Dad's army or brat pack?

By the time you read these lines, the Indian team to tour Bangladesh will have been announced. To go by media reports, there will be an accent on youth when it comes to picking the one-day squad but no such emphasis is likely in the composition of the Test team. Pundits will prognosticate on how India will regroup its forces to shake off the psychological shackles the World Cup disaster has imposed on the team, and millions of fans will wait with bated breath to see how new coach Ravi Shastri is going to restore the morale of India’s beleaguered troops while at the same time encouraging them to enjoy the game. Both a sensation-hungry media and fans ranging from toddlers to octogenarians will at once clamour for youth and the continuation of the status quo. Some will swear by Tendulkar and others by Ganguly, and yet others will demand a complete overhaul. The cynics will of course bet their last penny that every match India plays is a fixed game.

The risk with fielding a new look side against Bangladesh is that it could result in inflated performances by the young inductees in subcontinental conditions in the face of friendly opposition. That Bangladesh is not yet capable of testing India’s best, at least in Test match cricket, is inarguable, despite India’s setback in the World Cup. On the contrary, to go with the tried and tested—some would say jaded—for this series could enable the over-the-hill to prolong their careers, to the detriment of others on the threshold of the big league. A situation in which so many qualify for membership in Dad’s Army could have been avoided by the gradual induction of young talent and the staggered easing out of the seniors of the team.

Much is made of this business of inducting youth as though it were an invention of the 21st century. Indian selection committees have always been more adventurous than their counterparts elsewhere. Vijay Mehra, the Delhi opening batsman, was only marginally older on debut back in the sixties than Mushtaq Mohammad of Pakistan was when he became the youngest Test cricketer in the world. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi became the youngest Test captain in the world when he took over from Nari Contractor in an emergency. Some of these experiments succeeded while others, predictably, failed. Young A K Sengupta was battered and bruised by Hall and Gilchrist at Madras when he was pressed into service while still in his teens as Test opener following a hundred against the touring West Indies in 1959. Of spin bowling’s famous four, Venkataraghavan and Chandrasekhar were teenagers, Bedi was 20 and Prasanna 22 when they made their respective debuts for India.

India had to wait almost another decade before a selection committee once again gave youth prominence. Under Vijay Merchant’s chairmanship, revolutionary changes were made, some of them daring trials involving youth. G R Viswanath and Eknath Solkar were discoveries of this period, though the likes of Ashok Gandotra and Ambar Roy fell by the wayside. Questions were asked when Viswanath made a duck in the first innings of the 1969 Kanpur Test, but he made up magnificently in the second with a fearless 137 that included 25 boundaries. Solkar went on to become one of the best short legs in the world, besides consistently performing above his ability with both bat and ball on the international arena. He even opened the innings and scored a Test hundred. Incredibly, he opened the bowling too, his innocent swing repeatedly foxing Geoffrey Boycott, at the time the world’s best opening batsman.
The spin quartet dominated Indian cricket for nearly two decades. Those of us who happened to be pursuing the craft of spin bowling during that period simply had no chance of making it to the national team. The two most famous bowlers to miss out, Padmakar Shivalkar and Rajinder Goel, left armers both, were good enough to play for any country. It is nobody’s case that they should have replaced Bishan Bedi, arguably the greatest left arm spinner of all time, but there should have been an attempt to play them at least in a domestic series, without jeopardizing India’s chances.

The most spectacular example of a precocious talent coming good has of course been that of Sachin Tendulkar, who debuted at the age of 15 and went on to become one of the greatest batsmen of the world, though he did not achieve instant success. More often than not, however, a youngster who has not gone through the mill of domestic cricket fails to come to terms with the high altitude of international cricket. Again, more often than not, the selectors, instead of showing patience with the young prodigy of their choice, dump him in the face of widespread criticism. The young discard has now to make his way back through the Ranji Trophy and the like, but finds himself an alien among people of his own state. Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra, a surprisingly gifted writer, thus describes one of these members of the brat pack in a magazine article:

“The iPod belted to his side, the Oakleys covering his eyes, the studied nonchalance that is supposed to say, ‘Look at me, I am an India player,’ is part fear, part bravado. I go up to him and we chat. Like everyone else, he does not want to be here. Unfortunately, unlike those of us who have played domestic cricket for years before getting to play for India and being axed for various reasons, he is not used to being here. There is an unstated resentment at his fate, which he shows in the way he plays domestic games—he is clearly not trying as hard as everyone else.”
Chopra then compares the attitude of the Test discard with that of a champion performer in the Ranji Trophy who has never played for India. “He is cynical and bitter. He has never played for India, and probably never will, but he has done sterling service for his state, and now, on his ground, he is ignored for a youngster who has played for India but might well never do so again. There is a difference, one all of us are aware of.”

“Many youngsters who have been dropped from the Indian side seem to struggle to motivate themselves while playing cricket,” Chopra continues. “Inevitably, if they do not see success soon, many will give up.”

Aakash Chopra himself has been a victim of a system that rarely rewards the solid performers and team men rather than the flashy individualists. Surprisingly preferred to the in-form Sadagopan Ramesh on the Australian tour of 2001, he showed character and a strong will opening the innings in the company of Virender Sehwag and giving India firm starts in the Test series. He didn’t last very long in Test cricket, the selectors showing little patience with him, and dropping him for the third Test of the 2003 Pakistan tour, preferring a non-regular opener in young wicket keeper Parthiv Patel. Patel was himself a typical example of the kind of youngster Chopra talks about—someone who pitchforked into international cricket without having to prove himself at the domestic level.

In fact the opening batsmaen’s slot is the one position the Indian selectors have treated with scant respect, for all that it is perhaps the most crucial one in the team. Ramesh and Shiv Sundar Das were an excellent pair never allowed to settle down, thanks to the selectors’ totally avoidable penchant for experimentation. Many opening batsmen came and went—from Sanjay Bangar and Connor Williams to Debang Gandhi and Gautam Gambhir. Most of these players did perform reasonably well, but none of them was allowed to stay long enough to stabilize himself. Gambhir has been the most recent victim of this shortsighted, and often inexplicable, policy. Now replaced in the one-day squad by Robin Uthappa and, the Delhi lefthander has little chance of making it to the Test eleven, where Wasim Jaffer has been impressive if not highly consistent. His only hope is to replace Virender Sehwag if and when he is demoted in the batting order or dropped.

The youth versus experience debate should have no place in BCCI’s scheme of things. The idea should be to pick the best team available, ideally a judicious blend of both mature heads and quick legs, a balance between flair and the right attitude, and an overall insistence on fairness all round. A Sachin Tendulkar happens but once in a century; a Parthiv Patel should not have happened and should not happen. The unseemly haste to blood him played havoc with a number of careers—remember a feisty little competitor called Ajay Ratra, who was smart behind the wickets, but also scored a match saving hundred in the West Indies? Patel has equally been a victim—after the first fine rapture, it’s been downhill for him, and he is hardly 22.

It’s in the spin department that India has seemingly shot herself in the foot. Anil Kumble has retired from one-day cricket to concentrate on Test cricket. We have taken him on two World Cup campaigns and dropped him at the vital moment when he could have made the difference between defeat and victory. On both occasions we have paid a heavy price, but why did the selectors pick him in the first place if they were not sure of playing him in all the important games? Wouldn’t they have been better off with off spinner Ramesh Powar in the squad? And whatever happened to the promising leg spinner Piyush Chawla? Should not someone of his undoubted talent be understudying Kumble on tours and preparing to take over from him when the time comes? Or is he a spent force already, like so many youngsters identified not long ago in the bowling department and subsequently discarded?

The selectors have their task cut out. If they pick the ‘best’ Indian side for the Bangladesh tour, not inducting young blood, they will have no new material to consider for the forthcoming tours of Ireland and England. If they pick a young team and it clicks, then they will have a different dilemma of whom to drop from the youngsters, and whom to bring back from the old guard. And with the media constantly looking for masala, I don’t envy them, but urge them to err on the side of experimentation.

(Published in Sunday Express, 22 April 2007)