Give the players their due

Now is not a great time to be an Indian cricket fan. The team went to England and were beaten 4-0 in the Tests and with it lost their standing as the #1 Test team – and the final series score dropped them to #3 by the end of the series.

This was followed by a similar result in Australia in the Tests which preceded an indifferent tri-series where, despite being the defending holders, India's relatively younger squad failed to make the finals. India also failed to reach the finals of the Asia Cup, after losing one of their three league matches to eventual runners-up, Bangladesh.

Yet, while the recent results are enough to crush the hope of even the most optimistic of fans, the situation was nowhere near as bleak a little over an year back. After a crushing defeat in the first Test India came back to win the second against South Africa and played out a draw against the fiery pace bowling Steyn-Morkel combo to finish a testing series with honours even. This was followed by a long-awaited win at the World Cup and, for a while, India were world one-day champion and the top ranked test team at the same time. As always happens with success, the men who got the team there were feted, celebrated and hailed, rightly, as having heralded a new era in Indian cricket.

However, as is inevitable in all sport the highs of success have been followed by the lows of loss.

Just as inevitably a nation, led by an often rabid and capricious media, has turned on the players and the team - with ferocity, scorn and possibly a degree of perverse delight at their decline.

Suddenly the batting line up is being dismissed as being home wicket bullies, Dhoni’s Test captaincy has been described as unimaginative, and his credentials for the role are being questioned. Greg Chappell has not only described India’s cricket team as disinterested in Test cricket and only interested in the money that the IPL offers, but he has suddenly become a self-appointed authority on India’s “culture” with a description which borders on calumny. Ian Chappell, generally not given to hyperbole, has proffered the view that the amount of money India’s cricketers make has dulled their motivation or hunger for the game.

While unhappiness is understandable and the criticism for recent failures is well-earned, such sweeping generalisations are unfair to the players.

Some of India's Test wins in recent times and the best of those have come when this same set of batsmen played a huge role in those successes, often providing the bowling the platform for a win.

The list of successes bears mentioning – Perth 2008, Adelaide 2003/4, Galle 2008, series wins in New Zealand and England, South Africa 2011. All these wins came when India's batting and bowling combined to turn in match winning performances. These have meant, in turn, that the reputation of this batting line up as one of the strongest in the world - and possibly the strongest - was earned through sheer weight of results. In addition, India’s younger generation has had some impressive results – in addition to winning the 2007 World T20, this team also won the previous edition of the India-Australia-Sri Lanka Tri-Series. They held a 2-1 lead in the away ODI series against South Africa last year, despite missing some key players to injury and have generally given a good account of themselves in the shorter formats of the game.

The past successes of India’s cricket teams demonstrate that the players who make up these teams have the talent and the pedigree to be able to compete with the best in the sport and win. If achieving success and attaining the #1 status requires tremendous focus and perseverance, retaining that position is considered at least as demanding, and probably more challenging. India’s Test team did a creditable job of first attaining the #1 status and then retaining it, not just in the face of stiff competition from teams like South Africa, but also despite having their credentials constantly questioned by cricketing media, former cricketers, and in some cases by their own opponents.

So what happens next to India’s cricket? If now is the time to reflect upon their past achievements and make allowance for their present travails, what does the future hold? While the future of Indian cricket will only unfold as time goes by, Indian cricket stands on the brink of major change – Rahul Dravid has retired, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman may follow him soon, and on the bowling front, Zaheer Khan might well be heading into retirement before very long.

But all this does not take away from the fact that the very same cricketers who are the subject of much derision right now have given it their all to win for the team and country. And, as they head into retirement, or prepare to do so, now is the right time to thank them for their contributions to the success of Indian cricket, and for such precious moments like Kolkata 2001, Adelaide 2003, Mumbai 2011 – even if all of them did not play the last one – and to acknowledge that their efforts have given us much joy and pride as cricketers.

And when they decide to hang up their boots, the most appropriate send-off would be to thank them for their contributions and to acknowledge their role in some of Indian cricket’s biggest successes.

Eventually it would mean giving the players their due instead of taking a here-and-now short term approach. The latter sells, but the former is the real test of how India’s fans stack up against CLR James’ “what do they know of cricket who cricket only know?”


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