The spiritual intoxication of Mohd Kaif

Faisal Shariff

There are some interviews that create a storm, some that just fizzle away -- and some that never find their way to the readers. A recorded interview with Mohammad Kaif, dating back to more than two years ago, belongs to the third category, and is one I never wrote.

I met Mohammad Kaif in Ahmedabad three seasons ago, for the first time, during the Challenger series - India's premier limited-overs domestic tournament. This was shortly after he had led the Indian colts (Under-19) to the Junior World Cup title.

Pulling his skullcap off and rolling up his prayer mat, a wiry Kaif settled down on the hotel bed and picked up a copy of the latest issue of Sportstar, not bothering to hide a huge grin of undiluted pleasure at the cover picture of him holding up the Cup.

It was a notable triumph for more reasons than the obvious -- Kaif had to marshall a troop of youngsters who were chosen just two days prior to the team's departure for the Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka. How did he manage that, how did he weld into a hard-fighting unit a bunch of guys he had never even seen playing before, I had asked then.

"I watched them in the nets during the tournament. I knew that our opening pair had to do well for us to win the Cup. Both our openers, Ravneet Ricky and Manish Sharma, opened for their state teams, so they were used to it. When you are faced with time limitations like we were, you have to rely on your instincts," he said, with a calm that seemed years ahead of his actual age.

Interestingly, just two days before, former national selector Anil Deshpande had tipped the youngster as a future captain of India. There was, however, another cricketer who stole the show in that tournament -- vice-captain Ritender Singh Sodhi, man of the series. At the time, it seemed that he and Kaif were ready to push the seniors in the national squad.

Three seasons later, Sodhi is struggling to make the big league after a brief and rather unimpressive stint with the Indian one-day squad. Kaif, however, has -- to borrow from Vinod Kambli's lexicon -- taken the elevator to success. And the single factor that differentiates the two is focus.

Sodhi concentrated too hard on trying to snare the all-rounder's slot but Kaif, backing his instinct, focussed on earning himself a slot as a specialised batsman. Thus, while Sodhi batted at five and bowled his harmless medium-pacers to fill the fifth bowler's slot, Kaif concentrated on his batting. Where fielding is concerned, of course, there was hardly anything to chose from the two.

What Sodhi did is a common phenomenon in Indian cricket. Young batsmen with natural abilities reckon that by rolling their arm over, they create a package deal out of their abilities that will see them being inducted into the squad. One and all, they fall prey to the 'next Kapil' syndrome, forgetting that the Kapil Devs of this world are not made; they happen.

Kaif bowls useful off cutters -- but what sets him apart is the fact that he had the self-belief to work on his batting, and to not get seduced by the short-cut of positioning himself as an all rounder.

Kaif is not as naturally gifted as some of his seniors, but his self-belief and sheer hunger to succeed is far greater than that of most others in the country. In his blueprint for success, failure was just another hurdle he needed to cross.

The signs have been there, for those that would see. A tournament in Los Angeles three years ago was played on the kind of minefield that can only be called cricket's equivalent of Bosnia -- and the bowler Kaif had to face was a young Brett Lee, steaming in and letting go with everything he had. Kaif, on that occasion, dug deep to produce a gritty 38 that won the game for his side.

"If I play him (Brett Lee) on a good wicket, I can handle him with ease," Kaif said, with the kind of elan you associate with the Bothams and Kapil Devs of the cricketing world.

The name -- Kaif - means spiritual intoxication. At Lord's on a surreal Saturday evening, he provided intoxication of a more material kind, with the kind of finishing even Sachin Tendulkar has not been able to provide despite the 33 hundreds and 57 fifties he has registered in the shorter version of the game.

Based on the chat we had then, based on what we have been seeing of him since, I suspect that Kaif knows something the others apparently don't -- practice, allied to courage, defeats raw talent any day.

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