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Krishna Prasad

15 steps to Nirvana

The sports channels promised us barood, but what we got was something else.

The choice before Indian cricket-administrators and players -- and fans -- is simple: hope the nightmare passes quickly, and then organise a quick honeymoon in some batting paradise so that our "boys" can become "men" again. Clearly, a country which loses Test matches to (and in) Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, West Indies and South Africa, in spite of a "wealth" of cricketing talent, has lost the plot.

So what do we do? Here's a revolutionary 15-step guide to put Indian cricket back on track.

Step No 1: Stop playing international cricket for 18 months: There's no use pretending that playing more cricket, and lots and lots of it away, will somehow solve all our problems. It won't. When Glenn McGrath can knock down seven out of our best XI with a straw, it's clear we've reached crisis point -- like in Indian hockey, we have been overtaken by the rest of the cricket-playing world in technique, temperament and technology. Accept that reality without shame. Sachin's charlies will only spread national gloom if they are allowed to go anywhere west of Sharjah and anywhere east of Dhaka, Pakistan not included.

Union Minister Ananth Kumar is talking of a national reconstruction programme for youth. Let it start with cricket. And let it start at home. Don't worry about what we will lose out by staying off the circuit: international cricket runs on Indian cricket, and nothing is lost in 18 months that Jagmohan Dalmiya cannot make up in one fell swoop. If the Board can't do this, let them send out the next team as a BCCI XI -- under no law, by no act of Parliament in this country, have they been allowed to send a team which represents "India".

Step No 2: Domesticate our pets. Once you get Sachin & Co off the international grind, make it mandatory for 'all' -- ALL -- of them to play every domestic match -- Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy in particular -- for the next 18 months and for Doordarshan to show each match live -- LIVE. This will not only resuscitate domestic cricket, which is dying, but it will give a chance for lesser cricketing mortals to pit their talents against the likes of Tendulkar & Co with the future in mind.

More importantly, it will bridge the huge and yawning gap between domestic and international cricket, that stands so horribly exposed when you suddenly pick a Devang Gandhi out of nowhere. And it will enable the V V S Laxmans and Vijay Bharadwajs of the world to remove the chinks in their armour that takes about half-a-minute for the Brett Lees and Shane Warnes to detect.

Step No 3: Stop all further sponsorship of the national team, and all further endorsements for the national players. The real reason why our "boys" have so little "gumption, guts, class, technique, bottle, ability, panache, sinew, courage, pride, passion, determination, vim and depth" (thank you, Tunku Varadarajan) is because there is too much money in Indian cricket, and it's not such a good thing for so few to have so much for doing so little. They feel no disgrace in defeat, and are not hungry for victory, because they're assured of their millions, win or lose.

Stop that.

Let the money seep down below to the grassroots; only then will real talent flower. Otherwise, we will be stuck with "great" Indian commentators touting the very ordinary Hrishikesh Kanitkars and Nikhil Chopras as geniuses when every club team in the country has half-a-dozen of each.

Step No 4: Allow duty-free import of players. The big reason why our national team is so mediocre on foreign soil is because our domestic cricket, which is supposed to throw up talent for the national side, has become so lopsided that there is a genuine talent-crunch. There is no point, no benefit, no joy in star-studded Karnataka walloping Kerala or Uttar Pradesh, or a Sachin-studded Bombay beating Saurashtra. Create a level playing field. Allow transfer of players between states: Transfer Tendulkar to Madhya Pradesh for a season; Dravid to Delhi. Allow talent-rich states like Karnataka to have more than one side in the Ranji Trophy.

And allow one foreign player per side. Indian cricket will benefit by allowing an Andrew Symonds or a Hansie Cronje playing for a year for Assam and Haryana. And somebody else next year. Likewise, encourage sponsors to take good state teams abroad every season. Let our youngsters learn what it is to play on foreign soil while they're learning the game. It'll help.

Step No 5: Don't be so bloody xenophobic: There are people brighter, better and more brilliant than our former "greats" who know a thing or three about this wonderful game, and who might help turn our "boys" into real "men". Tap them. A foreign player per side, like in England, might block a place in the playing XI for a "deserving player" but it creates greater competition for the other ten slots. And remember what competition does? Similarly, feel free to get hold of foreign pitch experts, dieticians, fitness trainers, psychologists.

Cricketing success has only one part to do with performance; much else is off the ground, and a lot of it is in the mind. If Indian "greats" object and say why look for foreigners when we have so many of our own, return the compliment: ask why they should be commentating on foreign channels when we have so many of our own.

Step No 6: Mandal-ise the game: "Jaggu Dada" did a sterling job of marketing the game, and spreading it wider by getting guys like Debashis Mohanty and Gyanendra Pandey and Gagan Khoda and Pankaj Dharmani to play the game at the highest level. But the Indian team lacks the one thing a champion side like Australia has: flair.

It's too full of English-speaking, middle-class, safety-first types from the metropolitan cities whose first priority in the team is job security. Get rid of them. Dig deeper. Aim at either extremes of the social spectrum: the Vinod Kamblis and Dodda Ganeshs, and/or the Saurav Gangulys and Ajay Jadejas.

And go to the smaller cities and small towns. Set up turf wickets in each district headquarters. Create special incentives for sponsors who underwrite school, college and university tournaments. That's where real talent lies. Class is temporary, impact is permanent.

Step No 7: Pitch in or shut up! Get the game's "greats" to contribute something more concrete than tough but vacuous words on air or in television studios. If the BCCI gets Rs 40 crore a year in telecast rights alone from Doordarshan, Rs 40 lakh per Test match and Rs 25 lakh per one-dayer from Pepsi, and God knows how much else from the rest of the corporate world, surely it can afford the services of the Sunil Gavaskars and the Ravi Shastris to get the "boys" into fighting shape.

If they say no, offer them two words of advice: shut up. And go for the foreigners. Send them on a talent-hunt. We haven't produced anybody even half as good as Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid in the last five years. And nobody half as good as Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble in the last ten. We are getting into a talent crunch.

Step No 8: The hell with pace, go for spin. Let's not live under any kind of illusion that India is the next cradle of fast bowlers. Even a dozen pace academies will not produce pacemen of half the calibre of Wasim Akram, Alan Donald and McGrath. The Mysore masala dosas will never match Big Mac whoppers. We do not have it in us -- in our brains or in our brawn -- to kill batsmen with speed. Spin was our core strength, is not, but should be in the future.

Get Bishen Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and B S Chandrashekar to set up specialist left arm, off and leg spin academies, with Rajinder Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar and V V Kumar at the other end. Encourage toddlers to stir sugar anticlockwise. The next Warne is around. We only have to look hard enough.

Step No 9: Create a talent pool. Identify a broad band of 16 players in each zone. Place them on contract alongside coaches, trainers and other experts. Hone their skills day in and day out at specially set up regional academies. At the end of 15 months, get all 64 players to assemble in the national academy coming up in Bangalore. Let the former "greats", if not the foreigners, see who really deserves a place in the side.

Let's identify the next captain, not the one who will follow Sachin, but the one who will succeed Ganguly. Like, now. Likewise, the next coach, not the one who will follow Kapil, but the one who succeed K Srikkanth or Roger Binny. Let leaders know what is expected of them, and you will be surprised what they can do. Ditto with the "A" team. And the under-25 side.

Step No 10: Make players earn their caps. Don't gift it to them like we did Sujit Somasunder or David Johnson. Cricket can't be learnt on the job. Like "all-rounder" Sunil Joshi who scored his first 50 in his 50th -- and possibly the last -- one-day match for India. Players have to be a finished product when they arrive on the scene.

The reason Adam Gilchrist looks so daunting as a person and as a batsman-keeper is because he has spent seven years in Rodney Marsh's cricket academy and in the Sheffield Shield tournament learning the ropes. That's why a Rahul Dravid who scores tons or runs in domestic cricket before he is picked is a better bet because he's waited so long for a call-up. Make players hungry for success.

Step No 11: Telecast selection committee proceedings, live: Cricket is a religion in this country, and rightly so. Halt the desecrators who have been pushing in one of their own, in team after team, and ruining the national side. Let's all see why, in a country with so many thousand clubs, so many states, so many people, and so much talent, we always get a team which always has one surprise, untested name like Noel David, Harvinder Singh, Ashish Nehra and T Kumaran.

Open the committee. Similarly, let the BCCI's annual general meetings go on air. Let's view the deal-making that has made us a marketing success in five years flat, and a total, absolute, miserable and awful cricketing failure in a shorter time.

Step No 12: Advertise, advertise, advertise: For a professional chief executive officer, for professional coaches, professional trainers, professional media managers, professional everybody. The age of honorary jobs is over. The country's richest sporting body should recognise the reality that cricket is as much science as sport; as much business as brains.

There is no use in a Raj Singh "talking" to a Bob Simpson who "suggests" an Andrew Kokinos who is kicked out at the end of two years because somebody thought he made too much money (Rs 36 lakh). Or a Jaywant Lele making a fool of himself everytime he denies himself. Likewise, float global tenders for television rights and pitch makers. Root out the wheeler-dealers.

Step No 13: Restore the balance between Tests and one-dayers. There is no use pretending that success in the shorter version of the game is all that counts (although sponsors and advertisers would like to believe that). Test match cricket is the real thing, one-day cricket is bogus and the two shall never meet.

A country which promises the ICC that it will only play 27 one-dayers in a year and then ends up playing 50 has surely got its priorities seriously mixed up. It's killing players, who are travelling all the time, hiding injuries, not knowing if they are losing or winning, and not caring half a hoot about that. That's bad. Get them into a situation where they learn to savour the wins and brood over the losses.

Step No 14: Sack Sachin: Ajay Jadeja at home and in Kenya, and Saurav Ganguly in Toronto and Australia, have showed that the "world's greatest batsman" needn't necessarily be "India's best captain". Accept that possibility instead of praying for miracles each time Sachin leads the team out.

India needs Tendulkar, the terror-batsman, which he is, much more than it needs Sachin, the genius skipper, which he is not. Since Jadeja's place in the Test team isn't assured, go for Ganguly. And stay off players who look like born-captains -- like Dravid.

Step No 15: Pray.

Krishna Prasad