Vaughan Should Be Penalized For His Mediocrity

Former England captain Michael Vaughan criticized India's national selectors for picking a team without a specialist spinner for the first of England's three warm up games in the lead up to the Pataudi Trophy Tests in November. The hypocrisy of this is obvious since it has long been a practice in England for key county players to take a break in non-championship warm up games against touring sides. County sides that face up against visitors who seek practice are nearly always made up of second XI players. Further, he does not know what the make up of the XI for the other two warm up games will be. England are scheduled to play Mumbai A from November 3 - 5, followed by another team in Ahmedabad from November 8 - 11. These teams have not been announced yet. England are scheduled to play a warm up game at Ahmedabad, a week before the first Test at Ahmedabad.



But beyond the obvious hypocrisy, lets call it what it is - it is a mediocre comment - the sort that should, in any seriously meritocratic system disqualify Vaughan from any paid media work relating to this series (or any other). If the content of media work is to offer opinions, then surely, palpable hypocrisy which is not self-reflexive should be disqualifying, just as carelessness is disqualifying in other professions. Vaughan is a former England captain, not just a journeyman media hack - indeed, journeymen would think long and hard before they indulged in such verbal bomb throwing. It diminishes the press as a corps of observers, just as Vaughan's commentary diminishes former sportsmen turned media persons.

I don't criticize Vaughan because he's being partisan. I think Vaughan deserves more than just criticism - he deserves to be excluded from paid media during the England - India series, because he has demonstrated that he is incompetent and clumsy when it comes to even simple partisan hackery. To put it simply, he's shown that he's bad at his job.

Unless you disagree that he's bad at his job (and I can think of several mediocre PR arguments to support such a claim), I don't see how you can agree that he should have a paid job. It must elegantly follow that any station or publication that hires Vaughan to do paid media in the England v India series has no interest in hiring quality personnel. But this is now getting into delicate territory. I could, in some circles, be accused of trying to interfere with the market!

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