May 31, 1999
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CRICKET Shocking Surrender Star batsman Sachin Tendulkar's absence only highlights the inadequacies of the Indian team which needs to come up with an performance to offset the early defeats. By Rohit Brijnath
Just watching the man told the story. There was no need to ask him anything. An Indian flag was painted large across his face, a streak of saffron, white and green, a badge of honour. Now, minutes after the match against Zimbabwe had improbably concluded, he furiously scrubbed his face in a restroom at the Leicester County Cricket Club. "I'm embarrassed," was all he offered. Maybe without the flag someone would think he was a touring Bangladeshi. It was not a good day to be an Indian.
"It was indisciplined cricket by all of us," said an Indian player. What else do you call 21 wides and 16 no balls? Well you can call it "unacceptable", like Indian cricket board President Raj Singh Dungarpur did, you can call it "amateurish" as Navjot Singh Sidhu hissed or you can take heart and say the 51 extras (there were also 14 leg byes) were a World Cup record, which it was till May 20. In effect, the team bowls 37 extra balls, which means they can't finish their overs in time, which means they are penalised and have to get 253 in 46 overs. It was so bizarre that for a moment one thought that the two men accused of stealing three left foot slippers from a Leicestershire house last week must have been members of this team. If the awry bowling suggested a side that had had one pint too many the previous night, the batting, as The Daily Telegraph's Mihir Bose pointedly put it, "lacked cricketing common sense". Tony Greig was bemused as well. "Ramesh's dismissal summed it up for me," he said. "He was batting marvellously, then escaped getting out when his shot landed between two fielders. Jadeja went and spoke to him, but obviously he didn't listen for he was out soon after again trying a big shot." No wonder Grant Flower, who is admittedly "not a big turner" and who probably last bowled 10 overs in the local Matabeleland league, was finding it difficult to keep his laughter bottled up. Indian batsmen don't need to learn to play spin, it's written in their DNA, yet they were treating Flower like he was a white Bishan Bedi without a patka. In a tournament whose decisive moments are the middle overs, when accumulation and singles and consolidation comprise the New Testament of Cricket, India seems overcome by their belief in Oriental flair (remember Srinath, remember Mongia) convinced still that batting like Arnold Schwarznegger is what the script demands. Someone should send them a tape of a match played 50 miles away or so in Northampton, where South Africa were holding tutorials in teamwork, discipline and self-belief, virtues the Indians still seek. A 115 for 7 and they end with 199, then stirred by some ridiculous umpiring decisions they reduce Sri Lankan to 14 for 4. The previous day, always making time for unwelcome visitors, captain Hansie Cronje sat down to talk about his concept of captaincy and team. "I'm not one of those guys who leads from the front, my job is to maximise my players' potential, to get each player to think for himself." Even seemingly minor aspects do not elude him. As the winds swirled in Northampton and the cold promised to distract, Cronje told his team that "individually and internally you must motivate yourselves despite the weather". In contrast, the Indian captain stands accused of not talking to his junior players for days on end, unable to make decisions with the boldness a leader must have. Saurav Ganguly bowled four overs for 16 runs and one wicket in the first match, five overs for 22 runs and one wicket in the second, but was inexplicably taken off. He wants to bowl more, but Azharuddin says, "They (Ganguly and Jadeja) are there just to chip in, we have to rely on our main bowlers." Good thinking, except when Ajit Agarkar goes for 70 in 9 overs against Zimbabwe, it would seem he's put that thinking cap on backwards. Maybe Azharuddin should have read Steve Waugh's column last week in which he hailed Michael Bevan in public as "The Pyjama Picasso". A captain's faith is his players' fuel. The Indian team appear ambitious only on paper, somehow the enormity of their inflated ability never quite transferring to the field when it counts. Zimbabwe was an opportunity for a player to step forward, for Rahul Dravid to seal his growing class, for Jadeja to match the hype of match-winner that envelopes him, for Azharuddin to refind a form that he has lost somewhere in his hotel room, for Ramesh to argue that he is indispensable to India. Even Campbell said, "We thought Tendulkar's departure to India would be worse for us because we thought it was an opportunity for the other players to step forward." But not one man did. The only man who could had gone. Late the previous night before the match the entire Indian team had gone out for dinner in what is now a regular pre-match ritual. It meant Tendulkar wasn't there to take the call. Manager Brijesh Patel took it, summoned Anjali Tendulkar from London to break the news that a poet who thought the world of his son and in his dignified way never entered the spotlight that shone on his son had passed away. And when Ramesh Tendulkar's heart failed him, and his son, wrapped in grief, stepped on a plane to go home, he took the heart of this team with him. The Indian team needs Tendulkar, for like an inflatable doll that is punctured his absence knocks the air out of them. But it is a delicate time, there are matters more important than the World Cup, a young man's despair at the reality of having to cremate his father of more concern than a game of cricket. As Dungarpur rightly said, "We were not indecent enough to ask him when he was coming back." Nevertheless, as a player put it, "Instead of two played and two won it is two played and two lost." Fortunately Sri Lanka is in tatters, the grey in Arjuna Ranatunga's stubble signifying that age has halted their stride. Sri Lanka must win all three of its next matches, so too must India, yet as God, perhaps with a weakness for Handel's Messiah, grins from above-Zimbabwe need only one win from their next three to qualify. The Indian management, gurus from Anshuman Gaekwad to Bob Simpson to Patel, needs to drill a purpose into this team. There has been some complaints that "net sessions are for the press", just to prove the team practises for five hours. But with the main bowlers, Javagal Srinath, Agarkar and Venkatesh Prasad bowling early on, later batsmen have to deal with Dravid's off-spin and Azharuddin's seam bowling. Quality appears absent. Yet having said that, hold on to the knife and do not twist it further into the Indian team's back, for ironical as it is rarely have they worked harder. Ganguly, not worried that Barry Richards singled him out as the reason why India lost to South Africa-"my 97 was not slower than Kallis' 96"-prepares assiduously for every match "visualising the previous day before a match on how I will play my innings". Anil Kumble asked the ESPN cameramen to film his bowling at the nets, then watched it with Simpson before deciding he was running in too fast. Yet single men, not linked by a common thread, are useless. India wants a team unafraid to invent, walking the field with the menace of a prizefighter, led by a man whose fingernails don't rest between his teeth. Teams with character don't evade the spotlight, they ask for it. A few days ago, Dwight Yorke, the Manchester United striker, burdened with winning an unprecedented three titles for his club, said, "This is not pressure. Pressure is starving in Kosovo. All I've wanted in my life is to be in this position and I'm thrilled at being given the opportunity." The opportunity for India remains, the chance for redemption not yet passed. |
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"It's
all f****d up."
Next
morning too, like a nightmare that refuses to pass, the figures continued to beat a tattoo
of derision on the Indian subconscious: 11 balls, 7 runs, 3 wickets. Christ, even the
opposing captain, the erudite Alistair Campbell, said later, "We thought it was
over." A country with a base of millions of players versus a country that has 35
decent players to choose from. A country where cricketers sneeze and an endorsement for
nose drops is ready against a team that comprises among others a chicken farmer called
Eddo Brandes and two big-game hunters Heath Streak and Guy Whittall. And imagine, in the
end, Campbell throws the ball to Henry Olonga better known for his rendition of Handel's
Messiah than his reverse swing, a singer whose cricketing form was so poor three years ago
that he almost enrolled himself in London's Academy of Music and Arts. "I thought for
the past few days that I would be having a date with destiny soon," says Olonga. How
come all these players have their dates with destiny against India? 
