In Defence of Sreesanth

From Ravi Kumar Putcha, Singapore
How do you defend someone who is so overtly aggressive? How do you try to make a case for the talent of the IPL’s much maligned and much abused bowler when it is the sideshow everyone seems to care for? It is not easy, but if players who use performance-enhancing drugs have a right of appeal and if bowlers called for chucking have a shot at rehabilitation what, crime has Sreesanth committed that we are all being so hard on him?

This whole thing started off with Matthew Hayden - 486 runs from 11 matches, the orange cap, and a good match against a guy returning from a long lay-off - and Hayden was off. People should have realised that for a player who called an opponent "obnoxious weed" and who thought nothing of the contradiction between calling India a "third world country" and then running after the money the Indian Premier League offered, even after retirement, calling a struggling quick an "overrated bowler" was no great leap of imagination or faith. Nor is this a big deal for a man who criticized his Indian opponents for batting for their ODI hundreds, only for Cricinfo to prove, with statistics, that the slowest player to go from 50 to 100 in ODIs at the same time he offered this precious gem was, unsurprisingly enough, Matthew Hayden.

And then, of course, there were his graceless barbs directed at Ishant Sharma, who was still finding his feet in world cricket on a tour of Australia. But if this article is about Sreesanth, where does Hayden fit in? He does, you see, because the opponent he dismissed with so much contempt was the same bowler whose bowling proved so vital to India's success at the T20 World Cup in 2007. One of the batsmen whose skin he got under, and dismissed, was Matthew Hayden. But back to Sreesanth.

Like a lot of people, I had never really heard of Sreesanth, nor would I have been able to answer the trivia question that forms part of his Cricinfo player page. When India headed to the West Indies, a rare Test series without Sachin Tendulkar, it was with probably their least experienced bowling attack in ages. Along side Kumble and Harbhajan were three relative rookies - Sreesanth, Munaf and VRV Singh. And yet, some of Sreesanth’s performances stood out - the snorter that got Brian Lara in the decisive final test, the beauty that gave Gayle a pair in that crucial fourth innings of the same test. So when India arrived in South Africa for a Test series, at a time when India's famed batting line up was struggling, the last thing anyone expected was for a nearly unknown Indian quick to lead the bowling to a demolition of South Africa as they were dismissed for 84.

After India had cobbled together a meagre 249 runs, the South African batting line up was laid low by Sreesanth's 5/40, and at one point, with the score reading 45/7, the more hopeful of India's fans, self included, rather naively believed that a follow-on was not unrealistic. As Mickey Arthur admitted after the first Test, India's bowlers taught the SA quicks how to bowl in those home conditions, Sreesanth clearly led the way. Unfortunately, India blew their chances and contrived to lose a series they had started so well. India had it bad, but Sreesanth came away with a good showing. His bowling in South Africa was promising, though he made headlines for his impromptu dance number in response to Andre Nel's sledging, which is probably still on Youtube.

With all this, the series to England should have been the point where Sreesanth "arrived" in Test cricket. After all, so many Indian bowlers have discovered that bowling in England can be so good for their confidence - no, this is not a slight at England's batting, but merely a reflection of how well India's swing and seam bowlers have utilised the conditions to help India win in England, and he appeared to be one of India's better swing bowlers. However, things went totally awry - a beamer to Pietersen and Atherton's subsequent refusal to accept that his apology had been genuine highlighted a series where Sreesanth slipped behind Zaheer Khan and the fast-emerging RP Singh in the quick bowling stakes.

All this while, something else was building up - where his pre-delivery routine drew indulgent admiration from commentators and "fans" alike, his break dancing abilities made him very popular on one of several get-rich-quick Indian TV programs which discovered the "world champs" after India won the Twenty20 cup. But as time went by, and results were not always as one would have liked, his hitherto grudgingly accepted aggression became the focal point for all - "fans" and commentators alike. Players from opposing teams were just as willing to get in and say a few things to him, believing somehow that his overt aggression was in any way worse than the beautifully defined "mental disintegration" tactics.

And there was the break dancing - where it had once been a source of applause and admiration, however grudging, people were beginning to show that there was only so much tolerance they were willing to display. And while some of us, yours truly being in a somewhat minuscule percentage, looked forward to his return at the IPL, the knives were being sharpened. Three matches - one each against the rampaging nice-guy Hayden, Rajasthan, and against Dwayne Bravo, the last being just one over - turned the tide. In between, he was at the receiving end of Harbhajan's anger during the first IPL, an action that seemed to harm the offender less than the one offended against. After Hayden's comments, chat forums were agog with talk that he was overrated. And to make things worse, a nearly unknown Indian movie actress offered her rather self-important sounding tuppence, which included calling him an "insignificant player", the irony of which may have been probably lost on her personally.

To add to his woes, the now widely-read blogger chose to anoint him with a most offensive and unbecoming moniker, probably more out of envy. In an IPL where all but one of India's premier bowlers were struggling to make a mark, this probably damaged Sreesanth more than any thing on the cricket field - and ironically, a cricketer who has been criticised for not being enough of one, was being reviled by someone who sought the comfort that anonymity offered, and whose comments were not in the slightest concerned with cricket, and the cricket-result-loving public lapped up this non-cricketing abuse eagerly.

Having said all that, it is fair to contend that Sreesanth has brought it upon himself. At a time when he should have been focusing on his bowling, he comes across, from the perspective of a cricket fan who does not know him personally, as a man of extremes. When Sreesanth offers praise, it is not always fulsome - it is over the top. When Sreesanth offers aggro, it is ditto. And he seems to fall apart in matches just as spectacularly. It is to his credit that despite all he is having to contend with, he is willing to keep playing and keep trying.

However, there is reason to believe that if Sreesanth can sort out all that is holding him back, he holds tremendous promise. Sample, for instance, the fact that in terms of overall bowling stats he more than holds his own against the current incumbents - the resurgent Zaheer Khan, flavour-of-the-season Ishant Sharma, the extremely promising RP Singh, and other contenders to the quick bowling slots in India's Test team such as Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan and Praveen Kumar In fact when you do a comparison of these bowlers in terms of their strike rates, wickets per match, averages etc, Sreesanth does very well - so well does he perform, that in a ranking of India's top ODI and test bowlers he would be very close to the top on all of these parameters. But, as Cricinfo points out, he loses out on the one parameter that is so critical to the shorter and shortest versions of cricket - economy rates. In a ranking of India's top 50 bowlers in ODIs, Sreesanth comes in at #50 on this parameter.

In the shorter versions, his career is littered with such instances - 21 runs to Bravo in the recent IPL match, three sixes to Sohail Tanvir in the World T20 finals, an expensive first over to Imran Nazir in the same match and so on. There is, hence, probably a strong case for believing that in the case of Sreesanth, he may be the first of his kind in India - a specialist Test bowler, who needs time to evolve into an ODI/T20 bowler. But more importantly, there is reason to hope that if he can sort out his mental devils, Sreesanth will be able to fulfill the promise he offered in South Africa and in the West Indies. The question though is, with a headline-hungry media, an instantly forgetful cricket watching public, and an unwilling cricket organisation - in the form of Captain and selectors - who will give him the chance? More so, will Sreesanth give himself that chance?