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Partab Ramchand13-May-2002In these days of instant food, instant coffee and instantcommunication, it is tempting to look for instant results. Towardsachieving this objective, old-fashioned virtues of patience andforbearance, tolerance and reasoning are sometimes given the go by.Unfortunately, instant results are not always possible. Some thingstake time to mature and grow in the traditional manner. The same istrue in sport. It is not every cricketer who scores a century or has amatch haul of ten wickets in his first Test. Even a prodigiouslygifted player like Sachin Tendulkar got his first Test hundred in onlyhis ninth match.
© CricInfoI am mentioning all this now keeping in mind the example of AjayRatra. The 20-year-old wicket-keeper from Haryana, according toreports, came very close to being dropped for the Antigua Test.Plainly put, I could not comprehend why such a move was even beingcontemplated. True, he had scored just 16 runs in four innings. Butthen he is a specialist wicket-keeper whose batting should beconsidered a bonus. And from all accounts, he had kept reasonably wellat Port of Spain and Bridgetown.It is about time we stopped this obsession with wicket-keeper batsmen.If there is an Engineer and Kirmani who can bat as well as he cankeep, that’s fine. But in the absence of such a player, it is alwaysbetter to go in for a specialist `keeper rather than a sub standardstumper who can score a few runs. In the long run, the latter is ashort-term policy from which the team will not benefit.But then if Ratra came close to being dropped though good sensefinally prevailed among the team management it is part of a largermalaise. The policy of hiring and firing rather indiscriminately isquite common in Indian cricket. Young players are hardly givenadequate opportunities to prove their credentials.This is best exemplified in the following statistic. Of the some 240cricketers who have been given Test caps, an alarmingly highproportion of about 80 roughly a third have played in one or twomatches. Australia, on the other hand, is known for giving its playersa fair trial and this is borne out by figures. Of the nearly 400cricketers who have represented the country in Tests since 1877, onlyabout 80 just about a fifth have played in one or two matches.Certainly this benign and refreshing approach is one of the reasonswhy Australia enjoys the pre-eminent position in world cricket notonly today but also in overall results of matches played since Testcricket was first played a century and a quarter ago.My favourite stories about how perseverance by Australian selectorshas yielded long-term results concern Arthur Morris, Richie Benaud andAlan Davidson. In his first 13 Tests, Benaud took just 23 wickets atenormous cost and did not even score a half-century. In his first 12Tests, Davidson got only 16 wickets and hit one half-century. InIndian cricket, such results would have meant banishment from the Testarena. But aware that theirs was a case of potential far outweighingperformance, the selectors and team managements one must add gavethem every encouragement and this far sighted policy paid off richdividends as the whole cricketing world knows.Benaud became the first cricketer to achieve the double of 2000 runsand 200 wickets besides being one of the outstanding captains in thegame’s history – while Davidson, one of the leading all-rounders ofhis time, finished with 186 wickets from 44 Tests at an average of20.53.Again, in the case of Morris, the scores in his first two Tests were 2and 5. If he had been an Indian cricketer, that would have been theend of his Test career. Yet going by the adage `Form is temporary,class is permanent’, the selectors picked him for the third Test. Theleft-hander later to find a place in Don Bradman’s dream team -repaid their confidence by scoring 155, the first of three centuriesin successive Test innings and he remained Australia’s No 1 openingbatsman for the next decade.
© CricInfoThis roughshod policy in Indian cricket has been particularly rampantin the case of wicket-keepers. This at least was one slot in whichthere was more than a semblance of permanence in the Indian team,right from Engineer and Kunderan to Kirmani and More, from the 1960sto the 1990s.In the last couple of years, the selectors have created more than asense of just uncertainty in dealing with this crucial position. OnceNayan Mongia for reasons still unclear, went out of favour, thestumper’s place has been filled with no sense of permanency – by MSKPrasad, Samir Dighe, Vijay Dahiya, Saba Karim, Deep Dasgupta and AjayRatra. This kind of hiring and firing does no good in bolstering themorale of a team that is already beset by inherent weaknesses.It is to be hoped that Ratra has now cemented his place in the sideand the game of musical chairs for the stumper’s slot is finally over.The selectors would also do well to learn by Ratra’s example that apolicy of hiring and firing will not yield dividends in the long run,that deserving cricketers should get a fair trial and that adiscerning approach is what Indian cricket needs. It is ironical thatit has taken Ratra a feat with the bat to consolidate his place behindthe stumps. But then such ironies are a disturbing aspect of Indiancricket.