| When the Indians began their chase, they did not quite chase. Sunil Gavaskar, one of the best batsmen the game has seen, began as if to take the shine off the new ball, as he did in Test matches. But he continued in the same vein even after the shine was gone, even after the overs were gone. He stood unbeaten at the end with 36 off 174 balls with just one four. India had crawled to 132 for 3 in 60 overs and lost by 202 runs. |
| Theories abound, the most popular being that Gavaskar was unhappy with the team selection, especially the decision to rely on seamers. Others say he was annoyed that Srinivas Venkataraghavan was made captain. Still others say it might have played on his mind that the last time India played at Lord's, in a Test match, the team was all out for 42. |
| Years later, Gavaskar admitted that it was the worst innings of his life. "There were occasions I felt like moving away from the stumps so I would be bowled ... This was the only way to get away from the mental agony from which I was suffering," he said. Only recently, he revealed that he had actually nicked the second ball he faced to the wicketkeeper. But the appeal was muted and, to his deep regret, he chose not to walk. |
| The next match saw a dramatic transformation. As India defeated a weak East Africa by 10 wickets, Gavaskar scored 65 off 86 balls, a very respectable show. The same batsman went on to score his only one-day hundred at the 1987 world cup, which was then the second-fastest world cup hundred, only one ball slower than Clive Lloyd's century in the 1975 final. |
| How did Gavaskar mess it up so badly? How did the transformation come about? How did India, after putting up shameful performances in the first two editions of the world cup, win the third? To find out, do not read Ashish Ray's book; look elsewhere. |
| Ray, a radio commentator and a member of BBC's Test Match Special Team that covered the 1979 and the 1983 world cups, including the 1983 final, could have captured India's march to comfort with limited overs cricket. |
| Alas, he chose to be too loyal to his profession and stick to a ball-by-ball description, best captured in the Hindi phrase for radio commentary: Aankhon Dekha Haal (as seen by the eye). |
| Hope flickers at times, such as when Ray chooses to devote an entire chapter to The Turning Point. But all 14 pages of it focus on just one match in 1983 in Albion, in the Caribbean, in which India beat the West Indies as a prelude to the successful World Cup campaign. |
| Strangely, Ray seems to blame Gavaskar, his "percentage batting" and his aversion to losing matches as the key reasons for India's ineptness in one-day cricket till then. He also seems to credit Kapil Dev's appointment as the captain in 1983 as the reason for the transformation. |
| He also indulges in inane similes and metaphors, which are the bane of even present-day radio commentary. He writes thus about Kapil at Albion: "He connected with the ball like a Muhammad Ali punch ... he floated down the wicket like a butterfly but stung the bowlers ... Like the Hindu God Hanuman torching pre-historic Lanka in the mythological epic, Ramayana, he set Albion ablaze." Whew! |
| India's rise in limited-overs cricket has been a much more complex affair than the torching of Lanka and requires a study of the mindsets, including the Bombay Cricket School. It has to do with K Srikkanth's batting, Sachin Tendulkar's move to the top of the order and his partnership with Sourav Ganguly. It ought to look at India's early dominance over Pakistan in the 1980s and subsequent subservience. The role of the spinners and how Maninder Singh and Ravi Shastri once operated in tandem have to be looked at. |
| Ray shows admirable ability in narrating the Aankhon Dekha Haal and in compiling the score sheets. But he forgot that once you don the hat of the writer, you have to give insight. The writer says the publisher gave him a "stiff deadline" of 10 weeks. That shows in the jarring errors that a diligent sub-editor could have eliminated. |
| One-Day Cricket The Indian Challenge |
| Ashish Ray HarperCollins Publishers India Price: Rs 295; Pages: 386 |
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