As the country prepared for a long night of celebration on Sunday after Team India ascended to the top of the ICC Test rankings, it took “Captain Cool” to put things in perspective. Refusing to go overboard with excitement as the media did, MS Dhoni spoke of short-term goals and said he doesn’t lose sleep over the rankings. He was obviously aware that India still has no series-wins in South Africa or Australia and that the No. 1 status is going to be short-lived. Apart from the fact that India is just two points above South Africa in the rankings, the match schedule is such that Team India will play just two Tests in the next six months. In fact, India has no Test series scheduled at home next year, giving rise to the possibility that the glorious trinity of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman may have played their last Test on home soil together. Compare that with South Africa or Australia who have many more Test matches coming up; in fact, South Africa can take back the top position if they win the series versus England due to begin on December 16.
But such rankings — however short-lived they are — will, hopefully, help revive interest in Test matches, which some see as an event in decline. If India accounts for 80 per cent of all money in international cricket and has a TV viewership that is 10 times the size of all other ICC member countries put together, the credit goes mostly to Twenty20 cricket, and partly to one-day internationals. So, while Test matches come and go, the country comes to a halt only for shorter versions of the game. There is, however, no doubt that Team India deserves to soak up the moment — after all, it’s not easy to reach the World No. 1 position in any form of the game. In the past five years, India have won 22 and lost 10 Tests — by far the most successful innings in its Test history — mainly because there has been finally a bowling attack capable of taking 20 wickets in most conditions and the successes abroad have exploded long back the stereotype of India being poor travellers.
While the Indian cricket team deserves all the applause (money has already started flowing in with the Board of Control for Cricket in India being the first to announce Rs 25 lakh cash prize for each of the team members), maybe it’s time to also celebrate the distinction achieved by sportspersons in other games. That has been a sore point for quite some time. Examples: Abhinav Bindra, who fetched the first-ever individual Olympic gold medal in 108 years of India’s Olympic history, was given only a Padma Bhushan last year, while boxers Vijender Singh and Sushil Kumar — bronze medal winners at the Beijing Games — were completely ignored. In comparison, cricketers with much lesser accomplishments have got Padma Bibhushans. So, it’s hard to blame wrestling national coach PR Sondhi for saying that while cricket is played by only a handful of nations, Singh and Kumar didn’t get any recognition despite their sterling performances in a game that is played by over 150 countries. It’s not a bad idea to remember this as India gets ready to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010. A sporting nation has to look at heroes other than only cricketers.
