India blues

Editor's note: Follows, the series of conversations on cricket as it happens -- this one, on India's poor showing and the need for a new captain.

Prem: Hi, Sujata, long time no chat. And in the interim, another one-day tournament comes and goes -- and we are still looking for our first win since 1998!

Sujata: Hi, Prem, I suppose you could term it as a sort of mental block. If you stumble too often in the final hurdle you start building this nagging worry in your mind that cometh the hour, you'll blow it, and inevitably you do! How else would you explain it?

Prem: Hmmm... sort of like the opening lines of Love Story. You know, that bit about where do I begin to tell the story of...? This team reminds you of that line -- you don't know where to begin, simply because it is not just the wheels that have fallen off the cart, the entire machinery is in complete shambles. I personally am not too keen on this mental block excuse they keep trotting out -- bit of a Catch 22 thing, we don't win so we have this mental block and because we have this mental block we don't win!

Sujata: Well, the way things stand right now we're never going to see the old machinery working at optimum levels. Not in India. Didn't someone once say that it's a miracle how India stays glued together, and survives? It's the same with our team; they rarely resemble a cohesive outfit for too long, neither do they look as if they will in a hurry, yet the show goes on somehow.

Prem: Yes. Trouble though is, while we continue to accept the status quo, there is a World Cup coming up -- and if that event were next month, I wouldn't bet a buck on India making it through the preliminary round. If it was any one thing, solutions could be found -- but when batsmen don't bat, bowlers don't bowl, fielders don't field and the captain can't lead, then what do you do? Just curious -- if you had to pick *one* aspect of our cricket that, when improved, would mean say a 20 per cent betterment of our results, what would you pick?

Sujata: Oh, that's easy. I would pick a captain who leads by example, not sporadically but always. One who could lift a team to beyond it's percieved capabilities. A captain who didn't make obvious mistakes on the field; silly mistakes which cost us dear.

Prem: Bingo! Increasingly, we are giving away games in the field. A superficial view would be that we collapse chasing - but the fact is, throughout this tournament, bad field placing - especially this habit of setting the field too deep and letting the singles pile up - and worse bowling changes have ended up with the opposing team making more runs than they ought to. Address that, and you should see a significant improvement - and if, at the same time, John Wright could introduce some kind of system where any batsman whose dot ball to singles ratio is 2:1 or more gets fined, our play will improve 50 per cent or more.

Having said which - did you know the selectors, informally, have begun thinking of a captain for ODIs and another for Tests? So okay, who would your nominee be to take SG's place as ODI skipper?

Sujata: A 2:1 ratio would be a good one to start with, for India. Tell it to the top teams and they'd probably laugh. Who was the ex-player who said that technically there should be no such thing as a dot ball in one-day cricket? All right, so that's impossible, but a strike rate of 80% for singles wouldn't be far fetched surely.

Coming to the choice of captain, I'll take a chance on one of our past ones. We saw Kumble leading the side well, but we also saw Sachin captaining while Ganguly fiddled. I think Sachin has matured and will not be apt to lose concentration so easily if he's made the captain again. Ok, so he can't whinge on the scale of Mr. Hussain, or curse on the level of Mr. Waugh, but he can be relied on to use his bowlers more intelligently than does Ganguly, for a start.

Prem: I was just thinking of that guy, thinking that the BCCI would probably do well to hire Dean Jones for a period of about three months, and have him with the team, to focus entirely on that one aspect. Deano was the first to underline the importance of the single as a one-day weapon, and we, more than any other team, need to learn that lesson -- to take it when batting, deny it when fielding.

Sachin, huh? Interesting. He has this hunger in him to erase that one blot on his CV, that as a captain his results were ordinary at best. The only trouble with him is he is a bit of a control freak -- vide his habit of talking to the bowler after every ball. You need some interaction, to ensure bowler and captain are on the same ballpark, but if you were to come up to me and tell me after every ball where you want me to bowl the next one, I'm quite apt to fling the ball in your face and tell you to go do it yourself. Okay, maybe our bowlers won't do that -- but such constant chatter can upset a bowler's own rhythm. Other than that, can't think of any negatives about him.

Sujata: Good heavens! Only you could think of flinging a ball in the best and richest batsman's face! Jokes aside, I don't have anything against Kumble except that if you make him captain than he's there for every bloody match, even in one which doesn't require more than one spinner. And if just one is needed then Harbhajan would be the first choice. Can we afford to go into a match with essentially 10 players and a captain?

Prem: Well, I wouldn't be flinging it in the best batsman's face would I? And no one will suggest he is the best captain in the world, so, hey, what the haitch! Actually, you have a point about Kumble. Thing is, I suspect that the selectors will stick with Kumble, especially if you look at how he became interim skipper when Ganguly sat that match out.

The thing though is, Sujata, that replacing the captain is half the story -- the other half is how we pick our teams. You reckon you want to leave that for another day?

Sujata: Now that's another long story. I think we can leave it for another day, perhaps wait for some feedback from the readers too, concerning this topic.

Prem: Right, and in the interim, the captaincy will be decided on the 9th, so we can move on from there. Righto... till next time, then, adios.

Sujata: Right, Prem, till next time, goodbye.

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