What do New India live by? Teams announce their arrival in different ways, and this one puts it gently in Multan. Team India has been consolidating its confidence and resolve, it is now ready to go public. It invites us journalists over for dinner to explain.An extensive interaction between cricketers and journalists is said to be media manager Amrit Mathur’s brainwave. The immediate exigency is the fat media pack and strict injunctions against one-to-one interviews. At the Holiday Inn, players, minus Saurav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh, scatter themselves at round tables and welcome wandering correspondents with ready smiles and solemn answers. Yet, there is a background melody they are all humming to: we have the winning habit at last, we have acquired an insatiable taste for victory.The architect of India’s new and firm attitude change, coach John Wright, puts it succinctly: ‘‘These are players who have enjoyed success at Lords’, at the World Cup — they know they can win against Australia. There is a natural desire to succeed, desire and confidence.’’It broadcasts itself in countless ways. Anil Kumble capsules the transformed work ethic through the gym culture of today. After a day of play, players now retire to the health club, he notes — ‘‘this has given a new look and feel to the side.’’ V.V.S. Laxman speaks of a new fellowship beyond the ring: ‘‘As long as the dressing room atmosphere is good, we will do well on the field. These days no one is brooding.’’ Ajit Agarkar refers to that ‘‘winning feeling.’’ Zaheer Khan reflects the depth on the bench when he says that while he may have been out of rhythm in the one-dayers, Irfan Pathan has chipped in by providing initial breakthroughs. Rahul Dravid harks back to the luminous glow of recent triumphs in Adelaide and in the World Cup: ‘‘We never gave ourselves a chance before. We wanted to prove to ourselves that we could win.’’Sachin Tendulkar, fielding a battery of shutterbugs and reporters, hints at what this means for the future: ‘‘We have been together as a team for four months. We have figured out our strengths, weaknesses, and are prepared well for this series.’’On the eve of the first Test match against Pakistan, it is instructive to look back on India’s three long years in which everything changed. By end 2000 the team was haemorrhaging. Match-fixing scandals had imperilled the game’s wider resonance. Other teams were striding forth. Losing abroad was becoming a habit, fielding jibes about India being lions at home and lambs away a daily embarrassment. For us spectators, it was time to consider the unthinkable: was it time to give up on cricket? Today they are inspiring the big question of international cricket: are India the new Australia?Wright, on whose watch the queries have flipped, sliced and diced the gigantic task into bite-sized bits. Sports psychologists were recruited, fitness training insisted upon. When Adrian Le Roux began his stint, players could be seen exchanging notes on forced routines on the stationary bike like children complaining about extra homework. Within months, as Dravid once said, once the first question when the team checked into a hotel used to be, where can we find an Indian restaurant. Now, it is, where can we find the gym.On the field, in the ebb and flow of the game, the new attitude has been inculcated through minute detail. ‘‘I have always been interested in the motivation of players,’’ he says in Multan, ‘‘in character. If we meet the small targets we set ourselves, we have a chance at victory. These boys understand that achieving small things is important.’’Batting and bowling statistics are all very well, but the intent to huddle and win is sighted elsewhere. It lies on the field, says Wright: ‘‘Fielding is the easiest way to judge the motivation level of a team.’’In the end, the surest indication that all this has been absorbed comes from Laxman: ‘‘We are not afraid of defeat.’’
