Hope amidst the ruins

So India's proud record of remaining unbeaten at home for the last 13 years goes to ground and predictably it has thrown up a storm of recrimination. A concerted effort has been launched to lay the blame at various doors. A favourite conspiracy theory is that the groupism among the team and the problems between the board, selectors and team management were responsible. Here I would like to focus on some purely cricketing reasons for the debacle.

A cursory review of the series would suggest that the prime villain of the piece were the wickets. For ages now the Indian team has been pampered by accommodating groundsmen who load the tracks in our favour. The end result is that it renders us incapable of winning on sporting wickets. For the series against South Africa this privilege was withdrawn (in spite of the Board, not because of it) and the result is there for all to see.

I would think that rather than feeling despondent over the result, this particular development gives cause for hope. One of the symptoms of the rot is the repeated failures at international level of the same players who get tons of runs in domestic cricket. The constant chopping and changing that these failures entail does not augur well for the cohesiveness of the team. Conditioned as they are to the slow wickets at home, their limitations are exposed when they climb up the ranks and are faced with having to perform under all sorts of conditions. Years of spoonfeeding at home have simply not equipped us for the demands of Test match wickets that do not turn square. One is bound to absorb a few setbacks in the process of gaining acquaintance with unfamiliar surroundings. Losing on the kind of wickets encountered against South Africa is certainly a step forward from winning on underprepared pitches.

It has been repeated ad nauseam that any experimentation with the wickets should start at the lower levels and not in the Tests where India should not surrender the home advantage. But what is forgotten is that if we had beaten the South African on friendly pitches, all our failings in Australia would have summarily been swept under the carpet. Thus it is important to have uniform pitches at all levels. The bottomline is winning under all conditions against all opponents and if we take a few knocks along that road there can be no complaints. There are no short cuts to success. The weaknesses of the Indian batsmen cannot be overcome by introducing them for brief spells to the perils of more demanding wickets. After all, the Indians could not acclimatize themselves to the conditions in Australia even after spending two and a half months there. It will take a couple of seasons at least for the results to show. Patience is the watchword.

Another aspect that has been put forward is that of player fatigue. This was the contention trotted out by Chandu Borde, who pronounced his helplessness about this saying that the schedule had been chalked out long back. He then let the cat out of the bag by adding that the schedule was brought upon the Board by the need to meet the heavy emoluments of the players. The issue of performance linked pay scales, as already suggested by the England and West Indies Boards, must surely be at the top of the agenda here too.