By accident or design?

We can all feel proud if we retain the number one position in Test cricket at the end of the current series with South Africa, which should be possible in home conditions.

But let that not blind us to the looming transition concerns which have again come to the fore due to the injuries to Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Yuvraj Singh.

Suddenly the middle order looks inexperienced, which is not surprising because nobody has had much of a chance in the past decade or so to develop themselves as new Test batsmen for India, except the openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, and the wicket-keeper, MS Dhoni.

Of course, the board and selectors then compounded matters by forcing Dhoni to play second wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha as a specialist batsman in this vital Test, because there was no fit batsman to replace Rohit Sharma when he got injured on the morning of the Test.

Where on earth are Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, et al? The reserves only had bowlers, a second wickie, and Laxman (in the hope that he recovers in time!)

Such goof-ups are a given in Indian cricket. But the larger issue here is the lack of succession planning. How many India Test caps have gone to middle order batsmen in the last ten years? In fact, Yuvraj is the only one who has finally cemented a place in the side after making his debut way back in 2003.

TIME TO DEVELOP
It’s not just about getting a Test cap either. Even with oodles of talent, you need time to develop into a Test batsman, especially if you are a player from the sub-continent bred on pitches and bowling that are far removed from international standards. Marvan Atapattu famously notched up five ducks and 1 in his first six Test innings, and did not score a century until his seventh year, but went on to amass six double hundreds - and that’s two more than Tendulkar’s tally.

Forget seven years, an Indian debutant can barely expect to survive one bad series. Besides, for the past several years, even a player with the prodigious talent of Yuvraj Singh could only get a look in when somebody got injured, or when he agreed to face the music of the new ball as an opener.

In fact, if Sourav Ganguly in a rare selfless act had not given up his one-day opening slot to Sehwag, which then gave Sehwag the credentials to be tried out as a Test opener, who knows how long this destructive batsman would have taken to get a regular place in the Indian Test side!

Not everyone can convert himself into an opener, however, and so Yuvraj took much longer to get in, as the Fab Four ruled the roost in the middle order year after year. This certainly affected his development as a cricketer when he was in such prime form between 2000 and 2003. Who can forget his one-day innings at Lord’s which led to Ganguly’s memorable bare-bodied shirt-wave.

But back he went to domestic cricket soon after that knock, as he came into the reckoning only for the one-dayers. So, today when we find fault with the likes of Yuvraj for their loose technique, and dub them one-day wonders, remember how little of Test cricket they got in their formative years.

“If I had known it was going to take eight years for me to have a permanent place in the Test team, I actually would not have played the game,” Yuvraj Singh told The Mag.

You could argue, as former Sri Lanka coach Dave Whatmore did when asked for a comment, that “it was just his bad luck that he was born in an era which had good players in the middle order and he got to play Tests only when others were injured”.

But then how do you prepare for the future, or even strengthen the bench in the present? How do you ensure a seamless transition that doesn’t make the team yo-yo from the top to the bottom of the rankings?

The Aussies have had their transition issues too, but despite the exit of match-winners Adam Gilchrist, Mathew Hayden, Shane Warne and Glen McGrath, they’ve remained among the top three.

The reason they were able to do that is partly because they created openings for players like Michael Clarke and Michael Hussey. As Gilchrist and Hayden showed in the IPL by being among its top performers, they still had a few years left in them when they ‘retired’. Damien Martyn and Justin Langer too had a premature end to their careers by Indian standards.

It would appear that there’s a thin dividing line between current ability and future potential, and the Aussies tend to err on the side of developing new talent. India too needs to think long term and out of the box, unless we’re okay with our golden eras being all too brief.

NOT SUSTAINABLE
Right now whatever the team achieves is by dint of individual brilliance which often has to overcome additional extraneous odds, such as the selection fiasco in Nagpur.

New talent too is spotted by sheer chance, such as the time when the seniors opted out of the inaugural T20 World Cup. Bishen Singh Bedi agrees: “I would think that providence comes to our help. I don’t think there is a system,” he told The Mag. 

Take the current scenario. Even after the axing or retirement of Ganguly, three of the middle order slots are occupied by middle-aged players in their late thirties.

Are we looking two or three years ahead when their places will have to be taken by players like Rohit Sharma or Suresh Raina or Badrinath? How can they do that without getting a longish stint in Test cricket while they are still honing their skills?

The point is that international cricket is a different ballgame altogether compared to domestic cricket, particularly for Indian players. Maybe one way forward could be to leave out the least successful of the seniors, even if he deserves to be selected, just to open up at least one slot for new talent to be tried and groomed.

So, that would have meant an earlier exit for either Ganguly or Laxman to fast-track Yuvraj. Who knows how things might have turned out then? After all, it isn’t as though India gained its numero uno status during all those years when the Fab Four held the fort.    

With inputs from R Krishna