Award Winners Are Not Champions
I do not watch a lot of cricket these days. I follow the game closely but I am not as fanatic as I used to be. Even as I watch Indian cricketers come up small in game after game in key tournaments I do not get down on myself as I used to before. I guess I have grown older and understand that cricket is just a game and should not be the most important aspect of my life. But I still feel a tinge of pain and sadness as I see the last Indian batsmen or fielder coming off the field after another loosing effort.
Like many Indians I growing up in the seventies and eighties I grew up watching different sports (unlike the past twenty years cricket was not the only sport in India). We played soccer, hockey, volleyball and many other India specific sports like Kabadi and so on (this is not to say that weren’t good cricket players in India those days. Tiger Patuadi, Vijay Hazare and Polly Umrigar where great players of their times). But everything started changing when a small player stepped on the field for the first time to play test cricket for India against West Indies in 1970-1971. In his very first test series Sunil Gavaskar scored 774 runs (including a century and double century in the same match). India beat West Indies in a test series for the first time. Cricket immediately became the king of Indian sports.
From 1970 up until the late eighties was definitely the golden age of Indian cricket. There were many players who did not stand out individually but together were able to propel India to new heights in all forms of cricket. Some of my favorite players from those days are Kapil Dev, Srikkanth, Sandeep Patel, Balwant Singh Siddhu, Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Mohinder Amarnath. None of these players have records that are remotely close to that of players from the last 20 years. Many of them are not even as talented (If Madan Lal was playing today he would not have made it to the Indian team). But what they had was heart. The heart of a champion. India not only won the world cup in 1983 but also the Benson and Hedges World Championship in Australia and many smaller tournaments in Sharjah. In addition between 1970 and 1985 India also won many test series including against West Indies, England, and Australia.
What happened to Indian cricket after Gavaskar’s retirement in the mid-eighties is rather surprising. First it was all the match fixing scandals. Then it was followed by a whole lot of players like Tendulkar, Ganguly, Yuvaraj Singh and Dravid who are all good players but not match winners. They have impressive statistics (Tendulkar has over 16,000 runs in one-day matches but how many of these runs were made when it counted? Tendulkar for all his records has played only one significant innings in a one-day international and that was the World Cup semi-final match against Pakistan).
So it was not surprising to learn that Dhoni won the ODI player of the year award and Gautam Gambhir won the test player of the year award. They put up numbers when it did not matter (Dhoni was invisible in both the ODI and 20/20 version of the cricket in all the major tournaments from 2008 to 2009). So what do these awards mean? Why is the media so obsessed about the news about team and player rankings? The only thing that matters is winning. The only rank that matters is the first rank. What the champion’s trophy in South Africa proved again was that India is a paper tiger. The Indian player’s playmaking abilities and their reputations do not match their production on the field, unless of course they are playing Canada, Kenya or Zimbabwe. The next stop for failure is the 20/20 World Cup in West Indies in 2010. Sorry for being so cynical. Past experience you see …
Related posts:
- Are These Empty Praises?
- The Dilemma Facing Sachin Tendulkar
- All Those Meaningless Runs Scored By Tendulkar & Company
- Sir Donald Bradman is the Greatest Batsman?
- What is Wrong With Indian Cricket?
Category: Sports & Entertainment
one of the main issues seem to be that the youth of today have lot more avenues to have fun therefore sports in general has taken a back seat, especially in India. cricket is the only sport but even there a lot of people seem to prefer the 20/20 drama which is bound to kill international cricket which makes cricket very unique.The exclusion of Dravid clearly shows the direction of Indian cricket, people prefer batsmen who get out in the first ball, cannot face quality bowling as opposed to someone who can atleast stay in his crease for a while and give an opportunity for the team to win. Instead of a test and one day team, what i would recommend is a domestic & foreign series teams, so that the Dhoni’s & Raina’s can provide entertainment in flat pitches and let the Dravid’s & Laxman’s face the likes of Bret Lee, Murali & Shane Bond.
Problem with Indian cricket is style over substance.