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DEAR REDIFF

Slow and steady ruins the race

The sharp increase in the number of cricket tours -- the Sharjah Cup, the Independence Cup, the World Cup, the Asia Cup and the Sahara Cup in Toronto -- has had its debilitating effect on the Indian cricket team. Just a decade ago, there were few tours and the few that there were, were spaced out better. This gave the team time to recuperate from their exertions on tours. Not any more.

The composition of the Indian team in the last four or five years will bear out that Indian selectors have become far more cautious of picking newcomers. With all the prestige attached to the Tests and one-day internationals, the selectors tend to play safe and stick with the regulars. To the credit of the latter, it must be said that even those on the fringe have come up with the occasional inspired performance to avoid the axe.

Javagal Srinath makes an interesting study. Worried about exposing him, he was kept in the wings for long, even when Kapil Dev was losing his bite. After Kapil called it a day, Srinath became the Indian spearhead, and so successful was he that he was burdened with the yoke of the Indian attack.

The discerning feared he would break down. He did, in the concluding stages of the tour of South Africa. Fears about his fitness came true even before he had played a match on the West Indies tour in May.

After surgical correction of his shoulder, physiotherapy, yoga and practice, Srinath was to test himself in a match soon. But by then the team for the eight one-day matches against Pakistan in the Sahara Cup in Toronto and in Pakistan had been chosen. Srinath had written to the acting secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India of his progress from surgery and his fitness level. He messed up, apparently, by not submitting a fitness certificate.

Ramakant Desai, chairman of the selection committee, had hinted that Srinath would have to prove himself again in the domestic games beginning in October before he can come back into the national side. That is, after the matches with Pakistan. Desai also hinted Srinath lacks the fitness to bowl 10 to 12 overs (inclusive of no-balls and wides) and be on the field for 50 overs. Batting and throwing in from the outfield could strain the bowler's arm further, he said.

Abey Kuruvilla has even a worse time getting into the side. It took Srinath's sudden return from the West Indies to give him the chance. Abey Kuruvilla got his chance to stake a claim for a place in the eleven. Neither David Johnson in the Independence Cup nor Dodda Ganesh on the West Indies tour could measure up as the third seamer though Debashish Mohanty reportedly made a good impression on the just-concluded visit to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the strain was growing on Venkatesh Prasad.

Contrast this approach with that the more successful Pakistan, which have often done without key men like Waqar Younis, skipper Wasim Akram and Mustaq Ahmed. Whatever the disputes and disagreements in the inner councils of Pakistan's cricket, one feature stands out in all their sport: they are better prepared for crises caused by illness and injury.

Our selectors are not so bold. Even for events of minor importance they had not looked beyond established players. And with every event being prestigious these days and since these give less scope to develop players of promise into ones of international standard, our selectors have become even more cautious. Putting more strain on the bulwarks of the team.

And once the team breaks down, blame is quickly apportioned.

The recent attack on the current selectors, Ramakant Desai, Shivlal Yadav, Kishen Rungta, M P Pandove and Sambaran Banerjee, by Madhavarao Scindia, former BCCI president, was unfortunate. With the exception, perhaps, of Desai, the other four have been national selectors earlier too.

Scindia demand that selectors who had played Test cricket 35 years ago should be sacked was clearly aimed at Desai, while a similar punishment to selectors who have not played Test cricket at all is aimed at Rungta, Pandova and Banerjee. The former president of the Board must have embarrassed the incumbent, Rajsingh Dungarpur, who was chairman of the selection committee in the early nineties and who himself has never played Test cricket himself.

Scindia defended Indian skipper Sachin Tendulkar but he could have said something for most of the other players too. He could have taken a leaf out of the book of Indian hockey coach Pargat Singh, who has captained the Indian team in three Olympic Games, besides other international competitions like the Asian Games, the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. Pargat Singh had stressed on the inexperience of seven or eight newcomers as the cause for the big defeats in the recent four-nation Hamburg invitation tournament.

Despite playing a lot at home, Indian cricketers, too are on the wrong foot abroad. Like the astroturf or synthetic pitches that had Indian hockey players bewildered, Indian cricketers too are unprepared for foreign outfields, used as they are to brown uneven patches speckled with sharp stones.

The outfields in Sri Lanka, England, Australia and other countries encourage their fielders to dive and fall, with no fear of bruises and abrasions. As sporting pitches help develop batsmen and bowlers, lush outfields encourage top class fielding. The board and its top brass should give this matter some serious thought sometime.

With cricket becoming as quick as other games, demanding faster reactions and movement, it is also time Indian administrators learnt to meet these new demands, especially by seeking the help of science. If Edwin Moses could wire himself up to a computer and find out how to reduce the number of strides between two hurdles by at least one so as to gain a few fractions of a second in the final reckoning, there is no reason why our cricket administrators cannot initiate scientific methods to measure fitness.

Endurance, reaction time, psychological factors, all should taken into consideration to identify players of skill. With such findings, the national selectors and the national coach can do a better job with their proteges.

It's time people realised that sports too has gone hi-tech.