There's something about Mongia

Faisal Shariff

There is something about Mongia -- something that you keep trying to, but failing, to fathom.

On the surface, he is easily the best wicket-keeper we have had in the last decade -- an opinion shared by his own colleagues. "He has very soft hands, his collection is a treat to watch," is the assessment of one member of the Indian team, who has played with and watched Mongia for a good few years now.

Given that a wicket-keeper is a crucial member of the team, and given that the team members are unanimous that Mongia is the best we have, that should mean Mongia is one of the most popular members of the playing eleven, right?

Wrong -- spend time with the players, bring up the name of Nayan Mongia, and the reactions vary from indifference to contempt. Why, you wonder.

Mongia himself, in an interview with rediff.com , had said: "I play the game and go to my hotel room. I don't even know, most of the time, who is in the next room. I keep to myself; that is my nature."

Is this the problem? He is aloof, ergo unloved -- is that how it goes?

Or is it simply that he has bad PR? One thing is certain: the man is inconsistent, and we are not referring to his keeping here. If you spend time on the team's trail, you soon come to realise that the wicket-keeper is friendliness personified one day, seeking you out and chatting you up for no reason you can see, and he is equally capable, a day later, of looking right through you.

Plus, in a bid -- in Mongia's case, a constant bid -- to always present his best profile, he says things that just don't stand up. For instance, in the interview referred to above, Mongia claimed that he didn't even know about match-fixing till he read about it in the newspapers, and till I S Bindra spoke about it on TV. Which takes a considerable amount of swallowing -- he could hardly have been unaware of the dressing room buzz, the newspaper and magazine stories, the Chandrachud Commission and such like events, all in the wake of the original Manoj Prabhakar allegations.

There are other reasons, too, why Mongia is unpopular with his mates. I remember, for instance, my first encounter with the man. In fact, I was on the verge of approaching him, but he was at the time engaged in a conversation with the then BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur. And I listened, as Mongia cosied up to Dungarpur and damned Ajit Agarkar. "I don't know," said Mongia, "the ball doesn't seem to come into my gloves in quite the same way as before; the 'thud' is not there, you know?"

It was all done with a smile -- but what was happening was that Mongia was trying to convince the board president that Agarkar could be shown the door. Which made you wonder -- if Mongia were the ideal team-man, he should have been sharing his reservations with his captain, his coach, pointing out what he had noticed, discussing what the problem is, working with the player concerned. NOT doing the cricketing equivalent of pillow-talk with the BCCI chief.

That is one instance. It is by no means the only one. I knew about this one -- teammates know of many more. Seen from that perspective, then, it is a little easier to understand why, when he landed in Australia, no one was prepared to speak to him. Why, when he got into trouble in course of the match-fixing allegations, none of his mates had a good word to say.

"There is something about Nayan that turns people off," says a former teammate.

"He always seems to be creating camps, factions, in the team. You can never feel close to Nayan as a teammate," feels another.

On another occasion, I met Mongia immediately after Azhar, in his statement to the CBI had allegedly admitted that Mongia and Jadeja were involved with him in 'fixing' games. All of a sudden, Mongia, who was elusive and off the press, was embracing the media.

As I approached him, he put his arm around me and led me to the centre of the Cricket Club of India playing field. "I have nothing to say," he said. And then spent the next hour saying it, doing his utmost to convince me that he was the victim; that he was being discriminated against. By whom, of course, he did not specify.

"I am innocent. I have no clue why Azhar has named me; I have no idea. The CBI has given me a clean chit."

When I asked him why his teammates appeared to despise him, he grew curious and quizzed me, asking me to name the players who had spoken to me about him. He kept naming players, looking to me for a reaction. Tell me who they are, and I will speak to them and clarify any doubts in their minds, he kept telling me.

I caught up with him recently in Surat. When I tapped him on the back, he spun around, then smiled and said, "Don’t hide behind, my friend. Only enemies do that."

Seeming cheerful after being exonerated by Madhavan and the BCCI, Mongia spoke about how there was no reason to be ecstatic after being given a clean chit. "I was innocent all the way. This was bound to happen," he said, sitting in the pavilion of the Lalbhai stadium watching Kambli get amongst the runs.

After pleasantries were exchanged, he suddenly asked out of the blue: "So, what do the senior players say about me now?"

Obviously, it rankled.

I spent the duration of the match at the ground. Throughout that time, Mongia never made any attempt to be friendly with his teammates, who were there in strength since this was a South versus West game -- nor did any of the players speak to him. Obviously, exonerated or not, nothing had changed. Not really.

Perhaps, that is why his inclusion in the probables list came as a surprise -- I know for a fact that senior players have been plugging the case of Vijay Dahiya, arguing that while he may not be as good a keeper as Mongia is, Dahiya has this going for him that he is a cent-per-cent man, and always does his damndest on the field.

Of the reserve strength, under-19 skipper Ajay Ratra is being spoken of as an up-and-coming keeper -- but the expert opinion is that he is still a season or two shy from international class.

Nayan Mongia, thus, would seem to be the best keeper for the job when the Australians get here. Is he the best person to have in the dressing room? Now, that is another question -- one the coach, selectors, and captain will answer in their own way when they name the final squad.

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Design: Devyani Chandwarkar
Illustration: Dominic Xavier