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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Credibility Crisis

For years, Faizal Khan, known across the country by his affectionate moniker of ‘Khan Sir,’ has cultivated the image of an educator fighting a noble battle against an exploitative coaching industry. To millions of students, he is not merely a teacher but a folk hero, someone who is an outsider challenging entrenched interests while offering affordable education to the masses. But the recent episode surrounding the attack on Khan Global Studies in Patna raise uncomfortable questions and casts...

Credibility Crisis

For years, Faizal Khan, known across the country by his affectionate moniker of ‘Khan Sir,’ has cultivated the image of an educator fighting a noble battle against an exploitative coaching industry. To millions of students, he is not merely a teacher but a folk hero, someone who is an outsider challenging entrenched interests while offering affordable education to the masses. But the recent episode surrounding the attack on Khan Global Studies in Patna raise uncomfortable questions and casts a shadow on the educator’s reputation. According to reports, a group of men allegedly vandalised the coaching institute, pelted stones and assaulted a security guard. But the controversy did not end there. Soon after the incident, Khan claimed that seven to ten rounds of firing had taken place outside his institute. The allegation dramatically escalated the seriousness of the episode. His claim generated headlines, social media outrage and a wave of sympathy. Yet police investigations reportedly found no evidence of firing by the attackers. CCTV footage and local inquiries also failed to substantiate the claim. Then came a more troubling development. A video surfaced allegedly showing two security guards associated with Khan Global Studies had fired shots into the air. The guards have since been arrested. While the investigation is still underway, the sequence of events is, at the very least, fishy. If police are ultimately correct that there was no firing by the attackers, then how did such a dramatic narrative emerge? Why were claims of multiple rounds being fired presented with such certainty? Why did the alleged gunfire become the centrepiece of public messaging immediately after the attack? Khan’s rivals have claiming that it was the educator himself who orchestrated the attack to gain sympathy as his fortunes were flagging. While the truth of these allegations have yet to be proved, it is worth noting that the modern coaching industry is not merely an educational enterprise but also a business of branding whose teachers are celebrities. Coaching centres compete for market share, social media attention and student enrolments. Success stories turn into marketing campaigns. And victimhood can sometimes become a marketing campaign too. Indeed, the most striking feature of the episode is not the vandalism itself but the rush to construct a story of persecution before the facts were known. The suggestion that shadowy rivals sought to silence a successful educator fit neatly into an existing public image. It generated precisely the sort of public sympathy that influential personalities often enjoy. Students deserve better. They look to educators not merely for knowledge but for intellectual honesty. A teacher’s first duty is respect for facts. The Patna incident should therefore serve as a reminder that celebrity status cannot become a substitute for credibility. The damage will extend beyond one coaching institute or Khan’s reputation. It will damage trust itself. And for a teacher, there is no greater loss.

A Domestic Colossus

Paras Dogra’s record-breaking Ranji season has carried Jammu and Kashmir into uncharted cricketing territory, offering a quieter counter-narrative to decades of turmoil.

Indian domestic cricket rarely pauses to take stock of its longest servants. But the spotlight suddenly turned on 41-year-old Paras Dogra, captain of Jammu and Kashmir, achieved a historic milestone when his latest innings of 58 against Bengal in a semi-final made him the fastest player to reach 10,000 runs and placed J&K in a final they had waited 67 years to reach.


The presence of turmoil-racked Jammu and Kashmir’s presence at this stage of the Ranji Trophy is itself an anomaly. Since joining India’s premier domestic competition in 1959–60, it has barely managed to register its presence. Until recently, J & K occupied a similar position in the Ranji league to teams such as Tripura, who are seldom central to the tournament’s narrative.

But in this season, J & K reached the final for the first time. And Dogra’s innings has carried a resonance far beyond the boundary rope.


Cricket in Jammu and Kashmir has long lived in the margins, interrupted by decades of terrorism, curfews and constrained by geography. The region has generally supplied headlines pertaining to militancy, and not cricket. In a sense, Dogra’s achievement stands as a larger rebuke to this.


Dogra is not a late-blooming prodigy nor a meteor shot across the IPL-lit sky. He is a career domestic batsman who simply refused to fade by his sheer commitment to the game. Since making his first-class debut in the 2001–02 season, he has scored runs in all seasons, climates and divisions, often far from television cameras. He has represented Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry and now Jammu and Kashmir, adapting to new dressing rooms as easily as to new bowling attacks. The only constants were the bat and his appetite for runs.


His most prolific years came in obscurity. In 2012–13, playing for Himachal Pradesh, he scored five hundreds in eight matches – three of those in consecutive innings. This act of dominance had briefly forced national selectors to look his way. An India A call-up followed, against West Indies A in 2013. It amounted to a single match and a single innings with Dogra scoring just seven runs. Rather than wallowing in disappointment, he simply returned to scoring runs in domestic seasons.


In the 2015–16 season, Dogra scored two double hundreds in successive innings and averaged over 78.


As televised leagues and fast-tracked selections reshaped incentives, the virtues that sustained long domestic careers like durability and adaptation were quietly devalued. In this glitzy atmosphere, players like Dogra have been relegated to the sidelines.


His crossing 10,000 Ranji runs makes him only the second player ever to do so, overtaking the pace set by Wasim Jaffer. And yet, he remains uncapped internationally.


Dogra arrived in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the 2024–25 season not as a saviour but as a stabiliser. While the side had talent, it had little belief in itself. Its history in the Ranji Trophy was long and uncelebrated: debuting in 1959–60, J & K usually was often eliminated early and rarely feared by any team. But Dogra, with patience and result-oriented attitude sans sermonising or bluster, brought about a change in the team. “Cricket tests you far more than it rewards you,” he revealingly said after the semi-final in what could well be his own life’s summary.


Against two-time champions Bengal, J&K conceded a first-innings deficit. And yet, the seasoned Dogra ensured there was no panic. With two-and-a-half days left, Bengal folded quicker than expected. J&K then chased calmly to make domestic cricketing history.


For the state, the symbolism was unmistakable. Here was a classic underdog team from a backwaters region now being led by a man whose own career had unfolded in near anonymity. And yet, the team stands on the threshold of Indian cricket’s oldest prize not through any particularly flamboyant display, just intelligent cricketing and stubborn competence.


Dogra himself has been the epitome of restraint and wisdom. He called his 10,000-run mark “special but secondary.” He spoke instead of teammates, coaches and management that had sustained him at the fag end of a 24-year career. “Kabhi socha nahin tha,” he admitted.


With over 10,500 first-class runs, 34 centuries, and a career-best 253, Dogra has built a record that demands respect. More importantly, Jammu and Kashmir’s journey to the Ranji final has enlarged the imagination of what the region can be associated with.

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