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Great teams are characterized by how well they handle transitions - the
seamless and painless handover of the mantle from one generation to the
next, with little or no change in the status quo. Very few teams in the
entire sporting world managed to handle their rebuilding efforts well,
and when it comes to cricket, there are barely a couple of teams in the
modern era that came close to retaining the aura and regard between
successive generations.
At the peak of its form, which ranged for a
good 20 years, West Indians remained an immovable property at the top.
Agility, strength and stamina, the bread and butter of sportsmen,
reflected in almost every cricketer that West Indies produced during
the period of 1970-1990. Pace batteries upon pace batteries seemed to
spring up from an undying pool of talent and their batsmen, all looked
to be cut from the same cloth - fierce, unforgiving and clinical.
Nothing could prove it better than their near 80% success rate in tests
and 3 consecutive World Cup finals' appearances. Even after their first
failed World Cup campaign, they remained pretty dominant in both
versions of the game and it wasn't until the mid 90s that the sun
finally started to set on their glory. The reasons for the fall from
grace were manifold - lure of more lucrative sports like basketball and
baseball, and consequently decline in the sponsorship money that
directly impacted the domestic game, and above all, lack of proper
vision of the administrators in forseeing the impending danger. So
serious was the erosion of the game, that West Indian cricket has yet
to recover from its ruins and regain its old form, earning the title
'team in perpetual transition' in the process.
Wise men learn on fools follies, goes a saying. Where West Indian
cricket fumbled and faltered, Australian cricket wised up and
flourished. In the mid 80s, following the change of the old guard,
Australian cricket stood at the same crossroads as Windies before, but
here, it was as though someone went through the playbook of Windies and
figured out where the fault lied. And the solution wasn't money,
authorities or administration (though they are are vital cogs in the
wheel). The solution was men. A good bench strength. A reserve of a
good 20-25 players that could be run through, rotated, tested and
finally deployed in battle conditions. Of course, finding the reserves
was no accident. Everyone had to rise through the an intense and
grueling domestic circuit, in which the rivalry and the competitive
spirit were so fierce, that it is indeed very surprising to see the
same players who have clashed their swords in the domestic scene, rub
their shoulders with great camaraderie on the international scene. The
now much maligned phrase 'hard, but fair' sporting philosophy of the
Aussies is indeed that.
Where there is a good system, there is a
good game, and where there is a good game, there is good patronage, and
where, patronage, there is money, and where, money, good talent would
always follow. Aussies figured out a a solid closed loop process, where
the system could survive and thrive, in spite of retirements,
retrenchments and fortune reversals. When they say, form is temporary
but class is permanent, they meant this. In the end, it wasn't just
about the men too. The game was bigger than the men, and these men were
made to realize this paradigm from time to time, the hard way. And so
when the Board hands down the marching papers to someone who didn't
quite fit into the future plans, no matter his above average
performance (ex. Bevan), it is just that the Board is well aware of the
West Indian caution tale and vigilant enough not to stray down that
dark alley again. As a testament to their strategy, their test team won
16 tests on a trot, TWICE, and their ODI team 4 World Cups till date,
three in a row. Enough said.
No other country puts its sportsman before its sport more readily than
India. This is a land where sportsmen (read, cricketers) are revered
like Gods and accorded the highest status in the society. Sporting
culture is more Sportsman culture. Here, the term transition is never
taken in the right spirit, and hence, the team never moved through
generations without throwing a hiss and fit, without the hanging of
dirty linen in public, and without kicking and screaming. The dropping
of any player of some repute comes with the automatic trappings of
conspiracies, back-stabbing, and dirty politics. Sometimes, even the
right time to bundle off a player is still never the right time. He
still deserves his Miranda rights, his civil rights, his right for a
fair trial, and only then his final rites. Sentimentality oozes through
every pore of the society and so even the dead pet dog deserves its 21
gun salute. No icon, barring Gavaskar, was shipped out of the team
without at least a whiff of disappointment and disillusionment. This is
a society that is only now warming up to the idea of pink slips, and
the average age of its active politicians is a measily 60. The term
transition, even in its revered texts, the Vedas, refers to a only
peaceful promotion from one stage (ashram) to the next, with due
respect accorded to the earned credit. In short, the whole idea of
transition, in every walk of life, is highly romanticized, and any
deviation from this script is bound to be severely criticized and
castigated. If the problem with Windies was money and Aussies, men, the
root problem for India, lay in its mindset.
Under such conditions, dropping a couple of veterans with tens of
thousands of international runs between them and opting for pups in the
bargain, is perceived as serious a crime as forced religious
conversions. Had the end result of this experiment been anything but
total world domination, the entire system, right from the BCCI chief to
the lowly equipment handler, would have been excoriated and
disemboweled in broad day light. "How could they", "What were they
thinking", "Did they even know", "When has it worked before" and many
such, already on the tips of the tongues of both the cynics and the
critics, would had had a field day in the media - the print one and the
idiot one. Superstars have always been the boon and bane of Indian
cricket, more bane than boon. Individually, each reached the highest
echelons in terms of performances. Together, their record read
pedestrian. But here is the interesting twist. The only couple of times
that India received the highest honors in the one day arena, the team
was filled with just good performers, not packed with superstars. In
the past 10-15 years, despite the presence of world class performers,
the team came close only once to tasting the success of the forgotten
past. No matter the reasons, changes and the experiments, the sum of
parts could never be equal (leave alone, greater) than the individual
ones. And so, now, when a captain, from the deep interiors of the
country far flung from the perceived pools brimming and bubbling with
talent, leads a bunch of cherubs and no-names consciously
sidelining/side-stepping over conventional establishment and succeeding
like no other combination before in Indian cricketing history, the
signals are clear enough to chuck the conventions and get behind the
revolution. For, this victory is no fluke, this achievement is not a
flash, this new mindset is the order of the day and it is here to stay.
Somewhere, Greg Chappell, currently grooming the Indian
next-in-commands, might be smiling ear to ear, for it is not often, in
India, that the board, the selectors, the administrators, and the
players, all get it right, when it comes to serious change.
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More Views by Srinivas Kanchibhotla
