Who draws up India's schedules?

The Kochi-IPL saga is like a soap opera: the promise of a verdict, the sense of anticipation, and then a twist in the storyline that gives it legs for another month. Meanwhile a parallel storyline with the Rajasthan Royals emerges for viewers, and of course there is the never-ending saga of Lalit Modi and various agencies that are joyously sending out notices. As an Indian version of Law and Order (the Hindi news channels will find more dramatic words and sound effects for it) it might have been interesting; as an episode in Indian cricket it is more than just a trifle disconcerting.

Meanwhile the Commonwealth Games enquiry has enough parallel storylines to guarantee at least a 104-episode run. Has sport found new stadiums. New players? Weren't courts where tennis players flourished?

And when cricket went to the grounds, it found two playing fields grossly inadequate. In Goa there was sunshine and no play, which is like going to a million-dollar production and discovering that the actors can't make it because of a traffic jam. Cricket can never really insure itself against rain but it can ensure that once it stops, the game begins as quickly as possible. Possessing grounds that drain quickly and allow cricket to be played is no longer an accomplishment, it is a necessity; like having a sightscreen or a box of new balls. You don't cancel a board meeting because there was no photocopier. And so the best one-day series you could have in India (okay, second best after India v Pakistan) was lost to the elements. It was a criminal waste.

It should hurt. If you want to be the industry leader, you set the standards; you cannot play on medieval grounds. I know there is a case for taking cricket to many places in the country, and it is a fair case, but those places must be well equipped. Would Iron Maiden perform with a sound system that had loose contacts in it? Would Apple sell their laptops in plastic bags? Everything has its place. I feel sorry for the fans in Kochi and Goa, who have always filled stadiums, but the more there is at stake, the more particular you need to be.

Even more interestingly, everyone is in a tizzy about what to do with the Test matches in South Africa. On the face of it, it's very nice that people are going to go out of the way to ensure that the best players have enough time to acclimatise. But surely there will be a child in the crowd somewhere who will, like with the emperor's new clothes, ask a slightly more obvious question. But why, the child will ask, didn't they have more time between games in the first place? Because, the adults will say, the schedules are tight and this is the way it is in modern cricket. In which case, the child might ask, if winning in South Africa was so important, why didn't they play less against New Zealand? Or, the child might well continue, was the objective of winning in South Africa framed a little too late?

And so while it is laudable that India wants to give their top players more time to get used to the conditions in South Africa (talking of which, how many matches are they now going to play before the Tests?), giving them five days between the end of the series against New Zealand and the first Test in Centurion was a bit untidy in the first place; it gave India the worst possible chance of winning a short series in a country where they have never really done well.

And so I am very curious to see how this eventually plays out. Will India play the last five one-day games in home conditions with players who won't play the World Cup? Or only the last three? Or will some people get acclimatised and some others jump off the plane and get into whites? I think the time to show intent is in the planning, the scheduling - not in running helter skelter once things are sealed.

So then, as tigers must reside in jungles and not in villages, so too must sport reside in stadiums, not in courtrooms. I fear that increasingly the language of sport is being drafted by lawyers, that the sounds of sport are arguments in tribunals. We huff and we puff too much. It is not meant to be so. Part of the joy of sport lies in the anticipation. We deny that to our audiences too often.