Nothing to shout about

By intent or by luck, the BCCI got its timing dead right, this time, in respect of the Challenger Trophy.

It is the start of the season -- if there is such a thing as a season any more, in cricket -- and, more importantly, a good opportunity to check out the bench strength with a view to the World Cup scheduled to be held in South Africa in 2003.

Importantly, all senior players with the exception of Rahul Dravid (undergoing treatment in South Africa for an injury to his shoulder), Javagal Srinath and Sachin Tendulkar (both resting) participated -- so the young guns had an opportunity to pit their skills against established players, and see how they stack up.

Four days of closely monitoring the contests produced some thoughts -- the main one being that depth on the bench is, for Indian cricket, more illusion than reality. Take out the established names, and those others who have been transit passengers in this side, and you are left with very, very little.

What follows, is a checklist. A note, in passing: Not every player is being referred to here, since itemizing 39 players (three squads of 13 each) would be too time-consuming and pointless an exercise. What follows, thus, is merely an attempt to hit the high spots. Having said that, if one of the players who figured in the Challenger but does not figure in the list below comes through and finds a place in the Indian team, I’ll start believing in Santa Claus.

The Status Quo Ante: In this category, come the likes of Ajit Agarkar, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Murli Karthik and Debashish Mohanty.

Agarkar won bowler of the tournament. And on the credit side of the ledger, bowled at pace and struck early blows in each outing. On the debit side, however, there is this -- Agarkar has not, during his period of rustication, gotten over his Schwarzenegger complex -- at the first sign of some batsman meeting him on level terms, he gets agro and starts banging them down. For the most part, in this tournament, he was not faced by batsmen who could take toll of his excesses in this area -- but against tough international opposition, this tendency will continue to cost him, and India, dear, as it has in the past. His problem has never been a lack of pace or of striking ability -- rather, where Agarkar has erred has been in his uncontrolled adrenalin rushes.

Harbhajan Singh performed as he was expected to -- incisive, and of obvious class. Some rather inexplicable field placings took away some of his edge. And further, he was obviously feeling the pressure of Sarandeep Singh bowling brilliantly for India A. Thus, throughout this tournament, it was easy to notice that when the field placing did not have an attacking edge, ‘Bajji’ focused on bowling flat and fast, in an obvious attempt to try and keep the runs against his name down, if he couldn’t attack and take wickets.

Anil Kumble and Virender Sehwag, too, merit mention in this particular category because their performances told us nothing we don’t know already. Kumble in ODIs relies on tightness and control. Sehwag, in the limited version of the game, is the maverick every side needs -- sort of like a stick of trinitrotoluol that you toss in the face of the opposition, knowing that if the conditions are right he will explode, causing untold destruction.

Yuvraj Singh has been one of the top-of-the-mind names when it comes to picking one-day sides. And he has been his own worst enemy, thanks to an often thoughtless stroke selection. In course of this tournament, he showed signs that he has been working on that aspect of the game. And, by way of bonus, has added an extra edge to his already outstanding fielding skills, by developing an ability to hit the stumps at will from his favourite positions square of the wicket on either side. The only entry in the debit side you can think of is that he appears to have let his bowling skills slip, which is a pity.

Murli Karthik and Debashish Mohanty are included in this category -- but they might just as well be clubbed into a separate one, labeled 'Tragedies'. Karthik is, by several leagues, the best left arm spinner in the country today, and one of the best seen in the last decade. I’ve never figured out why, but left-arm spinners more than any other breed seem to need the faith of their captains to perform -- Phil Edmonds with David Gower, Bishen Bedi with Pataudi, Iqbal Qasim with Imran Khan, Venkatapathy Raju with Azhar are all examples that come to mind.

This has been Karthik’s biggest problem -- he has not, till date, found a captain who has any confidence in him. Sachin Tendulkar had little use for him, and Sourav Ganguly has none. For once, here, he found in VVS Laxman a captain who seemed to have faith in his abilities, and would give him the kind of fields that lend an edge to left arm spin bowling -- and Karthik did enough to suggest that by ignoring him completely, the national team is missing out on a bowler who can help win matches for his team.

Mohanty is similarly unfortunate -- more than one senior cricketer has remarked to us that while they admit his swing either way can be devastating early on, he is no great shakes with the older ball. Begs the question: which Indian seamer is great with the older ball anyway? Mohanty is used to his best advantage when the ball is new and shiny. In this tournament, he got only one game -- and he produced a superb spell. He must have known, even as he bowled, that he wouldn’t be picked. He wasn’t. Hell, he wasn’t even picked for the final!

Comeback kids: In this category, put down the names of Hemang Badani, Mohammad Kaif, Ashish Nehra, Zaheer Khan and Dinesh Mongia.

Dinesh Mongia was the surprise package of the last Challenger Series, impressing everyone with his ability and, more crucially, an ice cool temperament that saw him absolutely unflustered in crisis. Here, again, he showed those two qualities -- with the World Cup in mind, this is one guy to keep an eye on.

Nehra and Zaheer appear to have profited from being benched -- both looked fitter, and bowled better, than during their last tour of South Africa. Nehra still appears to carry niggling worries about his groin, judging by the fact that he has reduced the extension of the leading leg in the delivery stride and, consequently, dropped off a touch in pace. Zaheer started out rather uncertainly, but hit his straps as the tournament progressed -- and the delivery he produced to take out Virender Sehwag in the final was easily the ball of the tournament, exploding off a length and giving the rampaging Sehwag no option but to fend at it. That ball, and a few others, also indicated that Zaheer's confidence -- and with it, his aggression -- is back. Sehwag had just picked an attempted slower ball with effortless ease and slammed him over long on -- the glare that greeted the shot was quickly followed by this riposte.

The one complaint against Mohammad Kaif in the past has been that he is limited in his strokeplay -- and one Rahul Dravid is enough for a team. Kaif would appear, judging by how he played in this tournament, to have worked on that -- he was surprisingly fluent in his scoring, going at pretty much a run a ball and getting his runs all round the park, without ever needing to slog.

Badani, though, was the real revelation. He has always looked the part of a talented batsman -- without ever showing that he had the heart, and nerve, to go the distance. This time round, his performance was impeccable -- completely unfazed despite repeatedly coming in with his team in trouble, he batted with élan. He should make the playing eleven, probably as Dravid’s replacement -- and if he does badly, I for one will be very surprised.

Upwardly mobile: This is the section that should, by rights, be the most populated -- with names of yet-to-be-established players who are increasingly translating potential into performance, and pushing the senior stars for places in the side. Unfortunately, as it happens, there are only two names worth including -- Sarandeep Singh, and Tinu Yohannan.

Yohannan’s entry in this list might seem surprising given his lead bowler status in the recent India-England Test series -- but here, we are looking at ODI talent, and the tall seamer produced enough cutting-edge spells, especially with the new ball, to indicate that he is a prospect to keep in mind for the shorter version of the game.

Sarandeep, though, was the revelation of the tournament. He was completely relaxed, as you would expect of a bowler with everything to gain, but nothing to lose. Harbhajan was the established star, so Sarandeep went in knowing that if he bowled well, it was a bonus and if he didn’t hit his straps, well, nothing lost, he was merely where he had started from.

What surprised you, though, was the quality of his bowling. With his captain consistently giving him attacking fields (the little passage of arms when Ganguly took strike to the offie in the final was one of the moments of the tournament), Sarandeep flighted consistently, hit and maintained the perfect length, gave the ball a real rip getting it to turn and bounce and, most interestingly, began making the odd one ‘go’ the other way -- the lack of this delivery being, till now, what set him a rung below his fellow offie.

A year ago, articles were being written about how spin was dying out in the land of its birth -- and now, at least in the off spinning department, you have an embarrassment of riches, and a problem of which of two top quality bowlers to pick.

Watching brief: Keep an eye, for future consumption, on Sangram Singh the Himachal opener.
He is something of a right-handed Yuvraj Singh -- in the sense that he hits the ball with authority and power, and without any hesitation whatsoever. Against that, he is a typical product of Indian wickets -- his front foot plonks, as opposed to glides, forward and, against the quicker bowlers, he quite often plays his shots on the walk. Which on placid batting tracks over here is okay -- but if you are thinking World Cup prospect, then he needs a trip back to the drawing board. And some intense coaching, intended to remind him that he has two feet, not just the one he keeps shoving forward even before the bowler has released the ball.

Cloud in the silver lining: Syed Kirmani (who to my mind is, along with Sadanand Viswanath, the only wicket-keeper worth mentioning in the post Farokh Engineer-period) told me, some five years ago, that we were likely to see a major drought in this department.

The reason, he explained, was that Indian selectors had stopped picking a second wicket-keeper in touring squads. "I was even worse than the young boys you see today, when I first started out," Kiri said then. "But for three, four years, I got to tour as Engineer’s understudy. Being with the national team is an education in itself, plus you get to stand in tour games with a senior keeper watching and correcting the mistakes you make, so that by the time you are ready to take on the gloves, you are a finished product."

Kiri has certainly proved prophetic -- there is an alarming dearth of quality keepers, judging by the evidence of the Challengers. And by extension, maybe his analysis of reasons for the decline is worth keeping in mind -- and acting upon. Let’s face it, each time we pick a team to tour abroad, at least one or two of the squad of 14 or 16 are passengers who are not expected to play in a single game, but make the cut simply to satisfy some regional quota.

So why not, if you are going to carry a passenger, give that slot to an upcoming keeper? The failure to do so has resulted in a situation where Ajay Ratra has been picked simply because he is the best of the three options on view -- and not because he is intrinsically good.

Pankaj Dharmani is a grabber -- and is, in any case, nowhere on the selectors’ radar. Deep Dasgupta took to keeping late in his cricketing evolution, and it shows -- for starters, no keeper worth his gloves has his fingers pointing down the track as he prepares to gather the ball, the right technique being for the fingers to point down towards his own feet. And for another, Dasgupta has the habit of jerking upright as the ball hits the deck, rather than rising with the ball. This means that when the ball keeps low, he finds he has to bend hurriedly back down again – time and again, his inability to get back down in time resulted either in byes, or missed chances. Against that, Ajay Ratra is better organized -- but still a long, long distance behind Kiri or Vishwanath, or even of the likes of Chandrakant Pandit, Kiran More and Nayan Mongia.

The nowhere man: Remember a gent by the name of Sadagopan Ramesh? A free-stroking opener who dropped out of the team owing to injury? But who was, till then, a regular member of the Indian Test squad? Do you find it strange, that in a tournament that supposedly brings the 39 best players in India together, Ramesh fails to find a place, while more restricted batsmen such as Shiv Sundar Das and Deep Dasgupta get repeated opportunities to make a push for the opening slot?

The why-is-he-here man: Sridharan Sriram, to give him a name. Frankly, if I could get as many chances as Sriram has been getting, I would have won the sweepstakes by now. It has been painfully obvious for quite some time now that the Tamil Nadu player is nowhere near international standards -- and yet he keeps getting chances in Challenger after Challenger. Juxtapose this against the treatment handed out to Ramesh, and you begin to wonder who is playing games, and why.

The above list has two notable omissions -- VVS Laxman, and Sourav Ganguly. Both of whom figure in a companion piece to this article, which will appear on this site tomorrow.

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