April 6, 1998

With a decisive Test series victory over the formidable touring Australians, the much-maligned cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin has confounded even his staunchest critics by making an impressive return as captain of the Indian team.

By Rohit Brijnath

Mohammed Azharuddin has been, and still is, a confounding man. Just before the Australians landed in India, the Indian captain was accosted at a party in Mumbai and asked by an acquaintance, "Boss, yeh Shane Warne ka kya preparation kar rahe ho?" That is to say was he studying video cassettes, plotting strategy with his best batsman Sachin Tendulkar, seeking ways to defuse Australia's most explosive player? No. Nothing. Zero. He just shrugged his Versace-clad shoulders -- he is the Sultan of the Stylish Shrug -- and said, "Arre kaun Warne? I have five guys who can play him easily." It appeared like primitive captaincy, a cocky man who in his Second Coming had not stopped to learn anything from his First. It even moved Sunil Gavaskar, not a man with excessive affection for Azhar, to write pointedly: "What kind of preparation has the Indian think tank done apart from scanning the catalogues of Giorgio Armani."

Mocking Azhar, the most popular sport within Indian cricket, had resumed. Some of it with reason, for he can be a clumsy man, an uninspiring captain. Yet perhaps we do not have his complete measure; perhaps in the silence of his room, the captain remembered what his grandfather told him: "If you work hard enough you can change your destiny." He was ready to lead. His critics may well have sneered, loath as they are to use the word leadership when defining him, as if this bewildering man could scarcely contain such a quality. Except that Australia, the world's finest Test team, are in squabbling disarray after their most humiliating series defeat in 60 years; except that the Independence Cup win in Dhaka in the third final against Pakistan by an Indian team known to twitch nervously in tight situations seemed to redefine the word miracle. Except that a veteran journalist, shaking his head, said, "I've never seen the team so energetic. In Calcutta the match was over in four days, but some players were back at practice on the fifth day." Surely Mohammed Azharuddin, 35, solitary, vilified, controversial, had a little something to do with it.

Relieved of his captaincy in 1996, dropped from the team in 1997, crucified in the public court, he has risen again. It is a comeback so bold that even Ravi Shastri, an unabashed critic, wrote after the Calcutta Test: "He looks more focused, more composed and hence more effective. He has silenced his critics." The body language is more vibrant, his manner more acceptable. Now Tiger Pataudi, never quite a member of the Save Azhar Society, says, "He looks more communicative and relaxed."

His style, arms folded in the slips, remains laid back: he won't rush like the exuberant Tendulkar did to speak to his bowlers every over. For the cynics, it is the lethargic pose of a man who has been in the sun too long, unaware of the moment, a man who Bishen Bedi says, "Can't really handle his bowlers". But perhaps he nods from the slips, has a short chat at over's end, for as Anil Kumble says: "He knows how I bowl, he talks to me when he needs to." Javagal Srinath is complimentary too: "He endorses our views." Sprawled in his room prior to the third Test, Azhar does not pirouette in pleasure. He still fumes at the invective he has had to face: "People have been jealous of me. Not able to digest what I've done. Even in the first Test they said I was an ordinary captain, but we won it, did not we? For all the jealousy, see what happens in the end, who is the winner?"

Today it's him. Yesterday it wasn't. Of tomorrow no man can say.

Mohammed Azharuddin is not a man of black and white; he is a man of shades, some light and buoyant, some darker and despairing. Shy, often inarticulate, he is a speaker of incomplete sentences -- the ugly duckling unable to explain himself, a swan with only a blade in his hand. But though he swears he has not, some things about him have changed -- these days he shines brighter. The solitary man who turned intemperate at talk of what he wore now poses for magazine covers in Versace suits; the spoilt captain who cut his toe nails at a table during a press conference is now willing to spend two days with a writer he barely acknowledged. Even in his latest, unreleased, Reebok advertisement he is portrayed as an exuberant Azhar, with a new attitude to life. It is said that wife Sangeeta Bijlani has pushed him steadily to construct a new, kinder image. It is a good time too, for the darker side was winning.

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