The Sharmas don146;t know yet what they cannot do

Ideally, a captain should be free to think about the game and his players. If matters outside the playing field begin to occupy his mind more than those on it then there is a problem in the system that is causing it to happen. If a captain has to keep thinking about contracts, coaches, schedules and such other matters that really should be someone else8217;s responsibility, it is taking away time from his primary activity.

Nasser Hussain quit as captain in 2003 because he was being forced to think more about Robert Mugabe than about the opposition. If Dravid has left the job for similar reasons, then all we will have is a new face with the same worries.

So far, the man appointed to follow him is doing an excellent job. There is much to like about Dhoni as a person and as a cricketer. He seems to have a balanced head on his strong shoulders and seems quite capable of sizing up situations. It helps to have young legs and unfettered minds in the team and under him, India have surprised many at the Twenty20 world cup. They have played with passion, with calm minds and have won a crucial cricket match with a catch, a run-out and runs saved in the field. You wouldn8217;t have thought that was possible three weeks ago when fielders strolled in the deep and lobbed returns in.

This is a young man8217;s game for age, and occasionally, experience, tend to install boundaries in a world of possibilities. Rohit Sharma doesn8217;t yet know what he cannot do and so plays by sheer instinct. For Robin Uthappa, life is still an adventure where you stumble only to dust yourself and move on. Dinesh Kaarthick8217;s fidgety reflexes allow him to reach cricket balls that many won8217;t even as they make him drop sitters that others won8217;t! And RP Singh is on this wonderful tour of discovery, becoming, and making us, aware of his great skills.

Thursday8217;s win over South Africa was one of Indian cricket8217;s better days. And a phenomenal commercial for Twenty20 cricket. India should have been rocked by the withdrawal of a champion batsman, but the captain let him sit out and didn8217;t bother persuading him to play.

That is the way to go and in doing so he made a statement on what he thought the rest were capable of. Only Yuvraj will know how bad the pain was but it must have been excruciating enough to warrant missing a game a day after playing the innings of his life.

When he plays like he did against England you marvel at his skill because there is little doubt that he is a special cricketer. In a team that has Sehwag and Dhoni in it, he stands aside for the smoothness of his hitting. Yuvraj was born to win matches and it can be a bit frustrating to see the intervals between such efforts. In the shorter versions of the game he now has to assume responsibility as the lead batsman even if it means batting permanently at number 3 or 4. Not for the first time in his life, the big step upward is tugging at his collar.

There are a great couple of days in prospect as international cricket8217;s youngest child takes centre-stage. But the team most equipped to win in the conditions here will have no part to play. South Africa8217;s extraordinary self-strangulation is an excellent case study on what fear can do. It is difficult to quantify but one of the great truths of sport is that beyond the team list and the statistics and the records, there is always fear in the other camp.