NEWS
GROUNDS
COLUMNS
MATCH REPORTS
INTERVIEWS
ENEMY CAMP
GALLERY
SCHEDULE
FORUM

Tell us the other one, Mr Borde!

The chairman of national selectors, Mr Chandu Borde, was quoted by a news agency this morning to the effect that India needs to prepare fast wickets, if it wants to do well abroad.

We are impressed. Very. Not by the perspicacity of Mr Borde, but by the shortness of his memory. Then again, October 29 is a long way back in time -- why would we expect him to remember the events of Ahmedabad, where India played the third Test of the series against New Zealand?

To refresh his memory -- and ours -- we quote >the relevant portion of the match report >written on that day:

The pitch for the third Test, at the Sardar Patel Stadium, Motera, Ahmedabad, presented a picture that should surprise you only if you are just back from an extended trip to the moon.

Three days ago, this was a greentop. By the morning of the Test, every blade of grass had been surgically excised -- if Gillette wants to cash in on a good promo opportunity, they would advertise this one as the closest shave ever.

Actually, this is no laughing matter. Every single time the Indian team goes abroad -- and, inevitably, loses -- we hear talk of how the only way to turn it round is to prepare quicker tracks at home and allow the batsmen to play on seaming tracks. To this end, two years ago, the BCCI even announced with much fanfare the formation of a pitches committee, originally headed by Kapil Dev himself. The committee has a budget running into a few million, it meets regularly, it travels round the country, it imports soil experts at considerable expense to analyse the Indian pitches and put together an "action plan" for preparing bouncier tracks -- and at the end of it all, what do we get?

What is especially ironic is that this pitch at the Motera is prepared by none other than Dhiraj Parsana, a member of the aforesaid committee.

Shortly, India will go to Australia. Find itself all at sea on the seaming, bouncing wickets of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne. And on its return, the likes of Lele, Kapil Dev, Muthiah et al will talk of how Indian batsmen need practise against good seam bowling on quickish tracks, and the pitches committee will probably go on a round the cricketing world tour to 'study the problem' and produce an 'action plan'.

How much longer will this farce go on? How much longer before someone says it like it is -- 'Guys, we are content to earn results by creating turning tracks at home and if, in the process, we get the reputation of being lions at home and lambs abroad, the hell with it!'?

Does all that, written over two months ago, sound prophetic? As any fan of Indian cricket will tell you, you don't have to be Nostradamus to know how we go: Produce grassless, paceless tracks at home. Win. Go abroad. Lose. Talk of the need for pacy pitches. Produce grassless, paceless...

We said this after the first tour of South Africa, under Mohammad Azharuddin. Only to greet the visiting Englishmen with dead tracks. We said this after the tour of South Africa and the West Indies, under Tendulkar. And went back to flat tracks at home. We are saying this after the defeat in Australia -- what odds would you offer that when the South Africans get here a month from now, we won't greet them with the same square turners?

There is, in this, a clue to why India does so badly in the international arena. The administration -- whose job, ideally, should be to work for bettering standards -- is full of nothing more than hot air. There is no long range planning, no serious thought. What there is, is knee-jerk excuses. Or rather, the same excuse, trotted out ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

If the board, and the selectors, all agree -- and have in fact been unanimous, for almost a decade now -- that India needs quick pitches, why then have the Ranji and Duleep Trophy matches of the past several seasons been played on dead tracks, with both teams intent merely on piling up as many runs as they can and squeaking through on the basis of the first innings lead?

Maybe Mr Borde -- but why just him, the whole Indian board has been waffling on about the need for quick pitches -- might like to examine a little statistic that Mohandas Menon dug out for us, relating to the last five Ranji Trophy seasons:

Season	P	W	D	Result %
1994-95	71	40	31	56.33
1995-96	69	40	29	57.97
1996-97	92	44	48	47.82
1997-98	89	36	53	40.44
1998-99	95	40	55	42.10
Total	416	200	216	48.07

W = wins outright; D = drawn matches Matches abandoned without a ball bowled have been excluded from the above list

The relevant figures are startlingly obvious. The last three seasons have seen the percentage of Ranji fixtures that have yielded results dropping below the 50 per cent mark. The last two seasons in fact have seen those results barely above 40 per cent. And overall, in the last 5 seasons, less than half the domestic matches played have yielded results.

Is it coincidence that this five year period has also seen India's standards, in the international arena, hitting an all time low?

What do those figures tell you about the nature of pitches our domestic competition is played on? And it is pertinent to keep in> mind that this is precisely the period during which the board has been going on and on about the need for result-oriented, fastish wickets; the period during which a pitches committee has been in operation supposedly to change the nature of tracks in India. In other words, during the very period when the board would have us believe they are trying to change things around, is when the situation has actually got worse.

In Australia, we've seen the 11 players considered the best in the country, by the selectors, fail time and again to last the distance, to play through five days of a Test. At home, players considerably less talented routinely bat out days, and matches are merely about deciding which team gets the first innings lead.

Devang Gandhi is a product of this period. So too are VVS Laxman, Sadagopan Ramesh, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Vijay Bharadwaj. So, too, are Wasim Jaffer, Mohammad Kaif, Amol Majumdar, Jatin Paranjpe, Hrishikesh Kanitkar and all the rest of the young guns who are being touted as the stars of the future.

This is how Indian cricket operates: On tracks that would interest the mortician, the taxidermist, more than the cricketer, our young bloods go out and bat for days, and pile up runs like they are going out of style. On the strength of these scores, they are sent to take on international opposition -- and fail miserably.

No problem -- the selectors can then dump X, pick Y. And so on, down through the alphabet. All this chopping and changing is passed off under the guise of "experimentation", of "planning for the future".

>It does not occur to the selectors that if you have a new player every other match, there is no way a team can settle down, as a team.

It does not occur to the board that until playing conditions at the domestic level improve, every selectorial exercise will necessarily remain cosmetic.

It does not occur to the masterminds who run the game, that players who, on Indian pitches, are comfortable going onto the front foot to the first ball of a match, often before the bowler has released the ball, are the players who are found out within an over, when they go up against the McGraths of this world.

The solution -- at least, the large part of one -- has always been obvious. First, put a premium on domestic competition. Ensure that the domestic and international seasons do not clash. Make it mandatory for international stars to represent their respective states and zones. Prepare testing conditions, pitches that equally assist pace and spin. Let a Devang Gandhi, on a nicely grassed track, go up against a Javagal Srinath with the new ball -- and if he survives, then we can assess his fitness to go up against the Lees and the Akthars and Donalds and McGraths.

These things are simple, and can be done. All it takes is the ability to analyse the problem and come up with the logical solution, and the will to implement the solution.

The board, on available evidence, lacks all of the above. What it does have, however, is a parrot-like ability to mouth inanities> it has no intention of following up on.

"We need fast tracks," quoth the chairman of selectors.

Yeah, right, Mr Borde. You know, as do we, that we are not going to get them. Not in the foreseeable future. So now tell us the other one.

Prem Panicker