da bet7： Mohammad Azharuddin © CricInfo The Indian team is now in the same situation as it was when theEnglishmen toured India in 1993
Woorkheri Raman05-Dec-2001
Mohammad Azharuddin
© CricInfoThe Indian team is now in the same situation as it was when theEnglishmen toured India in 1993. Then too, the Indians had returned fromSouth Africa with hardly any success, as they did recently. The onlydifference is that the recent series in South Africa saw a lot ofcontroversy after the famous Mike Denness drama. Like MohammadAzharuddin in 1993, Sourav Ganguly is also hard-up for runs in Testcricket. The need to win and restore some confidence among the public,and also to salvage some pride, is very high on the list for Ganguly’sgang as it was for Azhar’s team then.But while Azhar was put on trial, both as a captain and as a player,Ganguly is under no threat to lose either his place or his captaincy.The first Test at the Eden Gardens in 1993 changed quite a few things indramatic manner, some good and some not so good. Azharuddin and EdenGardens had an intriguing chemistry, which has become something offolklore. He walked into bat with Damocles’ sword hanging over his head,and the entire team was hoping that things went his way. After a fewanxious moments, Azhar got stuck into the English with a vengeance, andthe shots that he unleashed provided great entertainment to everyonefortunate enough to watch them.With the Englishmen playing a four-pronged attack at Eden Gardens, theywere helpless as Azharuddin produced boundaries at will. He was verysevere on Chris Lewis, which was customary in the early ’90s. Lewis keptbanging the ball short and, on the low-bouncing Indian pitches,Azharuddin repeatedly smashed him off the back foot on either side ofthe wicket with élan. That he went on to score a big hundred and reintroduce the Indians to the winning mode is now history. The victory atEden Gardens unearthed a formula that brought success, but it alsohampered the Indian side in a big way in years to come.The Ajit Wadekar-Azharuddin combination favoured under-prepared pitchesto achieve results, but little did they realize that they were gettingthemselves into quicksand. It was also that very combination thatfostered the make-shift opener theory and, till today, there is noestablished pair of openers. Agreed that the record books show thatAzharuddin led India to many successes in Tests, but those results weretoo much of an illusion. The victories under Azharuddin also triggeredanother dangerous plague, that of the selectors picking all and sundryfor the Irani and the India ‘A’ sides. The logic was that, as long asthe Indian seniors kept winning, they were not going to be questioned.That policy turned out to be malignant, in the sense that India isstruggling today in almost all departments. There is hardly any benchstrength, the search for a good spinner is still on and, until recently,the wicket-keeper’s slot was up for grabs. Deep Dasgupta might havebatted well in the Test series in South Africa, but he still has toimprove by a long margin in his main job. Once again the make-shiftopener will be employed by the present team management, and the spinnerswill win the matches, but it has to borne in mind that India has a lotof away series coming up.If the Indians win against the visiting Englishmen, the South Africanblues might be forgotten for the nonce, but Indian cricket in generalwill remain where it was before the start of this series. Ganguly orAzharuddin, the trend will remain the same, and quite obviously nobodyseems to be bothered about long-term planning. As the saying goes, theIndians will make hay while the sun shines. The cricketers cannot beblamed solely and squarely for the laxity, because there seems to be nosuch thing called accountability in Indian cricket.