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Runs 'n' ruins

For one full hour after getting in to work today, all I had time for was reading emails from Indian cricket fans around the globe.

A rare unanimity prevails in those voices, the consensus being that skipper Azharuddin's remarks of yesterday, blaming a plethora of one dayers for the defeat in the Test series, is merely an ex post facto search for excuses.

That, it most certainly is. Cricket regulars won't have to dig too deep into their collective memory to recall the words of the Indian coach and captain just before the Test series began. Asked if an excess of ODIs could be a problem, both categorically denied that there was an "excess" in the first place, and that having played just 4 Tests last year was not a problem. There was some guff, too, about how everyone is a professional, and knows how to adapt, about how the two tour games had given the team sufficient practise in the longer version, and so on and so forth.

Having said that, it most definitely does not wash, for the captain to now turn round and blame the very factors that, under a month ago, he had dismissed as being of no consequence. It reminds you of Graham Gooch's English touring party. Prior to the series, Gooch had written off Kumble as no big threat, rubbished the Indian team's prospects, and generally sounded off. By the end of the tour, it was smog in Calcutta, prawns in Madras, Venus out of whack in the heavens, and "square turners" everywhere.

At the outset, it needs mentioning that this is an end of Test series review -- not a "trash Azhar" exercise -- his name is being taken because he is, after all, the captain, and the voice of the team management. However, it needs mentioning that 'Azhar', here, is being used to delineate the entire team management.

With which proviso, this -- the 'excuses' trotted out by captain and coach are not merely deplorable in themselves, but in fact are symbolic, symptomatic if you will, of the real malaise, the real reason why India will not win too many Tests, and that too most definitely not on foreign soil.

The real reason goes to attitude -- of the cricket board, the team management, and the players. After all, everybody earns more out of one ODI than they do over five days of a Test. Thus, despite the public protestations of the importance of Tests -- recall Jagmohan Dalmiya's words, in this context, on Rediff? -- the deep down thinking is very obvious, and has been for quite a while. In sum, it reads thus: One dayers bring in more money for the board, and for the players. Test cricket is a nuisance that must be endured, and paid lip service to.

This is why the board will continue to fit Tests into little gaps when no one is prepared to play an ODI with India. Why the captain will continue to talk of lack of Test match practise as being unimportant. I mean, look at the thinking here: two tour games are sufficient, we are told, to prepare for the Test arena a team that has played just four in the year. Which is a bit like saying that a gentle jog around the neighbourhood park is enough to prepare a candidate for winning the Boston Marathon.

Okay, if the Indian cricket mindset is going to be geared towards ODIs -- for whatever reason -- then so be it. But the board, the players, the coach, the captain, need to ask themselves one question first: What do they want for Indian cricket? What image do they care to cultivate?

Is it the image of a top cricketing nation, comfortable alike in whites and pajamas? Perhaps not winning everything in sight in either version of the game, but winning more often than it loses, and doing some justice to the individual talents in the team and, more important, to the fans who turn out in their numbers? Or do they seek to become one day specialists?

If yes, then they need to clearly understand one further fact of cricketing life: No side is going to win every ODI tournament there is. The very brevity of that version of the game means that one over, one partnership, one bad moment in playing time, can make all the difference -- in other words, unlike in Tests, it does not give you recovery time, one slip and it is curtains.

A better way to go would be to emulate the Aussies, the South Africans, the Pakistan side, to strive for a balance in both versions, to be a team that is taken seriously in both arenas -- and India is a long, long way from getting even close, especially on foreign soil.

Consider this: how often does a side that has two centurions in a Test lose to a side that has none? How often does a side produce five centuries in two Tests played and still lose the Test series to a side that produced just one plus-100 knock in four innings?

The difference between the two sides was that one played to peak potential, the other went through the motions in a way that seemed to indicate that they were completely clueless -- and worse, that they couldn't care less.

Excuses aren't going to help -- in fact, if my emails are any indication, the fans are way too quick to see through them, to call the bluff. For instance, "the boys didn't hold their catches" is not some kind of shroud that will cover up the real problems -- which, on the evidence of these two Tests, can be enumerated as under:

1) That the team is, to a deplorable extent, incapable of catching a cold in a rainstorm is only too obvious. What is worse however is that the management appears uninclined to think its fielding options through. Any good side worth the name has specialist fielders for key positions. India not only has few or none, but seems to make a bizarre speciality of placing the wrong guy in the wrong post. Witness Dravid, fielding superbly at short square leg, being brought out of there and shoved into the slips. Or worse, Srinath being placed at first slip, immediately after he had completed an over.

What these reveal is a complete absence of thought among the team management -- after all, this is not "fill in the blank spaces" we are playing here.

2) That despite its vaunted prowess with the bat -- and the five centuries in four completed Test innings -- this team is not Test match material. More so abroad. The trouble is that patience appears a completely unkown virtue -- so taken in are the batsmen by their own press, that they seem themselves as mayhem artists extraordinaire.

The New Zealand bowlers did not need to be outstanding to get the Indians out -- all they had to do, for the most part, was to place a standard field, bowl a few on a run denying line and length, and then produce one that was short and lifting outside off, or pitched up for the drive, and bye bye batsman. Tests are not merely about scoring a couple of boundaries every over -- but who's to tell this lot that? Evidently, not the coach, the consultant, or the captain.

In this category, also include partnerships. Time and again, India prised out two or three wickets in a hurry -- only for non-recognised batsmen to stitch together long and, in the final analysis, match-winning stands. Comes our own turn to bat and what happens? Despite the presence of a well set batsman at the other end, the newcomer shows no sign of settling down, of taking his time, letting the senior partner do the hard work and effacing himself into a supporting role. That it can be done, and done to wonderful effect, was evident when Srinath, for once, decided to apply himself with the bat -- so what, then, does one make of the 'strokeplay' of his predecessors, Kumble and Mongia, at the crease?

Makes you wonder: As the next batsman walks out to the middle, do the captain and/or coach have word for him? On the order of, 'We need to consolidate, hang in there, take time to get settled, don't do anything rash'? Or is the 'management' limited to saying, as Azhar did on a memorable occasion: 'Why should we give instructions, these boys are all professionals, they know what to do"?

3) We've heard much about how much the team missed Ajit Agarkar. So what's new? In the West Indies, the team missed Srinath, elsewhere, it was someone else. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it -- the problem was not with absent friends, but the ones right there on duty.

To give you a for-instance: Check through the reports of each day's play, in each of the two Tests. You'll see sessions where the bowlers dominated, where they blasted out quick wickets. Wasn't the side missing Agarkar then? And then, as suddenly and inexplicably, you will find batsmen -- in two vital instances, completely off form batsmen -- taking the game away from the rampaging bowlers.

What went wrong? This might sound like a stuck recording -- but the battle with the ball was not lost on the field, but in the dressing room. Time and again, bowlers got rewards when they pitched the ball up, and gave it enough room to swing around. Further, when they kept to one side of the wicket, the near impossibility of getting easy runs forced the batsmen into indiscretion.

But such sense did not prevail for more than a session per day, at best -- after one good session, they came right back to spray it all over the place, and managed to undo the good work of the previous session.

True, bowlers need to use their heads. But it is equally true that the team cannot go into the field for a session without a definite plan in mind -- in the mind of the coach and captain, that is, whose duty it is to do the overall thinking for the side and ensuring that everyone understands the programme and damn well sticks to it. And at no time did the Indian team look like it knew what it was doing, which argues a complete lack of backroom work.

Further, the attitude of the captain will tell on the bowlers. For instance, put yourself in Srinath's place for a minute -- on the morning of the fifth day, he comes out knowing that a quick wicket or two could dramatically change the game, put India, against the odds, with a chance to force a remarkable win. (If that possibility sounds overly optimistic, consider that the Kiwi bowling was missing on a few cylinders, with Doull and Nash being less than fully fit and Cairns not being anywhere close to his best -- India, in fact, found run-making remarkably easy in its own final essay for just that very reason).

That kind of situation pumps up a bowler -- and what does he then find? A field of just two slips (even that reduced to one, an over later), which to his mind signals that the gameplan is not to take wickets, but to keep the runs down. If there is anything more calculated to blunt a bowler's aggression, I'd love to know what it is.

Time and again, this happened. Everything would be going right and suddenly, for no reason whatever, the close field would vanish into the country, and the pressure would lift, in palpable fashion. Good teams stay alert for the hint of opportunity -- this team, when opportunity comes knocking, is out in the backyard, around the barbeque.

Take for instance that moment in the first Test -- which, for me, decided the outcome. India was ostensibly pressing for a win. Chris Cairns was in -- on a ground where he has never managed to exceed 20 runs, and after a very bad four days with both bat and ball. Harbajan Singh comes on and at the start of one testing over, finds the edge twice on the trot, then holds one straight to force a hurried defensive jab. Next ball, the batsman is a long long way down the wicket, lifting the bowler over the fence.

To any ordinary follower of the game, that would signal opportunity, it would indicate that the batsman was in trouble and looking to hit his way clear. And that in turn would cause the fielders to come in, to choke the singles, to keep the batsman on strike against the bowler who was troubling him, to force him to take risks. Not here, though -- in the very next over, Harbajan is banished to the outfield, the field is well spread, and Cairns breathes a sigh of relief and settles down to bat his team out of the hole.

Is the nerve of this side so fragile that one desperate hit is all it takes to break it and have the side run for cover? Or is it that not having played enough Tests, it just doesn't have the mental knowhow to tackle such situations?

True, catches were dropped -- but if that was the reason, then how explain that the Kiwis dropped catches too, yet still won? How explain the anguish of bowlers like Srinath and Kumble, who time and again beat the batsman all ends up, forced the edges and found them going to waste because the fielders who should have been up close to take them had been despatched to the boundaries to sign autographs?

True, the odd umpiring decision went against the side at crucial times -- but does this mean that a lineup the coach characterised (just what was he thinking of then, anyways?) as the best bowling attack in the world was incapable of absorbing a wrong decision, of smashing through the defences more than once?

There is one simple reason why we don't win Test matches -- and that is because we don't care to play Test cricket.

Admit that, and perhaps we could start the journey back towards cricketing self-respect, by working on the real problems. Continue to throw excuses around, like so much confetti, and this team will remain what it is today -- an outfit with two three bowlers and four batsmen in the world's top twenty, but incapable of ever producing results to justify those ratings, of performing as a team.

There is one other thing -- and this in fact has been bugging me, and most reporters, for a while now. It is about time captains and coaches figured out that press conferences are not the equivalent of buying us an all day sucker and keeping us happy.

Time and again, we go to cover a press conference. We ask, are you happy with the team composition? Yes, they say, all smiles, this is the best team in the world. Do you think an overdose of ODIs could be a problem? 'Of course not!' Is the team ready for this tournament? 'Of course! We are looking to do very well.'

Five days later, we have another press conference. What went wrong? 'We had the wrong bowling lineup, there is too much of ODIs being played, we weren't ready for... blah..'

Now, to my mind, that seems like no one cares for the guy who is out there, reading that bilge. Just pat the fan on the head, mutter a few words and off you go, seems to be the prevailing mindset, and frankly, that sucks.

It is also one reason why the media by and large seems unsympathetic to even the genuine problems this team faces. For instance, we write about a certain selectorial lapse -- and then the captain goes, no problem with the team. The fan obviously takes the captain's word for it, not realising that the guy just wont tell the truth.

Or, an even more recent example -- Rediff along with other sections of the media recently had cause to crib about the overdose of ODIs. When we wrote about the issue, fans wrote back, asking how come the players don't complain? Then the captain in a media interview is asked the question, and he categorically says there is no overdose, that the players are quite happy with the situation, and such.

When that happened, I in fact got mail from guys out there going, now what do you say, you simply want to find something to crib about, the captain himself says it is not a problem, they are professionals and are being paid to play, so what the hell are you bitching about.

Fine. So now where did this "too much ODIs" come from, now?

Maybe if players told it like it is, the fans would be more receptive to their problems, more supportive of the side in time of trouble -- and the media would be better able to support them, to press for change.

Postscript: The mails also asked about renewal of live coverage. My apologies -- continuing bad health is the reason. We will not be live for the ODIs as well, but live coverage resumes with the big one -- the upcoming Tests against Pakistan, with all its drama and attendant baggage. Hope to see you then, meanwhile, all the very best for the year just beginning.