More than a Masala Match

By Thaleel Bhai
November 16 2004

Following another ODI defeat for India in a "masala match", this time the BCCI Jubilee affair at Kolkata, the first of two columns focusing on India's recent collective collapse in one day form and performance.

A collapse worthy of an Indian lineup in the 90's

It's barely conceivable. Between February and April 2003, the Indian cricket team played sixteen one dayers - losing only three of them, two to what was undoubtedly the best cricket team playing in this day and age. In the last four months, a similar lineup has played fourteen games, and won five - out of which three wins came against Kenya, UAE and Bangladesh - clearly not the most challenging of one day sides. And for all the talk of the Platinum Jubilee one dayer being a masala match and a wallet-liner for the BCCI, it's done one major thing in highlighting yet again the problems with the Indian side in one dayers.

It's not 2003 any more

What worked in the past doesn't keep working - and the most successful teams keep realizing that. Take Australia, who shuffle their one day lineups, constantly weeding out older and less useful players and bringing in new blood, while testing new tactics consistently. Or Pakistan, who with the exception of Inzamam, have one of the youngest lineups in cricket right now - and are currently one of the top one day sides in the game, showing the sort of general consistency they very rarely had in the past. Wright and Ganguly, on the other hand, are sticking with what worked well over a year ago, not realizing that almost every other country has changed its tactics, leaving India behind in the one day game to be shown up consistently.

When the batting has failed, the bowling has tried with heart, but been unable to make up for abysmal batting. And as we saw at Kolkata, when the batting fired on most cylinders - the bowling has been dismally under-par. Yet, there's a lot more to this than just the bowling and batting failures alone.

Teams like Australia, New Zealand, West Indies and so on have consistently brought in new players to replace non performers, and they've reaped the rewards with youngsters like Michael Clarke, Hamish Marshall, Dwayne Bravo and the likes. India, in recent times, haven't dared to do such things, believing that sticking with a winning combination will bring success. What hasn't been realized is that very soon, the winning combination can turn to a losing one as other teams adapt - and a refusal to then try new tactics and players will always lead to problems.

A need for change?

After Saurav Ganguly took over the captaincy in 2000, a few dynamic changes were made - Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif burst onto the scene, and India immediately impressed, reaching the finals of the ICC Champions Trophy (as well as countless other tournaments), and for some time establishing an enviable win-loss record. The 7 batsmen theory looked to be ideal at one time, when India marched into the World Cup finals - yet, after nine defeats in pyjamas in just a few months' time, things have changed dramatically - and maybe it is time for heads to roll.

For the last 2-3 years, India've stuck with "tried and tested" - a combination of Tendulkar, Sehwag and Ganguly opening, Dravid keeping, and Yuvraj and Kaif in the middle order with a need for seven batsmen being paramount to team selection. Rahul Dravid, despite a commonly-acknowledged reluctance to keep the gloves on, has remained wicketkeeper until now - even after Ganguly's initial ideas of "keeping him on until the World Cup is over", showing just how worried the team management seems to be when it comes down to making a few groundbreaking changes and leaving comfort zones.

In the last few years, too many chances have been given to the same few people. Hemang Badani's had a handful of games in the side, Ramesh Powar's been called up for a couple of matches, but outside of Rohan Gavaskar, nobody's been selected and persisted with in the batting order. Mongia was dropped after a handful of failures, and since then hasn't been given a sight of a recall, while others like Mohammad Kaif and VVS Laxman have either been grossly underused, batting at 7 in the lineups, or have been overpersisted with through failures. Other players like Anil Kumble have started losing their effectiveness in the hit-and-smash format of one day cricket, and yet have been consistently kept in sides when younger, hungrier players are kept waiting on the sidelines.

So, who's to blame?

With these sorts of selection issues, and the lack of forward thinking in the team management, it's not surprising that India have done as abysmally in recent times as they have. Part of the blame needs to definitely rest upon the heads of John Wright and Saurav Ganguly, who've stuck with their picks for far too long. Ganguly was at one point heavily commended for backing certain players and pushing for their selection in the national side - however, the flip side of the coin has been a bullheadedness that's kept him from considering other options and quite often, from dropping his backed players.

Murali Kartik's been a victim of this, it could be said - with Ganguly backing Kumble and Harbhajan to the hilt, Kartik's been either ignored or underused. Several times, comments have been made about how much more successful Kartik has been under Dravid's captaincy, and it seems no coincidence - Ganguly's not had the same confidence in him that he's had in others, and as a result has used him poorly in both forms of the game, also hurting Kartik's eventual results with the ball. However, Ganguly can't take all the blame - as with Rahul Dravid and John Wright both playing the roles of yes-men, he's been given a free reign. Dravid as vice captain has never firmly gone out of the way to back other players or to even put his hand up and refuse to keep - and Wright, despite probably noticing the long term damage that Dravid wicketkeeping could do, has been fairly silent.

The BCCI and selectors too have been guilty - zonal politics have come ahead of ability and performance based selections far too often, and more often than not, the BCCI have allowed themselves to be dictated to by Ganguly, while rarely making their own marks on the side. The result is there for the cricketing world to see - a sharp decline in India's performances in the pyjama game, which is summed up by their new all-time low ranking of 8 on the ICC table. For India to start moving back up, either those players need to repay the faith vested in them on a more consistent basis, or else some heads need to roll. The job of rebuilding the one day team is not a hard one - but the question is, will it ever get done?