A well grafted second innings

A contributor to Wisden's monthly cricket magazine made an interesting point in a recent issue. "There are books by professional cricketers and books by professional cricket writers," he said, "but the best writing often comes from outside these categories""by writers who narrate with passion and insight how cricket was shaped by its historical setting."

Any book on the men who have captained India's national cricket side is potentially rich in such background material. After all, the list begins with the epicene Maharajkumar of Vizianagar ("Vizzy" for short), a man unpleasant in person but delightful in anecdote (he presented gold watches to opposition captains at the start of a match so they would bowl him long hops).

There are tragic heroes, one-series wonders, born leaders who never got the right opportunities, others who squandered their chances and great cricketers who couldn't come to terms with the job. And the above lineup doesn't even see us through to the year 1960!

Partab Ramchand's India's Captains has more modest aspirations, but that doesn't really work against it; it fits comfortably in its own niche as a moderately informative, moderately well-written cricket book.

Originally published in 1999 as Indian Cricket: The Captains, Nayudu to Tendulkar, there would ordinarily be little justification for a "revised and updated" version appearing a mere five years later""and including just one additional chapter at that.

But in this case, that extra chapter might prove to be the most important of all""for those five years saw the emergence of Sourav Ganguly as Indian cricket's most successful captain, and one of its most dynamic. Ramchand almost had no other option but to revise and update (though you could also say that he lucked out).

Ironically, while this book achieves its topicality because of the recent achievements of Ganguly's team, the most interesting bits are those that deal with eras past""with players and sides shrouded in time's mist, whose every move on and off the field has not been recorded for easy public consumption. And on the whole, Ramchand does a fair job in bringing alive such past heroes as C K Nayudu, Vijay Hazare, and Polly Umrigar.

Occasionally, he fails to present a convincing argument; take the chapter on Vijay Merchant, with its hollow observations like "... it was obvious that Merchant had welded the team into a fighting unit", unsubstantiated by any real insight into how exactly the skipper had managed this. But if there are misses, there are an adequate number of hits as well.

Like the story of Lala Amarnath's mindgames with Don Bradman on the 1946 tour of Australia. Most accounts of that lopsided series are content with describing how privileged the Indians felt that they were at the receiving end of Bradman's 100th first-class century, but Ramchand presents a less-heard side of the tale, taken from Bradman's own account: "With my score at 99, Amarnath called up Kishenchand, who had not bowled before. I had no idea what type of bowler he was and it was a shrewd move..."

Ramchand has been a sports journalist for over 35 years, which gives him a certain authority on his chosen subject. The flip side of being too much on the inside is that even when the writer is being completely objective, the reader will look for biases and hidden agendas; especially in the intrigue-heavy world of Indian cricket.

For instance, there's the chapter on Krishnamachari Srikkanth's very brief stint as captain (restricted to the 1989 tour of Pakistan). Ramchand believes there was more to Srikkanth than his popular reputation as a Clown Prince suggests (the image is being further perpetuated today by his annoying commentary stints on television)""and that, given the chance, he may have proved a mature captain.

It's a legitimate enough thesis, but diluted somewhat when one considers that the foreword to this book is by the same cricketer, who refers to the author as "my good friend". Likewise, few followers of the game will disagree with Ramchand's assessment that "Azharuddin was the worst captain as far as media relations was concerned". But how much of that is honest opinion and how much motivated?

Still, many a middling cricket book is redeemed by little stories and previously unheard anecdotes, and that applies here too. One of the most invigorating tales is the account of Lala Amarnath's cockiness in declaring an innings with India 103 runs behind Australia, because he wanted to put the Aussies in while the wicket was treacherous.

Speculation is one of the prerogatives of a cricket fanatic, and I couldn't help wondering how Sourav Ganguly would have handled the situation. (Bear in mind that the gap between Amarnath's team and Bradman's was almost as vast as that between the Bangladesh and Australian sides of today.) Incidentally, Bradman, a master strategist himself, countered by sending his tail-enders in to bat first up, saving the main batsmen for when the pitch eased!

India's Captains is an easy-to-read primer on India's cricket history from the late 1920s to the present day. As such, it's recommended for readers seeking the basic facts""and a few good nuggets""without having to plough through more cerebral, indepth works like Ramachandra Guha's A Corner of a Foreign Field or Mihir Bose's A History of Indian Cricket. As the cliche goes, it is just a game.

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India's Captains, From Nayudu to Ganguly

Partab Ramchand
Penguin Books India
Price: Rs 250, Pages: 272