Best of BS Opinion: Gautam Gambhir and India's selectors must go

Today's columnists write about long-term oil forecasts and wartime 'jugaad' to India's cricket woes, the AI investment frenzy and a new documentary probing US secrecy on non-human intelligence

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Hello, and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of today's Opinion page.   The oil market has always been wrong about long-term prices, and is still wrong in its anticipation that a barrel of crude will cost around $60 by 2030, writes Javier Blas. On the contrary, all else being normal, he says it will be more expensive by then. Using the five-year forward contract as a barometer, he points out that it has historically been wrong on prices. Blas reasons that oil consumption growth remains healthy and demand is likely to expand. Supply will also revert to normal levels - the market is currently oversupplied due to multiple unusual factors. Barring political tensions, the balance of risk points to higher oil prices by 2030 — likely above $75-$80 a barrel - even if the journey has a bearish pause in 2026.

 

The Second World War (WW-II) led to huge advances in science. But one key battle was won by 'jugaad', writes Devangshu Datta. British convoys carrying essentials from the US were relentlessly being sunk by German subs. Patrick Blackett came up with a mathematical formula to protect the convoys, but a far more frugal and efficient method was drummed up by officers of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The 'Wrens' junked protocol as they shaved 8-10 minutes off between spotting a sub and retaliating, simply by a ship transmitting the message 'Raspberry' or 'Banana'. Escorts could then launch a counterattack without waiting for orders. The results were stunning: Germans began losing U-boats at an unsustainable rate. Sadly, it took months before their 'jugaad' ideas were implemented.

 

The recent India-South Africa started off on an unavoidable note: the pejorative reference to visiting captain Temba Bavuma's height. But it was enough to trigger a revenge tale that led to the improbable crash-and-burn of the Indian Test side at home, the second time this year. More worrying than the verbal fireworks, though, writes Shekhar Gupta, is the catastrophic decline of Indian red-ball cricket. Two things, he says, have gone wrong. First, this Indian team can neither bowl spin nor bat against it. Second, the change of team management puts all-purpose cricketers above specialists. The BCCI must go back to horses for courses: like different captains for different forms, there must be different coaches, too. Gautam Gambhir, he says, must go, along with the selection committee. Their campaign to destroy the star system they detested has disembowelled India's red-ball domination at home. They must be held accountable now. 

 

The massive investments in artificial intelligence has many people believing it is another bubble. But is AI truly the kind of technology that should, on its own, dominate the investment corpus in large industrialised economies, questions Mihir S Sharma. He compares the AI investment craze with the early days of the Railways, which actually contributed more to GDP growth. The reckless spending on AI, he posits, is less about tech giants chasing revenue or profits in the near-term and more about preserving dominance for decades. They’re like the powers of Europe in the first months of the First World War: They are not sure what they’re fighting for, but they are certain that they have to fight, and they believe they have the resources to keep going until they win.

 

Dan Farah's The Age of Disclosure, which released earlier this year, comes not as another conspiracy theory but as a compilation of testimony from insiders who say the US is hiding decades of information suggesting non-human intelligence, and which information is hidden even from its presidents. Kumar Abishek argues that the film’s certainty is also its structural flaw, given there is no one to question this narrative, contrary to Carl Sagan’s exhortation that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. In 2024, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office reported no evidence of crash retrieval programmes, chalking dramatic accounts up to misinterpretation or rumour. While the documentary addresses not whether alien life exists, but whether the US government has been sitting on evidence, it remains in the space between earnest revelation and highly polished speculation, given the lack of any verifiable artefact.