Climbing Mt Comeback

Cut to July 21, 2006, a day after India8217;s team for the tri-series in Sri Lanka was announced. Mongia was enjoying a sunny day in the balcony of the Leicestershire dressing room, watching his teammates pile the agony on Derbyshire, cherishing the prospects of wearing the India cap once again.

Many miles away in Australia on a gloomy day in Cairns, India A captain Venu was relishing the washed-out day that saved his team. But he would also have been contemplating the future, which after the ODI drop, seems as murky as the weather.

While Mongia talked about how 8216;8216;his unstinted love for the game helped him to stay focused8217;8217;, Venu, after the free fall to the foothills of Mt Comeback, will simply have to brace for the soon-to-commence torturous journey.

Former India Test player Sanjay Manjrekar has been around long enough to understand this overnight toggle. 8216;8216;Not a thing has changed. Over the years, players have seen how one selection meeting can change a player8217;s life. The comfort level disappears and it is a tough challenge to battle obscurity. The comeback road is always tough,8217;8217; he says.

Now, look back to the ODI squad for the season8217;s first series against Sri Lanka last November. Two names that crop up here8212;JP Yadav and Gautam Gambhir8212;were not even uttered once when the selection committee met here to pick the tri-series squad. Not even in the 8216;8216;names were discussed8217;8217; category, that selectorial euphemism for fringe players in the radar.

Railways8217; all-rounder JP Yadav, who just months ago was seen as that elusive all-rounder that India always needed, is a confused man today. With months to go for the domestic season to begin, he doesn8217;t know what he needs to do to get back. 8216;8216;Since the day I was dropped, no one has called me,8217;8217; he says.

Over the years, different players have adopted different methods to deal with it. Former India opener Navjot Singh Sidhu had his own way of dealing with the 8216;strokeless wonder8217; tag that got him dropped from the team for the first time. 8216;8216;I decided to hit around 600 sixes a day to improve my strokeplay. And it didn8217;t come as a surprise when they started calling me 8216;Sixer Sidhu8217; when I returned,8217;8217; he says.

Robin Singh, the former India all-rounder who made a comeback six years after he was dropped in 1989, had another formula. 8216;8216;My agenda was to have at least five headlines in newspapers every month. After a while, it was impossible for the selectors not to notice me,8217;8217; he says.

This hunt for headlines is something Mongia has consistently done in the last two years. Sixteen tons8212;both at home and in England8212;in two seasons has meant that he never went out of circulation. But he knows that if he takes the Venu road, it might be back to the grind. Scores of 19, 38, 10, 61 and 11 saw Venu relegated to India A after the West Indies tour. As a national selector says, Venu became 8216;8216;ultra-cautious8217;8217; when he thought that his place was slipping.

It8217;s a tough balancing act for the fringe players. First comes the struggle to reach the peak and than the tougher task of remaining there. So what8217;s the way out? It8217;s simple, for Mongia and Venu at least. Venu has to do what Mongia did and Mongia has to avoid doing what Venu did.

8216;There have been days when things don8217;t go your way and negative thoughts surface8217;
Dinesh Mongia

IN early 2004, a year after I played my last India game, I was playing club cricket in England trying to reconcile to the fact that I was no longer a Man in Blue. That was when I met former West Indies captain Carl Hooper, who then recommended me as his replacement for Lancashire.

That was a big break since this ensured that even after the Indian domestic season was over, I had an opportunity to play competitive cricket and draw the selectors8217; attention. As a professional, one is always under pressure to deliver for your county but there is always the bigger incentive of wearing the India cap again.

But if one thinks too much about scoring runs and returning to the national side, the pressure doubles. The only thing that can keep you ticking is the love to go out and hit the ball. Of course, there have been days when things don8217;t go your way and negative thoughts surface. The obscurity of domestic competition8212;no crowds, no autograph hunters, not many to applaud8212;can also get frustrating.

It did get to me too, especially when I thought how despite scoring 16 hundreds in two years I wasn8217;t good enough to be in the national side. During such times, one leans on the support system of family and friends.

I was lucky to have friends like Harbhajan Singh. Whenever I used to meet Bhajji, he used to tell me, 8216;Dinesh, get some more runs, you will be back8217;. I did and Bhajji has been proved right.

As told to Sandeep Dwivedi