Suresh Raina was hailed as the next biggest thing to happen to Indian cricket. He seemed to have all the requisites for stardom – he was a brilliant fielder; a superb athlete, eager to improve his fitness at every chance; besides having a claim to all the strokes that a good batsman should have in his repertoire. He had already made waves in the U-19 circuit and the wise men of Indian cricket (or a bunch of jokers, if you still remember Jimmy Amarnath’s comments) decided that the time was ripe to blood him in Indian cricketer. “We must invest in the youth”; “We are building a team for the 2007 World Cup” etc. In the midst of all this, experienced cricketers were given the boot – V.V. S. Laxman could not run the 200 m at sub 25 second timings, he could not slide for 3 feet to catch a ball in its tracks before it reaches the boundary rope, he cannot fling himself parallel to the ground to take astounding catches – more importantly, in any case he was on the wrong side of 30 and therefore was not a prospect for the future.
A few months down the line with the World Cup getting perilously closer, India seems to have lost the plot altogether. The bright young things that had been carefully groomed for the event have had their failings cruelly exposed in domains that are different from their usual backyards. And the veterans, having been allowed to rot in the cruel environs of our Ranji setup seem to have got rusty. We are facing a crisis.
Perhaps, it is time to reflect on what has been a usual trend in Indian cricket these days – the tendency to hoist young cricketers too soon on to the international stage. Raina may be a supremely fit youngster with immaculate skills in running between wickets and saving runs, but he is nowhere half as good as V.V.S. Laxman, when it comes to scoring runs, incidentally, his chief job as a batsman. And the reason this is happening is that these days, performances in the U-19 and U-21 levels are all that matter; the long years of hard toil in the Ranji and other domestic tournaments may well be damned. Irfan Pathan had a meteoric rise, straight from the U-19 level and now seems woefully muddled on the international scene; Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif have never quite seemed to be ready to accept the mantle of senior players; former U-19 World Cup champion Y. Venugopala Rao (Kaif captained that team in 1999 and Yuvraj was a member too) failed to find his feet in international cricket. Go back a few years and you will find more such examples of players who had been blooded a little too early – the spark that the selectors saw in their few matches unfortunately never quite translating into a flame on the biggest stage – I am not sure how many people would remember Laxmi Ratan Shukla – hailed as India’s umpteenth solution to finding a Kapil Dev clone – made his debut when he was stil shy of his 19th birthday and had been forgotten before his 20th; Reetinder Singh Sodhi (incidentally, another of the U-19 winning team of 1999) – vanished after around a dozen desperate chances , cruelly unprepared for international standards etc etc.
Curiously, if you look at the some of the strongest teams of the last decade in international cricket, you would not notice such rashness in introducing new players. Michael Hussey played for years in the Pura Shield before making his Aussie debut at the ripe age of nearly 30 – and boy, he took to international cricket like a fish to water. He reached 1,000 runs in test cricket in the quickest time ever, has made a reputation as one of the most brilliant finishers in the game of cricket ever, keeps piling on runs as if he cannot be expected to score less ever and is already being talked about as Ricky Ponting’s successor. When Glenn McGrath wanted a break from international cricket, the Aussie selectors brought on Stuart Clark, himself over 30 at the time and what a successful career he has had with Australia since. Justin Langer, Matt Hayden, Damien Martyn, Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne - all of them are on the wrong side of 30 - some of 35 - yet the Aussie selectors continue to repose their faith in them and more often than not, with good results.
Unfortunately we, in India, are only too eager at dropping players who do not have some sort of a glam quotient – you would have to be breathtakingly spectacular in some game or sensationally young to warrant investiture as a future prospect. Ramesh Pawar keeps putting in decent performances in ODIs, yet never seems to be part of any stable Indian team; J.P. Yadav played solid, stable cricket in the few chances that he got, yet the selectors only seem to notice his age and little else. Even Dinesh Mongia, despite some good performances in his limited chances, never seems to have the team management’s support. And while some of the players named above can end their playing careers with the consolation of having still got the opportunity to represent India, the likes of Amol Muzumdar (long ago, touted as the next Tendulkar), Kanwaljeet Singh and Rizwan Shamshad would just have to spend their lives telling their grand-children of their monumental Ranji trophy feats, all in vain.
Perhaps, we need to reflect!!
A few months down the line with the World Cup getting perilously closer, India seems to have lost the plot altogether. The bright young things that had been carefully groomed for the event have had their failings cruelly exposed in domains that are different from their usual backyards. And the veterans, having been allowed to rot in the cruel environs of our Ranji setup seem to have got rusty. We are facing a crisis.
Perhaps, it is time to reflect on what has been a usual trend in Indian cricket these days – the tendency to hoist young cricketers too soon on to the international stage. Raina may be a supremely fit youngster with immaculate skills in running between wickets and saving runs, but he is nowhere half as good as V.V.S. Laxman, when it comes to scoring runs, incidentally, his chief job as a batsman. And the reason this is happening is that these days, performances in the U-19 and U-21 levels are all that matter; the long years of hard toil in the Ranji and other domestic tournaments may well be damned. Irfan Pathan had a meteoric rise, straight from the U-19 level and now seems woefully muddled on the international scene; Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif have never quite seemed to be ready to accept the mantle of senior players; former U-19 World Cup champion Y. Venugopala Rao (Kaif captained that team in 1999 and Yuvraj was a member too) failed to find his feet in international cricket. Go back a few years and you will find more such examples of players who had been blooded a little too early – the spark that the selectors saw in their few matches unfortunately never quite translating into a flame on the biggest stage – I am not sure how many people would remember Laxmi Ratan Shukla – hailed as India’s umpteenth solution to finding a Kapil Dev clone – made his debut when he was stil shy of his 19th birthday and had been forgotten before his 20th; Reetinder Singh Sodhi (incidentally, another of the U-19 winning team of 1999) – vanished after around a dozen desperate chances , cruelly unprepared for international standards etc etc.
Curiously, if you look at the some of the strongest teams of the last decade in international cricket, you would not notice such rashness in introducing new players. Michael Hussey played for years in the Pura Shield before making his Aussie debut at the ripe age of nearly 30 – and boy, he took to international cricket like a fish to water. He reached 1,000 runs in test cricket in the quickest time ever, has made a reputation as one of the most brilliant finishers in the game of cricket ever, keeps piling on runs as if he cannot be expected to score less ever and is already being talked about as Ricky Ponting’s successor. When Glenn McGrath wanted a break from international cricket, the Aussie selectors brought on Stuart Clark, himself over 30 at the time and what a successful career he has had with Australia since. Justin Langer, Matt Hayden, Damien Martyn, Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne - all of them are on the wrong side of 30 - some of 35 - yet the Aussie selectors continue to repose their faith in them and more often than not, with good results.
Unfortunately we, in India, are only too eager at dropping players who do not have some sort of a glam quotient – you would have to be breathtakingly spectacular in some game or sensationally young to warrant investiture as a future prospect. Ramesh Pawar keeps putting in decent performances in ODIs, yet never seems to be part of any stable Indian team; J.P. Yadav played solid, stable cricket in the few chances that he got, yet the selectors only seem to notice his age and little else. Even Dinesh Mongia, despite some good performances in his limited chances, never seems to have the team management’s support. And while some of the players named above can end their playing careers with the consolation of having still got the opportunity to represent India, the likes of Amol Muzumdar (long ago, touted as the next Tendulkar), Kanwaljeet Singh and Rizwan Shamshad would just have to spend their lives telling their grand-children of their monumental Ranji trophy feats, all in vain.
Perhaps, we need to reflect!!
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