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When the Indian cricket team came back home after the England tour, it was like waking up from a really bad, dream. Thankfully, for the team, people tended to dismiss India’s abject performance as an aberration, and also as indicative that England was the new Australia.
So, when India looked to Australia, the tour was touted as India’s best chance to defeat Australia in their own backyard.
It was touted as the tour when Sachin Tendulkar would score his hundredth international century, and would add a missing bullet point to his long resumé: that of a series win on Australian soil. He had finally got the World Cup after all, at his sixth attempt.
But India are 3-0 down and struggling. It begs the question, is something wrong with Indian cricket after all? Are these performances a corroboration of the contention that the India are only tigers at home?
One can explain, with the help of ample facts, that India were more than competitive abroad and deserved to be No. 1 at the time they reached the top spot. Now, however, something has gone truly wrong.
Before we look at India’s decline, which is in its early stages, let us look at the reasons why Australia, the team to beat, went into decline.
The oft-repeated reason is the retirement of all-time greats such as Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist et al, but I believe there was a more important reason than that. I call it the perfect storm.
The discerning would remember that Australia did not go into decline immediately after the departure of the aforementioned greats. Now, if that was not the case, their departure could not have been the main reason. The reason was simple. Key players were all out of form. All at the same time. More or less.
Ponting, Hussey, Clarke, Hayden, among others, lost their mojo as batsmen. Lee, Johnson, Clark, among others, were the guilty bowlers. The same, it is to be noted, has happened to India.
One the key reasons why India rose to the top of the world rankings in Test cricket was that, perhaps for the first time in the history of Indian cricket, India had found two sound Test openers simultaneously. In the past, they had struggled to find even a single quality opener, bar Gavaskar.
It seemed like an embarrassment of riches when you had a batting line-up where the middle was packed with the galacticos, comprising Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman, and the frontline boasted the marauding Sehwag and an indomitable Gambhir, both of whom, at different times, sat atop the Test batting rankings.
Then it all started to fall apart. The galacticos now look a shadow of their very recent past, and the openers have been in decline a little longer. Gambhir’s case is particularly pathetic, especially if one recalls that he is the same batsman who once dominated the Test batting rankings, averaged a Tendulkaresque 57, and looked the one batsman who just refused to give away his wicket.
But combined lack of form is not the only reason. The malaise is deeper. Another reason is the love affair with limited overs cricket of which T20 is the more unabashed and abrasive form.
The phenomenon that is the IPL was created and driven by a man who went by the name of Lalit Modi. An examination of his background would reveal that he is the heir to a multi-billion rupee business empire and that he had chosen to acquire education in sports marketing.
It is clear his intentions were primarily to provide commercial flair to cricket, and it was no surprise he chose T20 as the form of cricket around which he would build the IPL. The manner in which he set up and popularised IPL is a lesson in brand-building and deserves to find a place in compulsory curriculum in the marketing management classes of ivy-league b-schools.
However, in doing what he did, he relegated Test cricket to being a less attractive career option both for established and developing Indian cricketers. Gautam Gambhir went on to become the highest paid player in the IPL and young players like Suresh Raina too pocketed a substantial bit of cash.
The money from endorsements, determined more by performances in limited overs, is even bigger than IPL paydays. Indian cricketers, awash with such staggering access of money, found themselves ill-at-ease to motivate themselves for Test cricket.
The example of India’s captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, perhaps typifies the problem better than anyone else’s.
A while back he signed a there-year cash contract with Rhiti Sports for an eye-popping sum of two billion rupees (40 million USD). That straightaway put him on the league table of highest-paid sportsmen in the world. A comparison of his performances before and after signing the contract reveals a lot.
His performance, in general, dipped and his Test cricket, in particular, suffered. It is no surprise then that, in the midst of the ongoing India-Australia series, he has talked of retiring from “one form of cricket” if he wishes to play the ODI World Cup in 2015. No prizes for guessing which.
Last but not the least, one look at the assembly line of young Indian cricketers reveals a lot. Notably, the ones who form part of discussions in the media and among observers are all players with a limited overs-focus. Yuvraj Singh, not exactly a youngster, never really graduated to being a dependable Test player and remained content with being a limited overs star.
Suresh Raina played ODI after ODI before finally managing a Test debut and does not quite look like he will change India’s fortunes in Test cricket.
Rohit Sharma, who the purists and pundits adore because “he has so much time to play his shots”, has actually flopped even in ODIs, which is a less demanding form of cricket, as far as technique is concerned.
Virat Kohli, he of the spiky hair, cool TV advertisements and newfound posterboy-heartthrob status, is another example of an Indian batsman who has made it in ODIs but has a long way to go in Test cricket.
The opener cupboard looks bare once again and so, there seems to be no one who could replace the struggling Gambhir. Abhinav Mukund was tried with some success in the West Indies but that was misleading as he failed in England, where it really mattered.
Still, hope floats.
Two batsmen offer a glimmer. The very talented Cheteshwar Pujara is one of them. Unspoilt despite turning out in the IPL, he has a penchant for racking up triple hundreds in domestic cricket. But I stress the word “glimmer”.
After a stellar debut at home against Australia, where Pujara managed to get his name onto the headlines, he failed in South Africa. But, then, in his defence, it was a low-scoring series.
I only mention him because he is a grafter in the mould of a Dravid and not given to the slam-bang T20 affairs which many talented Indian youngsters find themselves lured into. The other name worth mentioning is Ajinkya Rahane. Just like Pujara, he has scored very heavily in domestic first class cricket and looks a batsman of the finest Mumbai tradition, whose lives revolve around batting.
To the uninitiated, Vijay Merchant, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunil Gavaskar and of course, Sachin Tendulkar are all batsmen who emerged from the same environment. However, these are but \ two names. Is Indian cricket’s supply chain, then, robust enough to arrest this sudden and alarming slide when everything seems to be coming apart at the seams?
Only time will tell.
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