Deep in worries, he masks them well

A Frenchman, resembling a lobster as his countrymen are wont to when they hit the tropics, threads his way through the toiling men at the nets and winds himself up to immense excitement.

‘‘There is not one, not one person in the whole of France who can understand this game,’’ he yells at Gautam Dasgupta, the Indian manager. ‘‘But I understand one thing: it is a very simple game that is also very complicated.’’ But he’s not beyond intuitive insights: ‘‘I also understand this is the best team in the world.’’

‘‘It’s great here,’’ agrees Deep Dasgupta, wrapping up the tour so far, ‘‘but one has to remember he is here for cricket.’’

Possibly the most exuberant, outgoing member of this young Indian side, and definitely one of the most articulate, he masks his worries well.

But probe some more about his prospects for the St John’s match and the ready smile does give way to deep worry lines. He’s a man resigned to confirmed passage on the last chance saloon.

To this music buff, the crescendo of criticism appears rather too well orchestrated. A hyphenated existence is never easy, but Dasgupta says it does not bother him — as long as one gets the sequence right: ‘Wicketkeeper-batsman, not batsman-wicketkeeper.’

And it’s a role he was playing rather well, extremely smoothly, he says, till he dropped a catch off Javagal Srinath in the second Test against England at Ahmedabad. Since then, the verdict seems to have been etched in cement: Deep can’t keep.

More disconcerting perhaps is gratuitous sympathy. Hey look, goes a school of thought, here’s a man who has spent 200 overs behind the stumps. Now you try squatting 1200 times, and after a brief interlude dancing out to the field, bat in hand, to take guard against seamers.

Talk about cruelty! ‘‘I’ve done it before, I can do it,’’ he pleads, citing as just one example a first class match in Baripada where he kept for 200 overs and immediately followed that up with a batting marathon of 150 overs.

As further evidence he cites his record thus far: a century, two fifties in just eight Tests, and an average of over 30 (don’t go by the figure of 28.66 at a cricket site, he cautions, they have credited me with one innings too many).

It’s an insecurity that the 24-year-old expresses in other ways. ‘‘I don’t want to leave my studies,’’ he says. After a B.Com (Honours) degree at Delhi’s Hindu College, he did enroll for a chartered accountancy programme, but a busy domestic season put an end to that. Now, he’s weighing other options. Maybe a shot at mass communications.