FUTURE PERFECT

It’s no idle speculation. This Indian team has played together for the past couple of years and, going by form, could stick together for the next four or five years. The experience they would have picked up by then would be phenomenal, unmatched in one-day cricket.

So says former Pakistani batting great Zaheer Abbas. ‘‘This is your team for the next five years or so. More, unless a few of them lose form and drop out. Except for Srinath and Kumble, everyone will play the next World Cup. This is the best average age to start a team off with. They have started their rebuilding process. Therefore, this is the team for the future.’’

And, even more dangerous news: India’s cricketers haven’t yet hit their physical prime. In fact, they’ll all be peaking round about 2007 (see graphic).

Meanwhile, every other team is in the messy, time-consuming process of rebuilding. At least four of the major Test-playing nations — South Africa, Pakistan, West Indies and England — will be going in for major overhauls (see story overleaf).

But let’s focus on India. The clear advantage that India hold over every other top team is the age factor. This is a young side but already has a wealth of cricketing experience. By tonight, they would crossed off the last experience missing from their list, a World Cup final.

The average age of this Indian side is 25.93, quite some distance behind the rest of the big teams. The West Indies team of 1979, arguably the greatest one-day side, had an average age of 28.45.

But what does this mean in cricketing terms? It means that most players are yet to reach their peak, that part of their career where age and experience reach optimum levels to make a lethal combination.

Let Dr P S M Chandran, Director, Sports Medicine with the Sports Authority of India, quantify this. ‘‘There usually isn’t any particular age you can put your finger on; peaking comes with maturity and experience. Plus, there are the factors of endurance, stamina, physical strength and speed. For a fast bowler, the peak age is when he is young. A Srinath is experienced and wily, but his speed has gone down. However, Zaheer (24) and Nehra (23) are stronger today than they will be at 30. So, in general, you can say that the peak age for fast bowlers is between 24 and 30.’’

When it comes to batsmen, Chandran reiterates what experts have been saying for a long time. ‘‘The peak happens with experience and maturity. Batting also has more to do with timing and skill than strength. Therefore, as a batsman matures, he gets better. The peak age for a batsman is, generally, after 30, maybe till 35. The same for spinners.’’

By this yardstick, Ganguly, Tendulkar and Dravid are almost at the ‘peak’ (bowlers beware!) while Sehwag, Mongia, Kaif and Yuvraj still have six-eight years to reach that stage.

And though Srinath is past his prime, Zaheer, Nehra and Agarkar have their best years ahead of them.

(While we’re at it, let’s just treat Tendulkar as an exception to all these rules.)

It’s not just age, of course. It’s attitude. The advent of Zaheer, Yuvraj, Kaif, Mongia, Nehra, Harbhajan and Sehwag has done wonders for the side. Not only in reducing the average age but in pumping up the speed and enthusiasm, the basic aggro.

Commentator Harsha Bhogle has witnessed this side at close quarters. ‘‘In terms of unbridled enthusiasm, there has been a huge change in the team. It has, for one, a lot of team players. The youngsters have brought in speed, and not just in the bowling. This team has the potential to be a great one-day side.’’

However, there are always flipsides to a positive. Words of caution are necessary in the Indian context because, whenever the team does well, a lot of us tend to get swayed, only to return to our effigy-burning ways eventually.

‘‘Don’t forget that the youngsters haven’t had the time to taste enough failure yet to start getting cynical. The balance of the side is critical, and at the moment, with Dravid keeping, it is on a knife-edge. Also, don’t forget that if we decide to bring in a wicketkeeper at some stage, and drop a batsman, the tail could begin at number seven. Then there is the Srinath factor. If he gives it up after the World Cup, the third seamer could be a problem,’’ points out Bhogle.

Perhaps the attitude has come from growing up in the one-day era. Most of the team started playing their cricket — at whatever level — after the one-day format became more popular than the Test format (in the late 1980s). Even the seniors started playing their cricket at the cusp stage.

But the youth core started out well after Jonty Rhodes had redefined 30-yard fielding — and they came into the scene well after every move of Rhodes and Ricky Ponting had been beamed into their drawing rooms. Long before they played against him, they watched Michael Bevan perfect the art of ‘finishing’. And of Gavin Larsen giving lessons in ‘wicket to wicket’ bowling.

So, more than even someone like Tendulkar, they learnt the one-day game before they learnt the more classical version. Parthiv Patel, for example, was not yet in kindergarten when Tendulkar made his Test debut.

Back to Zaheer Abbas: ‘‘In India and Pakistan, where most of the cricket is one-day cricket, the value attached to the game has changed dramatically. And it will help in the long run that the core of the Indian team is so tuned in to the one-day format. That’s the only cricket they have seen, enjoyed and focused on.’’

If this team has been successful, a major reason for that has been the unprecedented levels of team unity. And that largely flows from the leadership of Saurav Ganguly. He isn’t possessed of a shrewd cricketing brain. At least not any more than some of the others we have today. But there are two rather significant areas where he scores heavily. One, as has been written about extensively already, is that he is easily India’s most aggressive cricketer and captain. This was most apparent during the famous ‘last frontier’ series between India and Australia in early 2001, when he took on the sledging Aussies single-handedly, and paid them back with the same coin.

Aggression at the top rubs off on the others around, right down the food chain. It’s rubbed off on seniors like Tendulkar and Dravid. They don’t care about their mothers watching anymore, and discuss Glenn McGrath’s family as comfortably as he does theirs. It’s rubbed off on Srinath and Zaheer and Harbhajan, who are never short of a stare or two in a crunch situation.

Secondly, he has openly defended his young ‘wards’ and persevered with them, even when their performances have not been up there. It is because of the captain’s faith in them, that the youngsters are such match-winners today.

A third point, however contentious, is true, and needs to be made. The young lot in the Indian team today started their international careers away from the shadow of the most embarrassing and shameful period in Indian cricket. Regardless of the mechanics of match-fixing, it is a fact that the team today carries a lot less excess baggage than they did five years ago. And it has helped.

Finally, the F word. The younger you are, the fitter you are; and it’s no secret that this is the fittest Indian team ever. Much of the credit for that is due to physiotherapist Andrew Leipus. A tangible improvement is in the bleep test, which measures the heart rate in relation to workout levels. A year and a half back, Leipus’s figures show, the average Indian level was 11 or so. Whereas the Australians routinely hit 13s (the higher the better). Prior to the World Cup, though, the average rate of the Indians had gone well past the 12 mark. Except in the case of Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar, the two senior pros, who reportedly routinely flunk the tests or avoid taking them.

That doesn’t bother Leipus. What bothers him is the workload, the constant cricket his wards undergo. ‘‘Fitness needs time off. A person needs to rest for the effects of training to be apparent. Our guys are travelling most of the time. And that doesn’t help. Also, because the boys were so tired most of the time, they were not keen to work hard. And they were content with their threshold levels. But I found that after I criticised them a bit, they fell in line, and gradually improved.’’

To go back to the original point: India have made the final of World Cup 2003, and might even win it, but their peak is yet to come. They are only starting out. If they do win this one, it should be looked upon as a bonus.

But four years down the line, India should be the number one favourites, quite some leagues ahead of the teams who are yet to start their restructuring. For the first time, bar a few spots, India is not a team in transition. That is the fate of other teams. For India, the future seems to be perfect.