DID his captain not order Mushtaq Ali to run out Vijay Merchant in the famous Manchester Test of July 1936 at a time when India was trailing Gubby Allen's England by 203 runs? Those were the precise number of runs (203) that Mushtaq Ali (112) and Vijay Merchant (finally 114) put together (through 150 minutes) for India's first wicket in as fluent a rearguard as any seen in the game. This after Mushtaq (while the two were walking out to open) had spilled the run-out beans to Merchant. For Vijay to have responded in jest: "Just you try!"
Mushtaq habitually ran for his life, Vijay for his times, yet the afternoon of Monday, 27 July 1936 was this duo's Old Trafford day. Where Mushtaq Ali ignored his skipper's dastardly run-out directive that 1936 time out, Vijay Merchant, 15 years later, again opened in what inexplicably turned out to be his swan-song Test for India. The nation's captain in that November 1951 first Test vs Nigel Howard's England was Vijay Hazare. A Hazare who had been firmly told by a Cricket Board bigwig that, "come hell or high water, you simply have to score one run more than Vijay Merchant"! As Nigel Howard's England was dismissed for 203 (that figure again!) with five minutes to go for stumps on the first day, Vijay Merchant opened with debutant Pankaj Roy, on the dot, the following Kotla morning (of Saturday, 3 November 1951).
In the mere five hours of play we had in a day then, A. F. S. Talyarkhan's "Merchant The Master" showed himself to be more English than the English while immaculately stroking his way to a bat-in-hand 106 (in an Indian total of 186 for 2). That put Hazare under even greater Cricket Board pressure, the following day, to overtake the older Vijay. So Merchant slowed down to reach 154 half an hour after lunch on that third day. Hazare, for his ordained part, batted a full hour more than Merchant's 450 minutes to finish with 164 not out! Never again was Vijay Merchant picked to play for India - after having hit that 154.
I touch upon the prose of Hazare and Merchant, alongside Mushtaq Ali's batting as poetry in motion, to pinpoint how captains have done funny things in Indian cricket. Sourav Ganguly, therefore, was in good company in perpetuating this graceless Indian-captain tradition by not calling back Michael Vaughan (64). Sourav, that December 19 Wednesday afternoon, just somehow wanted to see Vaughan's back. After this batsman had displayed the virtuoso touch in striking 64 during that fateful first day of the third and final Test at Bangalore. Sourav could certainly have intervened becomingly, in the messy matter, even after umpire A.V. Jayaprakash had compulsively ruled Vaughan out - handled the ball. Sourav, at that turning point, did badly need a wicket to ensure that England did not run away with the deciding Bangalore Test. To this end, Sourav (looking rudderless in the third eye of the storm raised by his form) decided to take a leaf out of Kapil Dev's captaincy book.
Rewind the small screen to the Sunday afternoon of 27 November 1983. To the fourth Test at Bombay's Wankhede Stadium between Clive Lloyd's West Indies and Kapil Dev's India. By way of retort to India's 463, the West Indies was 128 for 2 - when it happened. Opener Desmond Haynes (having exemplarily grafted his way to 55) got such a rough edge to a ball from Kapil Dev that the ricochet could conceivably have rolled on to the stumps. In a swift reflex action, Haynes stooped and flicked the ball away with his right hand. Upon bowler-skipper Kapil Dev's swivelling and appealing, umpire M.V. Gothoskar benignly let his finger rest on the trigger. Indeed, Gothoskar was espied to be whispering something to Kapil Dev.
I was furious with Madhav Gothoskar for having failed to react on the spot and, knowing him rather well, cornered him at the end of the day's play. Vehemently, I pointed out that "Gothos" had no business to tarry in ruling the batsman out, once an appeal was forthcoming. "But do you really know what transpired there in the middle?" Gothoskar calmed me down. "As Kapil came up with his howl of 'How's that?'," revealed Gothoskar, "since Dev was not only the bowler but also India's skipper, I gently asked him: 'It's a matter of sportsmanship, so are you sustaining the appeal?' And Kapil Dev said he was, adding: 'I do want a wicket!' Imagine, India's captain didn't even know that 'handled the ball' is not a wicket credited to the bowler!" concluded Gothoskar in detailing how he had been left with no go but to declare Desmond Haynes (55) out. A.V. Jayaprakash could likewise have referred the handled-the-ball matter to Sourav. But desisted, perhaps because Sourav was fielding close enough to this umpire to have, instantly, interceded in Vaughan's behalf on his own.
The cardinal point is that Vaughan's wicket so dubiously came Sourav's way at a juncture when Ganguly appeared to be as clueless and idealess - about how to stem the opposition's flow of runs - as Kapil Dev had been on the Des Haynes occasion. An occasion when Viv Richards (ultimately 120) was blazing vividness at the other end. It is imperative to identify the Vaughan (64) happening as the moment in which Sourav's India failed to show itself to be "sportsmanly" enough. But for Vaughan's so coming to feel "had", Nasser Hussain, I say, would not have found just the alibi he was looking for to bring Sachin a leg-peg or two down in world estimate. In getting Ashley Giles and Andrew Flintoff to bowl the way the two did, Nasser Hussain, I submit, elevated Sachin to the peerless status of The Don.
But Tendulkar is no Bradman - never will be now, if we Indians are to be brutally frank with ourselves. Tendulkar (ultimately 90 from 198 balls in 263 minutes with 13 fours) became too precious a wicket for India to cast away in swift pursuit of England's Ganguly-gifted 336. The fact that Sachin was viewed to walk up to Sourav more than once and to urge Ganguly, as captain, to take a tighter grip on the game is a pinpointer in itself. A pointer that the very emphasis with which Tendulkar denies that he is again in the captaincy running is now confirmation that he is back in the reckoning! Remember what Sachin had said, just over a year ago, to a Kolkata daily: "At the moment, I have no problems playing under Sourav. When I gave up the captaincy, the situation demanded so. However, I have never said that I will not lead India again. I am pretty open to the idea of leading India - if the situation comes to such a stage." Such is the stage and situation, now, in the one-day face-off, that Sourav could easily rake in the run-shekels during the six ODIs against Nasser Hussain's England. But would any such one-day-and-night run bounty reaffirm Sourav's standing as India's litmus Test captain?
No, I am not making out a fresh caveat for Sachin to lead India again at a time when Rahul Dravid, too, is away from centrestage. For the sense of urgency with which Sachin moves as a captain, out there, is at direct variance with the blistering pace he sets with the willow. Sachin is batting well enough again for Nasser Hussain to have to bulldog-chain him at one end. So leave well enough alone. In the case of Don Bradman, Australia's captaincy saw this ogre's batting performances lose nothing to the extra responsibility. If anything, The Don's Bradmanifesto, as Australia's leader-rungetter, was definitive as definitive could be. With Sachin, on the other tossing hand, there is already proof that, in the matter of captaining India, he is not one to the Bradmanner born.
Sachin buffs will argue that he was given the job too early in his career, that he is ready for it only now. To that I say that the 20-30 Laxmantle in which we now teleview VVS (as irretrievably cast) makes Sachin too precious a heirloom to risk, afresh, to the vagaries of captaincy. The way VVS at last got going against Steve Waugh's Australia, we could distantly envision him as a future Indian captain. Now (willowy heart in tele-mouth) we instinctively think of what kind of a future Laxman has, here and now, at the wicket! We wonder if he really is "potentially as good as Tendulkar" (even on Indian wickets) against the backdrop of what Steve Waugh wrote about Laxman's Eden Test 281 in his "Skipperspeak" column. Good reading and good breeding are evident in Laxman's batsmanship. So too in Rahul's approach. Yet Laxman, on his return, looks "knee-jerky" in his responses; while Rahul, all over again, seems undecided about how to get his shoulder to the wheel. At the Palio wheel, Sachin alone now displays the gumption to drive his point forcefully home.
Spot-reminding you of how enormous a waste of talent Vinod Kambli appears in Sachin's TV company. If only Vinod had Fevicol stuck it out like Raju Khera, he would have remained "in line" to make all big fish (except Sachin) look as chagrined as Kamal Chopra in the art of "angling" the ball to the boundary.
Sourav, tenuously, is India captain still. If Sourav managed to ease out the stroke-laden Vinod Kambli, it was by solid, sustained Test performance. By the end of the three Tests against Nasser Hussain's England, however, Sourav looked almost a left-handed caricature of himself at the wicket. No amount of runs that Sourav now puts in the ODI kitty is going to rehabilitate his Britannia blade in our sharp Test eyes. Sourav Ganguly seems verily to have come to the pass Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi did in Test cricket against Clive Lloyd's West Indies through 1974-75 - a total of 94 runs from 7 innings in 4 Tests on Tiger's unanimous voteback to India's captaincy. Tiger Pataudi's failure then to measure up to the tempestuous pace of Andy Roberts (with a Test scoreline of 22 & 'absent hurt' at Bangalore; 36 & 8 at Calcutta; 6 & 4 at Madras; 9 & 9 at Bombay saw him, with anonymous grace, bow out of cricket itself.
Nobody is suggesting that Ganguly is going the Pataudi way. But what I wrote about Tiger Pataudi then holds good about Sourav Ganguly, right now, at least in our Test eleven. I wrote: "Remember, India's tail now begins at No. 5!" Seriously, Sourav, even Jagmohan Dalmiya - at a time when he is demanding accountability from one and all - cannot help you if you go on in the vein you are doing in Test cricket. Pataudi ceased to be current Test coin the moment the Tiger failed to show his stripes. Sourav, as the Royal Bengal Tiger, is now going to be judged by the same striped yardstick. The ruthless yardstick by which everyone (except Sharmila Tagore) assessed Tiger as no roaring success in the not so glad season of 1974-75.
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