Dhoni's boys bat for the other India

NEW DELHI: They hail from modest backgrounds but what they have is a passion for cricket, oodles of natural talent and most importantly, the absence of fear. And today they form the bristling core of Team India.

Leading from the front is the long-haired, 26-year-old swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batsman from Ranchi in Jharkhand, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whose self-belief and consistency has served as a model for the others since he arrived on the grand stage three years back.

With their incredible victory at the Twenty20 final against Pakistan in Johannesburg Monday, they now symbolise the new face of Indian cricket. Unapologetic about their underprivileged milieu, these youngsters see cricket as a tool of social transformation in their bid to make a mark in the national team.

Just sample the spirit and struggle of the other India that the nation is saluting after the stupendous run from being rank outsiders to Twenty20 champions. What is equally important to note is the shifting equation of classes and a departure from the traditional big cities where many cricketers of the past came from.

Joginder Sharma - the feisty bowler who kept his cool in the last over with Pakistan - from small-town Rohtak practiced on a cloth ball strung up from the ceiling as his father, a paan stall owner, couldn't afford anything else.

The Pathan brothers, Irfan and Yousuf, who grew up in the precincts of a Vadodara mosque in what is arguably the most communally sensitive state in India, struggled to make ends meet as father Mehmood Khan Pathan, a muezzin, found it difficult to even provide the money for the bus fare for their daily practice.

A monthly salary of Rs.1,200 and income from a small shop selling locally-made perfume was all the family of five had to live on.
 
Rohit Sharma, the 20-year-old Borivali boy, declared the man of the match in the crucial encounter with South Africa, finally moved out of his rented accommodation in the suburbs.

There are other gifted cricketers who have found it difficult to reach the top and it is their sheer dint of perseverance that has seen them through. Fast bowler Munaf Patel's father was a farmer and that of opening batsman, Wasim Jaffer, a bus driver.

As recently pointed out in a television show, Dhoni is the perfect candidate for the sociological archetype - the small-town boy coming good.

And that perhaps explains why Dhoni's rise marks a major shift in Indian cricket as it also signals recognition of the growing importance of the small town and a sign of its towering ambitions.

So does it come as a surprise then that there are many in Team India who have made it good - Harbhajan Singh, Jalandhar, S. Sreeshanth, Kothamangalam, Piyush Chawla, Aligarh, R.P. Singh, Rae Bareli, and Suresh Raina, Muradnagar.

The mojo is rising.