The cricket board may have its hands full in September. This is no routine year in which the annual general meeting is a formality with loyalties known well in advance and cosmetic changes are put in place by the top brass before they get on with the partying. The issues up before BCCI this time are huge. On the other hand, the scene from the playing field does look healthy with a generational battle going on for places in the team.
Yuvraj Singh was the first of the seniors to announce himself to the brats with the bats as the super bat of the previous generation who can still hit the white ball long and hard. When he is on song and his body is fit and his reflexes are responding, there is no more attacking player in the game. He is still the kind who can set the stands on fire in the limited-overs arena.
It may be far too late for him to do much about his patchy Test record in a format in which he never settled down to show in the manner of the moderns who, once their eye is in, can turn a 5-day game around in a session and a half of robust hitting. That he did not have the tight defence to get through the initial phase meant he had to rely more on chance to find his feet.
If I were forced to buy a ticket for a cricket match, I would certainly go to one in which Virender Sehwag is opening the innings and Yuvraj’s name comes up somewhere in the middle order. It is paisa vasool time if one or the other clicks. Viru may not be the Viru of old but if he does apply his mind to it he can be the most instinctive striker of a cricket ball, the newer it is the better for the making of flowing strokes.
It might have made sense had the proposition been made a few years ago that his dipping form could be corrected were Viru to bat in the middle order. Today, all bowlers know how to reverse the ball, which means batting is not always the unalloyed pleasure it used to be after the shine wore off and the trundlers were made to bowl on flat and true pitches. That period of cool batting before the new ball becomes due is gone.
Gautam Gambhir may not be in the same ‘entertainer’ class as Viru or Yuvraj. But the doughty opener is one of those campaigners who can flourish once he gets a start as he is equally capable of handling the spinners. His competence against spin used to offer him a huge advantage in building long innings in the Test arena while he was no slouch in the T20 or ODI format either.
Considering his possible comeback as a Test candidate will have to be against the awe-inspiring deeds of Murali Vijay and his latest partner, Shikhar Dhawan, who set the Test world alight with the quickest century by a debutant, the odds become easy to compute. But Gauti is not one to give up without a fight. He will give the season everything he has by way of diligent application. A bit of technical readjustment and a greater sense of where his off stump is might just bring back to him his big scoring ways.
Sachin Tendulkar’s middle order slot will become available only when he wishes to give up Test cricket. The indications are that the master batsman will be seen in action in South Africa as well as New Zealand this season after his 200th Test appearance comes against the West Indies, possibly on his home ground, Wankhade Stadium. No one in Indian cricket has the right to judge when Sachin should pull up his shoes with spuds. He will take the call himself, perhaps after this Test season that runs up to the New Zealand tour.
The merest whisper that selectors could begin to judge him on his current form — although chairman Sandeep Patil strenuously denies he spoke about this to Sachin face to face — after his landmark Test could mean the master will be intent on pulling out a monumental innings from the depths of his unprecedented experience of 24 years at Test level to prove a point. What better for competition among the young and old than this? While the administrators may chew their nails off at the AGM, they can at least be confident that their top players are doing alright in the arena.