Wanted: the winning habit

I saw the celebration in Bulawayo and the muted acceptance of defeat in Harare; saw history return to Port-of-Spain with an Indian test win and reassert itself with defeat in Bridgetown; saw the impossible nestling in an Indian fist at Adelaide and experienced the despair of seeing it slip away at Melbourne.

Now, Multan and Lahore. Each time India have taken the lead in a series, each time they have squandered it. Four times they have taken the first step towards erasing the worst away record in the history of cricket and four times they have embraced that record. It is like falling in love with an unwanted guest.

Great teams win matches on the trot, they don’t extinguish themselves with just one. This is a fine Indian team, it has planted the flag of success in areas few other Indian teams had but it is some distance away from becoming a great team. History still clings to its neck like a persistent vampire; it has been shrugged away, it hasn’t yet been decimated. There is enormous self-belief in this team, as they showed in an awesome performance at Multan, but it seems it needs something more.

Hopefully this is the passage of evolution, these are the hiccups that come before independence when you have been subjugated for too long. Maybe the next win will strangle the messenger of doom on the way. This team is capable of doing that. It doesn’t have the artillery with the ball, instead of cannons India’s bowling overseas resembles a persistent mosquito, but if the batsmen give them runs to play with, they might still do their job.

But the batsmen must provide those runs. At the moment, India’s performance is very strongly correlated to the performance of the openers. When the openers play the new ball, India’s batsmen are kings; when the openers perish early, they tend to take the middle with them. That is why, for all its incandescent skills, this is not the best batting line-up in the world.

On a lot of days it can lay claim to that but, until they start producing big totals when the openers fail, the jury will be out. A team, though, must work on the assumption that the batsmen will succeed and that is why Rahul Dravid’s decision to bat first was the right decision. India needed to survive for two hours, maybe three, and then take advantage of the best batting conditions.

At Leeds, a year and a half ago, India gambled similarly in conditions that were far more difficult for batting. The top order stayed firm that day and India pulled off its best overseas win in recent times. Had India survived in Lahore, a total of 500 was not impossible. Pakistan would have capitulated for they looked tense and uncertain. That India didn’t make the runs in the first innings was a tribute to the way Umar Gul bowled but it did not make the decision wrong.

So where do India go from here? Like in Australia a fantastic performance runs the risk of being remembered only by the events of the last week. India still haven’t won a series outside the sub-continent since 1986, that millstone still hangs around their neck, and they must approach the next week aware that they have a chance of creating history. For that to happen the batsmen must give the bowlers runs to bowl with and, if recent records are to serve as indicators, it means India need their openers to take the sting off the new ball.

That is why India must resist the temptation of playing a stop-gap opener. Using part-timers has been the bane of Indian cricket; being seduced by short-term measures has been the reason India have had a long-term problem. A lot of Indian teams have looked good on paper but that rarely wins matches. Solid, settled openers do and they need the same faith shown to them that middle-order players have been afforded.

If we go in for a stop-gap opener we will never have a settled pair again. India need to take bold decisions, not cosmetic ones; they need to play their two best openers and four best middle-order players. It will be interesting to see if they stand firm or succumb.