Horses for courses policy

Last year we gave the Australians a bloody nose. That was the Indian cricketing reason to celebrate in the year 2001. This Indian team always had good players. Today it has a team management that doesn't hesitate to make the big players sit on the bench if they don't fit into the scheme of things. For me, this is the cricketing reason to celebrate for the year 2002.

Why doesn't India win regularly? The problem has never been with our players not having the talent to win; it was always the effort being put in for the purpose. Sadly, the desire to continually get better was long ago drowned in a pool full of colas and in the hullabaloo about Laxman's 281 and Sachin's 29 centuries, either no one noticed or even after noticing just didn't care enough. Winning at all costs took second place to reputation building, and today, as a cricketing nation, we are in a position where the only thing we can brag about genuinely is Dalmiya's scaring the ICC every now and then.

Today, the Indian team management seems to be trying to combat just this problem. When I look at Dravid turning wicket-keeper recently, with all due considerations for Dravid's quality of keeping, this has started something that could take the Indian team ten paces further in the next one year than they have moved in the last three years. When I saw Kumble dropped from a Test recently and Laxman from some one-day matches, I felt that somewhere, without actually shouting from the rooftops, Indian cricket had just taken a turn for the better. We have started to demand more from our players and for me, that is more positive than the promise of fast pitches and induction of the Contract system in Indian cricket. We have dropped players before but the recent incidents send out a message. Fielding and running between the wickets actually matter. Being the spin-king or the vice-captain of the team doesn't guarantee a place in the eleven. Doing more counts.

Dravid might not be a brilliant keeper today but he knows what his ticket to the one-day squad consists of. Solely as a batsman he is a mill-stone around the team's neck; no one really needs "the wall" in slam-bang cricket where Yuvraj, for all his faulty technique, can tonk the ball around and get a fifty in the time it takes Dravid to cross ten. Dravid's utility is as an anchor but in the 50 over format 80 per cent of the times an anchor is useless.

When you talk of the same Dravid keeping and batting, things don't seem so bad. Batting at five or six, he gives the team a second line of defense in case of a total upper order collapse (the 20 per cent times an anchor is useful) and the clinching point is that we get the wicketkeeper for free since in the old order the same Dravid would anyway be playing as a batsman. In the new scenario, we have to see Dravid as a wicketkeeper first and batsman second. Here, if we play our cards right and nurse and groom him properly, we will have what we searched for so long - a keeper batsman. Dravid's usefulness in this position comes not when we think of Dravid the batsman keeping wickets but when we think of him as a wicket keeper who can bat.

The flaws in this idea are too obvious not to mention - Dravid will drop catches, miss a stumping and not collect throws cleanly, leading to overthrows and missed run-outs. This is where we need to add a touch of professionalism to a brilliant hunch. The one-day game demands a lot less from a keeper than a Test does. Groom Dravid to match that level. Make him keep wickets in all the one-dayers from here onto the World Cup. Give him specialized coaching. When the World Cup does come - and that is what is important, not the series against England, where a missed catch can be forgiven - let Dravid be ten times better than he is today. He will still be miles behind Gilchrist and Rashid Latif as a wicketkeeper but take my word for it; it will be enough for our purpose of taking a good shot at the Cup.

Many other players can give so much more too but they don't because no one seriously asks for it. Srinath, immediately after scoring a couple of 50s some years back, was very quick in reminding everyone that he wasn't an all rounder but wanted to serve the team just as a bowler. We called him modest and when he ran from the ball to avoid getting hit in the final Test against the West Indies, Harsha Bhogle remembered the time when he could "bat a bit". I could only remember Srinath's statement so many years ago of being just a bowler and not an all-rounder - if he had taken on the mantle of an all-rounder then we would have laughed at him the way we do at Agarkar today.

I sometimes think of Ajit Agarkar being an example of the kind of chump who lost out because of offering more than he needed to; a chump not because of the effort made to be an all rounder but being stupid enough in an unprofessional society to try and do more than he needed to. Agarkar has long left his pretensions as an all-rounder and is today looked at solely as a bowler by all sane people. Though I figure in the list of people who laughed at his fitting the all-rounder bill because of his uncanny ability to make many rounds (zeroes), I also can't help but feel some admiration for the guy.

He tried to do his part; his not being good enough can't be attributed as his fault - it is nobody's fault actually. Being the butt of ridicule of a nation of one billion can't be easy and when he comes in today and bowls his quota of 10 overs for 40 odd runs, I see someone who displays more guts on the field than many of the others do because he bowls those 10 overs knowing that most of the people watching him are sniggering at some inane joke about his being an all rounder.

Laxman and Dravid ran from opening the batting in Tests and made sure everyone knew they weren't happy at the idea. Dravid is easily the best batsman we have in terms of technique. Let me not talk about whether he should be the opener in Tests or not because to me, Dravid at three sounds extremely comforting. What I want to say here is simply that when Dravid opened, he failed and lost no time in telling his captain he did his bit and he wanted out. We sympathized with him and chastised the captain for making him the fall guy but I ask - why did he fail?

We all know he is good enough; he can come in the second over with the score at zero for the loss of one wicket and play comfortably so why not as opener? Was it because he had a ready middle order berth waiting for him? I know he took a knock on the noggin in the first Test in West Indies, continued batting and scored a ton, possibly helping India save that Test so my argument about his not giving his utmost sounds really silly but then I see what he did in West Indies as his job as a front line batsman. What he did, when he ran from opening, is avoid doing that little extra.

What I say of Dravid is also true of most Indian players; let my constant examples of Dravid not be taken in a light of Dravid-bashing.

For more than a year, Ganguly has played in the Test team without meriting his place. Even junior-high school kids knew the formula - soften him up with some short-pitched stuff and then pitch one on off, going away. Keeper, first slip, second slip or gully was just a matter of technicality. Today after the West Indies series, Ganguly looks to have taken the steps he should have taken almost a year back. He seems to have admitted he had a problem, searched for a solution and finally got it right by trying hard at nets. Again, it may be said that the effort from his side was always there but I ask one question only: if the effort was there then where was the result? How, after the second Test in the West Indies, did he suddenly learn the art of avoiding the really short balls, ignoring those outside off and (amazingly) pulling those deserving the treatment? How can someone go from a hopeless case to someone batting with such calm assurance as Ganguly did in the final three Tests?

Was it the fact that despite his success as a captain in terms of wins, the crescendo for his sacking was getting louder because of his batting? With no one around to really challenge a place in the team, it was okay, but with Sehwag, Kaif and Dinesh Mongia suddenly coming into the limelight, Ganguly knows he has to deliver and his captaincy has to be the "extra" to his batting and not the other way around.

For a long time, around eight to nine places in the playing eleven could be predicted a month before the match because you knew the seniors would take around eight fixed spots in the eleven. Adding the wicketkeeper of the day, whether it be Dighe / DDG / Dahiya, that effectively sealed up a lot of places.

Today, with Srinath not getting into the England squad, Laxman warming the bench and Dravid keeping wickets in the one-dayers, a beginning has been made though changes of this magnitude won't go down well with many people.

In this demand for excellence, gray areas will always be there. Accusations of nepotism too will abound and there will always be an argument of "Why should player X open and jeopardize his career? Why should player Y be castigated for not scoring - he is a bowler and he took three wickets, damn it! Oh, the captain decided to leave him out of the eleven - Is that the same captain who is the lousiest fielder in the team and a competitor for the worst runner between the wickets award"? Not to mention my favourite - "Why should Tendulkar play at four and Sehwag open in one-dayers? Why should Tendulkar have to suffer because the others aren't good enough in the middle order"?

The answer to all the questions above should be one: "because the team needs it, dummy. It doesn't matter if the bowler took three wickets; he still has to score those 15 runs we need for a win. It doesn't matter if the captain came down the wicket to Shaun Pollock and clocked him for a six over cover; he still has to dive when India is fielding and the ball goes past him".

And the answer to my favourite - "Sachin is a better player than Sehwag; Sachin no longer goes boom-boom at the top as he used to some years back; Sehwag can go boom-boom at the top today but might not be able to guide an innings along in the middle order; Sachin is good enough to guide the innings along in the middle overs, go boom-boom in the end overs and with Sehwag going boom-boom in the opening overs, give all of us something to go boom-boom about and giving the opposition something to go boo-hoo about throughout the innings".

Simple, so what is the fuss all about?

Slowly the line of thinking is changing in the Indian team where they are looking at the horses-for-courses policy rather than the seniority policy. Who deserves the credit for this? I don't really know though Ganguly looks to be the one who should be taking the bow. Many things, good and bad, can be said about his captaincy but the bottom line is that we win more under Ganguly than we do under others. What about the coach and the BCCI? Sure, if they are also responsible for this long-due change then they deserve a clap on the back too. At the end of all the Pepsis, Coca Colas and Hero Hondas, the only thing that matters is whether we win or lose. Not who scored a century or who took five wickets but who won. From the team's side, a start seems to have been made, and unless the idea is scuttled by the many politicians of Indian cricket, it will surely make the cricketers more accountable. Now it is upto us - the paying public, who make and break the heroes - to be mature in our worship. I sincerely hope we are upto it.

Indian cricketing reason to celebrate in the year 2003 - Hmmm, don't we have the World Cup then? Could it be ... maybe … why not?

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Mail Sriram Ranganathan