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Captain, my captain

One of the last, and forever lingering images of the just concluded World Cup for me will be the sight of Mohamed Azharuddin scraping together a 50+ innings in the crucial tie against Pakistan. It was not a tenure at the crease that enthralled the purist or the aesthete. There was no class or style about the way he went about amassing those runs which, in the final analysis, proved to be deciding factor when Pakistan came out to chase.

Again, it was a transformed Azhar that one saw on the field that day, as he went about marshalling his limited bowling resources and urging his players to give off their best against a traditional enemy. It was an innings of his life, and one that I will always treasure, for it was an innings that had all the hallmark of a sayonara. Azharuddin may believe that he has many cricketing years left him in, but for me that innings proved what he had lost. With that innings he was on a high, and that should be the ideal way to go.

Azharuddin has a chronic dislike for journalists, for he believes that the media carries the axe for him. It is a man without a valid defence who blames the media for his ills, so no wonder that the Indian skipper finds journalists as welcome as a rabid dog. The media, his wife can testify, loves a winner, since that is the way people are. No one gives a damn for your wristplay and finesse if your talent seems to desert you at times when the team, and the country, is in need of those skills. And this World Cup proved that: India played and lost so many close matches, matches it ought to have gone out and won, and the outcome in those matches would have been different had Azhar the batsman risen to the occasion.

Among all the slew of unsavvy remarks to emanate from him during the World Cup, the one I found oddest was when he said the captain is just one player, there are 10 others in the team. First, even the one player he alluded to did not turn out his best performance in the tournament, but that is a fact everyone, including Azharuddin himself, knows too well. And, a look at other teams who were in the reckoning for the Cup would show they were all driven by the skipper.

What would the Pakistani 11 be if it was not for the charismatic Wasim Akram leading from the front? It was his flair, his leadership that welded the team into a fighting unit that came all the way to the finals, after a disastrous series at home. And, it was his lack of leadership qualities in the final -- as evidenced by off-key decisions -- when it mattered most, that did the team in.

Looking at Akram, one could be excused for believing that captaincy is all about having a winsome personality, but Steve Waugh would beg to differ. The self-effacing Australian captain went about his task silently, even while the Pakis got taken in by their own braggadocio, and showed the world that flamboyance and leadership need not always go hand in hand.

In the final analysis, the Cup was won by a team that had the best captain.

India's unexpected win in 1983, was largely owing to Kapil's captaincy. He brought the team together, infused them with a sense of purpose, and when the chips were down, like in the tie against Zimbabwe, rose to the challenge. Not for nothing were they called Kapil's Devils, despite the presence of stalwarts like Sunny Gavaskar.

What is this leadership all about? Opinion could differ, but in the final analysis it is the quality to make a difference to the team, the ability to mould raw talent into a one, single potent force. Kapil Dev, in my opinion, was the last Indian captain who did that, made the men under reach for glory they never thought could be theirs. There have been other Indian captains who, given their stature, could have done wonders, but they allowed themselves to be hemmed in by whatever ghost they could not exorcise.

And, as this World Cup has shown, teams like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, while being good on their day, lack consistency, which is the hallmark of the professional teams. Australia could win seven matches on the trot and claim the Cup, because they are professional. While India, facing similar pressure, crumbled at the challenge. Of course, Azhar is not singly responsible for the debacle, but as captain, just as he enjoyed the credit whenever "the boys" did well, he has to take the rap for not raising the level of his team-mates' game.

The tragedy about the Indian XI is that even if Azhar were removed, there is no one who has shown the ability to convert the 11 talented men into one team. As often happens, we seem to equate individual brilliance -- of the kind possessed by, say, Sachin Tendulkar -- with leadership.

Sachin, or any other star in the team could be a genius on the field, and to be fair, both he and Ajay Jadeja have shown patches of brilliance on the occasions when Azhar has gone off the field. The real test of their ability would be while leading the team under adverse conditions on foreign pitches, not on tailored subcontinental ones. I don't see a man in this playing XI who suggests that he is capable of doing that.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy