It’s not often that one witnesses players spanning generations come together, with mastery being the common binding factor between them. Batting legends G.R. Viswanath, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly got together on Saturday to talk shop.
Up first, former skipper turned commentator Ganguly spoke about how a team drive a skipper.
“A captain is as good as his team. If you have a good team then half your job is half done,” he said.
GRV, who has been involved in talent spotting for a while, urged the youngsters to work hard, for that’s the only thing that takes one closer to their dreams.
“If you have talent it is good, but with that you need to have the ability to work hard. Nobody including Sachin reached where he is without working hard. Sachin continues to work hard to stay there.”
Batting giant Tendulkar gave his perspective on selection and said one needed more than a few runs or wickets to his credit to climb higher.
“Selection is about analyzing players, selections are not based only on scorecards, then you don’t need selectors to come and watch the players. It is all about vision.
“In the last many years there have been players who perform exceptionally well on the domestic circuit, but fail to make it at the international level.”
Tendulkar further spoke about getting the basics right. “Basics are very important in Test cricket and you need them in ODIs too. But in T20 cricket, it doesn’t matter much because 3-4 delivers can make someone a hero.”
Adding to the Mumbai maestro’s comments, Dravid said adaptability of a player was essential in all forms of the game.
“Playing in all forms of the game, one needs to learn to adapt. For example, I can’t block while batting in T20 like I did in Test cricket. That is where the basic foundation is very important. Test players adapt to T20, its not always the other way round,” Dravid analysed.
Coming from a man who had walked into the sunset much before the advent of T20, Karnataka batting great V. Subramanya’s assessment of the shortest format of cricket was pleasantly surprising.
“I do think there are good effects of T20 cricket. It takes a lot of skill to play in that format and I believe fielding has improved tremendously because of it.”
While the batsmen debated on their area of expertise, former pace aces Richard Hadlee, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad and Roger Binny relieved their happy moments on the ground.
Sharing over 1300 wickets between them, Bishan Singh Bedi, EAS Prasanna, B.S. Chandrashekar and Anil Kumble shared their spinning tales leaving the audience asking for more.