If, by any chance, you had yourself cryogenically frozen on or around that fateful night of April 2nd when the Indian cricket team won the 2011 Cricket World Cup and have only recently risen from your extended period of hibernation, you are in for a bit of a rude shock. It's fine if you believe in the theory that all good organizations go through cycles - The Roman empire was a shining example of that - but even the Roman empire took a few hundred years to fall. Had they followed Team India's model, history would have degenerated into a B-grade sci-fi flick where an army of giant termites attack and start gnawing at the foundations of the capital within a few minutes of their most golden period.
Of course, it's not like the players or the fans were given much of an opportunity to take in the victory. If some rumors are to be believed, N Srinivasan - the current Godfather of Indian cricket - ordered the entire squad to be doused with a bucket of ice water barely hours after they had started celebrating, and got them all changed out of their India kits to their respective IPL PJ's. My source is prone to exaggeration and this sounds a bit far fetched, but I have been wrong to doubt these kind of news before. But then with the kind of money on offer at the IPL, I doubt there was a lot of grumbling. Gambhir even started pushing and shoving everyone who was not part of KKR to get into the spirit of things.
However, the way these things work is that something is bound to give. For the irrelevant tour of the West Indies (who the ICC insist are still a Test-playing nation), as well as the tour of England, India went through more injuries and replacements than Elizabeth Taylor went through husbands during a busy year. By the time the ODI series comes to an end (and it cannot end soon enough), I doubt there will be anyone left in India who could salvage even a single positive out of it. For years, we have pondered in silent dread over what would happen if and when:
1. Zaheer breaks down for the 7th time. (Or is it the 8th?)
2. Sehwag and Sachin are both decommissioned.
3. The Indian population realizes that Laxman and Harbhajan Singh and two of the most overrated cricketers to be playing for the country and that Dhoni can not turn water into wine.
#1 is probably the most scary of the lot. Our over-dependence on Zaheer has to be addressed before any other issue. The South African tour and World Cup should have made the administrators wrap him up in cotton wool between important series. Ishant showed signs of being back to his best, but that was against a sub-standard West Indian lineup and any feel-good factor from that tour must have definitely eroded by now. That we had to depend upon Praveen Kumar, who in his early 20's, labors to the crease as if at gunpoint, and proceeds to bowl in the early 120's, was a throwback to the 1990's when Srinath broke down and we had Venkatesh Prasad leading the attack for us. To us Indian fans, those memories are akin to survivors' World War memories. We had all got down on our knees and prayed that we don't have to see such a day again. And yet those dark days have returned. As if that is not enough, we now have to endure R Vinay Kumar, in all his mediocrity, wearing an India shirt and bowling some extremely friendly length balls that even the most English of English batsmen would not have any trouble with. And all this while we have that rarest of beasts, Varun Aaron - who is said to be capable of bowling in the 140's - warming the bench. What kind of message is this to the kids watching?
I say issue #2 is not as worrying as #1, but that is only relative. In the shorter formats, we can still get by without either of these players performing and we would still end up being competitive. However, there is no doubt in my mind that in test cricket, we need at least 1 if not both of these guys to deliver, otherwise our batting ends up looking a touch too feeble, especially in Australia/England/South Africa. With absolutely no disrespect to Dravid, I have to say that his innings are the types that make our margins of defeat slightly more respectable. But at this point, only Sehwag has the capacity to turn an entire test match around on his own. The BCCI did try and offer the band air solution of rushing a visibly unfit and slightly deaf Sehwag to England only for the move to fall flat on it's face.
#3 is something that certain people still believe is news fabricated by aliens who want to take over the world. Describing Laxman's batting is some kind of national sport where his flowing drives have been compared to everything from floral meadows to Deepika Padukone's hips. Also, saying you don't like Laxman is almost like admitting you are gay in India - it's a ticket to becoming a social pariah. And yet, when you realize that this guy has been playing for India for over 15 years without ever asserting the kind of authority you would expect after all this time, it's fairly obvious that he is in the team on the basis of a few admittedly outstanding innings. Harbhajan, on the other hand, is not afforded the same affections in the media and yet continues to represent the country at every given opportunity. In every recent interview, he has stressed how "the ball has been coming out of the hand really well." and how this is the best he's ever bowled. If he is to be believed, there must be some sort of inverse relation between how well he's bowling and how many wickets he's taking. My advice to him would be: Please bowl the crappiest you've ever bowled and pick up bucketfuls of wickets. I really hope the selectors take this opportunity to give the likes of Kohli/Sharma and Ashwin test berths to build for the future. And it would also be a good time for Dhoni to take a long hard look at himself and try and go back to figuring out why he was selected into the team in the first place.
After the great high came the IPL. After this lowest of lows, comes the Champions League. Let us hope that the only way from here is up.
