Save the Wicket Keepers

All of a sudden there is shortage of good wicket keepers in world cricket. Except for Adam Gilchrist and Tatenda Taibu there are no wicket keepers who are good enough to play international cricket. Fumbling with collections, dropping catches and missing stumpings are the order of the day. It wasn’t so not very long ago, every team, including weaker ones, had outstanding wicket keepers in their side. The man responsible for the present state of affairs is Adam Gilchrist.

Before the arrival of Adam Gilchrist the team expected its wicket keepers to keep wickets only. Gilchrist has changed all that, now wicket keepers are expected to be accomplished batsman as well. If you look at the career averages of wicket keepers of the earlier periods you will notice their batting averages to be in the range of mid twenties to mid thirties. Mid twenties was considered fair enough and mid thirties as outstanding. Not any more, everyone is now looking for a wicket with Adam’s average. Nothing wrong in that, after all look at the difference that Gilchrist’s has made to the performance and fortune of the Australian team. The problem arises in the failure to realise that Gilchrist’s is a special talent, a person with exceptional gift such cricketers cannot be produced or groomed they have to be born.

Both batting and wicket keeping are special skill jobs that need hours and hours of practice and hard work to attain perfection. Just as among allrounders you wouldn’t find some one who can bowl as brilliantly as Anil Kumbhle as well as bat like Sachin Tendulkar, one is either a bowling all rounder or a batting all rounder. So it is among wicket keepers, one can have either a brilliant wicket keeper and a mediocre batsman (as most wicket keepers earlier were) or brilliant batsman and mediocre wicket keeper (cf. Rahul Dravid).

Though wicket keepers are taken into the team on the basis of their wicket keeping but soon enough pressure builds upon the hapless chap to be like Adam Gilchrist. The horrible part is that the pressure comes from all corners, the media, team, selectors and cricket fans as well. As a result the person starts spending more time on improving his batting and neglecting his core competence, in the bargain he remains neither a test class wicket keeper nor a test class batsman. It happened with Deep Dasgupta and Parthiv Patel and is currently happening with Dinesh Karthik, Macuulam and Geriant Jones.

To save the vanishing tribe of wicket keepers we need to bring our expectations down to more realistic level.

England's Ashes win is bad news for India

England's Ashes win is bad news for India. A safer word would have been performance in place of win, because one more Test is yet to go, but I don’t think Australia is going to win that Test. Even if Australia wins, it is not going to alter what I have to say about why victory for England is bad news for India. My views have got nothing to do with cricket because a victory in the Ashes series does not guarantee a series win against India (ask Ray Illingworth) India still is a formidable team under home conditions. Moreover, England has already committed the blunder that other cricketing nations do not commit anymore. England play both against Pakistan and India during the winter; since England play Pakistan first India will have the advantage of playing an already tired or tiring team.

When it comes to tour of the Indian sub-continent, England is the champion whiners. Its amazing the number of things they find to whine about; heat, sun, dust, crowd, playing conditions, ground conditions, practice pitches, test wickets, match scheduling, hotels, transport, toilets, tissues, water, cutleries, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh, Ashley Giles, bananas, guavas, oranges, sight screens and on and on goes the regular staple list of things to whine about. Be sure every hack accompanying the team, every member of the team, every visitor from that country coming to watch cricket and all the others and sundries are sure to find a cockroach in their soup, (amazingly the cockroach is always found in the soup and not in any other food), in the kitchen (amazing again why every one of them needs to raid the kitchen at the dead of night, are they habitual freeloaders? Members of Spot the Cockroach Club) and in their hair.

The Ashes victory is going to bring out in full bloom the haughty, supercilious, conceited, puffed up nature of the British behaviour. Even if England beats India, which they might for at the end of the day they are a good team at the moment, Indian crowd will find it very difficult to respect the team. Flintoff, Pieterson and Harmison can still build up fan following though.

That is why England's Ashes win is bad news for India. A boorish England (and sulking as well, if they start losing early) is going to spoil all the fun of a full cricketing season. How sad.    

Getting to watch Test cricket was not easy

Getting to watch Test cricket was not easy. Kanpur was the nearest Test centre, although almost every year a Test was staged at that venue, for a pre-teen non-Kanpuri it always remained a dream. Travelling alone or with a group of friends to a different city and that too for six days (there used to be a 'rest day' after either two or three days of play) was beyond question, to venture even beyond the borders of the mohalla one had to be accompanied by an elder. Girls couldn’t do that even, their boundary was set up to the next-door neighbour.  Apart from my mother no one else was interested in cricket; so my desire to watch Test remained an unfulfilled dream.

Mukesh was luckier; his elder brother Girish bhaisahab was an avid cricket fan. For a week after the Test, Mukesh would be 'the big guy'. We would surround him the moment he landed in his home, pester him, cajole him, question him to get out from him every bit of details about the match, the players, the ground and sometime even about the umpires. For sometime thereafter Mukesh would appoint himself as our coach and try to correct our stance at the crease or bowling actions. Once, after watching Subhas Gupte (or was it Balu Gupte?) he tried to teach me to bowl googly.

When we were in the primary school Girish bhaisahab was in class 10th or 12th by the time we were in the middle school Girish bhaisahab was in class 10th or 12th. Actually, we were never sure which exam he was due to take. I never saw him playing cricket not even for some idle moments of fun. He preferred umpiring. Every match that was played on our school field be that between our college team and another or between two teams from the primary section, Girish bhaisahab used to be the umpire. We had great respect for him and sincerely believed that he knew by heart every line of the rulebook. In the eyes of us children Girish bhaisahab became a legend for another reason. He fell in love Muktadi, his neighbour. Unfortunately they belonged to different castes and both parents were determined not to let them marry. One day Muktadi's father thrashed Girish bhaisahab mercilessly and got Muktadi married off within a few days. After coming out of the hospital Girish bhaisahab father set up a stationery shop for him which Girish bhaisahab cared very little about and left it to Mukesh. Girish bhaisahab never married and never went to Kanpur to watch a Test.    

I got hooked to cricket when I was a six year old ...

I got hooked to cricket when I was a six-year-old kid. My eldest sister was on her annual visit from her in laws home and she bought me full set of cricketing gear. It was an exciting year, Ray Lindwal was creating terror, Pankaj Roy got out for 99 in one of the Test and I with my cricketing gear was a leader among my friends, sort of. I have had no prior exposure to cricket but seen my mother listening to cricket commentary on the radio with great interest, Vizzy, Phadkar, Berry Sarbadhikari, Surita Pearson and Amarnath were some of the familiar names of commentators. In those days one didn’t have to be a former player to be a commentator. My mother talked with great reverence and nostalgia about Merchant, Hazare, Phadkar, Mushtaq Ali and others. Listening to mother I figured them in my mind as giants and conquerors. It was fun listening to the commentary along with mother, though for most part I couldn’t follow what was being talked about. At times noticing my perplexed expression mother would try and explain to me. Radio in those days occupied the pride of place in the household, more than ever TV would many years from them. We had a Murphy multi wave radio, which I claimed as my own (and continue to do so even now) because the set was purchased on the day I was born! The radio was set on a square table with curved legs. Ma had crocheted several covers for the radio and a few a tablecloths for the table as well. A chair with round arms and back was placed before the radio. Ma preferred listening to the commentary with her eyes closed and legs stretched out, perhaps visualising the in her mind the game that was on. Come to think of it I never asked my mother whether she had ever watched a Test match or not but the roar of the crowd and the excited description by the commentators must have helped her in imagining the atmosphere. Of course, I never made it big in cricket. About that some other time, perhaps.