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The uttakh-bhaitakh breed

In the small town in northern India where I grew up, the preferred punishment for an errant child was known as the uttakh bhaitakh. Squat and stand, up and down, up and down, twenty times in succession, and preferably with hands on ears. Fine preparation, one might say, for that most complicated of cricketing tasks -- keeping wickets.

The demands, both mental and physical, of wicket-keeping greatly exceeds those of batting, bowling or fielding. There is the additional weight one carries, the pads and gloves that are not required by your team-mates. There is the low posture, made more uncomfortable by proximity to smelly and unwashed batsmen.

A wicket-keeper must be vigilant and he must be fearless, alert to the need to go up or sideways, willing to be hit on his heart or on his head. He must focus, and focus relentlessly. Regardless of the state of the game and the shrieks of the crowd, he cannot ever give it less than one hundred per cent.

And sometimes, even that might not be enough. While the bowler can rely on another spell, and the batsman can look forward to the second innings, the stumper's mistakes are remembered long after the event. 'He dropped X when he was five, and the blighter scored a double hundred'. A triple hundred, actually. Go back to Lord's, 1990, when poor Kiran More missed Graham Gooch before he had reached double figures. Gooch went on to score 333, and the Indian cricket fan, always so quick to judge and to condemn, prepared to forget More's many previous contributions to Indian cricket.

A respect for wicket-keeping and wicket-keepers was drilled into me early, by my father. The first big match he witnessed was played between Rest of India and the then Ranji Trophy champions, Maharasthra, in 1941. The Rest of India were captained by Lala Amarnath, who at various times in the match batted, bowled, fielded and kept wickets. Ever since then, my father regarded the ability to keep wickets as the pinnacle of cricketing achievement. My own, modest experience as an active cricketer confirms this. There is nothing I found more taxing on the field of play than standing behind the stumps.

There is a relationship of mutual and deadly dependence between the wicket-keeper and the bowler. Indeed, the development of wicket-keeping has been heavily determined by the character of the bowling. The Australians in the Seventies gave us the remarkable partnership of Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee. One took a staggering 95 catches off the other. So well did they work together that at one time, they also held the world record for the longest distance travelled by an egg in the air without breaking. Lillee, of course, threw the egg while Marsh safely caught it.

Indian crowds, alas, never saw the Australian duo play. But from film clips, radio commentaries and written accounts, it is clear enough that Marsh redefined the craft of wicket-keeping. For a short, stout man, his agility was amazing. The edges that came off the bowling of Lillee and Jeff Thomson came bloody fast. Slashes high in the air, inside edges down to the left, the occasional ball straight at one's midriff -- one had to be prepared for the lot. Marsh's answer was to combine the traditional wicket-keeping skills with those of a football goalkeeper.

Also an expert at leaping about here and there was the West Indian, Jeffrey Dujon. In some ways, his job was harder still. He had to keep to four fast bowlers, while Marsh could 'rest' when Lillee and Thomson were off and the medium-pacer Max Walker or the spinners Ashley Mallett and Kerry O'Keefe were on.

The career figures of these two wicket-keepers make interesting reading. In 96 Tests, Marsh claimed 355 victims, of which only 12 were stumped. In 81 matches, Dujon had 272 victims, including five stumpings. And to think that in cricket parlance, the word 'stumper' is used synonymously with 'wicket-keeper'!

Consider side by side the figures of two older men. Godfrey Evans, the England wicket-keeper of the forties and fifties, had 173 catches and 46 stumpings in 91 Tests. Bill Oldfield, who played for Australia between the world wards, claimed 78 catches and 52 stumpings in 54 matches. All four men, it must be added, were handy with the bat as well.

Oldfield's career coincided with those of three great googly bowlers -- Arthur Mailey, Clarrie Grimmet and Bill O'Reily. Shane Warne, a more recent member of that honourable Australian tradition, has helped bring the art of stumping back into Test cricket. He is to Ian Healy what Anil Kumble has been to Nayan Mongia, or Paul Strang to Andy Flower. A happy by-product of the resurgence of leg-break bowling is that we can once more speak honestly of the wicket-keeper as a 'stumper'.

How has one day cricket affected the duties of the wicket-keeper? It has made a hard job harder still. In conventional cricket, he could put his feet up after two hours, when lunch came or tea was called. But where innings are played without a break, he has to do three hundred uttakh bhaithaks in succession, while remaining focussed for a full three and a half hours. Moreover, the number of sit-ups required go up with every wide or no ball. Then again, he has to be prepared to run to the wicekt for each delivery, whereas in Tests, he would at most be required to do so once or twice an over.

He has to dash and dive to receive hundreds of throws, and make some himself. He must learn how to whip off a glove, and convey the ball with pin-point accuracy to the bowler's end.

In contemporary cricket, it is the wicket-keeper's job, and his alone, to keep spirits up, to cheer and exhort any and all of his team-mates. Among the basic requirements of the job is a knowledge of all the swear words that have been left out of the Oxford English Dictionary. From the moment a batsman comes to the crease till the moment he departs, the stumper has to lead the chorus calling into question the batsman's skills, aptitudes, morals and lineage.

All in all, it is rather easier to be Prime Minister of a coalition government, even with Comrade George Fernandes as a 'colleague' and Jayalalitha Jayaram as an 'ally', than it is to be wicket-keeper of India. Were the job to fall vacant and a firm of headhunters were to be asked by the Board of Control for Cricket in India to find a replacement, the advertisement might run as follows:

Wanted: A new wicket-keeper for the Indian Test and one day team.

Age and Sex: Male, between twenty and twenty-five years of age.

Essential qualifications: The concentration of a heart surgeon, the reflexes of a fighter pilot, the guts of a boxer. Must be able to do four hundred uttakh bhaithaks in succession, in daylight or under floodlights. Should have demonstrated the ability to run the hundred meters in under eleven seconds, from a squatting start. Applicants with eyesight other than 20/20 will not be considered.

Desirable qualifications: The physical coordination and abilities of an Olympic gymnast, the voice of a town-crier, the vocabulary of a Dawood Ibrahim. Applicants who can identify a Bible, a Gita, a Koran or the Granth Sahib will not be considered.

Note: The job description can be redefined and expanded at the will of the captain or manager. In particular, applicants may note that from time to time, the successful candidate will be called upon to score 33 runs in 14 balls.

To understand what it takes to be an international wicket-keeper is to know for certain that Nayan R Mongia is the most under-appreciated Indian now living.

Ramachandra Guha