(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)L Suresh narrates the adventures of a rejuvenated Indian team that’s just discovered a druid and his magic potion.
England will beat the Aussies and win the Ashes. Chennai will record snowfall this winter. Hollywood to ban sequels to blockbuster hits. India will beat Sri Lanka 6-1 in a one-day series. C'mon, confess, which of the above would you have dismissed as the most improbable a couple of months back?
Experimentation seemed to be the most-used word in Indian cricket for some time (besides ‘spat’, ‘tennis elbow’ and ‘effigy’) and the end-results seemed far from encouraging. And then, something happened. The cauldron that was simmering with discontent and leftovers of previously failed recipes was cleaned up and filled with new ingredients. Experience was replaced with youth, records were substituted with performances and the concept of playing for one’s place in the side was exchanged for that of playing for one’s team. And viola! Druid Chappell had concocted his famous magic potion that would now power the Indian team.
It’s difficult to figure out exactly how long the effects of this magic potion will last, but one sincerely hopes the brew is potent enough to help us take on the four infamous Roman garrisons that could stand between us and the World Cup – Australia, England, Pakistan and South Africa. Anyways, if the Indian team continues to play like this, the only thing they need to fear, in true Gaulish spirit, is that that the sky may fall on their heads tomorrow. But since tomorrow never comes, all should be well as long as performance levels can be maintained.
And some performance it was! While the hapless Sri Lankans ran helter-skelter like Roman legionaries who were being whipped, thrashed and flung into orbit, the Indian team resembled a bunch of merry Gauls on the rampage, licking their lips at the very thought of bumping into ‘some friendly neighbours’. The choice of adjectives normally used to describe the lead character in the series of adventures – agile, clever and good-natured – accentuate the striking similarities in approach and demeanour between Rahul the Wall and Asterix the Gaul. And the other hero of the story had to be Dhoni, who obviously didn’t need any magic potion for his 17 huge sixes – he probably fell into the cauldron when he was a baby.
Now that takes us back to an old question - why did the experimentation process that failed so miserably in Sri Lanka and in Zimbabwe become a raging success here? The answer is equally simple – when conditions are alien, never bring along a twist to the tale because there are already enough unknown parameters to battle against. Never the best of performers on slow, dying pitches or in seaming conditions (a cursory glance at the Vitalstatistix of the team would have revealed that), the Indian team was saved of utter humiliation by a second-string West Indies team in Sri Lanka and by the rapidly deteriorating home team in Zimbabwe. And that’s when Chappell modified the first chapter of his coaching manual - practise and perfect things at home before you get on to the big stage and perform.
Amongst other key decisions made by the team’s think-tank was the one to stick to the basics rather than stick to the rules. And in the process, the team broke virtually every conceivable rule that was inscribed in the cricketing gospel in the ‘so shall it be written, and so shall it be done’ mode of authority.
* You shall not change a winning team
Thanks to the SuperSub rule, every match saw the team take on a different composition.
* You shall not tinker with the batting order
Just ask the Lankans how they felt on seeing a different No. 3 walk out every time!
* You shall not experiment with the opening pair
Sachin-Sehwag, Sehwag-Gambhir, Sachin-Gambhir... it's a fact that we ran out of matches before we ran out of opening pairs
* You shall not touch the untouchables
Well, Dravid and Sachin missed out on a match each, Sourav didn't play all seven and contrary to popular belief, the end of the world didn't come about.
* You shall not have a woman who knows her cricket in the fourth umpire panel
Strictly speaking, this has nothing to do with the team management. But since no one else thought it important to talk about this, I thought I should go down on my knees and doff my hat to Doordarshan for taking a revolutionary step and bringing in a member of the fairer sex who knew her cricket and didn't keep Charu Sharma on standby to cover up for some terrible gaffes and the resulting guffaws. It is not known whether Anjum Chopra is, by 'popular opinion', a worthy successor to the noodle-strap brigade, but cricket fans now have fewer reasons to feel insulted and intellectually assaulted after every match.
And every time a rule was broken, the results showed. The ease with which India won is apparent from the fact that right through the series, the tail didn't have to wag - Harbhajan and Sreesanth played 10 one-dayers between them and didn't have to bat even once. Of the 25 appearances made by Harbhajan, Sreesanth, Murali Kartik, Ajit Agarkar and R P Singh, only on four occasions did one of them have to go out to bat! If the batting was on overdrive, the pace bowling department decided to corner a bit of the limelight for itself. In Indian conditions, when was the last time a ‘pace battery’ wreaked havoc on the opposition, claiming 37 scalps in a seven-match series, with the spinners managing just 16?
And when was the last time India didn't have to depend on one man to do the demolition act for them? Five Indians figured in six of the Man of the Match awards won by the home team - Dravid, Pathan, Dhoni, Agarkar and R P Singh. And none of them were without competition - Sachin, Yuvraj and Gautam Gambhir staked their claim as well. Add to this Sehwag's starts, Harbhajan's consistency and Raina's icy-cool composure, and you get the complete Indian team – without a weak link!
The last time an Indian team played this well as a unit was in the World Championship of Cricket, in 1985 where the top order always clicked, the opening bowlers always drew first blood and the spinners always throttled the exposed necks of the middle order until the team was left gasping for runs. But Chappell and his new-look Gaulish team didn’t stop there – they upped the bar a couple of notches, through ceaseless experimentation that left the opponents totally confused, with breathtaking fielding that would make Jonty Rhodes sit up and take notice, and by handing out individual responsibilities, so no man was baggage and each player had a role to perform.
It’s way too early to compare ourselves with the superpowers, but isn’t that how the Aussies play their cricket? They made the world believe that anyone who wore the baggy green was a match-winner. They never needed to look up to a hero who would come and save them - they were heroes themselves. They talked about rotation at least four years before the rest of the world woke up to it. The Ashes defeat notwithstanding, Team Australia had become such an efficient piece of machinery that Chris Cairns felt his mother could lead the side.
While we displayed shades of the golden glitter of the Australians, the Lankans played like a tired Indian side. Remember the times when the Indian innings would fold up once Sachin was gone? That's exactly where Sri Lanka found itself. For over a decade, bowlers shuddered at the thought of the ball meeting Jayasuriya's bat. But the minute the home team realized that the momentum given by Jayasuriya was no longer there, even the cats sharpened their claws and charged in like tigers. The figures say the story better - when was the last time Jayasuriya stood 11th in batting averages in his team?
Atapattu's captaincy decisions didn't help the cause of their team any. Be it choosing to bat first when there was dew on the pitch, holding back his key bowlers – Vaas and Muralitharan – and letting India run away with the match, making the wrong choice of SuperSub or ill-timing his Powerplays when they had little on board to defend, numerous strategic and judgmental errors were made. India capitalised on each one of them.
While things do look rosy on hindsight, there were enough conspiracy theories doing the rounds, to begin with. The most popular of them of course, was the master plan to appoint Dravid captain of a team whose morale was so low that they would have to dig deep below to unearth it. If India had failed again against the Lankans in this series, that would have been the end of Dravid’s innings as a captain. Questions would have been asked of Chappell. And it would have synchronized well with the approaching BCCI elections as well. If Dalmiya and Co. were back at the helm, India would be taking a relook at its most successful captain ever.
But then, who was to know that in the process of taking their team forward, Chappell and Dravid would go back in time to 50 BC, and seek inspiration from a little Gaulish village and its happy inhabitants? It has to be said that the duo have luck on their side. The next month and a half have matches – tests and one-dayers – that will be played at home. The process of experimentation can continue. So can the hunt for Roman helmets, or scalps in this case.
While our series with the Lankans ended like a good Gaulish adventure – on a happy note – there was only one sequence where the Indians deviated from the typical Gaulish finish. After each match, the grand banquet was held amidst great celebrations, but one wonders why Mohinder Amarnath, unlike Cacofonix, was allowed to break into song.
(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 20 November, 2005)
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