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After another ICC event has gone without a victory, Indian cricket needs to answer two tough questions if they dare to embark on a daring transition: Should their coach Rahul Dravid remain unscathed? Does India’s future-proofing cricket include its continued presence?
To complicate matters further, those in the BCCI who will be responsible for enforcing this change have their own transgressions and bad whims to reckon with. Another interesting activity is to peek at Captain Rohit Sharma’s self-assessment form. Together, amazingly, despite their obvious merits, earnest intent, intelligence and abilities, the three – Dravid, Rohit and BCCI – have not yet begun to implement what they were brought in for.
One of the main features of Sourav Ganguly’s and MS Dhoni’s captaincy was that they built a team, and created careers for the youngsters. There could be argument about their abilities – Donnie’s curious reluctance to captain a Test team, his tactical and leadership failures especially abroad, Ganguly’s political machinations within the team – but the lingering memory of their spells was about youthful strength, promises kept, and victories.
In the post-Dhoni era, Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli expanded on this legacy: They were willing to stir bear within the team, provoke performers, speak boldly of winning abroad, and craft that desire to focus on glory on the world stage.
But India is still hungry for the ICC’s prizes. The humiliating defeat for Australia in the WTC final under Rohit and Dravid hurts even more. Not only is the empty closet eye-catching, but the path they took is also uninspiring.
Kohli and Shastri had their faults. They’ve made some glaring mistakes – failing to find the fourth-place finish at the 2019 World Cup, playing two spinners after rain on the opening day of the latest World Tennis Championship final, outdated style in T20Is, and giving up on the last lap to the ICC Trophy campaign. Rohit and Dravid were supposed to erase the occasional freaks seen in the previous regime.
Dravid brought impressive hands-on experience through the system, from the Under-19s to India. It was impressive to put himself on this organic path. Rohit came through with a stellar captaincy in the Indian Premier League, showing the grit and discipline needed in turning himself into a Test opener to start a late comeback. Together, a lot was expected. In simple terms, it was felt that Dravid would make up the Test team, and Rohit could make up the white ball team.
The temptation to deceive
The team selections leading up to the recent T20 World Cup have been bewildering. Kohli’s genius spark of two balls off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf sparked a national flood of hope, but it was a faltering campaign. The problems were many. There was the similarity at the top of the batting order, the inexplicable belief in dying specialist Harshal Patel in bizarre circumstances, the mistrust of Mohammed Shami, and the failure to replace Aksar Patel with the attacking gamble of Yusvendra Chahal. Not being able to find clarity in the role of Rishabh Pant.
The management of the team did not take too many “risks”. It was drafted as “consistency” in the team selection, but that’s just flimsy wear. For a while, they had Daebak Hooda perched on top, and when he hit a hundred, they pushed him down and finally got him out.
At the Tests, Dravid, moved by the WTC’s prodding, began pressing for rank imitators. It was not the salutary approach one conceived of it, but was accepted as a surprisingly real political policy by the old diplomatic hand. But when the in and out batsmen struggled, he would say “there were hard pitches; the averages had fallen for all the batsmen”. The irony gasped.
Shastri is often credited with a change of heart, the easiest factor to praise or discredit, but his tactical intellect was appreciated. Australia’s middle stump line tactic, turning their strength into weakness, including Ravindra Jadeja in the lower middle order in 2018, raising Rohit as an opener, has the audacity to make the team believe in outside performance.
He needs personal strength to push, pull and pull the team forward. It also needs a skilled support team to align with the head coach. Shastri had bowling coach Bharat Arun. Dravid’s choice of support staff also came into question. One of the carryovers from Shastri’s period is striking coach Vikram Rathore. Despite being part of the dressing room for a long time, nothing has visibly changed in the Indian top order’s approach. And generally all the old bugs remained.
Tactics and human management
One interesting idea was that the former India player-coach who worked with the Dravidians in the U-19 group, WV Raman, wrote in this paper when the Dravidians became the coach of India.
“Does he take what he gives? Ravi can. Ravi may rely heavily on you as a player at a certain point if he feels that is required. Say strong things. But he can also take if the player is going to give it back, provided there is sufficient justification for it. The question is can he Rahul dealing with that. Would he like to be challenged by a younger boy? That’s what it would boil down to… Would the Dravidians be comfortable with the fact that it’s okay to lose, to try to win,” Raman wrote.
This psychological field was to be expected, but what wasn’t were planning errors, tactical error, misreading of pitches, and lack of persuasion. During the IPL, there was talk that all the India bowlers would bowl with Dukes balls, but that didn’t quite happen. Injuries to Jasprit Bumrah and Pant – two key factors in the previous regime’s Test success – didn’t help, but the sense of aberration seen in the squad was unexpected.
There was criticism that the defeat in the World Trade Center final showed that the Indian team were “suffocating”. This is not entirely true. With the ‘throttle’ there is an element of expectation from the team that is running well, having warmed up intensely and pulled away on the last lap. This is not the case here.
This disaster was an expected disaster, and it was not surprising. Among the Indian board members this is more restless than his players regarding ICC awards but does not have the audacity to prioritize performance and preparation over trade. From the management of the Indian team who sighed about the offshore barriers, but was not sincere enough in considering, upgrading, planning and raising their standards. The predicted disaster is the worst kind of collapse of management and board which has money, intent and desire but not discipline, will and imagination.
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