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Full many a gem...

Vinod Kambli ought to consider himself lucky. With Azharuddin opting out of the squad to tour Sri Lanka, the selectors decided to give him another chance, and Vinod must be thankful he has been recalled to the national team ahead of players who have done much more than he has on the domestic front in recent times.

Vinod, however, will have to pull up his socks. He simply has frittered away his opportunities, and this is his .last chance to come good at the International level. There's just no point in a guy having enormous talent, if the man himself doesn't really care about it and yet expects everything to fall into place.

Messrs Jacob Martin and Mohammad Kaif, among others, must be pretty disappointed not to have got the nod for the tour. But they need not loose heart -- they are bound to get a look in sooner rather than later, for they are potential India material, there's no doubt about that.

I would even go so far as to say that Amay Khurasia, though overlooked during the World Cup, must also regard himself fortunate to have made it to the squad. England is a place where once gets enough opportunities before and during a tour to prove one's worth as a capable member of the side. But he has not been able to stake a claim in the playing eleven even on such a long tour, and hence is likely to find it tough to do so in future.

In one-day cricket, it is of paramount importance to excel in at least two departments of the game. And unless Khurasia can improve his fielding, he will have trouble holding onto a regular place in the side. You can't just bat well and then hide yourself in the field if you intend to be a regular in the side. For instance, both Kaif and Jacob, besides being outstanding batsmen, are brilliant fielders to boot.

I've always believed that it is best to give talented youngsters a break when the time is ripe, and not when they themselves begin to lose interest and grow disillusioned. Wasim Jaffer is a fine case in point. He has been a victim of this malady in the recent past, but then he's young yet and the selectors can make amends when the Test series comes around in October. The same, however, does not hold true for some promising others who have already missed the bus.

The Board, as usual, has crammed a good number of one-dayers in the season. I do not quite approve of it, though it could be a blessing in disguise for Indian cricket. In the sense that players who have been knocking on the doors of the national team will have reasonable opportunities to represent the country and thereby cement their places in the side for the more serious business - which begins when the New Zealanders arrive here in October.

What is unfortunate, however, is that the players who figure in the shortlist are all batsmen and not bowlers, with the possible exception of Laxmi Ratan Shukla. Spinwise, India has to be content with bowlers like Nikhil Chopra, and this is a clear indication that the cupboard is bare as far as bowlers capable of turning the ball are concerned. And with Sunil Joshi and Gyanendra Pande both on the wrong side of 30, the future looks all the more bleak.

What I cannot believe is that a country as large as ours fails to produce quality bowlers to do duty at the international level. The fault lies squarely with the system -- the Board has been toying with the idea of starting its academy for some time now, and while they dilly-dally, Indian cricket suffers.

Surely, there has to be talent in some remote areas, there must be blokes out there who have never been give proper exposure to the game, unlike the ones who play in big cities. And that could well be the stumbling block in unearthing talent.

How many in the Board really bother to venture out to far-flung areas in order to scout for talent? And unless potential players are capable -- read financially -- of making their way to big cities to parade their talent, they could end up spending a lifetime in the limbo of the unnoticed and unsung.

I speak through personal experience, for I've been having a first hand view of this situation ever since I started my academy in Mumbai. At our academy, players who never played the game at any level, but who had the potential, got an opportunity to prove their worth on an equal footing with others who had access to the best facilities because they happened to attend schools that showed interest in and encouraged the sport. It was, by and large, the facilities that were made available to them at our academy that made all the difference. And today, I can proudly say that almost 80 per cent of the Mumbai Under-16 and Under-19 teams comprise lads from my academy. As a matter of fact, all the awards constituted by the association for junior cricketers was won by players from my academy. That, I feel, is a reflection of the tremendous hard work put in both by the youngsters as well as the coaches.

It was precisely for this reason that I was very happy to hear Azhar announce that he intends starting his own academy in Hyderabad. Unless more and more players take the initiative and do their bit, nothing concrete is ever likely to come to pass, and the underprivileged, who have a tremendous urge to excel, will remain unnurtured and neglected.

There is, after all, an appreciable difference between merely conducting coaching clinics and actually setting up an academy. The clinics, while helpful to a certain extent, involve no more than nets where one merely bats or bowls. A full-fledged academy, on the other hand, concentrates on specialized coaching in batting, bowling, fielding, and also includes off-season training, including classes on mental toughness, positive thinking, so on and so forth.

Having just one academy in Bangalore, as the board is planning to do, is not going to solve the problem or unearth talent in so vast a country. Every association affiliated to the Board must start its own academy, only then will we really broadbase the process of unearthing talents, and begin to see results. All said and done, these associations enjoy a share of the loot, don't they? That being the case, isn't it time they spent a fair share of the profits on endeavours that will, in the long run, do wonders for Indian cricket and, in turn, produce the quality cricketers that we seem to be forever longing for.