‘The Indian fan today is running world cricket, make no mistake about that’

• But it also tells us that cricket is something we take seriously, second only to politics.

Sometimes I think too seriously.

• Politics or cricket?

Cricket! Politics, we must take seriously. We probably don’t take it seriously enough.

• Why do you say we take cricket too seriously?

I mean there is so much emotion and passion involved in the game that I think we tend to forget sometimes that it’s just a game and that winning and losing are part of the game, so long as your team, your country’s team, tries its best. It is a sport, and people should enjoy it for the sport that it is. There are good performances on both sides — both teams come there to play cricket and they play good cricket. Sometimes I think people take it too personally. Sometimes I think people feel that it’s almost a personal insult if the team loses. And it’s the same way when we win — they can get so excited and so happy that sometimes it can get a bit too much.

• I like what your coach Greg Chappell said the other day; he was talking to an Australian paper, I think, and he said working with these guys is like escorting the Beatles. You go to the airport and you have 50,000 people lining the streets. It’s wonderful.

It is. I must say it’s a privilege to play for India, it’s an honour. Sometimes I look around and I see how lucky I am to be able to play this game and to play it well enough to be able to represent my country for the time I have. The Indian fans are the best fans in the world. The kind of reception we get, they are demanding, there’s no doubt about it.

• And they are unforgiving.

They are unforgiving but you must realise that the Indian fan today is running world cricket; make no mistake about that.

• And that is why this is the richest part of the cricketing world right now, isn’t it?

It is. I think it’s where the financing of world cricket is. I wouldn’t say completely, but definitely a major part of world cricket today is being run by Indian companies. Part of that is also the result of our economy and the growth we have seen over the last ten or fifteen years. Just the success that is India is being reflected in the cricketing world as well.

• But Rahul, something else. You said Indian crowds are tough, they are demanding. But being booed by your own people, a stadium full of your own people, the way you were in Calcutta… I remember speaking once with Sunil Gavaskar once many years ago, in 1983, the last time, I think, until now, that an Indian team played an international match in Srinagar. And the team was booed and the crowd supported the West Indies, and, in fact, Gavaskar mentioned that it was the fastest he’d seen anybody bowl, Malcolm Marshall in Srinagar. The combined effect, how does it work on your mind? I know that many players who went to Srinagar then came back scarred from that experience, having an Indian crowd take a position against you from the moment the first ball is bowled.

To be honest, Shekhar, I’m not the first Indian captain to be booed on an Indian ground, and I won’t be the last. I have played under four or five captains, and I have seen all of them at various times, at various grounds.

• But this was for non-cricketing reasons.

I was lucky not to be on the boundary. Some of the things the boys heard on the boundary line was not nice. But, you know, having said that, we didn’t play well on the day. People were upset; there was a variety of reasons for why they were upset, some of it was legitimate, some of it not. There is no point getting into that. I think as an international sportsman you have got to accept these things sometimes. People are upset, you haven’t played well as a team, people are emotional. Like I said, I am not going to be the last. People are demanding, but they are very loving as well.

• Let me give you Kapil Dev’s regional theory of Indian cricket. He says, if you look at the West, it’s all talent, very little hard work. If you look at the South, a lot of talent, a lot of hard work. If you look at the North, some talent, loads of hard work. Then, he says, if you somehow get it all together, go East, go to Calcutta and perform, because you get 100 per cent adulation. To get abused in Calcutta, then, must be particularly galling. You have had one of your great appearances for India there.

I have always done really well in Calcutta. I mean, the experience of playing with Laxman that day. And six months before I went there for the last game, I’d got a hundred in each innings to win a game against Pakistan. To win a Test for India against Pakistan and score a hundred in each innings is very special. I love playing in Eden Gardens, it’s a great venue. That will never change. I am going to love going back and playing at that venue.

• Talking about Pakistan, Rahul, what do you take to Pakistan? What have you learned, what memories of the last tour do you take to Pakistan now?

I take back some very fond memories, both on and off the field. On the field, we were the first team to win a series in Pakistan. Personally, it was a good series for me, both the one-days and Tests. Just meeting people, making friends… I have some very good memories of that trip. It was a very different time when we went last time, we hadn’t been there for 13-14 years and there was a bit of apprehension. But we really had a lovely time.

• Were you surprised by the way the team did?

I wasn’t very surprised because, to be honest, we’d just come back from a very good tour of Australia.

• But we had heard the same talk as we hear now: Shoaib Akhtar, Sami, Kaneria, home pitches, home advantage.

You will hear these things all the time, Shekhar. The talk before a series has not changed in the nine years that I have been playing this game and probably never will.

• But there’s this feeling that it’s Pakistani bowling versus Indian batting. Our batting, as we’ve seen lately, has shown some change. We were nearly exposed by South Africa, we were exposed in at least one match by Sri Lanka.

We have a good batting line-up and that’s been our strength, there’s no doubt about it. Over the last four-five years, we’ve had a group of players who have come together and played probably some of their best cricket as batsmen. Whether you look at what Sachin’s done or Sehwag, Laxman, Sourav… I mean, all four or five of us have got together and played probably some of our best cricket at this point of time.

• But right now there’s a patchiness.

There is a certain amount of patchiness to it, but there’s some quality to it as well. And that will be a key part of the series. Our batting coped really well with their bowling the last time. Veeru got about three hundred, Sachin nearly got a double hundred, I got a double hundred. We can repeat that.

• But you have got a much better tail now, a much shorter and better tail.

I think one of the challenges for me as a captain and for us as the team management is how do we get the best out of our players, how do we make them improve not only as players but also as individuals, how do they grow. I think that by giving them different challenges, different opportunities, we are seeing that not only are they relishing it, they are also growing and becoming better cricketers. That’s the goal.

• Rahul, talking about that last series, you talked about your double hundred, Sehwag’s triple hundred and Sachin’s near-double hundred. A question about that. I mean, questions have been raised about when you declared and why. Have you thought about it? Or did you think at that point that an individual’s double hundred wasn’t that important?

Well, I was never sure that the Test was going to finish on the fifth morning like it did. I mean, it finished 80 overs before the end of the day and if I had known that we were going to have that much time, I would not have declared at that point of time. But, I was not privy to that knowledge and I wanted to have a crack at the Pakistani batsmen that evening. That’s what I felt would give us the best chance to win that match and we were in a position to. It was Sachin’s knock and Veeru’s knock that had actually got us into that position. I think there again a lot was made out of it. Sachin and I have respected and known each other for so long and we get along really well. Between us, the issue was sorted out as quickly as possible; we spoke about it and what we said is obviously something that will remain personal. I really admire and respect him and appreciate the way he handled not only that episode but a lot of things in his life.

• I remember in that very innings when he was bowling and he (got) Moin Khan… the joy on his face and you suddenly realised that there was no pain of having missed the double hundred.

Like I said, I have been very privileged and lucky in my career and one of the joys has been being able to play with cricketers like Tendulkar and Kumble and Srinath, Sourav Ganguly and now Sehwag and Harbhajan. These are players who are and will be great players.

• Rahul, let’s talk about captaincy. It is often believed that a player’s own attitude to the game reflects in his captaincy. How do you define your own approach? I know your answer will be that you have had the job for too short a time.

That will be my answer, thank you! But I don’t think that the way you bat is necessarily the way you will captain. I think that’s a cliche. People say, oh, he’s an attacking player, so he’ll captain attackingly. Or, he’s a defensive player, so he’ll captain defensively. I think they are two different things. You bat according to your skill level, according to the way you know how to bat, the way you have grown up batting; and you captain according to the way you think about the game, according to the resources you have. I don’t think the two are related at all.

• But your own batting has evolved.

It has, over the last four or five years. I have played some of my best cricket in these years and I have grown up as a player and as a person.

• In fact, John Wright said you are fitter in your 30s than you were in your 20s.

That is probably true. I think the awareness of fitness has always been there, but it’s probably been more professional since 1999-2000. The game’s also become professional; the rewards for playing at this level are also huge.

• And how has the business of captaincy changed? How do you motivate players? Because this is a team of stars.

I don’t think I need to motivate people to play for India. I think people should be motivated to play for India, and they are. If you look around and see who are the great players that you’ve played with, you realise you have never needed to motivate them to play for India. Those are the kind of people you are looking for in a team. You are looking for people who not only motivate themselves but also inspire other people. I think the mistake you can make in teams is to club people who are not that keen, not that motivated, who don’t have the hunger to improve. And if you get them in an organisation or a team, with a group of motivated people who want to do something, you can end up demotivating the people who want to do something. You run a newspaper, and I think you’ll agree with me that in any team or any organisation, a few people, if they are not motivated and if they are not keen for the organisation to do well, they can demotivate the actually keen people. It is important to get those people out of the way.

• The difference is when we find people like that, if we wish to we can tell them to go. It doesn’t become a public story. It is not something on which one billion people have a say.

Well, the coach and I don’t have a say in everything. There is a chairman and five selectors who watch more domestic cricket than we do. A lot of the time I have not even seen some of the players the selectors are talking about.

• But tell me, Rahul, as a leader, if you saw a negative influence developing around somebody, now that you are captain, how would you deal with it?

I think there are two ways to deal with it. You either talk to the people involved and try and get them on track; and if you feel that people are demotivating other people in the team, and are not playing for the team, then you have got to take some hard decisions sometimes.

• Have you seen that happen?

No.

• But people who bring in a brooding presence…

That’s not good in any team. What I’m saying is not rocket science. Anyone who brings a brooding presence, or anyone who doesn’t want to improve — I am not just saying that people need to be nice, but what I am saying is that people need to constantly improve. Because if they improve as individuals, the team grows with them. But if they stagnate, and if they don’t want to improve, then they bring down the whole team with them. So with people like that, obviously tough decisions have to be taken. But that’s international sport. And there are no tough decisions. What you are actually doing is you are making a decision that helps the majority.

• Rahul, one of the problems many people see is that this is a team full of senior people and senior influences. In fact we saw in the Kotla match in Delhi, it looked as if Pathan was getting instructions from three different people, from you, Sourav, Sachin. I am sure even the wicketkeeper will start doing it soon.

I think you want to get as many people involved as possible. I take the final decision.

• You can’t captain by committee.

But you can take advice by committee. Finally the captain is at the end, and whatever decisions have to be taken, I have to take those. I don’t have all the knowledge in the world, I don’t have all the ideas about cricket, and I’m not fool enough to believe I have all that knowledge. I know that to be successful as a captain and as a team, I’ll have to get help from other people, whether it’s the coach, senior players, people outside the team as well. It is not a job you can do on your own. But in the end, the responsibility lies with me and I have to take the tough decision.

• But when the buck stops with you, you better have the power to take that final call.

It does. That what’s the challenge of leadership is all about.

• The last time we spoke, you said what India needs most of all is a wicketkeeper/batsman. You think that wish has been answered a bit now?

Well, Dhoni’s had a great start to his career. He has done really well, he’s got a fair distance to go. He has got what it takes. And the good thing to see is that there’s not only Dhoni, there’s Dinesh Karthik who’s done quite well, there’s Parthiv Patel.

• We suddenly have talent.

Yeah, we’ve got talent and they’ll push each other throughout their careers, they are about the same age. So that’s going to be very exciting for Indian cricket.

• But one area where we don’t see that much talent coming up is spin bowling, unfortunately. I mean, out on the bench.

That is true, probably. I haven’t had a chance to see what the domestic talent is, but even there, some of the senior players I talk to in domestic cricket, or coaches, tend to tell me the same thing, that there isn’t much spin bowling around. But all that can change.

• Tell me your thoughts now on the eve of your visit to Pakistan.

It is a great opportunity, a great challenge and a great team; it’s a great chance for this young team, I think, to grow and to take this as one step in the journey that we want to accomplish. And to enjoy it. I think that’s more important. What I want this team to do is to go and play good cricket, irrespective of the results.

• And what will decide this series? Is it bowlers, batsmen, umpires, pitches?

Discipline will decide the series.

• Would you like to elaborate on that?

Well, the team that’s going to be more disciplined, the team that’s going to find courage and character in critical times, is the one that’s probably going to decide the series.

• Is that what we had the last time we won in Pakistan?

We had that. We had people who put their hands up when it mattered. There were critical points in the game, and it was one of our players who was a match winner. That decided the series.