INDIAN CAPTAIN & HIS (ir)RATIONAL NEED TO BOWL FIRST: 00s

Part 1 is here.

The new year of 2000 did not just bring the new year but also the new century and with it the new millennium as well. The first month brought many disasters of various proportions for the senior team but an exceptionally talented junior side won the 3rd U-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka. Five of those 14 kids played international cricket for India. The captain Mohammad Kaif was touted for great things as was allrounder Reetinder Singh Sodhi. Both were already world champions at the U-15 level with latter as captain. Neither did justice to their talents. One of those five was a certain Yuvraj Singh.

In addition to them, there were up & comers like Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Ashish Nehra, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag & a guy with mullet from the cricketing backwaters of Ranchi. The match-fixing scandal gave the selectors the opening they needed to ditch some of the 90s cricketers and blood this talented group of youngsters. India went to Kenya for the 2nd ICC Knockout with what could be called an experimental team. Zaheer bowled yorkers. Yuvi thrashed McGrath & Donald and suddenly India were in the final. Chris Cairns played an innings of a lifetime and India were left licking their wounds.

SAURAV GANGULY

There were many highs and few lows before the 2002 Natwest Final. India had lost 9 ODI finals in a row before this. Having dominated the group stages, the bowlers suffered the yips and the target became daunting: 326. Ganguly set India off to a flyer before the familiar script returned. Tendulkar failed and India collapsed to 146/5 needing 180 runs at almost 7 runs an over. The contest was virtually over. Tenth final lost in a row. 

WRONG! In step 20 year old Yuvraj & 21 year old Kaif and India sensationally aced the chase out of nowhere. They went from strength to strength and reached the final of newly christened ICC Champions Trophy. Unfortunately the final was played twice and on both occasions rain played spoilsport and the trophy was shared. As a typical Madras boy, I was more miffed about our boys not getting gāji than not winning the tournament outright. I could have let go if it was just the once. But twice? No way Jose!

Then came the tour to New Zealand that threw a spanner in the works. India lost the test series 0-2 and ODI series 2-5. Except for Viru, all batsmen failed in the white ball arena. The normally quiet Tendulkar repeatedly bellyached about not getting to open. For the fourth World Cup in a row morale was low. India began in terrible fashion making heavy weather of beating the Dutch, followed by getting thumped by the defending champions. Like Azhar, this result kept eating Ganguly inside.

They say when you are down in the dumps, the only way is up. Which is exactly what happened to India. Zimbabwe, Namibia & England were brushed aside like kabandha brushed aside giant trees to setup the first meeting against Pakistan in almost 3 years. India had already qualified for the Super Six stage but how can a game against them be a dead rubber? Pakistan set a challenging target thanks to Engineer-turned-Cricketer-turned-Tablighi Anwar's last ODI 100. Tendulkar's & Viru's pyrotechnics virtually finished the game inside 5 overs. Pakistan never recovered from Tendulkar's brutal take down of Rawalpindi Express.

From then on, India reached the final on auto-pilot. There were a couple of minor wobbles against Kenya & New Zealand but eventually India won both matches quite comfortably. Australia had similar moments of vulnerability but they reached the final in facile manner. Ganguly called correctly and saw that the pitch had some grass. He truly believed his trio of Zaheer-Ashish-Srinath would deliver and chose to bowl. 

If ever a match was over after the 1st ball of potentially 600 legal balls, this one was that. Zaheer bowled a 1st ball wide, sledged Hayden and conceded 15 runs! Church & Haydos added 105 runs in 14 overs. The spinners pulled it back a bit but Ricky Ponting played one of the all time great innings by a captain in limited overs cricket to push Australia to 359. He was especially harsh on veteran Srinath. It took the gentle giant from Mysore 12 years to learn how to bowl the slower ball. He died by it in the end.

The Indian response was over before it even began like Vasool Raja's hostel room. Tendulkar was out in the 1st over. Viru tried his best with some big hitting but he was fighting not a losing but a lost battle. With him ended the Indian "resistance". The only silver lining was there were no Jadeja-Robin Singh to prolong the inevitable. Australia won by 125 runs and became only the 2nd team to defend its title. A rational analysis, with or without hindsight, would have said that Australia were simply too powerful but the heart still yearned for an upset. Twas not to be.

RAHUL DRAVID

For the best part of arguably India's most successful era, John Wright was the coach. Eventually things went stale. A slightly short-handed India, thanks to a combination of weather, Nagpur groundsman and the legendary Indian (in)ability against the tail, were finally defeated at home by the Aussies after 35 years. One of the weakest Pakistani sides visited in the next spring. India ended up drawing the series 1-1 when they should have arguably whitewashed the bitter enemies. India managed to lose the 6 match ODI series 2-4 after going 2-0 up. John Wright resigned and on Ganguly's recommendation Greg Chappell was made coach.

We all know about the spat so I won't go into that but I want to mention a weird obsession the boys of Cricinfo have with Chappell the younger and Dravid's captaincy. One of my fundamental beliefs is that a coach in cricket is the most useless thing there is. Other than picking a side there is absolutely nothing a coach can do during a match. He/She is basically a redundant selector. A second fundamental belief is that there are no great captains. A captain is only as good as his/her team.

They repeatedly hold on to the 17 odd successful chases in a row but ignore other problems. He was a terrible man-manager. The weird obsession to turn Irfan Pathan into an allrounder made his bowling go to pieces. India couldn't beat a barely above average Pakistan away from home. India drew a test series against England. Commendable no? IT WAS AT HOME! Imagine getting spun out by Shaun-Effin'-Udal! India failed to reach the semis of the Champions Trophy at home. Ironically, India chased once and defended twice. Won the chase but lost both matches when they batted first. Operation success, patient dead. All the chasing bluster evaporated in South Africa where India lost 3 out of 3 batting second.

Despite all that, for the first time in many moons, India's morale before the World Cup was on the uptick. It all came crashing down against Bangladesh in Port Of Spain. The famed Indian batting came a cropper against the Mashrafe McGrath and Abdul Verity. Suddenly India were in massive trouble. What was thought to be a dead rubber when the schedule was made became do or die. After thrashing Bermuda, a match more famous for a corpulentthinness challenged guy's diving catch, India faced Sri Lanka in the aforementioned dead-rubber-turned-do-or-die...er. 

Once more an Indian captain ignored all evidence in front of him and thought like a Vegas gambler and chose to field after winning the toss. Traditional destroyers of India, Jaya, Sanga & Mahela, got out cheaply and yet Sri Lanka made 254/6. As usual India were never in the hunt. The infamous Paper Tigers failed yet again in a crunch match whilst chasing. The skipper even helped old timers remember the glorious days of Jadeja-Robin Singh and delayed the inevitable with a typical Dravid ODI innings. Even a guy like Dravid, touted to be among the smarter analysts of the game, ignored reality. Like that twitter meme goes: Sed Stery.

VIRAT KOHLI

The future Mr. Anushka Sharma was the captain of India's 2nd triumph at the U-19 level. He would display his future talents very well at U-19 level. In the first 2 matches, he scored 40 & 25* respectively. Then he got a 74 ball 100 in the dead rubber against West Indies. Post that he did something unthinkable. He actually contributed heavily in a win.....in a knockout match.....with the ball?!? Shocking but true. Coming in as 4th change, Kohli bowled 7 very economical overs and took 2/27. He then scored 43 in the chase as India went through to the final by D/L method.

He was back to "form" in the final scoring just 19 runs. It was just 3 runs shy of his terrific record in finals as a senior pro: 8 matches 154 runs at 22. One could say it was juuuuuust below par for course. Anyhow, Kohli went to establish himself as a master in ODIs. His reputation as a chase-master kept growing like vāli's strength when facing an opponent. In this period he became one of the handful of cricketers who had won both the junior and senior World Cups. After a classic Indian defeat in a World Cup knockout match, M S Dhoni resigned from captaincy and the reins went to the best batsman in the side: Kohli.

The (purportedly) last ever ICC Champions Trophy began in a rainy English summer, pardon the tautology, of 2017. India absolutely battered the Arch-rivals at Edgbaston. This was followed by a shock defeat against Sri Lanka as Men in Blue failed to defend 321 an ominous sign for the future. India put away the disappointment and comfortably beat South Africa and Bangladesh to reach the final. The opponents were the Old Enemy.

Yet another time an Indian captain thought fielding first in a big match was a good idea. I am starting to think this is a genetic flaw that can never be corrected. Yet another time everything that can go wrong went wrong. Fakhr Zaman, a guy whose name cannot be mentioned without a censor beep in the English world, tore the Indian attack for a 92 ball century. This was after he was bowled off a no-ball for just 3. If that was bad, getting thrashed around the ground by almost 37 year old Hafeez was worse.

Nevertheless 339 was not beyond the exceptional Indian batting lineup. India's top 5 was: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh & (arguably) GOAT finisher MS Dhoni. With Pandya and Sir Jadeja for support. As usual all of this was just on paper. Mohammad Amir destroyed the top 3 with a frenzied spell and India were behind the 8-ball. A few balls later Yuvraj & Dhoni went. There was no Jadeja-Robin Singh on this occasion but there was time for an Atul Bedade...on steroids. 

Hardik Pandya went berserk thrashing 4 4s and 6 6s in a blistering cameo. His innings was cruelly cut short by a run out and India immediately subsided within 4 overs. There are few over-optimistic Indian fans who believe India would have won if not for Sir Jadeja's selfishness. What's so wrong about being positive? Let us believe it would have happened.

There you go. Not one, not two, not three but FIVE captains who thought it would be a great idea to micturate into the wind. One of them even got a do-over but he refused to learn. It's like Roger Federer refusing to change tactics against Rafael Nadal stubbornly believing that his "talent" would eventually win. As things stand there is no cure for this disease for the foreseeable future. Indian fans should pray that an Indian captain should never win the toss on finals day. This way we avoid the hypothetical of wishing away the preordained batting collapse that accompanies the toss win.

There are a few men, three of them to be precise, who escaped this fate. The fate of never having to choose whether or not to bowl first after winning the toss in a big match. We'll see about those in the epilogue.