Gameplan for Ganguly

Prem Panicker

'Bias' is a funny word. Take for instance a hardcore fan of player X -- the kind of fan who will not hear a word against the object of his idolatry.

Some reporter does an analysis of that player and, based on fact and figure, talks of problems. Lo, the mailbox gets flooded with angry letters suggesting that the reporter in question is biased against that player. ‘How could you forget…??!!!’ ‘Do you remember….?!!!!’ ‘Who are you to….., you twit?!!!’

Makes you wonder which of the two is biased -- the objective analyst, or the idolator.

All of which is, actually, preamble to a companion piece to yesterday’s article regarding the Challenger Trophy -- a misnomer, as it turned out, because with the exception of Sarandeep Singh's end run on Harbhajan Singh's position as India's premier offie, 'challenge' was precisely what was missing.

Many readers have written in, suggesting that I had omitted various players from yesterday's analysis. True -- I had, and at the outset of the article, I in fact mentioned that it was not going to be an exhaustive look at 39 names. The names I didn’t mention yesterday were of those players who are not likely to find themselves in contention for places in the national side in this year of the World Cup.

I also left out two names -- Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman - who form the focus of this companion article. Take, first, Sourav Ganguly.

To my mind, there is no cleaner hitter of the long ball in India, and very few to rival him in the world. Against spin, especially of the off variety, his ability is unparalleled. And there is no conceivable field setting that can stop him putting away a good length ball on or just outside his off stump.

More to the point, I believe that one of the most important reasons for India’s remarkable upset win over Australia was Ganguly’s decision to give the touring side a giant-economy sized dose of their own verbal medicine, to meet aggression with even more overt aggression. In fact, the point has been conceded by Steve Waugh himself -- the man who found Ganguly and his unexpectedly belligerent bunch standing between the Aussies and their Last Frontier.

But it is equally true that over the past few months, two crucial aspects of Ganguly’s cricketing makeup have been seized on by opposition bowlers, to devastating effect. Firstly, Ganguly has a personal fear of being hit. And no, he is not the only one -- think back to India’s 1997 tour of South Africa, when Javagal Srinath gleefully preyed on Hansie Cronje’s fears by going round the wicket and giving him a good-sized dose of back-of-a-length lifters. Or even the way Ajit Agarkar in Australia went after Steve Waugh, very deliberately and openly.

The difference between Ganguly and the other two, though, is that the former has made his fear very apparent. And the fast bowlers' grapevine has seized on it and transmitted it worldwide -- with the result that during the recent India-England series, an English side that was content to focus on a leg or outside line for most Indian batsmen greeted Ganguly with three slips, two gullies, and a profusion of throat balls.

The second problem in a sense arises from the first -- Ganguly was never much of a backfoot player at his very best, but then he didn’t need to be, because his front foot movement was usually decisive, and this movement backed by his eye and his touch and timing was usually enough to give him the upper hand.

Not any more. His apprehension of the short lifter has created a situation where even that initial front foot movement is ginger, hesitant, half-hearted. With the result that time and again, he is caught in a no man’s land from where he can neither cope with the short ball, nor put away the fuller deliveries he used to dispatch with such felicity.

Simply put, his game in recent times has been on the skids. He always liked to wear adequate protection -- but increasingly, he has taken to going out there with more body armor than an extra in The Gladiator, and this has further hampered his mobility.

These are not problems you sort out in competitive play -- it takes nothing less than a return to the nets, and much hard work under the eye of quality players of pace. The first name you think of is -- no, not Sunny Gavaskar -- Mohinder Amarnath. Jimmy over Sunny, because while the former’s technique against pace was unrivalled, Jimmy can bring to Sourav a crucial add-on. Jimmy then, like Sourav now, was ‘sorted out’, famously, by the West Indies quicks even on India’s placid home tracks. He was, the consensus of the time held, dead and buried. And yet, he came back, and how -- to produce brilliant displays of batsmanship against Pakistan in Pakistan, then the West Indies in the West Indies, capping that fabulous year by being named in Wisden's Top Five and earning, from Imran Khan, the further accolade of being the world’s best player of pace at the time.

How? That is the question Sourav needs answers for now, and Jimmy -- who retooled his entire game following the fiasco against Lloyd’s West Indians -- is the man who has the answers.

The temptation, for Ganguly, would be to think: There is an ODI series coming up against England and if in course of those six games I can just once get a decent knock under my belt, maybe these devils will go away (the thinking, incidentally, that prompted him in the final of the Challenger to drop himself down the order). And if that doesn’t work, there is always a home series against Zimbabwe, and maybe that corner-turning knock will come against them.

That line of thinking will only result in his carrying his problems into the West Indies tour, and the away series against England to follow. Whereas if he were to take time out to address the problem now, then he can get back, freed of the devils of his mind and game, for the two crucial away tours.

One thing has been painfully apparent, both in the recent Test series against England and in the Challengers -- his worry about his own lack of form and runs has begun to affect his captaincy. There is a lackluster attitude to Ganguly in the field these days, that contrasts dramatically with his demeanor against the Aussies a year ago. The final of the Challenger was the latest, and most dramatic, example -- when India Seniors took the field to defend a paltry total, they did so with the air of a team going through the motions, a side that had at the halfway stage decided that the game was lost.

Neither Ganguly, nor the team, can afford this lack of form, and its result on his captaincy, for much longer.

The question that is always asked, though, is -- if not Ganguly, who? Not Rahul Dravid, who is similarly going through a bad patch, and who in any case reminds you of the Shakespearian character who “thinks too much”. Not Sachin Tendulkar, that Achilles of Indian cricket -- he has had two shots at the captaincy and even granting that he was shackled by politicking within the team and even more politics by the board and the selectors, the last thing he needs at a point when he is reworking his own game is to go through all that again.

So the TINA -- there is no alternative -- factor comes into play. Or does it?

The most noticeable feature of the Challenger Series was the captaincy of VVS Laxman.

Time and again, two major problems have been noticed with Indian captains. The first pertains to field setting: It is almost as if, as a reader recently remarked, the captains have heard that there are field positions called point, cover, mid off, mid on et cetera , and therefore they place fielders there. As opposed to placing them where they can do the most good. To give you one example of dozens possible, during this recent India-England Test series, Harbhajan Singh bowled almost entirely without a leg slip -- and yet, it was in this position that he got the likes of Mark Waugh and Ricky Ponting, time and again, during that famous series. When an off spinner bowls on a track that affords bounce, the batsman instinctively tries to play down to leg -- the Englishmen did, uppishly, time and again and got away with it.

The other problem can be summed up in one word: panic. The minute an opposing batsman hits a four, you find the captain, and sundry members of the team, gathered in the middle, arms waving like windmills, much discussion, and the inevitable removal of close catchers and their stationing in defensive positions. Mid off, cover, mid on, midwicket, all get pushed back -- with the result that singles are on easy offer, and the boundaries come along anyway.

It was in these things that Laxman excelled. Firstly, his is a calm, unflappable captaincy style -- at no point do you see any sign of panic, hasty field rearrangements, et al . At the start of a spell or at the entry of a new batsman, he is seen chatting with his bowler, then setting the field. And that is pretty much that -- the captain is clear what his bowler wants and what he plans, the bowler has the field he wants and can bowl to that field without having his captain come charging up after every other ball for another chat, it all goes along smoothly.

Similarly, he excelled at keeping up the pressure. For a brief while, it seemed like Sehwag would run away with the game -- yet, the close catchers remained in place. The captain did not go running up to Zaheer, arms waving in the wind, asking what the heck was going on as Sehwag clubbed one over long on. Similarly, even when Badani settled into a fluid display of batsmanship, the field remained tight, close catchers stayed in place, the outfielders were placed to make short singles dangerous (check out the run outs), bowlers were rotated with thought and skill -- and all this was done in an unobtrusive, yet very effective, fashion.

His worst critic won’t suggest that Laxman is scared of the short ball -- more often than not, the batsman tends to hook or pull, even at times taking on the field. His worst critic -- and his best friend – will, however say that Laxman values his batting gifts too lightly. That time and again, he gets himself out through sheer what? Boredom? Casualness?

It is almost as if he finds himself unable to concentrate unless the conditions are against him, the bowling is of the highest caliber, the opposition ditto. The man who creamed Australia’s vaunted attack should have been setting world records against Nasser Hussain’s lot -- yet what we got was a string of cameos, as pretty as they were frustrating.

That is a very big entry in the debit side of his ledger. It is also the kind of thing you can’t cure in the nets.

But could it be that the cure is to give him the responsibility? Not only does it cure Laxman of his problem, it also frees Ganguly up to go back to the drawing board, retool his game, and come back twice as good as new.

I’ll tell you what -- I miss the sight of the guy waltzing down the track and with a seemingly effortless flick, sending the ball soaring high into the stands. And any way of getting to see that sight again, of getting that batsman back to his best, I’ll root for.

Postscript: Thanks all who mailed re yesterday's take on the Challenger Series.

Many readers have written in asking about many names -- thus, one asks about Sridharan Sharath, another reader or two about Vijay Bharadwaj, etc. But there is one name I find cropping up in a majority of the mails I got today: Robin Singh. Why, I have been asked, did I ignore the ultimate team-man, the quintessential all-rounder?

Given that the question is universal, I'll answer it here. Or rather, I'll point you to a column written on October 30, 2000, which answers the question. All I can add to what I wrote then is, nothing has changed. Thanks, all.

The first part - Nothing to shout about

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