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October 14, 1997
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"Gavaskar was the best..."
L Sivaramakrishnan
India, for now, is euphoric over the decisive 5-3 result secured against Pakistan in the eight games played out at Toronto, first, and then on Pakistan soil.
Given how rare it has been of late for India to win a game against Pakistan, the joy among fans here at their side winning not just one, but a decisive five, games is perhaps understandable.
And what has made the feeling all the more intense is that it was so unlooked for -- India having gone into the tournament with a bowling attack that looked non-existent on paper. And yet a lineup of essentially raw, untried bowlers succeeded where, earlier, their betters had failed. They used the conditions, they bowled with intelligence, they kept taking important wickets at the right times and contained the strong Pakistan batting lineup.
Which leads to a question -- what makes a bowler, or bowling lineup, tick? Equally, why did India with this kind of bench strength not utilise it fully in recent times? And the answer to the question lies with the basics of selection. When selectors have a wide array of possible talent to chose from, things can and sometimes do go wrong, players get overlooked.
In India, there is so much of junior cricket going on -- and not enough talent spotters around to keep an eye on the budding talents. We have the schools games, Under-13, Under-16, Under-22 and so on -- all of them fertile breeding grounds for talent. And surely a lot of talented cricketers must be taking part in these tournaments?
But how does one cull the best out of the bunch? What does one look for, at that age? To my mind, it is not pure talent alone, but attitude, mental fitness, the will to work hard, that is the key to such a selection exercise. Young bowlers succeed at their level. If at that stage they get to thinking they know it all, then they are obviously unsuited for the big time, no matter how talented they may be. Cricket changes all the time, the demands on a bowler bowling to say the Pakistan side and that made on him by the Australians could differ wildly... a good bowler thus is one who is thinking all the time -- and bowlers with that ability can be spotted young. Because even in the junior levels, you will see some bowlers who play to the galleries, try out all their variations irrespective of everything else -- and others who do what they have to, tailor their bowling to the conditions prevailing, to the quality of the batsmen facing them. And to my mind, the second kind is the best kind.
Other things to keep an eye out for are a smooth and rhythmic action with no room for controversy and complications, and a clean follow through. Given these basics, the rest -- variations of line and length and flight and loop -- can and usually are acquired with experience.
But there is just so much an individual can do -- at least half the responsibility for a bowler's development belongs to his coach and his captain. While the coach by ironing out his technical defencies and introducing him to new skills further polishes the raw talent, the captain by giving him the right fields and using him in the right way gives him the confidence he needs at the start of a career -- and from experience, this very confidence can carry him through a bad patch.
What we tend to forget that bowlers are humans, each with their own personality. And like all humans, each bowler needs a different kind of handling -- some function best when cajoled, some need pushing, others need a sharp talking to.
As far as I am concerned, Gavaskar was the best captain I played under. He knew exactly how much room to give me, when to pat me on the back and when to pull me up. And though I was very young at the time, he had enough faith in me to ask my opinion on field settings -- and this in turn boosted my confidence and made me bowl better.
Just as it is easy to make a bowler, it is equally easy to finish him off. Give him a bad field, make him bowl at the wrong time, or don't bowl him at all. And that's it, the bowler is finished.
And then there's the biggest factor -- luck. In the past, top quality spinners like Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar never got to exploit their potential at the highest level. And it was nobody's fault, really -- the breaks just didn't go their way, they happened to be playing at the same time as four legendary spinners. And more recently, the likes of Vivek Razdan and Prashant Vaidya can count themselves very unlucky to have missed out on the big time.
Granting talent, the breaks, a modicum of luck, I've found that it takes tremendous will to be able to hold on to your place. Not to mention the determination to keep going when things look bleak. A classic instance is Manoj Prabhakar -- picked in 1984, he never established a permanent place in the side till around 1989. But despite being dropped more often than he was picked during that period, he persisted, and India in the end gained a very valuable all-rounder, the man behind some fine performances.
All of which boils down to the question, how do we train our promising bowlers to help them produce good results? The prime essential is that our domestic season has to be played out on true, good wickets that offer a real test for the bowler -- after all, these are the surfaces he will encounter on tour. Taking wickets on favourable pitches is easy and, what is more, tells you nothing about a bowler's real ability. If he takes wickets on good tracks, then and only then can you be sure of a quality performance from that bowler irrespective of conditions. At the same time, the risk is in producing flat tracks that kill bowlers -- that, in fact, is what is happening on the domestic circuit of late.
One factor that has cropped up in recent times -- or rather, become more important than before -- is physical fitness. We have seen injuries plaguing our bowlers time and again. A proper fitness schedule, drawn up and overseen by a good trainer and physiotherapist, is a must. The pity is that in India, there are not too many centres where such facilities and trained personnel are available -- the possible exceptions being the MRF Pace Foundation and the MCA Spin Foundation, both in Madras.
It does seem a pity that in a country where cricket has such a large following -- which, in turn, translates into much money in the board coffers -- there is no real initiative to go beyond moaning the lack of quality bowlers. Till this changes, merely moaning the lack of bowling strength is akin to the sorrow of the proverbial crocodile.
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