Raving, ranting don146;t portray effective aggressiveness

They gave television channels a lot of footage and used up a lot of newsprint. Instead, they could have given their side a better chance of winning. Sport is best played when the mind is calm and the intent is aggressive. It is a very rare sportsman that can rave and rant and focus on the job at hand.

John McEnroe might come to mind and for all his genius there is a school of thought that believes he underperformed. And Glenn McGrath8217;s mind was calm more often than when the whirlwind blew through it. The most aggressive Indian cricketers I have known are Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble and between the three of them I cannot remember one instance where the opponent had to be taunted, where the finger had to be wagged, for a result. They could play and they won matches for India.

And so it worries me that some wonderfully gifted young men believe that being rude and demonstrative is the path, or indeed the essential ingredient, to success. Zaheer Khan learnt it the hard way and when we were in England the most noticeable aspect of his cricket was how relaxed he seemed in his delivery stride. There was a calm about him that allowed him to send the ball where he wanted it to go. When you beat the bat or get the batsman out you don8217;t have to tell him you have won.

He knows. But Zaheer needed time in the wilderness to understand himself. He realised that the ball speaks a thousand words and it is something that a Sreesanth or a Harbhajan must understand. Cricket is unlike other reality shows where singers must know how to dance to win and judges must learn to be rude. That is scripted mayhem, it produces a fleeting acquaintance with fame and success; even those two qualities, as we now learn from the glamour pages, aren8217;t always related.

Sreesanth must learn to bowl five great outswingers in an over, Harbhajan must tease and tempt and torment.

And they must ask themselves if the best way to do that is to be in the face of the opponent. The answer might just be yes though evidence from the deeds of most great men suggests it might be no.

Far too many young players are displaying distracted minds. It doesn8217;t help that far too many rewards are being thrown at them, far too many microphones thrust in their faces, far too many cameras focussed on them.

And far too many of them, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh are learning that they need to be dropped to become better cricketers. It is not wrong to be dropped if a better player shows up but that is not always the case with a lot of younger players who give the impression that it is unfashionable to just get on with it.

Does the quote and the close-up get more important than the scoreboard sometimes? And to think it didn8217;t with Tendulkar, with Kumble, with Laxman, with Ganguly even and certainly with Dravid. Those are fine role models with fine records.

India must play aggressively against Australia and Pakistan. They must, as Kumble told me many years ago, seek to take a wicket everytime the ball is in their hands, for that is the best definition of aggression you will ever get.

They must take bold decisions and bat bravely and run hard and stop every ball that must be stopped. Otherwise they will let their team down. To be silent is not to be soft. Assassins don8217;t scream from the rooftop before they press the trigger.

Tendulkar8217;s smile and Kumble8217;s piercing look have made many barbed comments innocuous. India must play to their strength. Raving and ranting and gesturing isn8217;t a strength. A calm, calculating mind is.