Full marks for Cairns, Leipus
Harsha Bhogle
My man of the match was Chris Cairns' doctor. My player of the series was Andrew Leipus.
I don't think anybody expected Chris Cairns to play, let alone to bowl. The cameras were on him in the morning
and he did little to suggest that he was going to have a big game. The cameras were on him again in the evening
and if anyone had any doubt about who the best all-rounder in the world was, it had been dispelled by then. It is
not known that his knee was in such bad shape that he had signed up with us on ESPN to be a guest
commentator to replace Ian Chappell who had to leave early for a game in Australia. I don't know what he was
injected with but it worked on his knee and as a result, on the psyche of the New Zealand side.
Over the years, Cairns has been temperamental, moody and occasionally, his own enemy. Talent can do that to
people for talent is often on the opposite side of grit. Talent needs to be massaged sometimes, it needs to be given
space. At most times, talent just needs to grow up. In the last two years, Chris Cairns has discovered the ability to
align his great skill with a very mature head.
You saw that on Sunday in his very first over. He only bowled from five paces but he bowled with a great deal of
thought. He changed his pace beautifully and he hardly allowed the batsmen to come on to the front foot. And you
saw it in dramatic style in the afternoon when he came out to bat. Like the performer who knows just how good
he is, Cairns knew that if he was there in the end, New Zealand would win and so, after a good start, he played
the waiting game wonderfully. At no time was he ruffled, at no time did he play a desperate shot and as an
exercise in how to time a chase, it needs to be in every cricketer's text book.
New Zealand have been the side to watch for a very long time and that is because they, more than
anyone else, know their limitations. They know that, Cairns apart, they do not have anyone who can do the
difficult things in the game and so they concentrate on doing the simple things very well. And so they bowl a good
line, field very well, take their catches and run the singles and twos hard. They maximise potential and that is
something a lot of very good sides struggle to do.
They can still be beaten because a lot of teams around the world have greater potential. But not every team
produces its mean performance every time. If Australia did, they would never be beaten. New Zealand's chance
lies in hitting their mean very consistently and hoping the opposition goes below theirs.
There is a huge lesson here and I think the key to it is discipline. When your body is in sound shape, you achieve
a base performance automatically because you will run well, catch well, hit the stumps and chase the ball hard.
That is seventy per cent of cricket today. Beyond that you need to be a Tendulkar or a Warne or an Akram but
even they, with their extraordinary skills, need their body to be well tuned. At Nairobi, the Indian team had better
tuned bodies than I have seen for a very long time and that is why my player of the series was Andrew Leipus.
Anshuman Gaekwad told me during one of our pre-game interviews that during the training camp at Chennai,
Leipus asked him how hard the coach wanted him to go with the players. "It is completely up to you," Gaekwad
said, and was man enough to admit that what Leipus did at the camp was translating into performance on the field
in Nairobi. Leipus is a very quiet man and goes about his job with very little fuss. And the players love him, which
is such a critical factor. I think he has a major role to play in our cricket.
I think he has just been told that he will be with the Indian team till the 2003 World Cup and that is a very fine
gesture. Now the BCCI needs to do more with him. We need to work out a plan which takes Leipus around India
so that he can spread the gospel of fitness and training to all our state sides. And he definitely needs to work with
our under 19 and 'A' teams.
There is a lot happening in our cricket that is good and if that can be a pointer to people in the BCCI, than they
will take immediate moves to change the way the game is run. Just to give you an example, the political side to
our cricket appointed Ravinder Chadha as the team doctor and that harmed our cricket enormously. The rational
side to it, and it must be there somewhere, appointed a professional like Leipus and that is one of the best things
to have happened to our cricket.
This has been a genuinely fantastic performance by India. If it can show the virtues of replacing politics with
reason, the bigger win might still be, not in Nairobi, but in the minds of those who need to bring change.
Harsha Bhogle
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