Shushh Saurav!
Avinash Subramaniam
Keep the complaining down. Don't you realize you are only the captain of India! You have no power. You have no say. You have no mind of your own. Only the responsibility to deliver. (Not to mention, the burden of being held solely responsible for all team failure?) So what if that makes no sense. That's the way things are done here. Out here, we encourage no thinking. (Just yes-men.)
It doesn't matter that the players have to respond to the captain. His word must still be undermined. Remember how we cut Dilip Vengsarkar down to size? Remember what a hard time we gave Sunny? Remember how shabbily we treated Kapil? Remember what happened to Krish? (Right after he led the only team to return unbeaten from Pakistan.) And how can you forget how Azhar survived all the years that he did? (Actually, some of us would rather not remember Azza at all.)
Please, dear Saurav, don't you forget all these people and lessons. They will hold you in good stead. Unless, you'd still rather do what's good for Indian cricket. In which case, go ahead and do the bravely foolish thing like 'insisting' for faster pitches. (So our players don't forget all the hard lessons from their disastrous forays abroad. Not that you and the 'boys' need any help doing so.) And of course, the powers-that-be will have none of that. (Reasons for which they, naturally, won't care to go into. After all, they are answerable to no one. Or else, we'd have sent them packing long, long ago.)
Who says we need better wickets? Who says it's only fair that we train our batsmen before expecting them to deliver while playing in the real world? (As opposed to the batsman's paradise they're presented with in our parts.) Who says we should put more faith in our perennially under-rated pace-attack by giving them the conditions under which they have, repeatedly, proved match-winners? Is it the bowling or the bating that delivers on the faster pitches? Do the batsmen or the bowlers need more time to adjust? Who's likely to flounder more due to lack of familiarity with conditions? Who says we need to think a little more…a little…about the way we pick, manage, handle and motivate our cricketers…and cricket?
I'll tell you who says…the captain says. The thinkers say. The cricket lovers say. The people who make sense say. Except, none of it matters. (I mean, if the captain doesn't matter, why should anyone or anything else?) The board knows best. Even if it's knows only jack-shit.
Only a board that knows jack-shit, or less, will have an itinerary such as the kind seen in the last month and a half. Three Test matches into the season, and we still haven't sunk our teeth into some serious cricket. The only serious cricket we've had in recent months has been one-day internationals. (Which is anything but serious cricket.) The future shows we'll be playing fewer and fewer Tests. And all due respects to the 100s and double-hundreds, this is the huge reason we still don't know how to play top-class pace bowling. We don't play enough of it in testing conditions. (Yes, the pun is every bit intended.)
Post the debacle 'Down Under,' our top order has never been tested against really fast bowling. (The two Tests against South Africa were hardly tests of any sort.) Post the debacle 'Down Under', no concrete steps have been taken to prepare young batsmen to play on bouncy wickets. And post the debacle 'Down Under', we continue to demonstrate we have learnt nothing from the pounding our batsmen were subjected to. Slow, knee-length balls are still the staple diet in all forms of cricket played at home. The pitches committee turned out to be a joke. And we still have no idea what is a 'sporting wicket'.
Worse, the selectors and the captain are still, more often than not, at loggerheads. Transparency is still not a valued commodity. And the future of the game is still not the main thing on the agenda. (Case in point, the Madhavan re-report exercise v/s the CBI report and the shameful loops this one, too, promises to get into.)
On second thoughts, Saurav, don't shut up. God knows we can't do a thing about them. (Except stand, write and cheer, firmly behind you.) You can 'shushh' the author though at avinash@eurorscgindia.com
Avinash Subramaniam
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