11 players - but where is the team?

Prem Panicker

It is an old axiom that if you want to find out what is happening within the Indian cricket team, the time to do so is when the team has dispersed and the players are back in their respective homes.

Call them during a tour, and they make the obligatory noises, insist that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and politely end the coversation. Wait till they get home, though, then phone them and they talk - albeit off the record, and with the mandatory prologue: "Please don't use my name, the last thing I want is to be hauled up for telling the truth".

During the latter leg of the recent South African tour, the whispers from that country was vaguely disquieting, indicating as they did that the Indian team was not exactly spilling over with the milk of human kindness.

And underlining the impression was the statements from leading members of the opposition. "I," said Zimbabwe's coach and senior pro David Houghton, "have played against India for years now, and am yet to see such a dispirited side."

Could it be because the side has been reeling from a series of defeats? "That alone does not explain it," says Houghton. "From their attitude, it is clear that there is more to it than meets the eye." Adds South African coach Bob Woolmer: "To me, it appears to be a case of behind-scenes problems resulting in indiscipline in all aspects of the game."

Is the assessment true? And if so, what are the reasons for it?

Judging by off-record comments of some of the players who made up the touring party, it was a concatenation of factors, none of them damaging in itself, yet altogether culiminating in a situation wherein the prevailing attitude among the members of the team was mistrust, suspicion, insecurity - and bruised ego.

Take the last named first, and the name that first springs to mind is that of Nayan Mongia. Briefly, the history is thus - India's first keeper got a nasty delivery from Allan Donald in the third Test at Johannesburg, and was less than 100 per cent fit for the first game in the one day series that followed. Captain Tendulkar then asked him to sit out the game, and included Saba Karim in the side - and the second keeper promptly came good with a battling 50-plus innings. This meant that Karim continued to play the one day series, while Mongia was forced to sit on the sidelines.

Reinstated for the rain-ruined first final against South Africa at Durban, Mongia was involved in the disastrous run-out of Mohammad Azharuddin. Azhar pushed to mid on, called, and sprinted across. Mongia, at the non-striker's end, first made the cricketing error of looking at the ball and not at his partner - given that the stroke had been played in the V, it was Azhar's call. And when he did turn round and found Azhar standing beside him, he compounded the error by not sacrificing his wicket, though Azhar was obviously asking him to do so. At the time, Azhar was on 60-plus while Mongia had just come in, so it made sense for the Indian keeper to allow the well set batsman to continue.

There was something very obstinate about Mongia's attitude at the wicket on that occasion - and the fact that it was not merely a case of the player showing cricketing presence of mind, but symptomatic of a deeper malaise, was confirmed when Mongia was dropped, on disciplinary grounds, for the replayed final.

Now that the players are back home, it turns out that Mongia - who has been rated by all commentators as one of the best in the business - is nursing a definite grouse over his omission from the one day side. "I have lasted longer as an opener than many of the regular ones," says the ace keeper. "And suddenly, I find myself out of the team."

Form wise, Mongia would appear to be the first choice - Karim is obviously not anywhere close to him in terms of wicket-keeping abilities. And thus, Mongia's grouse appears to have some substance.

Having said that, the question bears the asking - as a senior player, should Mongia not have taken such things in stride, rather than make a bad situation worse by acting as he did at the crease and, in the process, harming the team cause by the needless run out of Azhar?

What in the event has been the result of the episode? Karim, aware of Mongia's antipathy, nurses a grouse. Mongia sports a chip on his shoulder. And Azharuddin, the victim of the run-out, is obviously miffed at the incident, and its perpetrator. In other words, three key members of the side nurse grievances against each other, while Mongia is also miffed with the team management comprising skipper Tendulkar and coach Madan Lal.

Madan Lal himself has been at the receiving end of some flak - the general feeling being that he is a hard taskmaster, and needlessly abusive of his players, to boot. Add to this the fact that he has proved to be less than the perfect tactician - vide his persistence with Javagal Srinath in the pinch-hitter's slot, among other instances.

Lal himself makes no secret of the fact that he is as unhappy with the players as they are with him. "I am sore about a lot of things," said the Indian coach, after the team to the West Indies was announced. "But I cannot talk in detail now. It is not that I want to hide things from the public, it is just that I have a duty to first report to the Board."

Interestingly, Azharuddin himself is the centre of more bad blood. While the former Indian captain played at the top of his form in the one-dayers and, on more than one occasion, guided the team out of early difficulties, he was more slapdash in the Test series. And a section of the team, at least, believes that Azharuddin had no business playing the kind of rash strokes that got him out more than once, when the need was for long innings from the senior batsmen. Azhar was in fact twice spoken to at team meetings, and asked to rethink his carefree attitude to batting - but given the fact that he is the seniormost player in the side, his captain, far younger in years, has apparently not been able to get his message across with sufficient emphasis.

Asked whether some Indian players had displayed a less than professional approach to the game during the South African tour, coach Madan Lal said, "Well, that is there for everyone to see. In Tests, we have to stick around, play long innings. What is needed is a century in five hours, not fifty in 30 minutes. And when some players do less than justice to their place in the side, the result is that the pressure on Sachin builds up even more. I keep telling him there are 10 other players besides him, but Sachin tends to blame the non-performance on the side on himself, and this further affects his game."

Team selection is yet another sore point. The zonal biases that have fuelled various selections has, in the final analysis, resulted in further schism within the ranks. Players who are in the side mainly because they have been picked to fill quotas are looked down upon by the ones who have claimed a place on sheer merit. And among the latter category, there is also the feeling that the quota-players are having an easy time of it, while they have to do all the hard work - an attitude that hardly makes for 100 per cent commitment on the field.

Another fallout is that players from various zones have tended to stick together, and not mix too much with their colleagues from other zones. "Players need to interact with each other, learn to know and trust each other off the field. Only then will they back each other up 100 per cent on the field. Unfortunately, however, the team is riddled with zonal cliques, and so there is very little across the board interaction," confirmed a senior member of the cricket establishment.

Another widespread reason for discontent lies in the fact that, in the perception of the players, the Board has not really been backing them to the hilt. An oft-cited instance is the absence of a physical trainer. The Indian players have been at it non-stop for a year now, beginning with the Wills World Cup in February 1996 - and wear and tear is beginning to tell on the bodies of the various players. Unfortunately, Ali Irani's presence in the side as physio owes more to the fact that he is persona very much grata with the board, than with his abilities in the physiotherapy department.

"We are all drained after so much continous cricket," Lal admitted. "We badly need a doctor and a physical trainer."

In fact, so dire is the need that the Indians, on the South African tour, were actually approaching South Africa's trainer, Paddy Uptom, for help with fitness exercises and diet. Upton for his part is appalled at the lack of knowledge the Indians show in this crucial department. "The players have only a basic knowledge of what fitness is all about. And the Indians are making it worse by not hiring specialists. Today, we use psychiatrists, sprint specialists, vision technique experts, special coaches to teach throwing, stuff like that, besides physical conditioning experts, dieticians, psychologists... Whereas all the Indians have is one coach, Madan Lal, trying to do a job he hasn't been trained specifically for."

A common grouse among the Indian players who went to South Africa arises from the 10.30 pm curfew Madan Lal has imposed. Most players appeared to feel that the result of this was that they didn't get a chance to interact with the South African players outside the field of play, and get to know them on a person-to-person basis. And this lack of personal contact only tended to aggravate on-field aggro, vide the incidents involving Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald.

"We don't believe in curfews and such," Upton says. "The choice has to be left to the players, the commitment has to come from within. Simply sending them to bed like naughty schoolboys only makes matters worse."

The upshot, according to players who have just returned from the tour, is that the Indian camp was a joyless, suspicion-ridden camp - and the result was that the fun was taken out of the game. And when that happens, the stress of continuous cricket makes an even greater impact on morale, it is being pointed out.

Another important factor is the amount of cricket that is being scheduled (as I write this, comes the news that while the last game of the Windies tour - the final one-day match - will be played on May 3, the Indian team will have barely enough time to catch the flight to India before getting involved in a tough quadrangular, for the Independence Cup, against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand beginning May 9).

While Jagmohan Dalmiya, the BCCI secretary, has said that the Cup fixtures were decided only after consulting captain Tendulkar and coach Madan Lal, it surely takes no genius to realise that no team can expect to keep up a uniform standard of performance under this kind of strain. The tour to the Windies - coming at the end of a season that has seen India play the World Cup, then in Singapore, Sharjah, England, Sri Lanka, Toronto, then a one-off Test versus the Aussies, then the Titan Cup triangular, then six Tests (three home and three away) versus RSA and yet another triangular in the latter country - involves five Tests, several tour games and four one-dayers. By no stretch of the imagination will this team be either physically or mentally up for tough contests against premier sides like Sri Lanka and Pakistan immediately thereafter.

The results of such frenetic activity is already there to see. "We feel that Prasad has lost at least two yards in pace from the Singer Series in Colombo in September 1996 to the triangular series in South Africa," feels Houghton. "If Brandes and Streak were to bowl continuously for four months, they too would be like Prasad now, these Indians are playing too much cricket."

Lal agrees that the scheduling is too frenetic. "An optimum amount is around 50 days of international cricket, divided between Tests and one-dayers, per season. Beyond that, no player can be at his best. Players at this level need time to iron out their problems in the nets - but when these boys are playing every second day of the year, how can I push them further in the nets? There is just so much strain a human body will take," argues the Indian coach.

This is one of the main reasons that the Indian players have not worked on the basic skills of the game - as for instance running between wickets. Sunil Gavaskar, on Star Sports, compared the Indian running between wickets to the antics of a flock of agitated pigeons, while SA coach Bob Woolmer summed it up in one word: "Pathetic!"

The only way to improve is to have sprint sessions, to actually practise the art of taking quick singles out there on the ground on non-match days. But such days off have been too few in recent months, and when they do occur, the players prefer to put their feet up and unwind from the tedium of the game just played.

There is yet another fallout - and that is the consequent drop in standards in domestic cricket.

Throw your mind back to the third Test between India and South Africa, at Johannesburg. A week before the game, South Africa announced its playing eleven, picked a 12th man, and then released the rest of the players so they could play the domestic Supersport Series.

The reason - it is in domestic cricket that players can actually get opportunities to fine tune their technique, to erase flaws and experiment. And this is how a player improves. Meanwhile, the presence of national stars in the domestic games not only adds to the public interest, but also motivates the other players to give of their best, and thus sharpens the level of competition.

Compare that situation with the one prevailing in India right now. Players like Sujit Somasundar and Vikram Rathore, to name just two among over a dozen recent examples, were picked up on the basis of their performance in domestic matches - but when was the last time they had to face bowlers of the calibre of say a Srinath or a Prasad?

By the same token, bowlers like Kuruvilla, Ankola, Johnson and Ganesh have enhanced their career stats in course of the domestic games - without having to bowl to the Dravids, the Gangulys, the Azharuddins and Tendulkars.

Experts ranging from Ravi Shastri through Harsha Bhogle and Sunil Gavaskar believe that if the overall standard of Indian cricket is to improve, there should be a good balance between domestic and international cricket. Coach Madan Lal concurs: "We should first concentrate on bridging the gap between domestic and international cricket," he argues.

So are we saying, here, that these are the reasons why India lost so badly in South Africa?

Unfortunately, it is not quite so easy - such things have a tendency of developing into a vicious circle. The team loses. Bad blood increases. Physical and mental fatigue escalates. The performance in the next game deteriorates further. The team loses. More bad blood...

You get the point?

"I have never seen such a jaded side in all my years," said Dave Houghton after the one day game at Bulawayo, which India lost to Zimbabwe at the fag end of the South African tour. "Those guys seemed to be sleep-walking out there!"

Says it all, doesn't it? And to make matters worse, essentially the same bunch of blokes - fatigued, mentally exhausted, jaded, dispirited, mutually antagonistic - will leave for the West Indies in five days from now, to play five Tests and four one-dayers.

At this rate, what can be expected except more sleep-walking on the field of play by the players? And more insomnia for the legions of disappointed Indian fans across the globe?