I have, at the time of writing this, 34 emails -- all asking essentially two questions: 1) Is this the best team we could have picked and 2) Is Saurav Ganguly the right guy to lead it.
Let's take the questions in reverse order -- starting with whether Ganguly should be leading the team to South Africa for the big one.
The answer is -- I know, I know, I hate the bloke, my one-point agenda is to get him out of the side, I've been campaigning against him since birth (his birth, not mine) -- yes.
We have five more one-day internationals to go, in New Zealand. Overall, we have 41 days to go for the World Cup. Even thinking of a change in captaincy, at this point in time, makes no sense whatsoever.
If the question had to be asked, it should have been a year ago -- heading into a big tournament, you need to have identified your leader well in advance, you need to have given him the assurance that the job is his, and let him get on with the task of building the team he wants to take to the Cup, and fine-tuning its component parts (it might pay to remember that the selectors spoke to Ganguly and Wright before picking and announcing the squad). To now take away the captaincy, and give it to someone else, is to handicap both that someone else, and the team.
You don't ask who the pilot is going to be after getting takeoff clearance from ground control.
The second of the reasons is equally important -- I think the current argument, that he failed in NZ and therefore will fail in SA, is knee-jerk, and needlessly alarmist. (And here, I am keeping in the forefront the fact that we are talking of a one-day tournament in South Africa).
The pitches the team is playing on in NZ are in no way comparable to the ones the World Cup will be played on. That is for starters. Here, you are talking underprepared wickets, sizeable cloud cover and atmospherics, and banana swing. In South Africa, you are talking wickets with some bounce to them. (Incidentally, I don't believe you are going to see lightning quick tracks there -- the ICC has too much invested in the game to want to see WC matches getting over inside less than half the allotted number of overs).
If past is precedent, then the last time Ganguly was in South Africa, he went 14, 30, 42 and four not out, a total of 90 runs in four Test innings. He was once caught behind, once caught in the gully, once bowled, all by pace bowlers.
In the triangular one-day series that followed, he went 127, 24, 24, 85, 111 and 9, for an aggregate of 380 and an average of 63.33.
If there is no reason to imagine that tracks prepared for the World Cup are going to be alarmingly more pro-pace than the tracks prepared by South Africa for a home series, then by the same logic there is really no reason to imagine we are going in with a passenger in the captain's seat, either.
If we were discussing, say, the composition of the side -- or its leadership -- for a Test tour to Australia, or South Africa, it would be a different story. For now, since we are talking of a team for one particular competition, in specific conditions and against a specific background, what is the debate about?
In passing, I remember (this year has been big for déjà vu) writing this one in February 2000. When Sachin Tendulkar took over the captaincy of the Indian team, he had a "lean and hungry look" -- and it showed, in the way he led in the one-off Test against Australia at the Kotla where, with under 200 to play with, he chose to attack and brought it off; or in the way he led against South Africa at home.
By the time the away series to the West Indies came around, he was reduced to walking out of selection meetings, furiously muttering, 'If they don't want to listen to me, then why call me?'; to asking 'Noel who?' when told that the selectors had belatedly fulfilled his wish and granted him an off spinner against the array of Caribbean left-handers; and finally to hiding away in a hill resort to escape being given the captaincy (it didn't work -- he was given it anyway!).
It is in this context that I recalled the column linked above. In 2000, Ganguly had that "hungry" air -- as opposed to the current haunted demeanour (and oh yes, before we waste unnecessary space in the mailbox, it is time to make this point: Indian players and captains don't get up first thing in the morning, read BackChat, and get depressed. In other words, let's cut the crap about media pressure. No media ever put "pressure" on someone who was scoring runs or taking wickets; if 'pressure' builds on a player, it builds thanks to the weight of his own failures, not because of printer's ink).
In course of the next 40 days, he needs to recapture that. After all, the job is his, he has nothing to lose, and a world of glory to gain.
Which brings us to the second question, which was actually the first question: What is this team like? And that one's for tomorrow. Meanwhile, best wishes, all, for a great New Year.
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