attention of ICC is disciplinary panel and some action would have taken but for some reason. So, progression of things happened in that direction BCC I was silent. I don't know whether behind the scenes some some discussions happened and that is what led to be a coalition recognition that's not clear yet. But if that happened, well and good because BCC is at least showing some signs that they they are keen on the discipline of the team. But the way if it has happened they should be out in the open they should also portray it as a as a chance to portray the board stands as far as player and discipline of the team and the stance of the team is concerned regarding and it is a clear matter of. Within the games it's not something outside outside outside the cricket field assets. So, the that incident for me is is is is is critical here when we look at Virat Kohli's stint as a captain, I know people would say that we are harsh in judging him for one incident. Like, we would not judge the incident for the head but right, but then circumstances are always different as well because we can't equate these two. So, that is this incident is indicative of many such instance that has happened through Virat Kohli's captaincy. And we have always been critical about his style of captaincy stances his his approach to certain things the way certain things that he has spoken, because the general feeling was that he is setting a wrong precedent for the members of the team as well and also not just that is also setting a wrong precedent for youngsters out there who are looking up to him to for as a role model. And it is very clear and there's no two ways to is that two ways to it that Virat Kohli's as a role model, as far as behavior is concerned is not exactly something that we would want youngsters to emulate. So, the piece in itself was criticizing Virat Kohli as well as the BCCI for how they're handling that situation when it happened. And it also looked at certain past incidents and certain form of players and how they reacted to similar similar situations when it happened including how Saurav Ganguly himself had reacted certain times. So, it's within the game that such disappointments happen. So, yeah, if it was within the right of the team, team management, then they could have lost their protest. Instead of that doing such antics, I mean, it's uncalled for and for me that highlights what Virat Kohli stood for as people of Indian team and also where the Indian team is right now. Under his leadership. So, in context, if we can take the conversation to a bit more of a forward looking place now that Kohli's time as captain has kind of come to an end. And there's a new coach as well in the form of Rahul Dravid, who's looking to build something for I guess the next 10 years or more in terms of at least the test side, let's say. Maybe there was a time it can be argued, I think many people will argue that that kind of aggression, whether it's Saurav Ganguly or Mahindra Singh Dhoni or Virat Kohli, the kind of aggression and that kind of attitude that they brought to the playing field to the cricket pitch. That shaped India's I guess progression from a country that also played cricket as one of England's former colonies and all of that to a country that has now come to dominate world cricket in many ways. But how do you see things proceeding from here on now that we have clearly this is one industry or one sector in which India's sort of control over how things work on a global scale. Cannot be argued against. When we look at aggression, that's the wrong thing again because we look at aggression and we look at fist pumping, even speaking expletives as a sign of aggression as the sign of Indian team being on the front foot all the time. They're chasing the match, they're chasing victory, etc. But that's not the case. That's not the case. Let's just be very clear on field aggression what it is. There are laws which govern any sport for that matter and there are things that you are not supposed to say. For instance in a playing field, in any other game, if you give a swear word, if you shout out an expletive, you might be expelled from the match. It's not happening in cricket. Strange laws that govern the game in itself, sledging is considered part of the game. So there is a fine line, it's a very subjective thing when you judge if the player has crossed the line as far as sledging is concerned. We know the monkey gate, famous monkey gate incident in this regard. So if you look at the transformation you're talking about, the mindset of a colony playing cricket to a country who was chasing victory. Then that transformation happened in the previous generation. It started to happen around the time Saurav Ganguly was a stripper and then with the current ones slowly the transformation happened. During Virat Kulli's era when he took over, he was just imposing his personality onto the team dynamics. He as a leader was always outspoken, expressive, be it displeasure, be it victory or in the sense even the way he celebrates victory it exuded not just, I mean we can interpret it as confidence but it was not just confidence, it was also brashness, it was also back then. So that kind of a cultural behavioral impact, it slowly permeated into the team as such because as a skipper and also as a skipper who has had a long spin at the helm, he had the chance to mould the team the way he wants and pick the players that he wanted. So that building process has happened and the team is where it is now but when we measure whether that aggression that we so celebrate because that's the only point that everybody is talking about as far as Virat Kulli's legacy is concerned that he made fighters out of the team. The team was always fighters, let's not forget that India won the last ODI World Cup under another skipper. A skipper who would never betray is what is working inside him, he will never betray his emotions. That doesn't mean that there was no aggression in the team setup, there was no drive to push for that victory, there was no fighting spirit. And so when we measure Virat Kulli's victories, yeah we had a lot of overseas test victories and all but we didn't win the World Test Championship. When the stakes were high we lost that. That has been a hallmark of Virat Kulli's skipper that the team was and I personally believe that the team was so bogged down by this constant pressure from within also where the skipper is so hyper aggressive that they themselves I mean feel that push from the side that we need to... We couldn't hold it together. So probably that's why we used to, in ICC Major, ICC World Championships, we used to falter at the knockouts at semi-final stages when the knockouts were on, even the finals. So the team is, as we say, threshold a point where beyond that Virat Kulli is not the answer for the future. Because there need to be a fresh outlook now because this clearly is not winning a trophy. And being the topmost country in the world in cricket, you just can't let a skipper remain because you are having good bilateral series victories. Most of it played at home or even every victory also but when major tournaments happen the team loses. And that is also one of the reasons why I mean Virat Kulli's captaincy and its shortcomings is one of the reasons why RCB Royal Challenges Bangalore has not won an IPL trophy as well. The team on paper was one of the best teams out there, stars, great players in great form but no, they couldn't win that trophy. So there are, I mean, let's just be very clear that no skipper is perfect. So there have been weaknesses in Virat Kulli but those weaknesses were completely overlooked because of his star power. And I'm just glad that the BCCI and the current management of the team are in a way very keen to keep this aside and move on and build something else. And when the decision was announced, a lot of people have come out just like and they're talking a lot of good things about Virat Kulli which is very good when we analyse this. Stintas captain, of course, it's not been fully banned that way. They have been very, very good victories as well. But at the same time, someone like Ashwin tweeting it out saying that it would be a headache for the next skipper to emulate or take it forward what Virat Kulli has done for the team. It's also, I mean, of course Ashwin has his reasons to say that but let's also not forget that Ashwin was sidelined by Virat Kulli despite being one of the best bowlers the country had, best spin bowling option. Especially in test matches because he was also, he's also a test sensor and he was ignored for the longest time. So that makes us question Virat Kulli's idea of team building in itself. Let's not, I mean, for the present, let's not even discuss what kind of a team building he did for the future as well. That's that we can evidently see in the coming months when Ravid will be doing the tinkering now with, I guess, Rohi Sharma who is likely to take over as a skipper as well. I mean, likely to have not been sure whether that kind of a single captain thing would, BCSAI would want that. And so yeah, so looking at future, I don't think now the focus would purely be in the idea of aggression, in the idea of team philosophy as such. I think some basic things have to be ironed out also as far as team composition is concerned and as far as rebuilding because again it's a cost generation now a lot of players would retire soon, including Rohi Sharma himself. Virat Kulli again mid 30s so he has to also over the next few years he will start waning if not completely out. So that process is there so that this and aggression won't fuel that process. It needs a systematic approach and it needs approach that will that require the board and the management to draw its resources from the Renji circuit and not just IPL. Okay, so either ways from my point of view and with very limited stake in the game as far as cricket is concerned but at least from that point of view the exciting times to look forward to in terms of change and newness. The good thing about chatting to you Les is that there is complete clarity when a question is asked. There is no desiring, no equivocation at least you seem to have your thoughts clear and for me just from that the little learning is that perhaps exciting times ahead for Indian cricket as this rebuilding process takes shape and some of these newness, some change to look forward to I think. We will keep a track on what happens with India cricket of course as play things continues. Moving on to a young badminton player Lakshya Sen who has on Sunday won the India Open badminton beating the world champion in the process 20 year old Lakshya Sen. Let's see happening in New Delhi again at the time of the pandemic but I guess badminton they are probably a little bit safer in terms of contact and all of those things. What do you make of this win at the start of a new season in a sport that has become quite popular and in a sense important also for India? So I mean it's easy to say that this is the year that Indian badminton the men's game will come of age because Lakshya Sen beat the world champion who was crowned last month and he had beaten Kidamba Stigant in the final of the world championship last month. Locke in you the Singaporean player but he's also a young player he's just 20 the same age as Lakshya so he has just stormed into the global badminton scene towards the end of last year the same thing with Lakshya Sen as well. Their trajectory and their growth I mean the climb into the upper excellence of the sport that way because Lakshya won bronze at the same world championship last month so he is in the thick of action now but it also coincided with the tapering off season because in a year when the Olympics are staged the second half of the year is not exactly something that all the top players would be waiting because they would be recuperating they would be replanning they would be getting into the next Olympic cycle and they would be planning all these things. Of course they will come and play and it's not like they would be completely off the gas but the priorities are a little different the priorities become suddenly long term. Having said that Lakshya Sen's priority right now is to just keep pushing and just keep winning whatever the tournament wherever that happens and that he is doing perfectly. In that sense in the last year he missed out qualifying for the Olympics and that's not because of his fault because he was he had a couple of injury issues then he tested when he was starting to compete early last year he tested positive for covid he had to come back. He tested positive at the tournament venue and then subsequently another injury he suffered and then he just got it back after the Olympics he started competing again and he made it to finals a couple of times and he made it to the bronze player and he won a bronze medal at the world championship so it has been a remarkable journey in the second half of last year for him and a journey that is well planned out. In the sense he is a thorough system product he was assimilated into the badminton system but not the Gopishan system which has brought out so many champions in the past few years. But he is from the Padukone academy the two major schools or two major if I can call it Garanas of Indian badminton so he is based in Bangalore training base is in Bangalore and he joined the Padukone academy when he was 12. So he has had a long stream there and the guidance of Padukone as well as Vimal Kumar who is the coach and so and OGQ is involved in it. There is also the ministry in the Sai involved in ensuring that he is getting the systematic exposure that is needed for him to grow and become a player of stature. And beyond that in the past six months he has had certain major tweaks in his game. He has had influences from various foreign coaches. The next is going to get a Korean coach who would be working with him as a personal coach and abandoned the ministry's modelling to give him an entourage including a personal physio to work with him. And also last year he has had chance to train with Victor Axels and the Olympic champion as well. So this game in the last six months has transformed in the sense that there is a certain level of maturity that has come in as far as tactics are concerned in the game. He was himself a very aggressive player. He liked to finish matches fast. He was always on the front foot. He wanted to keep it flat and fast. He was some of the power and youthful speed that he had that he has. But against the world champion who also plays a similar brand of game. I go aggressive. He goes flat out to kill the game. Probably the lesson learned was from Kidambi himself when he was in the world championship final. But this time Laxia was ready for it and the tactical change was simply he was patient. And developing that kind of a patience at this stage of his career where he is just moving out of the junior ranks and trying to make a mark in the senior ranks. It just presents itself. It is promising for a bright road ahead. Just that he has to keep evolving and also I always take these kind of victories with a pinch of salt because it's the start of the season. It's also a point where not the entire world of badminton is not exactly in that peak trajectory. They are just building towards whatever they want to achieve in this year. And also whatever they want to achieve in the next three years, culminating at the Paris Olympics. So that is a kind of plan that should be in place for Laxia and knowing how Padukone works as well as how his trajectory has been from the age of 12 when he has been training under Padukone. I believe that this part would be taken care of as far as Laxia is concerned. Talent-wise, there's no doubt that he is one of the best right now in the Indian mix of talented players that we have. And it's also great to see a young player winning medals on the global front and exuding promise. We have only seen with the women's players, badminton players in the country. It's always great to see the men also join the bandwagon. Absolutely and in a year when we have both the Commonwealth and the Asian Games to at least in theory look forward to, it'll be good to see men's badminton also making some kind of impact and I'm sure that he'll be up there. We'll keep track on that also. But finally, our last bit of the day and perhaps most exciting news of the day is that this week begins the AFC Women's Asian Cup. It's happening in India. India are hosting the tournament for the first time since 1979 and participating in the tournament for the first time since 2003. Twelve countries are playing the tournament of which eight will proceed from the league stage to the knockout stage of the competition and five teams including of course the host Australia who have already qualified for the next FIFA Women's World Cup. Five teams will get to qualify for that global quadrennial tournament. Japan of course are the favorite, some would say Japan, Australia, China have been the most successful historically at this tournament but I think over the last three or four editions it's Australia and Japan that have really dominated along with a strong Korean side that have made it to the finals as many as four times without ever having won the competition. Let's see, super excited now that most of Indian football is also on a bit of a break following COVID-19 unfortunately but this is happening in a super tight bubble. I received a press release just this morning, I haven't had a chance to go through it yet but talking about the Maharashtra Government's role also in ensuring that the AFC bubble for these 12 teams is maintained as strictly and as sort of diligently as possible to make sure no one gets sick and we get a chance to see some top quality football over the next couple of weeks. That was the biggest worry in fact last week in our last episode we had spoken about that as well so now with ISL also getting affected by COVID-19 when I saw that news I was just worried about the AFC Cup because there is a lot of things at stake here beyond just the staging of a continental tournament or these countries coming in and playing for the Cup. What is at stake is for Indian football itself so not as forced but as for the future of the game for the women's game as concerned because we don't have such a setup for women in this country and them playing a continental stage and it's very evident the long gap 2003 after 2003 they are making it into the tournament as forced and imagine that back in 1979 I believe that we were finalists in the inaugural Asian Cup so in that regard probably we can call India as a footballing nation as one of the pioneers of women's football in Asia but then we fell a long way behind because of one simple reason there has not been a keen interest by the National Federation to push the women's game into the forefront or give them if not equal opportunity a level chance I mean some semblance of a level chance for them so the fact that the National League which is actually a tournament it's not a league it's not been staged since 2019 when we have had ISLs and Ileagues being staged Ileague qualifiers being staged, Santos Trophy and being staged so National Championship happened last year the women's national championship in Kerala but we have been and this is something that we may work on a story just giving it out a little in advance that there are informations that we have obtained which point at that national championship to be very shoddily organised lot of issues were there in fact and so that is in fact a clear portrayal of how the game is run in the country and so for this women who hardly get anything to play or play for and they are getting a chance to showcase their talent and their skill and their abilities on the continental stage and fingers crossed we are very hopeful that they would make a good showing they would make it to the knockouts it's a tough group for them which you can possibly elaborate what are the dynamics in that group and I believe when we discuss this there is a chance that they can I mean if not the big top two teams they can probably progress as one of the third best qualifiers from the group stages so further complication in this story is the fact that Australia by virtue of being host for the next World Cup have already qualified that also kind of changes the World Cup qualification dynamic a bit but yeah so just since you were asking about group dynamics India have in the same group China who are extremely strong they also have Chinese Taipei old rivals because you were mentioning the 1979 tournament Chinese Taipei beat India in the final of that inaugural tournament so otherwise there would have been an Asian Cup somewhere in the trophy cabinet at AFF house but and of course then there are debutants the only debutants of the tournament which is Iran the good thing I think from an India perspective is one that on the opening day of the tournament which is the 20th of January India will play Iran and I think that is a great way because no disrespect to Iran of course but they are a young team they are a new program playing in this tournament at this level for the first time so at least theoretically our best chances of a solid result and starting the tournament strong is against Iran which in a football context I mean you don't normally you wouldn't normally hear us as Indians saying that so that should be fun and if they can start well in that opening game then I think anything is possible because what we've seen of this team and they've been training and working under extremely challenging conditions like you rightly mentioned let's see no competitions really at club level or any other level so fortunately over the last few months they've gotten a chance to travel around a little bit and play some exhibition games they played in a four nation tournament in South America where they played the likes of Venezuela and Chile and Brazil of course showing some very very spirited performances and some great potential they are physically very well drilled at this point so beyond how India does at the tournament I think it's exciting for us as fans to get a chance to be watching the best in the continent play day in day out in our time zone so very few other distractions so it'll be I think for many Indian fans the first opportunity to see a Japan or a China or a Korea or an Australia play at this level and I think as exciting as it is to see India's women at that stage it's equally exciting to see some of these guys who are also World Cup winners and among the best in the world at the sport that they do coming and playing in India and performing and doing the stuff here so pretty excited about that you can of course catch for those who are interested in football catch our extensive coverage we've got Ex-India captain René Desingh who will be coming in for some of the tactical analysis of the games as they go on we have the veteran sports journalist Sharda Ogra, Weber Praganandan, my colleague will hopefully be at some point able to attend some of those games on the ground if things COVID-19 permits etc so we're planning regular coverage of that so you can join us on 420 grams for all of the coverage of the AFC Asian Cup which actually begins today with a big preview show we'll have all the details on all the teams and the biggest highlights of things to look forward to and much more so and with that I think we'll call it also a wrap on this edition of Playthings from Leslie myself and the entire NewsClick team I hope you're keeping safe, thank you very much for watching, we'll be back again next week with hopefully lots more to talk about until then, goodbye