Harsha Bhogle: Tendulkar leads a balanced outfit (14 Aug 1996)

14 August 1996

Tendulkar leads a balanced outfit

Harsha Bhogle

Just under seven years ago, in a dimly lit, crummy room at the Gymkhana Cricket Ground in Secunderabad, Raj Singh Dungarpur, then chairman of the national selection committee, had made the announcement that stunned a whole nation of cricket lovers.

"Mohammad Azharuddin," he had said, "will be India`s new captain".

His reasons were unusual - but then, those were unusual times in Indian cricket with loads of intrigue and dollops of mistrust around.

He told me when I was researching Azhar`s biography, "I didn`t even care if he didn`t know how long first slip should be. But we needed an utterly honest man to be captain of India. We needed someone who would not manipulate situations; someone who would bring dignity to the job".

Given the murky relationships of those days, these are far happier times in Indian cricket - and I say so in spite of what happened with Manoj Prabhakar and Navjot Sidhu; two com- pletely dissimilar men who reacted so similarly. And so diplomacy and dignity are no longer compelling qualifications for the appointment of an Indian captain; inspiration and leadership skills are. Hence, to nobody`s surprise, the appointment of Sachin Tendulkar as captain.

Seven years is a long time in international cricket and Azhar wil be the first to admit that it was seven years more than he would have expected when he made his Test debut. From a man who was gauche and apologetic, he became India`s most successful captain; a fact that for some reason never received the recognition that it was worthy of. There have been few Indian cricketers who have been more popular abroad, and for a major part of his tenure, Azhar preserved the dignity that Raj Singh spoke about.

But as Peter Roebuck, perhaps the world`s finest cricket writer, told me on ESPN earlier this year, "When you`ve been captain for seven years, your exhortations to your teammates don`t ring as true because they have probably heard it all before". Indian cricket, so rich and yet so skewed in talent, needed someone to shake it up; to hold it by the neck and to put it back on the right path. In Sachin Tendulkar, they have probably found the right man.

But the sense of expectation surrounding his appointment is scary and there have even been editorials suggesting that happy days are here again and that all that was wrong with Indian cricket has been brushed aside and that there can only be a great new dawn ahead. This wilful suspension of disbelief can only harm, for out- side this illusory cocoon there is a rather brutal world waiting. Tendulkar`s greatest quality, though, is that he lives in a real world - of competition and of achievement - and I am pretty sure he will not get as carried away as the others.

He will be a different captain; more demanding, more ruthless and I suspect, shrewder, if a little less charming. He inherits a side that is younger than most Indian sides have been. Azharuddin is 33 and he is more than six years older than anyone else. And everyone else in the team has made his Test debut after Tendulkar did in 1989! It is an amazing statistic, even by Indian standards where we give tough young men of thirty or thereabouts the pensioner treatment.

But it is a good side given the fact that Sidhu wasn`t eligible. It is fairly representative of the talent available in the country and if the batting seems to have a lot more lustre than the bowling, that is how it is in Indian cricket today. But I am surprised there isn`t place there for Sanjay Manjrekar.

Manjrekar isn`t the batsman whose technique was so captivating for a couple of years between 1989 and 1991. As he told me last week, he was "trying hard to forget that Pakistan and West Indies happened to me because I am trying double now for half the runs." But he has been fairly consistent in the one-day game and had said he was keen to open the batting. Tendulkar and Manjrekar, if they could sort out their running, would have been a great opening pair for India; one destructive, the other statesmanlike.

Instead, Vikram Rathore, the handsome strokeplayer from Punjab, gets another opportunity. This year in England, outside the internationals, he looked brilliant. In them, he looked out of place. But he remains the only specialist opener in contention and the thinking must have been that in climates where the ball may not move around too much, he will get runs.

The rest of the batting selected itself though, I believe the retention of Azharuddin and the recall of Kambli are outstanding selections. Azhar remains India`s key one day batsman and without any close catchers or slips, he may just produce the runs that will give him his confidence back. A free-stroking Azhar in the middle order is what India needs for the next couple of years, while Ganguly and Dravid get more familiar with the harshness of international cricket.

Once Vinod Kambli became available, he simply had to be picked. His dropping was a strange affair, for it was only midway through the tour that disciplinary reasons were offered for his absence. His misdemeanours are still largely unknown, and he must wake up every monring and ask himself if he is still a good boy. Chances are that no one will know! He is India`s ideal number five in the one day game, and if he and Ganguly are both picked, as they must, we will at last have two left handers in the top order. It was a major handicap that India was virtually a right-handed team for several years now, and the presence of Ganguly and Kambli makes it an exciting time.

The batsmen will have to score a lot of runs, because the bowling is looking just a bit thin. In England, Srinath and Prasad were unbelievable but even they could not cover up for Kumble`s loss of form. It was terrible to see him struggle, but the flip side was that it revealed the cover-up job that he had been doing; bowling the early overs when the quicker men got knocked around; closing up the middle overs and coming back for the slog. Kumble`s greatest strength has been his patience; and the confidence that the next wicket was just round the corner. In England that corner seemed to move a little further up and Kumble seemed to try too hard, desperate to get a wicket against his name in a country where he had seemed to mint them a year earlier.

He`s had a month away from the action and the Intelligent man that he is, he would know where the problem lay. He is delighted that he has been made vice-captain and this is a wonderfully calcu- lated move, for the selectors have told Kumble that they regard his performance in England as a temporary aberration and that they believe in him.

He`ll find a few familiar faces around him - for, apart from Aashish Kapoor, every bowler is from his Karnataka side. Srinath and Prasad were certainities and with Joshi getting no chance to prove himself, his selection was logical too. The lucky man is David Johnson, who I thought would get a chance sometime this winter. He is a strong man with great self confidence and a bowler who hits the deck quite hard. But unlike Srinath or Prasad, he is a skidder and if he can acquire enough control, he can be a wonderful third seamer. What he could do with though is some confidence, for that is what Salil Ankola was denied. I thought Ankola needed to get a few games in a row to prove himself, for he was looked very good whenever he has been tried.

This is a very well balanced side because it bats deep, has a wicket-keeper who can bat anywhere, has three left-handers, at least two men who can be destructive in the slog overs in Jadeja and Srinath, and three in the top order - Tendulkar, Ganguly and Jadeja - can bowl. If this side fields well, it would challenge anybody in the world.

But it cannot. India is the world`s worst fielding side with only Pakistan for company in those murky depths. Till such time as India catch up with the rest (remember we are still saying that about our hockey!), we will depend for a win on individuals and their ability to have a good day oftener than a bad one.

Editor`s Note: The members of the ESPN international cricket commentary team could, if they wanted to, go right out and play a Test, or even a one-day international, against any top team in the world today - if only because the mike-smiths in ESPN`s harness are among the biggest names in international cricket in the recent past.

In that galazy of Test players doing duty as commentators, one man sticks out. Harsha Bhogle, while being a competent cricketer in his own right, has never played for his country - and yet, with mike in hand, easily holds his own amidst that stellar lineup.

Harsha, in fact, owes his position in the ESPN commentary team to two reasons - knowledge, and passion.

Thus, his sessions at the mike are characterised by the eloquence with which he imparts insights - the right mix for a topflight commentator, and one of the hardest to attain.

In just over a week, Harsha will move onto a new medium, when he begins his own innings on the Internet. Cricket With Harsha Bhogle, scheduled to kick off on Friday, August 23, will be an all- inclusive cricket site featuring his views, articles, interviews, responses to readers` queries and - wait for this - a regular, weekly chat show where Harsha will talk to netizens about his, and our, favourite sport and also introduce, and grill, an array of cricketing personalities both past and present.

Wait for a more formal announcement, later this week, on the Rediff sports pages. And meanwhile, begin your own dialogue with the ace commentator via the e-mail link provided below...

E-mail Harsha Bhogle

Source :: Rediff On The NeT (https://www.rediff.co.in)