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SPORTS:
CRICKET
Young
Turks
Yuvraj
Singh and Zaheer Khan aren't our only cricketers for the future. An entire
generation of players is hungry-and ready-for the big stage.
By
Sharda Ugra
There
is no bigger compliment in international cricket than being sworn at by
Steve Waugh. In Nairobi, the Aussie captain is peppering sentences with
four-letter words that rhyme with "cluck". He turns to his bowler,
asks why he, Brett Lee, the fastest white man in the world, can do nothing
about a mere "clucking" youngster. The youngster in question
grins. Couple of hours later, Waugh faces another new lefty. This one
bowls. Quick. He is beaten outside off and gives the bowler a stare that
makes the strong weak. Second time in the day, Waugh gets the full glare
of white teeth in his face. Then an Exocet missile destroys his stumps
and the toughest man in cricket knows he is beaten. On his way out, Waugh
probably double checked the two kids' colours. Indian powder blue. No
clucking way.
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LEARNER: Zaheer lets rip |
Yuvraj Singh
and Zaheer Khan cannot wait for taxis in the street today without starting
fistfights between cabbies. Singh is in the process of cultivating cool
but he is still amazed that envelopes come sliding under his hotel room
door bearing the emblems of companies selling cheap fizzy drinks and expensive
suits. Khan remembers spraying the ball like a drunk with a hosepipe and
shaking his head eight months ago. Today, he knows how to refuse dinner
invitations from strangers and how not to go for too much. He is being
talked of as a successor to a slowing Javagal Srinath and cannot stop
shaking his head.
Yes, yes,
yes, we know about single swallows not making summers and all the rest
of it, but admit it, these are mighty fine swallows, are they not? In
a few hours of flight, they have parted the clouds and brought some sunshine
streaming over the Indian cricket team. Skipper Saurav Ganguly talked
of a "team spirit" like never before. Stopgap coach Anshuman
Gaekwad said the rookies' keenness and energy had rubbed off on the rest.
The team soon forgot that it was playing without a troika who had between
them played 670 one-day internationals and 156 Tests. Nothing like a little
fresh blood to redefine notions of indispensability.
Kiran More,
the former India wicketkeeper who runs an academy in Baroda, says, "This
should have happened a long time ago. We had too many superstars and at
one point no one was allowed into the Indian team." Former opener
Arun Lal says, "What is great is that it is the new guys who won
matches for India against tough teams." Indian cricket needs both
craft and chutzpah and the good news is that there is more where Khan
and Singh came from.
Summer may
take a while arriving, but the signs are that there are plenty of those
swallows around. Khan and Singh belong to a generation that has grown
up in the glare of televised cricket and understands the modern vocabulary
of the sport. Twenty-three fringe players, including these two, spent
five months this year receiving the benefit of Australian-style training
as the first batch of the BCCI's National Cricket Academy (NCA). When
the new season begins, the trainees will claim spots on the team, for
openers, allrounders and bowlers. The news that Ajay Jadeja has turned
up for pre-season nets with his new Ranji team, Jammu and Kashmir, is
a story in itself. The moral of that story is: nothing like a spot of
competition to keep complacency away. This is a hungry new generation
and Gaekwad says they know it, "We came to camps to get fit. They
come to camps fit and try to get fitter."
The Rest
of India team which beat Ranji champs Mumbai inside four days in the recent
Irani Trophy featured the best of the new generation. Last season's Test
debutants are still in the hunt: opener Wasim Jaffer was the only man
who could hold out against matchwinner Murali Kartik who took nine wickets
in a single innings, while Mohammed Kaif, quicksilver, wristy bat, composed
a cool half-century.
India's cricketers
of the millennium will come from among them. Shiv Sundar Das, Orissa opener,
spent six weeks at the Australian Cricket Academy and his eyes shine as
he talks about doing drills for bat-swing speed, boxing for footwork and
reflexes, and facing a fast-bowling robot called "Iron Mike".
Ajay Ratra is an 18-year-old wicketkeeper from Haryana, who received a
little help from Syed Kirmani and Rod Marsh. They reckon he is a specialist
in the Mongia-More mould. He's doing weights for the first time in his
life and discusses the merits of gathering the ball at the side of his
body rather than in front. Punjab allrounder Reetinder Singh Sodhi has
run laps with his gear strapped on to build endurance and has read books
on motivation. But no motivation has been greater than watching a friend
flower with India. "Yuvraj and I have played in the under-15s and
the under-19s. When he does well, I think I can do well too. I can match
him," he says.
Balwinder
Singh Sandhu, an India player who is now a coach, says, "The coming
generation is much better prepared mentally and skillwise. They are used
to video analyses of their game and are receptive to new ideas."
NCA chief coach Hanumant Singh adds, "Indians don't lack anything
in skill. They are better off than the older generation of Indians in
terms of preparation, but the question is how they compare to the present
generation of other countries."
He believes
the biggest hurdle to learning for an Indian cricketer is his own status.
"That is something we had to remove from the young cricketer's psyche-the
fact that they know it all. You must always be a student but there were
some who thought that because they had played for India they didn't have
anything to learn." The NCA had to ask two such players, Nikhil Haldipur
and Harbhajan Singh, to leave. "I think the media must give greater
value to collective effort. Saying that Yuvraj Singh has the world at
his feet after two matches ... he is a young man at an impressionable
age. We must be careful."
In between these bright and talented players and their well-meaning mentors
is the revolving door of the Indian selection committee. Where is Debashis
Mohanty today? Or M.S.K. Prasad, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Vijay Bharadwaj,
Jacob Martin, Virender Sehwag? Chairman of selectors Chandu Borde denies
Sunil Gavaskar's contention that the selection committee picked a fair
team for Nairobi only when they were up for re-election. "We want
young players to be given a fair chance, try them for five or six matches,"
says Borde. There has been far too much horse trading in the committee
and India caps have been handed out like flyers at a street corner. The
question of grooming a player slowly had been an alien one until now.
Sandhu laughs, "Playing for India is like the Mahabharat-you cannot
go in after preparing like Abhimanyu. We know what happened to him. You
must prepare like Arjun in skill, mind and body."
From next
year, five regional academies will mushroom under the wings of the NCA
and train only under-19 cricketers. In the long run, receiving the best
training will not be enough, for not every one of them will make it to
the top: all these trainees will need a system of competitive domestic
cricket which will broadbase talent in the same way that television had
broadbased the sport itself. It's not only the cricketers who need to
prepare like mythological warriors. For Indian cricket itself to be relevant
in the world, the cricket Board needs to shrug off its arrogance and schedule
a round of classes in far thinking administration for themselves.
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CII’s
conference on Friday on corporate governance is called Independent Directors:
Why, How and Who. Why Not, How Not and Who Not, would have been better,
says INDIA TODAY Associate Editor, V Shankar Aiyar
