Sunday, April 06, 2008

An event, in search of the process...

A defeat in sport can be a good lesson for everyone involved. It is the benchmark of where you as a team or an individual, were, are and can be. It is also an opportunity to turn things around and put up a brighter performance in the next outing. With the Indian cricket team though, a defeat is a reminder, if not a reflection of the way the game has forever been in the country's history - an event and never a process. What brings me to describe Indian cricket this way is the glorified importance we in the media give to sporadic victories here and there.

Great teams are great teams because they manage to achieve a percentage of unmatched consistency. That is perhaps the differentiator, if not the USP of a great team ! In football, to win a league, teams need to win a larger chunk of the matches and come May, the team with maximum wins is more often than not crowned champions. This is precisely why the Indian cricket team and by and large, the way cricket is run in India baffles me. Has India dominated world cricket on the pitch consistently for a period of time ? You do not become World No. 1 by winning a one-day tournament in Australia. With my vivid knowledge of Indian cricketing history, I can't think of a definite period when Indian cricket has risen to the ranks of the modern Australian team to achieve the sort of consistency and dominate the game per-se. Ajit Wadekar's team of the early 70's tried to, but before they could pr0gress further, the 1-os soon got reversed. They won the World Cup in 1983, when Kapil Dev's men conquered the West Indies, only to lose the home series 3-0 to the same team almost immediately thereafter.

We sung the praises of this Indian team in Australia, and fairly so. They managed to raise the levels when it mattered, especially after being subjected an early thumping. The way we finished off the tour by polishing the hosts in the one-dayers could have suggested something more, perhaps a higher level that India could have striven to achieve. But, as we are used to it by now, complacency has always been Indian cricket's 12th man. Before South Africa even arrived in India, Anil Kumble must have licked his fingers about the prospects of grabbing twenty wickets in a series yet again, only to realize that South Africa, through their repeated travails to the sub-continent have become far better equipped to handle spin bowling than any other non-Asian nation. If not that, from a team perspective, it would have been just a case of - wear the whites, cross the boundary line, turn up, pick wickets and pack your bags with the trophy within our grasp. And with the bigger balloon, the IPL floating above the players' heads, it was not surprising that they had their minds elsewhere when they were subjected to facing a recharged Dale Steyn and Co.

A team aspiring to be world champions in all forms of the game, will be willing to compete irrespective of the surface, opposition and conditions. They will not succumb to external pressures, instead focus on the job in hand. Thats what South Africa seem to be like these days. Having spent a year on finding the right combination that could win in all conditions, Mickey Arthur and Graeme Smith have finally managed to put the jigsaw pieces together and form a unit that has results to prove its ability. They won in the dustbowls of Pakistan, had answers to questions that the meek Bangladesh posed of them and now the win in Motera. The way the South Africans have managed to apply themselves and finally come out on top is a lesson for teams like India to see. South Africa, thus have turned out to be the most consistent team since the start of the 07-08 season, now on course to winning their fifth consecutive Test series, previously having overcome Pakistan, New Zealand, West Indies and Bangladesh. This is perhaps the march to being World Number 1 and not winning the twenty20 World Cup, beating a hapless Pakistan team at home, losing 2-1 to Australia and now, a test down to South Africa.

What India need from here on is perhaps establishing a process, a roadmap of sorts that will take them to the destination they desire to reach. Greg Chappell and Rahul Dravid meticulously followed the catchphrase - the "process" but unfortunately, it was reduced to nothing short of a mockery by the Indian cricket media, where the word became a way to marginalize Chappell and his vision. Gary Kirsten has a job in hand, most certainly. The process needs to be brought up all over again, keeping in mind the long-term ambitions of the team at large.

1 comment:

Pankaj Giri said...

Nice Article Venkat.. I too like the professionalism in South African cricket..