We all clearly remember captain Virat Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri’s joint press conference before leaving for the tour of England earlier this summer. One bold statement stood out, “We have enough days to acclimatise in England and we are going to enjoy coffee”.
Seeing the performance of the Indian team in the first two Tests so far, the team really seems to have taken their skipper’s statement seriously – they are truly only enjoying the coffee in English conditions.
Nobody likes criticism but if a team performs this badly then they should also be ready to face the reality, facts and the criticism.
I would like to remind you of Ravi Shastri’s comment following the South Africa tour this year when he said he would have a word with the BCCI’s tour committee requesting them to give players more time to acclimatise on all future tours. Keeping that in mind, this tour of England was planned so as to give the players a good number of days to prepare and as well as rest ahead of the T20 series. However, it is puzzling that when the BCCI provided the team the opportunity to play practice games, as was requested, coach Ravi Shastri and Captain Kohli instead felt that rest was the best option for the team and played just a truncated three-day practice game in the 14 days between the ODI and Test series.
Great Indian cricketing idols Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly all voiced their concerns, but the current Indian team never felt like taking their advice.
In earlier days, it was grilled in our minds that we needed to watch, improve, practise hard, follow the senior players, learn from them and take their advice. But instead of taking the advice of players who have been on multiple tours of England, and have succeeded, Virat Kohli’s team seems happy to be enjoying the country’s coffee. In fact, if I look at the Indian captains who toured England, Ajit Wadekar, Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Azhar, none of them ever made such an irresponsible comment on the eve of such an important tour.
We are 2-0 down in the series with three more matches to go and I do feel especially bad because all these players who have extraordinary talent got themselves selected during my tenure as chief selector. It amazes me that these extremely-talented cricketers, in the two Tests so far, have been looking like they are playing in fear, as if they are playing their debut match!
As I said earlier, cricket is a cruel game. A game of glorious uncertainties. Yesterday’s heroes have become today’s zeroes. Seventy percent of this England tour is already over and we are still sipping coffee.
Someone has to take responsibility. The blame cannot be put only on the coach and captain, the entire party is responsible for this debacle. Sunil Gavaskar has been critical of some of the decisions made by the team. He asked why when practice games were arranged before the Test series, the Indian team members instead chose to travel around Europe? Is BCCI going to ask for a clarification now? I agree that you need a break on such a long tour, but from my experience I can say that a day or two is good enough time to recover.
It was evident that the lack of preparation was the main cause for India’s poor show in whites. You simply cannot appear in an exam without studying and this English paper was going to be a tough one anyway. Time though is now running out. On paper, India still look like a strong team, but after every match and every loss one simply doesn’t know what our playing 11 is and, most importantly, who is going to open the innings.
I would like to remember my first tour of Australia, New Zealand and the Fiji Islands. It was a four-and-a-half-month-long tour but our captain Sunil Gavaskar never took a break and never allowed any member to take a break. The entire four-and-a-half months we were thinking about cricket, we were talking about cricket and we were playing cricket.
During the two months of the 1982 tour of England when again Sunil Gavaskar was our captain, nobody was allowed to take a break, including the captain himself. The 1984 tour of Pakistan was again a month-and-a-half long but nobody took a break. During the 1986 two-month tour of England under Kapil Dev’s captaincy, nobody took a break and the outcome was that we won the series.
We were playing cricket and we were practising cricket. But now, the players are playing cricket but without practice and the outcome is in front of you.
The international calendar nowadays is too tight. Today’s cricketers play only international matches but in the 70s, 80s and 90s we played club cricket, office cricket, domestic cricket, international cricket and also practised hard in between all those matches. Be it the great Gavaskar, Kapil, Vengsarkar, Amarnath or later, Azhar, Sachin, Sourav, VVS Laxman, Kumble or Dravid, cricket has seen many changes in the last four decades but if you don’t practise you will never achieve the goal.
Talk less, practise more and play cricket is my advice.
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