Sunday snippet
The gamechanger for Indian cricket over half a century
By Venkatesh Raghavan
As we sketch the Indian cricket team’s performance over nearly half a century, it clearly indicates that India’s standing in the arena of cricketing nations began to improve only after each and every corner of the country started throwing up professionals.
Starting with the early seventies, just take a look at the composition of the team. Sunil Gavaskar, Ramnath Parkar, Farooq Engineer, Ajit Wadekar and Eknath Solkar, all of them from Bombay served as the backbone of the team. India’s first breakthrough came with the advent of Kapil Dev, the Haryana hurricane. The pace he was able to generate made a lot of difference to the fortunes of the game as he was a potent weapon to contain the scoring of any opponent team.
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Despite this sign of improvement, people were still very pessimistic. The question that was being repeatedly asked was “After Gavaskar who? May be India will stop playing cricket post Gavaskar’s retirement.” As we all know nothing of that sort happened. First it was a trickle with the arrival of Sachin Tendulkar. Later on Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Lakshman joined and we had a very formidable batting line up.
On the bowling front too, there were pacers like Manoj Prabhakar, Venkatesh Prasad, Javagal Srinath. However, when it came to winning matches, India had to rely on its spin department. It was Anil Kumble for nearly more than a decade. Even in the current decade, it is Ravichandran Ashwin who wins matches for India on the home turf.
As the team matured and started scoring more victories, it became clear that India was able to throw up quality professionals in the field of cricket mainly due to the popularization of the game and big money the popularization fetches. Right now, the contribution of Bombay to the Indian team is only Rohit Sharma. With the passage of decades, it became clear that small town players like Irfan Patel, Yusuf Patel and biggest of them all Mahendra Singh Dhoni are all getting a golden opportunity to showcase their skills.
The lesson to be learnt for India or any developing nation is that once you popularize a sport, the rest will follow on its own. Even today, India is a far cry from being a sporting nation. However, there are an increasing number of flashes on the pan. As of today, there is a lot of money in the game. Recently, Farooq Engineer had commented, “In our days, it was just the honor of playing for the country. Things have changed a lot since then.”
Bombay, the mecca of Indian cricket had heavily contributed to the Indian team. Albeit, bowlers like Padmakar Shivalkar and Abdul Ismail who played for the Bombay Ranji team never got a chance to wear the Indian cap. It was Sunil Gavaskar in his maiden book Sunny Days, who captured the essence of Indian cricket. “Be it Sabina Park or Shivaji Park, the air is the same.” As luck would have it, the Indian cricket team has broken the shackles of being regarded as the minnows of cricket and stands out as a strong test and one-day side.
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