Ramblings from an Indian Cricket Fan ....

With an iconic coach, an inspiring captain and a team that believes in itself, the Indian team has never had it so good. Here is a run down on the people that can make a difference and help us win us the World Cup. Any satire detected is totally unintentional and absolutely unavoidable.

Virendar Sehwag (Batsman & Vice Captain) :

A destructive batsman, he can pick out fielders almost at will, a tough ask considering that there are only 11 fielders in the entire field. But then that is what great batsmen like him are capable of. However he is yet to completely master this art and often miss-hits a couple of powerful boundaries before he can find his man. They call him the Master Blaster, but looking at his recent One Day exploits, the only thing he manages to blast to the pavilion is himself. Has the unique ability to get out to incoming deliveries and so to help him out with his discomfort, the Indian team management is thinking of getting the incoming delivery banned. They argue that it is a loss for spectators if they do not get to see some explosive batting from Veeru.

He’s also a decent part time bowler, often bowling out his full quota of 10 Overs. There's still scope for improvement in his bowling since he still hasn’t yet achieved the ability of giving away as many runs or boundaries as either Irfan Pathan or RP Singh. Incredibly they are able to achieve this by bowling just half their quota. Since he has all this extra time on his hands after he gets out early, he’s been made the Vice Captain of the squad. Not much is known about his captaining abilities but looking at his batting style he does seem to be one of the great thinkers of the game and can only take Indian cricket to a new high when his time comes.

Rahul Dravid (Batsman & Captain) :

Nicknamed the Wall. A master strategist. His techniques have confounded even the best cricketing minds and in fact he is the only captain in the history of cricket bestowed with the rare ability to bowl out his own team with a googly. An Absolute genius. He bamboozles all his opponents by sending the same pinch hitter at No. 3 in every single match as a surprise tactic. He catches them by surprise every single time. Another of his master plans is to play 5 full time bowlers and let them take the burden of bowling out 25 to 30 Overs at half pace so that they get adequate rest and can come out to bat in the next innings to help get India to a respectable score above 75. The specialist batsmen in turn are supposed to bat for a total of 25 to 30 Overs without taking too many singles or straining themselves so that they get enough rest to bowl out their quota of Overs. He has made it clear that the decision to play 5 bowlers has worked for Indian cricket in the past and there is no reason even after around 20 loses in a row that this tactic will not work for us in the future. Captain courageous, take a bow. His decision to declare in Multan with Tendulkar on 194 has been severely criticized but it was all just a misunderstanding. Since Tendulkar and Sehwag look so much alike on the field, he probably assumed it was Sehwag batting on 309 and didn’t realize it was Tendulkar.

As a batsman, when he started out in One Day cricket, he was known to be a grafter who simply refused to play any shots that would get him out. In fact he refused to play any shots, period. He would hit the ball on the ground straight to the fielder with a precision that even Sehwag has failed to master in all these years. This infuriated and frustrated bowlers to no extent and they would then start pitching it all over just to get him to play a shot, any shot. However they soon came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no respite from the Wall and nothing could make him budge. Later on in his career when Rahul realized that the bowlers had sorted out his tactics, he started playing his shots into gaps and so creating run scoring opportunities. He has now become the backbone of the team and is mister reliable. He was also able to fulfill his dream of opening the batting for India in both forms of the game when he got selected as captain.

Yuvraj Singh (Batsman & Fielder) :

Had a really high scoring season with the bat against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. In fact he started winning the MOM awards, left right and center. However much he tried, he found it really hard to get out early. This was unlike the Yuvraj of old who would play a good innings once in a blue moon. His ability was never questioned but his consistency at getting out was never doubted. After undergoing intensive rigorous sessions with Greg Chappell and helpful tips from his team mates, he has finally been able to master the art of getting out early. This helps him conserve his energy going into the next match and is also the reason behind him being such a live wire in the field. This is exactly what the team management wants from him, an excellent fielder with the ability to bat and bowl a bit.

Ajit Agarkar (Bowler) :

One of the good bowlers in the squad. He missed out on the match against Australia which did a lot of harm to his bowling figures. The Aussies are known to be generous to the hilt with the Indian bowlers and usually help them add runs against their name. When he started playing for India he was labeled as an all rounder in the mould of Kapil Dev. Trying to fulfill this role, his bowling, stamina and eventually his confidence took a severe beating. His confidence was directly proportional to his generosity and he started to give away free runs to all and sundry. He eventually decided to sacrifice his batting for the country and concentrate on bowling. He is now in the team solely on the strength of his bowling skills. And a by-product of his selfless sacrifice is that he is now in line to beat the record for the maximum number of ducks by a batsman in one day cricket. Bravo Ajit !!!

Sachin Tendulkar (Batsman) :

The God of Indian cricket and is still regarded as one of the best batsman in the world. He’s been injury prone lately and missed out on the entire WI series which we managed to lose handsomely. His reflexes have probably slowed down with time but come the WC and he will be the guy to watch out for. There is nothing that can turn him on more than a chance to be the best in Cricket’s biggest trophy. He’s done it before and there is nothing that can stop him again. Except a team that firmly believes in hitting itself on its own foot and in recent times Glenn McGrath.

Saurav Ganguly (Batsman) :

Well we all know he’s out of the Indian team but few can forget his dazzling display against fast paced short bowling. He would twitch, snarl, wobble, dance, hobble, tip toe, lean back, duck and then stare with terror at the tip of his nose as the ball either whizzed past him or took the edge of his bat thru to the gleeful wicketkeeper and slips. But he’s a master batsman against the "not so short pitched and not so fast" balls and also plays well against spinners. Has the god given ability to make every fielder fight for his wicket. They can never tell which way they would need to run to catch him out. Maybe the Indian team ought to bring him back, at least for the entertainment he provided on the field. Taking off his shirt during the Natwest trophy (there are reports that a million Bengali women swooned while the rest of all women fell unconscious on that day) or keeping Steve Waugh fuming at the toss (actually it wasn’t dada's fault .. he was just having his morning meal of 25 roshogullos), this dude had oodles of attitude.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Batsman & Wicketkeeper) :

The style-bhai of Indian cricket, an Indian rock star. In fact he actually looks like a rock star with a long mane of brown hair that would have made even the lead singer of KISS envious. It is said that bowlers fear him more for his swishing shiny coiffure than for his marauding merciless batting style. Has the ability to hit any ball into orbit. When he hits em they stay hit. In fact NASA has formally complained that the number of asteroids in space have increased a lot in recent months. He was for a while, no.1 on the ICC one day batsman list, even beating Ponting and Gilchrist on his way to the top. He can also curb his attacking instincts in times of crises which is the case more often than not for the Indian team. However his form has dipped of late which shows in the fall in his rankings and has also acquired his revered team mates' unique ability to get out in the most innovative of fashions. We can either ascribe this attribute to the contagious spineless batting disease that has been endemic to the Indian team or Yuvraj like intensive sessions with the coach and master mind, Greg Chappell. His wicket keeping is not the best in the world but for a team that has for long relied on the unstable hands of Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik, he has been a miracle find. We can finally boast of a wicketkeeper who can actually keep wickets.

Mohammed Kaif (Fielder & Batsman) :

Another fielder who can bat a bit. There is an old jungle saying, "Kaif moves faster than the ball can see". Has had a huge dip in his form ever since he won us the Natwest trophy sometime in 2002. But as his captain says, he’s the future of the Indian team and has to be nurtured back to form. 4 years on, we are still waiting for him to showcase that ability. He’s a fidgety batsman who has been in and out of the team lately due to the presence of other acrobatic fielders like Yuvraj and Raina. He is also a bit of a grafter like Rahul Dravid but is often sent at the bottom of the order so that he can finish off matches (like he did at Natwest once), hit out towards the end (hmm , does Natwest count) or save the team when it has lost its entire top order (Natwest .. again).

Suresh Raina (Fielder) :

An electric fielder, has an uncanny ability to get out when perfectly set in the middle. Only once do I remember him actually carrying on and making a score above 50, a brilliant innings on a weary pitch against England. However all of his other promising innings have ended prematurely by his innate ability to hand over his wicket on a platter to his opponents. He believes in the coach’s philosophy that Tail Enders deserve a chance to bat and has often been selected at the expense of the more experienced Kaif for his superior fielding abilities. We finally have a specialist fielder in the team. The chief of selectors just verified his selection to South Africa saying that Raina has potential and we need to groom him. Wise words indeed from a wise man!

Irfan Pathan (Batsman & Bowler) :

He was hailed a national hero, he could bowl like Wasim Akram and bat like Imran Khan. India had finally found an answer to its biggest problems, a world class All Rounder. For a while, he was almost unplayable and never failed to get the initial breakthrough for India. That was the period where we demolished Sri Lanka, Pakistan and England back to back. But just as the team confidence suffered a blow in the West Indies, so did their best player, Irfan. Nowadays he bowls a mixed bag of looseners, wide leg side balls, over pitched offerings and short balls pitched way outside the off stump with a “hit me” written all over them. Batsman enjoy his bowling with gay abandon and cash in onto these generous offerings. Once in a while he comes up with a ball that actually pitches in line. This ball more often than not catches the batsman by complete surprise and forces him into playing a dot ball. Facing Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting, he surprised them by bowling an entire spell to their strengths, a barrage of fiery slow paced short pitched stuff aimed harmlessly at their ribs. He was probably celebrating Halloween early. Hand out those treats. Needless to say their eyes lit up and treated all his deliveries with great disdain. Such an intuitive and thinking bowler!

Initially used as a pinch hitter at the no.3 spot, the coach and captain have made it his official position. Probably the “in-form” middle order thinks they can get a respite from all the fearsome fast bowlers. In fact the Aussies were pleasantly surprised, when as a surprise move, Pathan did not walk in to bat at no.3 during their final Champions trophy match.

Greg Chappell (Coach) :

Greg Chappell, coach of the Indian team and the brains behind their recent fluctuations in form, has a reputation of being one of the most brilliant brains of the game. They said he would transform the Indian team, and he did. He took them from a team that was losing everything in sight to a team that actually started to win matches and then back to a team that is losing everything in sight. It’s probably just the master plan, to let the world of cricket think of the Indian team as under dogs and then to spring a surprise on them at the opportune moment. The hall mark of his coaching stint has been his experimentation. He made more changes to the batting lineup in his first 3 months than John Wright had made in his entire tenure. Forget the opposition, even the Indian players themselves didn’t know who was going in next to bat. He soon decided that the same tactic would work with the bowling and started playing 5 bowlers in each match. The trick being he would let his part time bowlers out bowl his regular bowlers keeping the entire opposition on tenterhooks. And against the West Indians on a slow spinning Ahmedabad pitch, the team went in with 4 fast bowlers. Experimentation at its best! But it’s not only the coach that deserves all the credit. His players have always stood by him with such grit. His bowlers Munaf, Irfan and Sreesanth bowled slow, short and wide to the strength of the Aussies trying to force a mistake out of them. His batsman try to hit their way out of trouble on pitches where only grafting out an innings can help fetch runs. And so end up holing out to the midfield. And last but not the least his fielders picked specially for their fielding skills drop the most important of catches. His team not only believes in itself but also possesses total confidence in their own abilities. Coach Chappell motivates not only his team but also his opponents. His recent comments against the West Indies inspired them to beat India 6 out of the last 7 times that they played us. Maybe he still has the West Indian hangover from his own playing days or maybe he’s just preparing himself for his next job, the Australian coach. A brilliant man doing the world’s toughest job!

MERA BHARAT MAHAAN !!!