A Tale of Two Captains

If truth be told, I do not want to analyze India's CB Series triumph. I just want to enjoy it. I want to write an ode to my favorite cricketer - Sachin Tendulkar. I have waited for a long time since that fateful sand-storm in Sharjah to boast the fact that Sachin does deliver when it matters. I have argued many a hour with fellow cricket crazies that Sachin does not seem to score when it matters because "whenever he scores cricket seems to be too simple a game to matter at all". However there have always been doubters and I am sure there will be a few still lingering around with stats and sarcasm waiting to pounce after Sachin's next cheap dismissal. I would request such souls to cast away their cynicism and rejoice in a true master of the art that is batsmanship.

Unfortunately, my critical urge takes over at this very moment and I need to lay aside my art appreciation and look at the crucial difference between India and Australia especially in the finals of the CB series. As I admitted in my last post, I was surprised Dhoni played Piyush Chawla at Sydney but it was a punt taken on pure cricketing logic. He deserves a lot of praise for his punt to play Chawla and open the bowling with Praveen Kumar. Brisbane threw up new challenges to Dhoni while choosing the final playing eleven. Ishant was iffy and Sachin was struggling with his groin strain. Again Dhoni made the call based on pure cricketing logic.

No captain must risk a fast bowler in an ODI. If he breaks down, the game is lost then and there. The captain loses the tactical advantage of playing 5 frontline bowlers if one of them breaks down. It does not matter if they go for runs but breaking down is a totally different story. It upsets the captain's rhythm, the team's rhythm and results in a scramble on the field to finish 50 overs. Dhoni was too smart to risk Ishant Sharma. He called up Sreesanth. Sachin was a different matter because batting is a different matter. A batsman can play at 70-80 % fitness especially when he is in form and the captain does not want to risk upsetting his top order. And if that batsman is Sachin, the captain does think twice before replacing him when he has scripted the side's last win.

The final and biggest decision Dhoni had to make and the one that eventually was the difference between the two captains was Piyush Chawla's inclusion. There was a lot of talk about the bounce and carry at the Gabba and Ponting fell for it. He replaced Hogg with Clark and 2 overs into the Indian batting, I remarked to my friend that it was a wrong move. The first two overs proved the slow nature of the wicket as well as the low bounce. Eventually, Ponting must have realised his error when he used Michael Clarke and Symonds to bowl more than 10 overs between them. When Yuvraj got going, Ponting must have definitely been ruing the fact that he hadn't given Hogg his last hurrah at the Gabba. Again, Dhoni proved the smarter captain. He made the call to play the leggie especially since the Gabba is a venue where Warne has enjoyed a lot of success in ODI's. This fact makes Ponting look more stupid leaving out Hogg who is a wrist spinner too.

One needn't look too far to see why Dhoni has been making the right calls on team selection than Ponting. The reason is Dhoni is a captain in form. He is at the top of his own game which allows him the clear head to make calls before and during the game. Ponting on the other hand has struggled for form throughout the summer. It has affected his captaincy and it has had a telling effect on the result of the ODI series. In the past I have seen Australia win a few series just because their captain was in top form. He seemed to magically pull them out of trouble from his pivotal number three position. Now, we can look back and realize how important a captain's form is to his captaincy.

Dhoni has always down-played the value of good captaincy. He has always maintained that captains are made to look good when their charges return the trust the captain places in them. However, when you contrast the captains' decisions in the finals of the CB series, you do realize that a captain does make some sound choices and some unsound ones irrespective of how these choices pan out. Moreover, the soundness of a captain's choices are mirrored in the captain's own performance and form.

Sachin's Masterclass and Dhoni's Masterstroke

Admittedly, I am a Sachin connoisseur. It was as if I had written the script in my last post and Sachin decided to read it and deliver a critic's dream performance. Pity the Academy awards were done and dusted last week else, I guess, Sachin's batting today would have been a contender. At the very least, it has been a slap in the face to all his eternal doubters. Enough said about him; my generation has grown up watching Sachin and if anything, I have always wanted him to be in a world cup winning squad. Then again, that's just me!!

A more pertinent accolade must go to the firebrand Dhoni. I was pretty disappointed he did not play a fully fit Piyush Chawla until the final. In fact, I had rued the fact in my last post. What I didn't expect was to see Dhoni field his trump card at the deep end! It was always a given that Chawla would be more than useful in Sydney and Adelaide if not at the other venues. However, if Chawla had been taken to the cleaners today, I am sure there would have been a fair amount of tabloid space dedicated to some Dhoni bashing. That would have been quite unfair. I guess Dhoni's line of thought would have been something like this - "I have got a bits and pieces bowler in Praveen Kumar and I have got two bowlers struggling for some form in Munaf and Sreesanth. Why don't I punt on my reserve leggie kid who had a good time on the most unhelpful pitches in Ireland and England?". The worst that could have happened was that Piyush Chawla might have gone for a few runs but then Munaf and Sreesanth couldn't have been backed for anything better. Therefore, I consider Dhoni's call to play Piyush as one backed by sound cricketing logic and hence a masterstroke.

Then again, there is that small matter of Dhoni's masterstroke paying off with Bhajji and Piyush suffocating the Aussies in the middle overs. Dhoni has a presence even in press conferences. He comes across as a captain who does not take the post match presentation as a formality. He treats it as just another chat and his words are pertinent and natural. His rider for caution and intensity for the remaining games was well received. Here is a leader of men whose words will not be lost on his charges. I hope he is able to back it up with results and in the very short term I hope he is able to finish his business down under at the Gabba!

Good Luck India, May the fours be with you ...... always !!

O India! May the Fours be with you!

Finally, we are at the business end of the CB series and I am glad to stick with my finalists at the crucial juncture: Aus v Ind. Frankly, the Lankans have not beefed up their game. Australia definitely go into the finals as favorites but the Lankans will have to pull off a Houdini act to make it to the finals from here on. Expecting them to win against the Indians and Australians at the business end of the series is a big ask. Yet, if they do manage it, they will have an edge going into the finals with a win against the Aussies.

I did predict that the Indians would get better as the series progresses and I am glad it has panned out that way. Going into their last game, they would like a few more runs from their top order and I feel one of Sachin and Sehwag will fire in their last pre-final game against the Lankans. Nevertheless, I whole-heartedly believe the Indians will make it to the finals and give the Australians a run for their money.

Call me a fan but I have my money on India to win the last edition of the tri-series down under. I still feel, India must go in with five bowlers on a featherbed of a pitch for the first final at Sydney and I also feel Piyush Chawla must have been given a few games as he would have been useful at Sydney and Adelaide. I expect the Indians to win the second final at Brisbane and if they can pull off a thriller in Sydney, India have an outside chance to beat the Aussies 2-0 in the grand finale.

If Dhoni gets lucky with the toss at Sydney in the first final, expect Sachin to fire away batting first against Lee and Johnson. Sachin is due big time and being the quintessential cricket purist, I would love Sachin to get big runs in the finals. Sachin getting runs is a celebration of cricket and is beyond winning and losing.

Trust me, the Aussies are not sitting pretty; they have had the better of the Indians in some close encounters over the last month but that streak is bound to end. Given the weight of performances, one must regard the Australians as the favorites but the forthcoming finals are by no means a "David vs Goliath" affair. I would rather compare them to "Bheema vs Jarasandha" borrowing two champions from the Mahabharata and delightfully leave it to the reader to decide who's who amongst the two!!

A Terribly Consistent Rudi!!

Never seen an umpire who so consistently fails to hear thin edges. I guess age is catching up with Rudi Koertzen. He failed to hear the thin inside edge on Gilchrist's bat and adjudged him Leg Before and he so faithfully failed to hear Sachin's thinnest of thin edges.

To be fair to Rudi, watching these wickets on television, Rudi seemed to have got them right. Coupled with the noise exodus in a thickly populated MCG, it was difficult to hear these close edges. Gilchrist's dismissal was the easier one to spot. While watching it live, I thought there was some odd deflection in the line of the ball before it hit the bat; a deflection that didn't look like late swing but of course, one couldn't hear a sound. In Sachin's case, watching the match live with a few friends at home, none of us heard anything or picked any deflection. Only after repeated replays and snicko's could one be sure that Sachin had nicked it.

This brings us again to the question of employing aging umpires in international cricket. Bucknor paid the price for too many mistakes and I feel, Rudi is aging fast and needs to be careful before he is reported by some disgruntled captain.

Surely the ICC must be doing some "Umpire hunting" overtime!!

Experience vs Youth in cricket

Essentially, the conundrum in Indian ODI cricket is valuation of experience and youthful energy. This is not a problem of economics but a puzzle of perspective. The term 'experience' is often used to mask the lack of athleticism among senior players in the Indian cricket team. Of course, Sachin Tendulkar, as of today remains an exception. He has still got the zip in spite of 18 years of international cricket but for all practical purposes, let us exclude him in our analysis; after all, the entire cricketing intelligentia considers him a legend of the game, so for our analysis, he is a pleasant exception.

Of course, Sachin's case might be put in perspective if you look at international standards of player performance. Ponting, Hayden et al are in the same age bracket (albeit with lesser years at the international level) and they set the benchmark when it comes to aging gracefully as an international cricketer. Nevertheless, the experienced bunch in Indian cricket - Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble et al - live by the standards of an older era: the bygone era of Indian cricket when "senior" players were mollycodddled for having that rare gift - experience. This bygone era includes Azhar and Kapil Dev to name a few. If truth be told, both these greats (match fixing or not!!) were given huge career extensions without due regard to their performance on the field. Again, the selectors were ready to stick with the 'old bunch' in search of that abstract gift: experience.

It is but obvious that we need to ask ourselves, "what exactly does experience bring to the table?" The answer is verbose so bear with me! A cricketer, while playing the game in the heat out in the middle at any level, 'experiences' different situations. It doesn't matter if he is playing test cricket at the county, grade, Ranji or international level. He still learns from his role in the middle. He grows as a cricketer and the sum total of these 'cricketing episodes' are somehow hard-coded in him. He is supposed to find himself in similar situations and react in a more informed manner given that he has already been through more of the same. Therefore, if he has been in a huge fourth innings run chase at the Ranji level, he is supposed to be more anticipating when confronted with a similar situation in a Ranji final. He is supposed to know exactly, how to pace his innings; when to press the initiative, when to block, when to play for time and so on.

In the limited overs contest, the player learns precisely the same issues via experience. He learns how to assess pitches, how to visualise a target, how to pace his innings etc. Watching the game between India and Australia on Sunday, I daresay, the Indian youth were trenched in their belief that anything short of 300 is useless while playing against Australia. Some might say, they still have the hangover of the T20 world cup experience. Then again, that should be classified as a lack of 'experience' and count against 'youth' in this contest with 'experience'!

Then again, in this circular argument the question always remains, "If one cannot go with experience indefinitely, then how to ensure that the youth builds experience?" The answer is simple: Make sure the experiences built at the domestic level are meaningful enough at the international level. For this to happen, domestic cricket must meet the standards of international cricket. This is precisely the reason why Australia do not have the problem of bleeding new charges straight out of domestic cricket. The difference in quality between domestic cricket down under and international cricket is not insurmountable. This is not the case with any other cricket playing nation. India have the best chance to ensure that domestic cricket takes a quantum jump in quality and they are taking minute steps over the last few years. In general bowling standards have improved but batting standards haven't. This would be puzzling but the root cause is the pitches. Even today, India does not have enough sporting pitches to even out the contest between bat and ball and at the same time, India has too many domestic teams!

A multitude of domestic teams means a lot of weak opposition for quality players. Therefore, the performance statistics do not reflect the true merit of the player - bowler or batsman. The 'experience' gained at the domestic level needs to be put in perspective taking into account the lack of quality opposition. It would be fruitful for India to cut down the elite domestic competitions to 6 teams only and continue building infrastructure at a level below that. More focus should be on the zonal teams than the state teams. The zonal teams must play more cricket against each other so that quality reveals itself. When someone from the zonal team makes it to the international circuit, he will not feel a quantum leap in quality.

I am also critical of giving preference to players in touring A and B teams. Just because they have international experience playing against other A and B teams does not mean they have adjusted to international cricketing prerequisites. This is also detrimental to the quality of domestic cricket. If you take out the creme de la creme for international duty, the cream below the cream for A and B team duties, then the domestic leagues are going to languish far, far behind.

Australia's dominance in world cricket must teach every other cricket playing nation at least one sure truth - There is no short cut to international success. There is no bypass to international cricket. There is no possibility of building a consistently successful national team if a country does not have a high performing domestic cricket setup.