All for one, one for all

The story of a country's cricket team is the story of its enfant terrible turned Captain Courageous turned comeback Maharaj "" Umpire's Post.

Before you begin to snigger, take a moment to mine out of your memory the image of a man, not particularly well-built, taking off his blue T-shirt and waving it on the balcony of the venerable Lord's.

Is that a smile on your lips...isn't it laced with a sense of triumph? That is the picture of a leader "" and his team "" resplendent in ascendancy. The Final Frontier had just proved itself impregnable to Steve Waugh's army. The astounding run to the World Cup final and the victory in Pakistan followed. The pathetic results in New Zealand on pitches unfit for cricket were the only aberration.

The triumph in the NatWest final was followed by a 1-1 draw in the four-Test series, but India emerged the better team. The Leeds win is one of our best in trying conditions. Ganguly, the captain, led from the front, scoring a sparkling century. The other two big guns in the settled batting order, Tendulkar and Dravid, also got hundreds.

On the previous tour, in 1996, Ganguly joined the team amid allegations of favouritism and with a reputation that many years later found an echo in Waugh's description of him as a "pr***".

The team, too, was tentative under Azhar, who was so beautiful to watch when batting, but not a great captain in spite of his many wins. The team tried out Vikram Rathour, Ajay Jadeja, Sanjay Manjrekar and Nayan Mongia as openers. And then there were two debutants, the other being Dravid, leaving only Tendulkar and Azhar sure of their places among the batsmen. The bowling too, with a raw Venkatesh Prasad, was a work in progress.

Now, we have a Ganguly groping his way back. (Comeback Maharaj in the opening quote is not quite accurate; it was just too tempting to resist.) His return journey had a long patch of roughing it out in domestic cricket, a monument of neglect, before empty stands. The new Ganguly is mellow. He is also uncertain.

Guess what? So is the team. The core of the team "" Ganguly, Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble "" is definitely on its last tour to England. Sehwag and Harbhajan are out. Lakshman "" it is a sad fact "" is being made to fight for a place. Yuvraj is yet to establish himself. And one of the openers is makeshift.

Having endured the World Cup debacle, the team is trying to claw its way back to international respectability. It did beat Bangladesh, but, well, it beat Bangladesh.