A natural progression

This is a post about captaincy.Specifically, Anil Kumble's captaincy.

There has been a lot of discussion in the print and visual media in the few days following the win at Perth that Kumble should have been made captain a long time ago.

I am not so sure.

The 90's was a wasteland as far as Indian captaincy went. Md. Azharuddin never inspired, Sachin Tendulkar demanded too much without the necessary expectation setting.

And the selectors oversaw such shenanigans as the player disputes over pay, the Navjot Sidhu walkout from the England tour, the debacles at Barbados and Australia, the disaster that was the 1996 World Cup and match fixing.Remember "Noel David who"? Or the "Nayan Mongia- Md. Azharuddin" package deal to Oz circa 1999?

There was no cohesion - we prepared dust bowls at home and rolled the opposition. Then we packed our bags and got rolled over by the opposition.

The match fixing scandal ( and South Africa winning in India) changed all that.

The match fixing scandal and Sachin's subsequent resignation as captain forced the Board and the selectors to look seriously at blooding newbies untainted by match fixing. Also, because of the match fixing scandal and the subsequent bloodbath, the selectors and the Board were in no position to rock the boat when it came to the new captain.

Which worked just fine with Saurav Ganguly.

Despite the series by series appointment as captain, Saurav Ganguly had latitude and leverage very few Indian captains have had in the past. And to his eternal credit, Ganguly used this latitude and leverage to mold a team rather than give in to parochial considerations.

The success at the ICC Knockout Trophy at Nairobi and THAT series against Australia gave the team self belief.

Seld belief - that will remain Ganguly's greatest legacy as captain.

While the team had self belief and were second to none when the going was good, there was a frailty when things were going pear shaped.

Rahul Dravid brought a whole new dimension to the way we played cricket. No longer was the team dependent on one man or one great performance to seal the deal.

Rahul Dravid's tenure saw the team play in the mold of their captain - ready to go toe to toe with the opposition and play good attritional cricket. Across the board.

While Dravid, like Ganguly, was tactically naive, and despite the fact that we screwed up at Newlands and the Oval and regressed as a One Day unit,his legacy to the team was that he molded the team in his image. Or nearly did.

Which is why I personally consider his resignation as captain a betrayal. We had a good thing going, we had a team that played good attritional cricket despite showing frailties now and again. And while he was not a good ODI captain, his contribution as a Test captain was immense.

Anil Kumble's appointment as captain was fortuitous. By accident ( or by design), we landed the right person for the right job at the right time.

What Kumble brings to the captaincy is a certain gravitas. His ability to inspire was not in doubt - by sheer dint of personality, he could make the team aim for more. What is surprising is the hard nosed element displayed by the team - like their captain, the team is getting more and more competitive with every test.

And while I think Kumble's captaincy is a tad conservative ( like his predecessors), the twin tours of Pakistan ( at home) and Australia ( away) should give him and the team enough confidence to open up the play book a little.

So, there you have it - self belief coupled with the ability to play attritional cricket coupled with the hard nosed element of being in the game at all times and we stand at the cusp of being a really really good Test unit.

With the talent that India has, it is easy to overlook the tactical aspect as natural talent can buck the tactical aspect of the game. Tactically, Indian captains have always erred on the side of conservatism ( atleast in my living memory). Also, given the enormous following of the game in the country and the subsequent pressures, playing safe is the safer option.

Dhoni, in his avatar as ODI and Twenty20 captain, has bucked the trend somewhat. Maybe that is a harbinger of the future.

A team fuelled by self belief, playing hard nosed cricket and going toe to toe with the opponent, led by a tactically astute captain and there is no reason why India cannot be the best team in the world.

A natural progression? Yes.

So,would Kumble have made a greater difference if he was appointed captain sooner? Would the team dynamics been the same with him and Greg Chappell in the same dressing room as captain and coach? Would we have played attritional cricket the way we do if Dravid was overlooked as captain for Kumble? Was Ravi Shastri the better choice ahead of Md. Azharuddin?

Questions and conjectures all.

All I know is that we have somehow hit the right combination in the captaincy progression - more by accident than by design but hey,I will take it .

Thanks Tony

for articulating what I have been thinking for the past couple of days.

The Captain speaks

Keep believing

All mixed up

is Nirmal Shekhar in this article.

1. It was the players and not the BCCI who called for the suspension of the tour. And they had pretty valid reasons for this.
2. It is a pity the BCCI had to use its financial clout to get Bucknor out. If the ICC had been half as proactive, things would not have come to this. It was not the first time that Mr Bucknor ( and Mr Benson) displayed incompetence and a blatant disregard for the rules of the game.
3. 24 hour news channels are going to play up certain aspects of the game - that is media responsibility/culpability.
4. Obviously Mr Shekhar has not had to endure an entire season of Mr Nicholas and Mr Healy on the Channel 9 commentary box.

If 24 hour news media and the hype they generate is Mr Shekhar's window to India's sporting culture, he needs to step out of the office a bit more.

And, a little fact checking will also help.

The ODI team

The team announced is

Squad: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Karthik, Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Irfan Pathan, Praveen Kumar, RP Singh, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla

with Manoj Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan and Munaf Patel the standbys.

Taken in isolation, the selection is a pretty good one.

There are potentially 8 all rounders in the team, 4 openers and a plethora of middle order bats who can hit the long ball.

This aspect ( of playing power cricket and multi role players) is evident in the list of the stand by players too.

And that leads me to believe that India have finally embraced the concept of power cricket in the shorter version of the game.

And while this squad may not do too well in seaming and swinging conditions ( partly because of a lack of exposure and partly because of suspect techniques), the odds of such conditions cropping up in ODIs are next to 0 - because of the loss of revenues that entails.

Add to this the fact that most, if not all, of the selected players are pretty handy in the field and crisp between the wickets and the transformation of India's ODI cricket from power hitters up top, consolidators in the middle and power hitters at the bottom to power hitters up and down the batting line up, is complete.

Will all of the selected players be in the grand scheme of things for the WC 2011? May be not.

But the fact of the matter is that the selectors have finally decided to give the concept of power cricket a go and have done it in an environment where the pressure of succeeding is considerably diminished as compared to playing at home.

Now, the big picture - there seem to be a lot of people who are upset that Ganguly and Dravid did not make the cut. Hence the breast beating of considering "youth" versus "experience".

But, what is experience?

Is it the ability to quickly assess a situation and tailor one's game accordingly? Is it the ability to pace one's innings? Is it the ability to last 50 overs?

Bigger question is, does it matter?

Runs are the order of the day and the more the runs the better - the manner in which the runs are scored is trivial. And 300 runs in 40 overs for the loss of 10 wickets beats 260 runs for 5 wickets in 50.

And for the CB series, we have a team that can put the runs on the board - by constantly attacking.

And an offshoot of the constant attack motto is that it has a wearing effect on the opposition - bowlers lose their lines and lengths when constantly under the cosh, fielders feel the heat and most important of all, the loss of a wicket does not dim the tempo.

Do Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly fit the mold? Rahul Dravid was never a biffer of the ball to begin with. Coupled with a loss of form post the England tour and his life as an ODI player was over a while ago.

Ganguly can biff, but does he fit into the grand scheme of things?

He will almost certainly not play the 2011 WC. And given his limited ability to run between the wickets and a propensity to play sheet anchor (of late), he does not fit into the philosophy of power cricket.

Given all that, it has been a courageous move by the selectors to
a) embrace the philosophy of power cricket and
b) select a team that can deliver on that philosophy.

600

I wanted to write about it. Then I read this.

And if there is a better written appreciation of the man on the Internet, I have yet to read it.