Wanted: The Spirit of ’01

It won’t be easy. Because, away from the wins, losses and statistics since that series, there’s a subtle change in the India XI. The spring is missing from the step — last seen at Lord’s and, fleetingly, during the World Cup — and, despite the Huddle, the camaraderie appears strained at times.

Saurav Ganguly was once hailed as the captain who freed cricket selection from its traditional biases, picking players on merit rather than zonal affiliations. The obvious result of that was the blossoming of Zaheer and Nehra, Sehwag and Yuvraj and, most famously in that series, Harbhajan.

Today, he is seen as picking players on personal preferences. And team selection, while largely free of regional bias, is still not free of questions.

Where Ganguly was once inspirational, he is more often seen today as surly, shrugging shoulders and glaring at an errant bowler.

Where his men played with obvious passion and pride, they seem to have taken their eye off the ball and fixed it on sponsorships, so as to even draw the attention of team psychologist Sandy Gordon.

Indeed, India’s greatest obstacle is itself: the players appear to have drunk so deeply on that Spirit that they have got high on hubris. Perhaps for them, for the coach, for the selectors, for Indian cricket, that series of 2001 was the worst thing to happen.

For, though it showed us the depth of talent available, it gave the Indian public a hyper-inflated opinion of their cricketers, just as the cricketers overestimated their own worth.

Today, that translates at various levels; the most obvious being the money that’s come into cricket, the most dangerous being the fact that everyone connected with Team India takes their place for granted. Remember, India went into the Kolkata Test 1-0 down; at stake was the series, the captaincy, perhaps the coaching job too.

That fear — not of the Aussies but of their future — played a large part in what happened at Eden Gardens and later at Chepauk.

And that fear is needed again tomorrow. Because if Sehwag knows he’s playing for his place, if Kumble can be made aware that a certain Mr Kartik is waiting in the wings, if Ganguly gets the hint that he is dispensable, they may just deliver on their talent.

It will be easy for India, if they lose the series, to hide behind the Australians’ awesome record. They can each point to their individual statistics — a century here, a five-wicket haul there — and say, ‘I did my job, he didn’t do his.’

Deep down inside, though, they will know that for all the batting records, despite being the winningest captain, and even though the world’s cricket writers swoon over their classic style, they simply aren’t the best. Their sponsors may still have a place for them but sport, that unforgiving arbiter, will not.

The choice is theirs.