Fringe cricketers live in a world which oscillates between two extremes of hope and exasperation
In December 2009, with a series win over Sri Lanka, India gained the number one pedestal in the ICC Test rankings. Present amongst those jubilant cricketers at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai was one Subramaniam Badrinath. “Although I am not part of the first eleven as yet, it is just a matter of time when the moment finally arrives. I intend to make that opportunity count and hopefully my hard work will pay off,” he had said looking down joyfully at the huge stack of runs he had scored in domestic cricket.
Alternatively, some seven seasons ago, Sourav Ganguly-led India challenged the might of Australia in their den. Part of that squad was a young wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel; he was yet to play a first-class game, but had already featured in 13 Tests for his country before turning 19. Six years on, despite averaging more than 40 in domestic circles, he is only the third or fourth name should the first-choice Indian wicket-keeper report in sick.
This is the world a reserve or a fringe cricketer for the Indian team lives in, one which oscillates between two extremes from season to season, driving the ones waiting for that phone call from hope to exasperation. For quite some time now, it has been all the latter for Patel — runs in the Ranji Trophy, IPL or any other competition notwithstanding. You can understand why so, for it is not easy to squeeze in a spot in the playing eleven when the captain himself is a batsman-keeper and quite a good one at that. But the situation becomes perplexing when we move to quite a few other names.
Cheteswara Pujara, Wridhiman Saha, Manish Pandey, Piyush Chawla, Ajinkya Rahane, Abhinav Mukund, R Vinay Kumar, Saurabh Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan, Dhawal Kulkarni, Ashok Dinda and so on. There are a few on this bench a step ahead — Murali Vijay, Dinesh Karthik, Virat Kohli, Badrinath, Pragyan Ojha and Ravindra Jadeja — who have tasted what it feels like to adorn India colours. Then there are also those who have been long forgotten in the wilderness of domestic cricket, lying in wait if another chance will ever come their way again. Irfan Pathan and Mohammad Kaif come to mind in this light.
The inherent problem being outlined here is a lack of seamless transition in Indian cricket, whenever it comes to blending in fresh faces. It is a problem that has long been persisted with, simply because those who need to make tough calls do not do so. One only has to look back at the 2003-04 series against Australia, when Steve Waugh had been told that he wasn’t guaranteed a spot any further and he towed that line to make a fine end to his glittering career. If ever there was a time to follow this example, it is now when the great might of the Indian batting line-up is on its last legs. How long they will continue to stretch, however, is anybody’s guess, such is the class of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and V V S Laxman.
Even so, it is better to groom the generation-next stars in their shade rather than thrust them into the sun when these stalwarts finally bid adieu. Is it indeed feasible that the new bunch will be able to hold on to Indian cricket’s newfound top-billing in world cricket if these faces aren’t timely invested in? Even this can be traced in the way Australian cricket fortunes have floundered with the collective exodus of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Mathew Hayden. To stay number one, we might need to learn from the erstwhile number one.
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“For any player on the wrong side of 30, questions about retirement do start coming in. But better fitness standards have helped lengthen careers,” says Rahul Dravid. “Fitness was the one thing I worked on during my rough patch in 2008-09. And that is necessarily a good thing for younger players for they are fitter than ever. There are a lot of good names floating around and these 10-12 players are the ones who will be vying for those three-four spots that will open in the team in the next couple of years.”
The tussle, mind you, has already begun. The ever swelling cricket calendar has meant that no cricketer, try as he may, can ever play all the matches in a season. There is always some or other tournament that he will invariably have to miss out on. It provides a perfect opportunity then to catch eyeballs and just about anybody can do so. Explains former cricketer Aakash Chopra: “Today, performance is just not about the Indian team alone. The IPL has galvanised how we look at players and how performances are taken into account. And the fact is if you are playing well in the shorter formats of the game, you tend to stay longer in the memory of the people. This is unfortunately true of times even before the IPL was conceptualised. Sometimes it takes a series of good performances, sometimes only a single memorable one will take you from T20 or ODI formats to Test cricket. It is not really true the other way around, at least not anymore. And this is where a more correct player stands to lose out.”
If we compare the domestic cricket in India today with, say an FMCG brand, then the emphasis has to be on products that blend style and substance. If either characteristic outweighs the other, the consumer loses interest. And in a cut-throat environment no one can really complain. The onus is then on providing for both quantity and quality such that the final purchase decision is always an informed one. If these budding cricketers can answer this call, won’t the selectors hand be forced?
(Chetan Narula is a New Delhi-based freelance writer)