Allow me a sweeping generalisation about sporting success and failure: For today's governing elite, only success matters and when it happens, the grasping presiding deities rush to bask in reflected glory and share the limelight with the champions. Recall Modi's fawning over our triumphant T-20 world champions a few months ago. But when defeat comes calling, these calculating opportunists scurry away or join in the public lynching of our sportspersons.

You've guessed right! This cynical paroxysm of outrage has been provoked by the unseemly reaction of the BCCI and former cricketers to our Indian test team's twin defeats to New Zealand and Australia. How dare they?

You don't kick anybody, least of all our heroes, when they are down! But that's what our wonderful Indian cricket team has had to face since our Test series defeat to Australia last month. When they most needed empathy and understanding, they were greeted with brickbats!

Instead of rushing in where angels fear to tread, let's step back and look at our team's performance in perspective before passing judgment. It's a fact that in the last three months, we lost 0-3 to New Zealand and 1-3 to Australia. But this bland statistic obscures how exciting and nail-bitingly close most games were.

Against NZ, the first Test was lost on the first morning when India was bowled out for 46 runs on a devilishly lively Chepauk wicket, and despite the second innings heroics of Sarfraz Khan and Rishabh Pant, NZ won the game handily. But in the subsequent two Tests, the pendulum swung maddeningly to and fro with NZ, ultimately prevailing by 113 runs in Pune and 25 runs at the Wankhede.

Likewise, India lost the series in Australia but, thanks primarily to our lion-hearted bowlers led by the peerless Bumrah, put up a sterling fight. Don't underrate our thumping victory in the first Test, where the victory margin of 295 runs was the most comprehensive ever by an Indian team in Australia. Sadly, as happens even to the best, our vaunted batting line-up, barring Jaiswal and Pant, couldn't get going. India lost the series but was gallant in defeat!

And lest we forget, this very Indian team spearheaded by Virat, Rohit, Bumrah and Ashwin is our most successful ever. Since 2019, India has won 31 of the 59 Tests played and lost 19. India was the runner-up in the 2023 ODI World Cup, reaching the World Test Championship 2024 Final and winning the T-20 World Cup 2024. Beat that!

It's sickening to see these heroes who have given their all for the country now crucified by paunchy old men "dressed in a brief authority, most ignorant of what (they're) most assured of." The BCCI, as graphically described by a leading national daily, "cracks whip to fix Team India, issues strict disciplinary guidelines to rein in the players."

Among the directives issued are juvenile fiats that include staying for the entire duration of practice sessions, travelling to and from venues together, making participation in domestic matches mandatory, allowing only restricted time with families, barring personal advertisement shoots during series/tours but making it mandatory to be available for "BCCI's official shoots, promotional activities and functions."

The laundry list of dos and don'ts is an insult to team India, particularly to the seniors like Virat and Rohit, at whom the barbs are aimed. Asking these battle-hardened heroes to go back to the basics reminded me of arguably the greatest actor of all time, Marlon Brando, being asked to do a screen test before he was offered the role in The Godfather. Even at this distant date, I remember Time magazine's droll comment: "It was like asking the Pope to recite his catechism."

The shabby treatment of guys who have achieved so much for the country is unconscionable. The absurd BCCI diktat treats our heroes like errant schoolboys, ignoring the reality of their high-pressure lives, playing and travelling day in and out. Never have we had a more professional and fitter group of senior cricketers than we have today. And to subject them to this kind of schoolboy inquisition? What a shame!

Maybe it's too much to expect the puny men in the BCCI to show understanding or empathy with our cricketers. But one could not have imagined that our former cricketers like the oracular Sunil Gavaskar and Sanjay Manjrekar would join the lynch mob as they did. In the wake of our team's defeat in the fifth Test at Sydney, Gavaskar set the cat among the pigeons by urging the Board "to stop acting like admirers and put their foot down …We don't need players who are partly here and partly elsewhere. It's time to stop pampering anyone."

My word, the forgetfulness and hypocrisy! One feels like yelling, "Foul"! This man is clearly amnesiac about his own playing days. To his credit, he was the first Indian cricketer who demonstrated that enormous financial benefits through ads and appearance fees could be reaped as collateral for his craft. And why not, considering the all-too-brief shelf life of a professional cricketer!

I am ancient enough to remember that at that time, too, in the late 1980s, former cricketers like Bedi and Pataudi made snide comments about Gavaskar and Kapil Dev for having "too many distractions and they all revolve around money" and for being "commercial, not professional." Then too, the criticism seemed outrageously unfair as it was levelled against two stalwarts who, irrespective of their other preoccupations, were the quintessential professionals devoted to their craft. It ill behoves Gavaskar to now do unto Virat and Rohit what was done to him. One expected a more measured and empathetic response to Team India's recent defeats from our greatest ever batsman.

While Gavaskar played petty politics, Greg Chappell, a modern great and deep thinker of the game, brilliantly and empathetically analysed the plight of our ageing stars and what he calls "Elite Performance Decline Syndrome (EPDS)." The fear of failure results in hesitation and self-doubt. Consequently, fearlessness is replaced by caution, self-doubt, and physical and mental fatigue. There is also the overpowering emotional toll of carrying the weight of expectations of one billion fans. Chappell suggests that the only cure is to "rekindle the thinking of your youth," though he admits that it is easier said than done.

India is a front-runner to win the Champions Trophy commencing later this month - a tribute to their outstanding performance in the One-day format. At this crunch time, one hopes that our heroes have overcome the demoralising effect of dealing with an iniquitous cricket establishment. And let's pray that our heroes, Virat Kohli and Rohit, end on a high note and echo Chappel's thoughts at the end of his final Test when he scored a century: "Time may diminish our powers; it cannot erase the habits of excellence ingrained over a lifetime!"

(The views are personal)