All-rounder – adept cricketer or anachronism?

Time and again, history shows that man has embarked on futile searches for elusive mythical riches. The search for an Indian all-rounder seems have fared no better. And I don’t think that this search is ever going to end, well, not until certain issues are resolved. But far easier would be a simple scope change.

If you ask me, the definition of an all-rounder is all skewed. Ask one the selectors who were in the panel last year to name his favorite all-rounder and I bet I can guess what his answer would be. Oh wait, I was not supposed to write that. But to my defense, I think this mindset is typical of any average Indian, who would define an all-rounder as a batsman who can bowl at least 5 overs a day and keep the batsmen quiet and take wickets from time to time. So, the focus in the sub-continent seems on finding players who would contribute both with the ball and the bat. And there lies the flaw.

Ten years after Kapil Dev retired, we have still not understood that all-rounders are made and not born. None of the “all-rounders” that India has chosen lately, can do a Chris Cairns and walk in on the basis of one skill set alone. And that is probably not their fault either. You see, even without the “all-rounder” tag, we sub-continental players already have our hands full. Our enthusiasm for the game while we grow up, acts like a double edged sword. We learn our cricket in the streets where the game is typically one dimensional by direction (i.e. run scoring is on only one side of the wicket) and sixer is almost always "local". The batsmen are constrained by the surrounding buildings and the glass windows. While such a scenario could ideally breed discipline, it actually brings with it some evils that are hard to exorcise as the years go by. The bowlers too do not get anything positive out of the rubber or the taped ball.

So when we graduate to playing organized cricket, we are still stuck with these shortcomings. And it does not help that our coaching seems to be geared totally into pushing players into the ground at the shortest possible time. For example, some of the schools in Chennai are hot beds of cricket activity with full time coaching staff and groundsmen, with but it has been years since we have had a regular in the team, in fact, not since my man Srikkanth. Where do all these school boy cricketers go?

Only a fraction of those who play age group cricket while at school (which is again a small fraction of those who play cricket in the streets) continue to play after graduating from high school. And the lucky few who actually get to dirty their whites on turf do not fare any better. The bowlers toil hard in unresponsive pitches and the batsmen are lulled into complacent mediocrity by the lack of challenge posed by the pitches.

Given all this, I think it’s a fallacy that the selectors in the subcontinent (specifically India) get a large pool of quality players to choose from. So when some of them they make it to the big league and tour abroad, the absence of proper techniques and the dusty sub-continental pitches that they are used to, they tend to stick out like a sore thumb when the pitch offers some juice to the bowlers. In such a scenario, wouldn’t be better if we let players focus on their core competence rather than force them to fit in another skill set. It might be simpler to find an excellent batsman or a bowler who would contribute more by saving a few runs by being athletic on the field.

But I do see a faint light, not at the end of the tunnel, but from a ventilation chute somewhere in the middle and that should be enough for us to get out, i.e., the new ODI Super Sub rules. From what I can understand, the new rule makes it easier for captains to choose a Super Sub who would be either be a specialist batsman or a specialist bowler who would bowl 10 whole overs. Used intelligently, the Super Sub should solve the eternal 5th bowler problem in the subcontinent - the sole reason why teams in the subcontinent look for all-rounders. Another emerging positive is the fact that pitches in India have slowly started losing their dustbowl tag. The rise of several young Indian fast bowlers is ample evidence for this trend.

So do we need to remove the phrase from our lexicon? No, but it would make sense to edit this definition to say – An all-rounder is either a batsman or a bowler who will save a few runs and force a few dismissals by virtue of being an excellent fielder. And if that definition is true, we seem to have found quite a few of these all-rounders already and its time to stop call off the manhunt.