Transition time for Team India

The announcement of a somewhat new cricket team for the upcoming home series against England has many portents in its belly, some good, some worrying, some emerging and some fading out.

For starters, it is still inconceivable to envisage a mighty Indian team in the absence of the Big Four. But with injuries to none less than Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and our lead bowler Zaheer Khan, it is time to test our next rung of cricketers and that means testing our bench strength, testing our young guns and, finally, going into a long waiting-to-happen transition period.

If one were to do a reality check here, much as we love to love and worship Tendulkar, fact is that the master craftsman of cricket has gone into the veteran zone from where his cricketing stints will only dwindle with age and injury recoveries taking their toll. He is close to 40 and if you have noticed, we have been seeing him more in social service and commercial advertisements than in the middle. He is poised for his 100th 100 and one wishes him many, many more milestones but for him to go beyond, at the most, the next World Cup would be wishful thinking.

Already he has missed a whole lot of ODIs due to injuries and has already signed off from international T20, the format that is said to be the future dominator of the game. If sources are to be believed, the master blaster will be closing his glorious innings in cricket after the upcoming tour to Australia and if that indeed is the case, the selectors will do well to start the hunt for replacements. Of course, a classic player of perfection like Tendulkar visits the world only once in a while, and in that there may never be a replacement for him, but Team India’s transition from the Tendulkar era to the next one needs to start now.

As we have seen with Australia, reconstruct of teams takes a painfully long time which sees the world worth of the dispensation dip. The Australia of the Hayden-Gilchrist-McGrath era is distinctly different and weaker than what that country is meticulously building up nowadays. The transition has seen the Aussies, the eternal champions, fall in rankings in all forms of the game. Even their legendary professionalism in nursery rearing has come to be questioned. But now, and with a keen eye on rebuilding, the Aussies are fast returning to the hunt and working hard on the invincibility quotient with new hands in the gloves and helmets on their thinking heads — something that fell by the wayside with the West Indies which could not regain their mastery of pace bowling in the absence of a well-laid out transition plan.

Today, West Indies of the feared Clive Lloyd, Malcom Marshall, Michael Holding and Vivian Richards days is a pale shadow of its glory, caught up as it is in the politics of the game rather than the excellence of it. Imagine if an explosion like Chris Gayle had been nurtured well and not allowed to fall to politicking within the Board, how different the situation could’ve been. In the last World Cup, I remember their coach admitting privately how surprised and worried he was that a pace haven like the West Indies was now turning to spin bowlers, a species innately looked down upon in a place where the likes of Marshall and Joel Garner used to once tread.

Coming back to India, the bench strength inductions into the ultimate team have so far not been too fruitful, if that is, we can count out the dream run of debutante Ajinkya Rahane whose exploits with the bat in English conditions gave us a lot of hope for the future. This was something we saw in the England series which was a whitewash for us. But resting beaten to death bowlers like Harbhajan Singh is the way to go, something that the selectors have boldly done for this series. R Ashwin seems to be the right successor of Harbhajan’s wonderful statistics of 400 international wickets. Yes, there must be a lot of cricket left in out Sikh offie, but he needs time to gather his magic in domestic cricket to earn back his place in the team.

This brings us to spinners like Rahul Sharma whose struggles with physical setbacks are till now more legendary than his histrionics on the field though the lad has shown a whole lot of promise in his IPL stint, emerging as the most successful and variety oriented leggie in IPL 2011. Besides getting his golden opportunity to graduate from IPL to international cricket, he will also serve well as the much-needed competition propeller for the likes of Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla who will inevitably work harder to find a place in the new India 11, especially with Sharma showing potential to step in Anil Kumble’s exalted shoes as a leg spinner.

This will also be a call for MS Dhoni, the tireless skipper, who can now preside over the transition with his thinking cap on. He has shown his preference for leading a young team and crafted this out during India’s last eventful tournament of Australia in which in one of the ODIs he had even rested Tendulkar! However, his alleged favourites like RP Singh have not found a mention in this team from which even Munaf Patel is missing and a veteran pacemaker like Ashish Nehra has been ignored despite him declaring himself fit. This brings us to the next worrying part of Team India’s slimmest ever pace attack. Yes, pace really has not been our forte, much less after the heady days of Kapil Dev, but Zaheer has slowly and steadily gone up the ladder even as his compatriots have blown hot and cold in the corresponding period.

The selectors, and of course coach Duncan Fletcher, should be going back to domestic tournaments to hunt down prospective pace bowlers and the Irani Trophy is Ground Zero for that.

Till the time Yuvraj Singh can tide over injuries and Virendra Sehwag can shed his frequent shoulder niggle, it’s time for the Rainas and the Kohlis and the Gambhirs to take centrestage.

SOURCE: Sunday Pioneer, October 2, 2011