IF you want to see frustration on display, Indian cricket is your dish. Some good servings in Zimbabwe were topped by a large portion of yesterday's food. And in Sri Lanka, three poor games were countered by three good ones until a terrible final put that distasteful odour up again. Consistency is not a virtue of this side. Sadly, consistency is an essential ingredient of almost every good team.
And yet, this is not a bad Indian team. It is not a great side, only one team today can lay claim to ownership of that wonderful but badly abused adjective, but it is a good side. And given the environment they live and play in, I will stick my neck out and say they are playing better cricket than most people should expect them to.
I say so because a lot of us see the dish that appears on the table, not the kitchen it comes from. We see the end-result, not the process that produces that result. As with the ridiculous reaction to the Wisden Online ratings, where we concentrated on the list without thinking about how it was produced, so it is with our cricket. We celebrate and condemn the results our cricketers throw up without casting a second look at the process that creates them.
You cannot produce a Ferrari out of an Ambassador factory, however hard you try. And if you do want to produce a great car, then you ensure that you have a great factory first. We have a poor, outdated production line managed by a largely obsolete organisation. In normal course, you should get poor, outdated products and that is why I believe this team is actually playing better than it should. You can see generous helpings of talent, see Sehwag's century or Laxman's match-winning effort that started the turnaround, but you can also see the obsolete mechanism that is producing them; see how a lot of them move on the field, for example.
The key word to success anywhere is intensity. We demand it of our cricketers but if we demanded it of our system instead, the product would automatically have it. Success in a team game is rarely about lone ranger individuals shooting down the enemy, it is about a strong phalanx that represents the system. It is always the system that wins, not the individual. And we do not have a system. Till such time as we do, we must be happy with the results we are getting.
This is not an effort at justifying poor performance; or of rallying in support of an inconsistent team. Nobody likes an Indian defeat, none more so than those who have to talk about it immediately afterwards. But it is important to understand why we lose and thereafter, to understand why we will continue to lose from time to time. That is what our cricket system is geared to do. Indian cricket is managed in fits and starts and so, it will perform that way. If we want consistency, we must change the way we produce our cricketers. Otherwise, like a shower with hot and cold taps, we will continue to praise and to ridicule in equal volume.
We must demand, and provide, intensity. Currently, our presidents and secretaries and selectors demand intensity but do not provide it. If a young man plays cricket at a leisurely pace throughout his formative years, he cannot suddenly become an intense cricketer; if you don't have a test for three months, it is very unlikely you will do well in an exam. But we do nothing about the shortcomings in our domestic cricket.
There is too much cricket, there are too many cricketers, it is outdated and it is not competitive. You need to change that if you want to produce intense cricketers and winning teams. You cannot produce basmati rice in an uncared, tropical jungle.
That is why, more than anywhere else, we need intensity in our management. The best teams today are, and the best teams of the future will be, those that are managed the best, not those that are the most talented. There was a time when talent and ability mattered more than anything else. That was a good time because it meant that everybody had an almost equal chance. But that era has long gone. Today, it is the best prepared, rather than the most intelligent, student that comes first. And so it is that the best managed, rather than the most gifted, team that will win more often.
It is not something that Indian cricket has realised. And so the BCCI keeps tinkering with coaches and captains and selectors but does little about the cricketers they have to pick. The best machines cannot convert jowar into wheat. So, there is little point in appointing expensive consultants if at the end of it all, we are not going to change the structure of our domestic cricket. The academies will not do much good if its products are not going to compete in tough situations. A lazy and unconcerned management cannot produce world class products.
That is the lesson, not just from Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, but from the last ten years. Or maybe, twenty. And that is the way it is going to be. Let us not live in this charming, illusory, world and dream of the day we are going to be the best in the world; and then vent our frustrations on a few players and selectors. We will win some and we will lose some but till our system changes, till the BCCI even recognises this reality, we will be a middle of the road side. The intensity and passion must come in the management first and it isn't even knocking on that door yet. If they are happy with a machine that produces string, string is all you will get, not fine thread.
In the management of our cricket, we are at the bottom of the world. In the playing of it, we are at least halfway up.
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