IT is an hour in which, even as you look behind, you look beyond. Under a cloud in South Africa, over to "England" go India - with the cosily cocooned feeling of being back in their own bailiwick. A bailiwick where the wicket better suits a Harbinder Singh having the Sanspareil Greenlands (not the Kookaburra) ball in his supple, subtle hand. With this SG ball it was that Harbhajan laid low World Champions Australia. Could the lad now - "Ashes to Ashes and clay to clay" - have England in a similar "Harbind"?
Right up to the midway Test-series stage in South Africa, such was the tenor of India's batting that Sunil Gavaskar and Geoffrey Boycott, Ravi Shastri and Navjot Sidhu, had a minefield-day. In the result, what we had, at the end of the day, was a wealth of comment on commitment (or lack of it) on the part of Indian batsmen. If the Indian batsmen (up against a Shaun Pollock in his world-classy element) were guilty of making the same mistakes time and again, the ESPN-STAR mikemen, too, kept making the same points again and again.
What viewers - in such a milieu where the telecommentators have to keep going long after close of play - look for is healthy debate and dissent. One commentator seeing third eye to third eye with the other does not add much to the grand sum of the visuals. It was therefore a rewarding moment when Navjot Singh Sidhu - for an enlightening change - refused, gently, to go along with Sunil Gavaskar's viewpoint that the idea of a psychologist travelling with the team (to motivate our players afresh) was pointless at this juncture in a seasoned performer's career. Navjot came back into the big league after Sunil had called it a day-and-night with the 1987 World Cup. Sidhu, in consequence, came to be exposed much more to the advanced techniques adopted in cricket after Sunil had left. Navjot, in this context, subtly queried Sunil's being totally dismissive of the notion that there should be a headshrinker, spot on, to galvanise the Indian team into action.
How one wishes Navjot would draw more and more upon such cricketing experience fulfillingly his own - after Sunil Gavaskar and Geoffrey Boycott hung up their recalcitrant bats! When Sanjay Manjrekar came into the telecommentary team, it was this generational lacuna that he was expected to fill. Sanjay was just about beginning to settle down when Navjot arrived (as a ball-to-ball commentator) to upset all settled values in telecommentary. To each his own style, so that, if Navjot is current coin with telebuffs in the highly individual idiom of comment that he has devised for himself, that is the way of the viewing world. However, now that Sidhu's popular niche is no longer in doubt, the sardar, even while maturingly toning down his colourful phraseology, should be seeking the opportunity, more and more, to be his own commentary man.
Sunil, for instance, has by now Little Mastered the art of drawing away from Geoffrey without giving that opener's opener the kind of offence that would "show" on TV. Likewise should Navjot be refining the craft of taking on Mohican fellow commentators without necessarily getting confrontational. No harm in occasionally turning the spotlight on oneself to drive home a point made on the strength of one's own peculiar seasoning! Boycs is doing it all the time, miraculously giving the impression that Geoffrey played as much for the team as for "him"!
Let us bring under the microscope this captive commentator speaking in a bucolic "phoren" accent that endears him to all India.
Geoffrey Boycott makes solid Yorkshire-pudding sense in the views he explicitly expresses. If only because he is on the ball with decision, on the button with precision. But Geoffrey Boycott's touring record is by no means as unsullied as he would have us make-believe. England is right now touring India and Geoffrey's, presumably, is going to be the voice of mission, reason and passion dominating the telescene. But what happened when Geoffrey Boycott himself toured India with Keith Fletcher's England team in 1981-82?
Boycott then notched 60 & 3 in the Bombay Test - a series opener at the end of which Geoffrey, gracelessly, was viewed to leave the prize-giving ceremony (in visible disgust) upon a totally out-of-touch Sunil Gavaskar's being Wankhede Stadium-awarded for a highly dubious opening-day 55. Boycott himself went on to hit 36 & 50 in the Bangalore Test; 105 & 34 not out in the Kotla Test; 18 & 6 in the Eden Gardens Test. For all that, Boycott's England was still one-down, as his co-commentator of today, Sunil Gavaskar (with a matching scoreline of 55 & 14; 172; 46; 42 & 83 not out), just refused to loosen his stranglehold on the rubber, once his India had handed Fletcher's England a 138 runs beating in that first Test at Bombay. As Kapil Dev (13.2-0-70-5) and Madan Lal (12-6-23-5) bowled almost unchanged, England (needing 241 to win) came to be shot out for 102 - inside a day. And Boycott had scored but 3 when he had no counter to a Madan Lal beauty catching Geoffrey, as England's beast of prey, plumb in front. Just like Geoffrey to question even such a palpable lbw decision!
If that was only to be expected, what was not to be anticipated was Boycott's failing to turn up for the January 1982 fifth Test at Chepauk plus the sixth Test at Kanpur - with Fletcher's England continuing to be one-down in the series. Boycott, in hitting 105 in the third Test at Kotla, had overhauled Sir Gary Sobers' then world-record tally of 8032 runs (ave. 57.78) from 93 Tests. After attaining this personal milestone during that December 1981 third Test at Kotla, solo performer Geoffrey Boycott seemed to lose all interest in orchestrating the England team to squaring the 1981-82 series in India - even while himself reaching a new career high of 8114 runs (ave. 47.72) from 108 Tests. Indeed, after mysteriously moving away from that key Madras Test, Boycott was never again to play for England, being sent packing home - under the pretext of being "ill"!
Only for Geoff Boycott to surface in radiant health, a few weeks later, in South Africa - as the bandleader of a team of 15 English "mercenaries"! His Test-playing days thus numbered, Boycott soldiered on for Yorkshire, heading (in 1982) the English averages (at 61.70) with an input of 1913 runs! Indeed, the pertinacious Geoffrey stayed put to hit 100 hundreds, for Yorkshire alone, by 1985; and to strike his 150th century (in all first-class cricket) during 1986. No player, therefore, was more committed to himself than was Geoffrey Boycott. That is why, as a commentator against the backdrop of that 1981-82 series-quitting happening, Boycs needs, now, to be going easy in his comment on players' "commitment" to the team and the cause!
At various stages during the tour of South Africa, Sourav and Rahul, Sachin and Laxman, did need to be called to run-getting account - by Boycs and Sunny alike. But in a vein that would have encouraged them to bond, as a team, rather than bend as individuals. When have we ever performed thunderingly abroad (against a cricketing nation that counts) for the glitterati in our present team to have been roasted - evening in, evening out - by Boycott and Gavaskar, when not Sidhu and Shastri? Carpingly repetitive assertion of the same Indian batting failing made even pointed criticism lose its keen edge.
After India's 4-0 whitewash in Australia during our 1967-68 tour Down Under, the Junior Nawab of Pataudi succinctly outlined the nation's cricketing problems, in the international arena, as: (i) lack of pace bowlers; (ii) failure to hold vital catches; (iii) the new tendency to "rush" our cricket, forgetting that Test matches are played over five days, not three. "How amazingly valid our Tiger skipper's perspective remains a full 33 years after it was put forth? From the same Pataudi (in Tiger's Tale) we had this very special insight: "Tests highlight the slightest flaw in a batsman's technique. Once this has been exposed, the world's top bowlers will exploit it with nagging persistence."
So long as Sunil was exploring this Pat-pinpointed grey area in our batting to underpin our failings, the credibility gap between Sourav's bat and Rahul's pad looked convincing enough on the small screen. What, therefore, came as a shocker was Sunil's grave charge that the language in which our players communicate (in their home and State) had again become the basis for their grouping together on tour. It was, remember, Ajit Wadekar who put an end to this pernicious linguistic malaise (in the Indian team) by seeing to it that one player invariably double-roomed with a performer from another State. Ajit told me that the realisation dawned upon him when, unwittingly, he was speaking to the Bombay players in his touring team, huddled as a group, in Marathi. "What we were engaged in was idle Marathi prattle," revealed Ajit, "but, to players from other States, it perhaps sounded like we were discussing something we did not want them to hear!"
For my part, I thought the Indian team had already travelled a long way ahead, in this direction, once the Junior Nawab of Pataudi made each one of our players feel (for the first time) that he was, every inch, an Englishman's equal - on and off the field - and should, therefore, be looking his white opponent in the eye. Where performers of Sunil's era seem to feel slighted is in that our players, today, no longer sidle up to our icons with their problems. But does Sunny really expect performers of Sourav, Rahul and Laxman's leavening to come to him in this age, at this stage? Recall the time, Sunil, when (on the 1991-92 tour of Australia) our team, under Azhar, felt itself to be under siege from all sides? Refreshingly, Sunil then just walked up to the Indian team at the nets with the offer: "Boys, could I be of help?" It was with vociferous unanimity that Sunny then was welcomed by Azhar and the boys to guide the Indian team out of its Kangarootless travails.
Even topnotch players withdraw into a peculiar shell when they are not doing well on tour. At such times, they might or might not summon the gumption to trudge up to a little giant like Sunil for counsel. Therefore the first feeler, here, had to come from Sunil. In sum, if in South Africa the Indian batting looked as "wrinkled" as did Grasim Suiting to supermodel Sheetal Mallar, it was up to vintager Sunil (even if no longer in Gwalior Suiting) to step up and show our players how to cut the blazer according to the cloth.
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