There can be no light if there is no darkness but — as at the start of the year — too many dark thoughts and controversies have surrounded Indian cricket in the last few weeks of 2012 as the team was unexpectedly pushed on to the back foot by a determined England team led by the marvellous Alastair Cook.
What promised to be a season of redemption after a series of defeats overseas was playing out a mixed script, with easy victories over New Zealand at home, followed by serious difficulties against England, interspersed with high drama and lament over the retirements of Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman, some fantastic performances in domestic and international cricket by youngsters and not forgetting the pathos-laden, heroic return by Yuvraj Singh after battling cancer — albeit briefly.
The start to the year was forgettable with Australia completing a massive 4-0 whitewash that left the Indian team dazed and groggy. After a similar debacle against England the previous year, this was one calamity too many — and not helped by stories of dissent and dispute with the dressing room which inevitably emerged.
But the first half was not all that bad. Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th century came against Bangladesh in the Asia Cup. This was a landmark which the entire cricket world had been anticipating for almost a year. Tendulkar’s tally of centuries took him far and beyond other cricketers and his reaching a century may well go down as India’s happiest cricketing moment of 2012.
The T20 World Championship, however, was a mood dampener, though victories over New Zealand seemed to alleviate some of the gloom — till, of course, England arrived to turn the tables on Dhoni’s team. All talk of avenging the previous year’s whitewash started to look puerile if not downright silly as England outplayed India. Dhoni, the captain with the Midas touch, was engulfed in the darkest hour of his career as former selector Mohinder Amarnath fired salvos at him, claiming that he was not deserving of the job and had only been saved by the BCCI president N. Srinivasan whose team he leads in the IPL. Not just his captaincy but Dhoni’s Test career was on the line. Ditto for Tendulkar whose floundering form till Nagpur left him exposed to cynics and critics.
In the terrible irony of life, the same year he reaches that amazing milestone of 100 centuries, the calls for his retirement became stronger and louder than ever. Unlike Dhoni, however, Tendulkar has more laurels to rest on than any other cricketer. When he decides to lay down his bat, his position among the stars is assured; his pedestal is polished and ready. But he, too, must be wary of pushing his body and luck too far. To the uninitiated, it would appear that Indian cricket had hit the doldrums in 2012. But as an eternal optimist, and somebody who has tracked the mercurial ways of Indian cricket for three decades, I see a silver lining of hope on the horizon. The old order is giving way to the new and players like Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Pragyan Ojha, R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja — with a fairly large support cast of players waiting for an international break — look ready to take over the responsibility of revitalising Indian cricket.
Not too long ago, when Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Amarnath, Vengsarkar, Kirmani et al retired, it seemed that India would take a long time (if at all) to recover. In fact, it took only a few years before players of the calibre of Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman, Kumble, Srinath, Zaheer, Harbhajan and Sehwag arrived to make Indian cricket stronger and richer.
While the present may seem gloomy, there is no reason why the future can’t be better than anything seen earlier.
WHAT NEXT?
Cricket enters perhaps it most volatile but also most engaging phase in the near future. In Tests, six or seven countries are jostling for pole position. While South Africa are the deserving number one, Australia, England, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka are not really that far behind. What has emerged clearly from the series played in 2012 is that home advantage is not as decisive as it was earlier.
The number one position changed hands when South Africa beat England in England; and the Proteas almost lost this a few months later to Australia, luckily scraping through with draws in the first two Tests before winning the third.
Elsewhere, New Zealand amazingly won a Test in Sri Lanka to square the series and, perhaps, most significantly, England turned the tables on India. Despite the delights of Test cricket, the allure of T20 will continue to grow. A T20 league is in the offing in the United States and the cricket establishment in England has been straining at the leash for a league of its own. Much will depend on the global economy to support so many leagues as well as the availability of days in the itinerary. Cricketers will be a tired lot, but clearly they will also be richer than ever imagined even 10 years back.