Sourav’s choice

Choice two. He abides by the comical compromise reached before the BCCI’s review committee in Mumbai last week, confident of enough support in the team to indulge in that other Gangulian skill, slow attrition of the opponent’s strengths through mindgames and concerted lobbying.

Choice one could withdraw him from cricket completely or it may yet see him establish primacy on the offside. Choice two will keep him in the dressing room some time longer. But the options hold more significance than that. Choice two, at this point, entails ceding far too much agency to the board and its endless committees, to spot opinion polls and trials by media. Choice one immediately returns decision-making in Indian cricket to its proper arena: the field of play.

You have to feel for Ganguly. Timing life’s decisions is always a lonely exercise; to make one at 33, in full public view and amidst so much ridicule, must be agonising. But, then, you don’t get to earn the distinction of being India’s most successful captain ever without a thoroughly cathartic gambit.

In fact, he’s done it before. The first time, in 2000, the challenge came in the form of a tragedy. As the match-fixing scandal broke, India began to fracture. It was a humiliating, dark moment, it had the potential to implicate the guilty as well as the good.

It was then that captaincy came to Ganguly, when no other claimant was in sight. It is hard today to recall the despair of those days. But the benefits that accrued are abundantly visible. At a time when its soul was being leached out of the game, Ganguly — assisted by a core of senior players like Dravid, Kumble, Tendulkar and Srinath — took ownership of Team India. Where certificates of personal integrity would have been sufficient, they insisted on redemption through performance. They sought insulation from politicking and requested the services of a foreign coach, they demanded the support systems of modern sport, they yearned to be put through punishing fitness regimens, they picked up the lingo of self-improvement, they yelped into empowering huddles.

To this project Ganguly brought that rarest of qualities in Indian cricket, aggression. He became his own team’s mascot. India were in it for victory, and Ganguly made this point by ripping off his shirt at Lord’s, baring his triumph and necklace collection at cricket’s most sacred space. India could not be taken for granted, and Ganguly paraded the attitude by keeping men in baggy green waiting for a toss. But, most of all, he fought regional lobbying and established reputations by recruiting raw talent into the side and staying with them through difficult patches.

Now, all of that is coming apart. The last year has been so cruel to India that a series win against Zimbabwe — yes, the same Zimbabwe that lost to Bangladesh recently — is actually eliciting the adjective historic!

Where did it all go so wrong for Team India? There they were, making assertions of civilisational turnarounds, stringing together Test victories in Calcutta, Port of Spain, Leeds, Adelaide, Multan. There they were, refusing to believe that a shortage of good fast-bowlers and allrounders could keep them from one-day laurels, packing the team from opener to tail with the best collection of middle-order batsmen in history. Team India had a compact with self-belief and refused to countenance the thought of any adversity breaking it.

It was actually an assurance of victory that snapped it. Pedal back to Rawalpindi, April 2004. India had won their first Test in Pakistan, with Virender Sehwag’s 309 giving them an uncommon resolve to strand Sachin Tendulkar at 194 in announcing allegiance to team strategy. They lost the second Test at Lahore, but in the absence of an injured Ganguly, the substitute, Yuvraj Singh, mustered heroic consolation for the visitors with a quick hundred. Never mind, when Ganguly took charge of his flock once again at Rawalpindi, the air was knotted with intimations of an impending series win.

It was there, on the brink of achievement, that Team India’s credo began unravelling. So far reliant on expedient team selection, it was as if they did not know how to assemble a playing eleven that would win any which way. It was not about Yuvraj. Like Mohammed Kaif today, his record had already announced his Test potential. It was the manner in which the team, the coach, the captain lurched for explanations to rationally account for the final playing eleven that hinted at an unravelling. India won that Test, but things were never the same again.

Now, another crisis brewed in anticipation of victory is unfolding. Would Greg Chappell have suggested that Ganguly sit out a Test against Australia or Pakistan? We will never know. But unlikely. A series win against Zimbabwe can, however, be made to mean something only if questions gathering over the past year are allowed to be properly contested. Questions, foremost, of merit versus experience.

Questions, alas, that are being projected on Ganguly’s person. Given the farcical obfuscation at Mumbai, it is really up to him, the most successful Indian captain, to voluntarily make a statement that could set India on the road to success once again.