You can tell a new cricket season has started. Emotions are washed in public and the search for dirty linen begins! Expectations grow and are pricked faster than bubbles in the stock market or real estate. A nation in search of a balm finds an old punching bag! Like Mumbai’s roads, nothing changes in Indian cricket. We seek to deposit reality around us somewhere, find a hiding place. We search for the high that will take us elsewhere. But we knock on the wrong door. We build hype on slippery footholds. Indian cricket needs a reality check, its supporters need a wake up call. A fortnight ago, Sri Lanka were second on the ICC table, India were seventh, the West Indies were eighth. You saw nothing in this period to suggest that the rankings be otherwise. The Renaults and Ferraris will beat the Minardis and the Jordans. India lost three out of three to Sri Lanka because India weren’t contemporary. To search for a rift in the team, for a leadership struggle, for dissent, is to mistake cricket for India’s other prime time viewing spectacle. It is also misleading and simplistic. It makes the diagnosis simple and the cure impossible. India lost because a number seven team played like a number seven team. The best one-day teams in the world are built around the right balance of bowlers, batsmen and all-rounders but they have two pillars they stand on. These are non-negotiables, without them the greatest skill can be rendered irrelevant. One is called fitness and the other fielding and they are the easiest things in the game to perfect. They are also the least glamorous. You saw their value in the final. Sri Lanka looked a modern side in the field, India suggested they were driving a model that had been phased out. Fielding creates opportunities, it makes an average bowler look better, sometimes it ignites the lost spark in him. Good fielding works in tandem with good bowling, bad fielding makes decent bowling look ineffective. Fielders inside the circle build up pressure, they starve a batsman or, as the Sri Lankans said after the final, they strangle an innings. They make a batsman kick and shove, look for riskier, more desperate alternatives and in doing so give the bowlers the best chance of picking up a wicket. Poor fielding is like trying to fill water in a polythene bag with holes in it. The pressure never builds, the batsmen never have to grow desperate. Look no further than Irfan Pathan, who would seem to have had a forgettable match. The ball wasn’t swinging much for him, he didn’t look completely at ease, he needed the fielders to help him tide through the day. In all fairness he created chances against the two best batsmen in the opposition, both were put down. One was embarrassingly simple. Had the fielding done its job, Pathan might have had a shot at the man of the match. The figures now show he had one of his worst games. The difference, you see, can be devastating. And just to prove the point, without a direct hit from Mohd Kaif, India may not have even made the final! It brings us back to an old theory widely promoted by this column. The fielders have to function as the sixth bowler in a side and they must take two wickets in every match. Anything less should be inadmissible if excellence is the objective. India know that better than anyone else. The highest points in our one-day cricket correlate very well with our best fielding sides. India’s top cricketers also need to grow beyond their basic skills. Yuvraj doesn’t seem to bowl anymore and Sehwag isn’t contributing in that area either. It is all very well to use the great power of hindsight and criticise the five-bowler approach. India’s part-timers are driving the team there. If they don’t grow they take away a degree of freedom. So too with Kaif who, when faced with a leadership situation in the last few overs, capitulated. Once Dravid was out he alone had the skills to win the match. He needed to take control, instead he watched while the attempted big hits came from the other end. Matches, like wars, are rarely won by merely watching. These are examples, not an attempt to single out individuals. The cause, the infection, is deeper and the antibiotic is within. If we continue to believe that batsmen and bowlers alone will win us matches, this wait is going to be very long. Till India field well number seven looks like a good place to build a house.
