Kyon miyan, captain banoge?

If only it were as easy as that. Which begs the question, what is this that that we're talking about. Umm, stay with me. Despite the oh so irritating verbal jugglery. It's an occupational hazard I promise to get rid of. Back to the cricket. Like I was saying, if only it were that easy to be captain of India. Which then begs the question, why is it so difficult to be captain of India? Or, why has India had few, if any, captains considered among the best of their times? (Forget all time.)

To delve into a couple of names, just to illustrate my point, there was Gavaskar. Acknowledged by many to be one of the better captains India has had. But Gavaskar... well, let's put it this way, he wasn't a class apart as a leader of men. Sure, he made the best use of his limited resources on hand. Sure, India had no fast bowlers save Kapil to run through sides. And sure, he didn't have the quartet of spinners Wadekar had to back him up. All Gavaskar had was Kapil. And to a certain extent, Dilip Doshi. Who'll be the first to admit was no, well, Bedi. Yet, all said and done, Gavaskar was defensive with a capital D. Something he so awesomely put on the back burner in his last series as captain. Unfortunately, it was a revelation too late. The fact is, Gavaskar is stuck with defensive. And that's one tag no great captain ever carries.

Then take Kapil, Sachin, Azhar, Sourav. Take anyone from the history of Indian cricket. And you/we will still be searching for an Imran among us. Or the unifying force that was a Clive Lloyd. Or the gritty motivator that was Allan Border. Or the canny, ruthless mind that is Steve Waugh. Put brutally simply, the best captains in the world are not from India. Ever wondered why? Could it be in something we eat? Don't eat? Or could it be that deep-seated colonial hangover we still carry and so easily let slip nary a thought?

Yes, the same one something even as powerful as the media bending over backwards to paint their own heroes in black and genuflect abjectly in the face of a craving we seem to have for the white man's recognition. Now throw the psychobabble out of the window and it might even boil down to something as basic as... we expect too much. The insane pressure we seem to put on our heroes/leaders can't make life any easier for them. It 'hasss' to affect their performance. It takes an incredibly strong individual to soak up the kind of life we force our captains to lead and, furthermore, translate into performance positivity. I know, more meaningless psychobabble. But we do know what I'm getting at, right? Put differently, even the superman that is Sachin failed to, at least in our fiendishly judgmental eyes, deliver. All that must say something about the kind of men we expect our leader to be. Yes, men, not man. The kind of leader we seem to demand can't be found all in one man. Our ideal captain is/has to be custom made. An android put together for our viewing pleasure. Many men in one man, all adding up to a mythical beast of a captain even Sachin had to bow down before.

Most would go on to say, in a more practical, rational vein, that nothing less than 100 per cent is all they really expect the captain to give and get out of his/our team every time they go out in India colours. While that might seem like an utterly reasonable thing on paper, pause for a minute and think about that. And then, this. Has your every day in the office been a day when you've given 100 per cent? Haven't there been days when you just don't feel like being there. Like the days of the Test series just gone by? When the only 100 per cent you gave was spending every minute of your work time thinking about the greatest series so far played on Indian soil. True? Ok, not the best example in the world.

Point is, perhaps it is humanly impossible to give 100 per cent every time. Perhaps the amount of cricket this cash-crazed Board makes them go through, and those have to be the words our players would be feeling like on many of the less sunny days, has made the pure joy of the game that much less. Perhaps it's okay to fix matches that no one except the treasurers in the Board care about. Okay, bad example again. And how so very silly of me. I seem to have forgotten we're the ordinary human beings here. And that our rules don't apply here. Out here, they are special. And anyway, this we seem to love to add, they're making way more than they deserve to. (Like we have any right to take that tone.) And so, net-net, they cannot be judged by our standards. They just have to pander to our every fantasy. Feed our greed for rare successes in the shamelessly under-performing nation and society that is India. And so, you must deliver our quick fixes. Our shortcuts to happiness. You must do, nothing much, win. Umm, every time. Is that too much to ask for? Certainly not! And if that's not humanly possible? But of course, crucify the captain.

Maybe we ought to be more reasonable with our captains. Find better ways to communicate our thoughts to them. Work with, as against cross-purposes, them. Even, for once, try and do a bit of all that learning we so love to dole out, ourselves. (Instead of always expecting our captains to listen to every one of our million path-breaking, great, good, ok, pathetic and downright insulting ideas on how he can improve the lot of his team.)

For starters, we can start by being a bit more supportive towards them. To cite two mortifyingly examples of insensitive and unforgivable behaviour: thing, and then cringe, oranges at Sunny in Eden and Sourav being booed off the ground on his long, lonely walk back to the pavilion after yet another heart-rending failure with his, until recently, broader-than-Jeniffer's-posterior-bat. It can't be something we want to be ever reminded of. And obviously there is something very uncouth in us to stoop low enough to grudge our leaders the respect they so deserve for simply carrying the burden of our expectations. Just that should make the leader special in our hearts. To cut to the chase, say, it may be time to do a bit of looking within. You know, the fact that we have had so few great captains might have a bit to do with us. Think Damocles. Think Indian captain. Ever wondered how good a leader a man in Damocles, or the Indian captain's, seat would make?

Avinash Subramaniam

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