The (medium-) fast and furious

I’ve often wondered what it must have been like being an Indian batsman in the pre-Kapil era. Say you toured a place like the West Indies and found yourself staring down the pitch to find a fire breathing Marshall or Roberts or Holding … basically someone who, from your point of view, looked at least 20 feet tall and was trying to decimate you by hurling a heavy object in the general direction of your helmet-less head at a million miles an hour. The reason the post-Kapil era was different is that you might have found yourself in that situation as well, but at least you had someone like a Kapil or a Prabhakar (hey, beggars cannot be choosers) or Prasad (ok, that’s going a bit too far – cancel Venky) on your team who might have been able to return the favor every once in a while. But to look at your dugout only to find Bedi, Prasanna and some other fairly unathletic looking types playing cards, sipping hot tea and discussing grips that impart maximum spin on the ball must have been a disheartening experience.

That is the biggest reason Kapil was such a revolutionary figure in Indian cricket. Batting ability and athletic fielding aside, people just simply loved him for the fact that he at least made opposition batsmen think about coming in to bat with a helmet on and actually ponder going on to the backfoot every now and then. After the heady moments of 1983, every Indian supporter imagined it to be the start of a new era where Kapil’s success gave rise to a new generation of truly genuine and hostile fast bowlers who would make batsmen the world over shake in their boots. Twenty-seven years later, we are yet to unearth such a species.

It’s not like India haven’t produced any fast bowlers in that period of time. Javagal Srinath and, lately, Zaheer Khan have been the torch bearers of the pack and deserve all the accolades that they have received. Zaheer, at his rawest, probably made every Indian sit up and take notice: he had the physique, the action and the skill. So also with Srinath at the beginning of his career (although Srinath was probably more raw than Zaheer at that point). But then they were the lone warriors – due to the serious lack of back-up (except for Srinath when Prasad was at his peak), they had to assume the role of leader of the pack, swing bowler, stock bowler and third seamer. With it came torn rotator cuffs and a host of other injuries which only accelerated (ironic how an adjective used to describe an increase in speed is apt here) their journey towards medium-fastness.

Of course, none of this is to say that we don’t appreciate Zak and Jaggu’s contributions to Indian cricket – far from it. But we are still obsessed with raw pace! Why you ask? Well, here’s a little insight into the psyche of the Indian supporter. Every time their team does well (or poorly), they take a look across the border at our dear neighbors. As long as they are doing worse, we are happy. This is one area where we have never been able to match Pakistan who seem to have a nearly unending supply of genuinely quick bowlers. From Wasim to Waqar to Sami to Shoaib, every generation seems to throw someone who absolutely rouses the speed gun and makes it sing. Compare this to our very own Praveen Kumar who barely manages to tickle the speed gun behind its ear as it stirs a little bit out of its slumber only to turn the pillow and fall back into a deep, dreamless sleep. We might laugh at their administration and politics and a bunch of other things that make Pakistan an entertaining team to follow, but for their fast bowlers we always have a grudging admiration.

The most annoying thing of all is that there have been times of real hope! From Ashish Nehra to Munaf Patel to Irfan Pathan to Sreesanth and more recently, Ishant Sharma – they have all showed promise. There has been at least one moment in all the above mentioned careers where they have bent their back and produced the odd delivery at over 140 kph. The next day Indians all over the world have YouTube’d the video and have stared at it in admiration and awe. But then something happens to them and they are somehow coached into bowling “line and length” at anywhere between 120 and 130 k’s an hour.

It could be a combination of many factors – maybe the diet (Srinath, for all that he was, was also vegetarian and ate the odd egg when a gun was held to his head), maybe it’s the pitches – but whatever it is, it is doing Indian cricket a serious disservice. Of course, one cannot fail to mention stupid selection policies. Remember Abey Kuruvilla and Salil Ankola - The tall pair of Bombay fast bowlers who used to bowl with pace and bounce? What happened to them? One was picked at the ripe age of 29 when he depended on slow offcutters for most of his wickets whereas the other decided that there was more promise in a television acting career. The absolute nadir, however came when on a tour of the West Indies, both Srinath and Prasad broke down and Kumble was shouldering the responsibility of being the leading spinner as well as quickest bowler in the team (Dodda Ganesh is said to have bowled faster than him on occasion, but it is hard to distinguish between truth and legend in this case).

But then, say what you will about Indian supporters, we are an optimistic lot. We will continue to forward each other YouTube videos of promising pacemen. We will continue to keep watching the speed gun hoping for a streak of 6 deliveries over the 140 kph mark. We will continue to hope that someday, at some point in the future, a generation of Indian supporters will be able to talk about how they saw an Indian paceman running in from a long run up, with the wind in behind his back, bowling fast as lightening and making the batsman (preferably Aussie or South African) hop, skip and jump before getting out fending a delivery in front of his face. Until then, we have Ijaz Butt.

P.S. Agarkar was not excluded from this article because he was forgotten. He was not mentioned for a reason.