The road to No.1 Test ranking

The credits in the name of the Indian cricket team are aplenty. From being the World champs at the senior level (current ODI champions and winners in 1983 and T20 champs in 2007) to being the World champions on three occasions at the junior level ( u-19) and also being ranked no.1 in Test matches in December 2009, they seem to have -been there and done that, with almost everything that is connected to the game, yet there is a sense of emptiness in Indian Cricket ,when it comes to test cricket.

While ‘ Team India’ did manage to reach the top in the test rankings, they soon found out how tough it was to retain the crown for a longer time, when they lost it to England in July 2011. With the exit of senior cricketers like Anil Kumble, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman from the Indian team, a feeling of panic has set in, especially with regard to India’s future in Test Cricket.

In this backdrop it is worthy to discuss the option of including youngsters in the senior Indian team, especially those from the India-U-19 side that recently won the World Cup in Australia.

It’s indeed a healthy trend that the youngsters are doing well and staking a claim in the senior side, but how far is this realistic is the question. Unless of course it is a teen-Sachin re-incarnate, it wouldn’t be a wise decision to push these youngsters into roles that they are probably not ready for.

Cricket at the under-19 level can definitely give us a glimpse of a player’s temperament, but on the flip-side it can also mask a few deficiencies in his technique. It would be important for us to understand that even physically, most of these players are yet to reach their peak in terms of strength and stamina, particularly the medium-pacers.A medium- pacer in Sandeep Sharma,who bowls beautiful in-swingers at 127 kmph might develop into a fast-bowler who hurls the same in-swingers at 137kmph in 18 month’s time and prove more effective. A dedicated approach by the board to focus on the physical and mental conditioning of these young pacers for the next one year might see us producing at least two world class pacers by the end of 2013. It will be more meaningful than just getting them in while they are raw and clueless. If these boys do not perform well or get injured owing to their lack of strength, then their confidence will take a severe beating. Even with regard to the batsmen, the peaking-age is around 24-30 yrs. The administrators should focus on grooming this talented bunch in physical, technical and psychological aspects of the game.

However another aspect is the importance of playing the Ranji Trophy and performing in the ‘A -Team’ tours. It’s an ideal platform to gauge the temperament of a player as it is played on challenging surfaces and over longer periods of time. Overseas tours against other ‘A’ teams will see the boys being separated from the men. The age factor is negated, the cream of talent are pitted against each other and only the best will come good. Also it will familiarise the boys to foreign conditions and finally if/when they make their debut overseas, the pressure will be much less than what will be on someone who is totally alien to these conditions.Take the case of Virat kohli who rose to fame when India won the u-19 world cup the second time in 2008 . Virat made his first class debut in 2006 and played a good lot of domestic games before making it to the national team for the ODI’S in 2008. However his Test debut was only in 2011 , a good 4 years after his success at the under-19 level. This four year period ensured that Virat got a lot of exposure at the Ranji level and also saw him get runs at the “Emerging Players’ Trophy” in Australia for the India ‘A’ team. As such, he was able to prepare and adapt himself better for the Australian tour in 2011 as he exactly knew what it takes to get runs on aussie pitches against senior sides.

It’s obvious that no matter how well you score in an IPL game, on the flat Indian pitches, it’s the success in overseas conditions and the long hours of batting on the tricky last day Ranji Trophy pitches that will ultimately tailor a prospective player into ‘test-match’ material.

The relatively smooth transition of Virat ‘the wonder kid’ to ‘Virat the finisher’ was mainly due to sorting of issues regarding technique (especially against the short balls that are bowled aplenty at the highest level) and temperament. These four years of invaluable exposure had given Virat all the time in the world to mould himself into a better player. He soon realised that quick fire thirties and forties just don’t do the job at the Test level. It’s a matter of grinding it out in the middle , it’s about assessing the game from session to session and playing accordingly. This steady climb to the top gave enough time to make mistakes, realise them, work on them and finally become a dependable middle-order batsman even at the test level.

Also, there have been many players like Badrinath, Robin Bisht, Abhinav Mukund, Manoj Tiwari, K.P Appanna, A.Rahane and many more such youngsters who have been consistently performing at the Ranji Trophy and “A” team levels. As such, it would only be fair to let the young guns of the under-19s make their way to the national side by performing at the various levels, thereby competing with the relatively older players (performers) on an even plain. Even the opinion of veteran Indian cricketer and former Chairman of the national selection committee, Mr. Chandu Borde, is on similar lines.

India has definitely never been short of talented players. All we need to do is to ensure that we put in place a system that recognises talent irrespective of any other factor and grooms them into world-class acts, who can ensure us a longer stay at the top of the test rankings in future.