B D Narayankar
The final World Cup squad is out and there are many cricket-frenzy fans cribbing over the omission of their favourite players. They certainly have the right to express their disappointment, but that’s how it is -- only 15 can board the flight to West Indies.
Credit should go to captain Rahul Dravid and chairman of selectors Dilip Vengsarkar for picking up players who have the potential to win the World Cup. It is beyond doubt the present Indian players are far more accomplished, but they certainly lack the passion of 1983 World Cup players who thought they could win every match. They, in fact, won the World Cup without a fluke.
Dravid is right in saying ``Which players are selected. What combination the team employs. These are the things which does not count. What really matters is how well your six or seven players consistently perform in the World Cup.’’ This exactly was done by the Gavaskars, the Srikanths, the Yashpals, the Devs, the Amarnaths, the Patils, the Madan Lals and the Binnys consistently in the 1983 World Cup with their bat, ball or fielding. Such was their passion to win that they thrashed the then reigning world champions West Indies not once in the final, but in one of the league matches too.
Ask Imran Khan what is required to win the World Cup. He says: ‘’Self-belief to win each and every game you play.’’ And, he did win the 1992 World Cup captaining a new-look Pakistan side comprising of unknown talents like Aamir Sohail, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Iqbal Sikander and Waseem Haider, after receiving a huge blow in the form of Saeed Anwar, Ata-ur-Rehman and Waqar Younis, who fell unfit.
There always has been complaints that the BCCI does not gets its priorities right to make players feel comfortable on an overseas tour by giving them enough practice matches for acclimatisation. This time, though, they will have all that in the West Indies before the big games.
And it will be a matter of time for the Indians to acclimatise themselves to the conditions in West Indies as it is quite similar to India's, except for a couple of venues. Under the circumstance, it will be not long enough for the Nawab of Najafgarh (Virendra Sehwag) to bounce back to form. It, however, remains to be seen how Irfan Pathan copes up on West Indies pitches. So far, he had played only one international match against West Indies and under-performed. Another hotly-debated player Munaf Patel has done enough to satisfy the selectors with his bowling against Sri Lanka in the Rajkot one-dayer where he showed signs of returning back to the form.
There has been unnecessary concern raised on the issue of Indian fielding and it has been blown-out-of-proportion by media. After all how many quick-footed fielders do we require? Only two – one in the point and the other in the covers. We have Yuvraj, Robin and Karthick for that. The slow-footed Anil Kumble, Munaf Patel and Zaheer Khan can protect the boundaries and seniors like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virendra Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly can be close-in fielders.
There also has been a lot of media-created confusion over whether Sehwag will open the innings. For the first few matches, surely the team management wants the Delhi dasher to play in the middle order and strengthen it in the august company of Sachin, Yuvraj and Dravid. If Uthappa and Ganguly fail to impress as openers, the team has the option of Sachin, Sehwag or Karthick. Experts in the cricketing world are firm in their opinion that openers make good middle-order batsmen, but not vice-versa. It is good India has five openers at its disposal.
The fact that the 1983 team could win the World Cup was that it in all had seven players who were bowling-allrounders and batting-allrounders. In comparison, the present Indian team boasts of six batting-allrounders and bowling-allrounders. They have done well in chipping in with their extra skills to won many matches for India in the past.
Key batsmen for India in the World Cup will be Ganguly, Dravid, Sachin, Sehwag and Yuvraj. And bowlers Zaheer, Pathan and Kumble, as they are expected to play in almost all the games if fit. One good thing happening to India right now is the comeback of Sachin to form. Ganguly also is on a song and Zaheer is back with his old habit of taking wickets. It is up to other players to pick the gauntlet up and raise their standards of the game for a man (Dravid) who had backed even the inclusion of now-hated Sehwag, Munaf and Pathan in the squad.
The great rishis of India had said that the world exists on Vishwas (faith) and let us all Indians have Vishwas on Gavaskar's uncanny prediction of India winning the World Cup when he recently told Gulf News in Dubai ''Dravid will do what another January-born captain did for India in the 1983 World Cup.''
Kapil was born on January 5 and Rahul on January 11.
eom\
No comments:
Post a Comment