United in cricket

Skipper
Chetan Narula
Rupa
2011, pp 796
795

These aren’t the best of times for Indian cricket. The World Cup triumph of April has been emphatically pushed to the background following the abject capitulation of the world’s number one Test team in England.

It wasn’t just the loss of the top ranking, but the manner in which it was lost, that has both disappointed and disillusioned the average Indian fan. Blame has been laid at all quarters, most notably at the Board of Control for Cricket in India for supposedly mindless scheduling, though slowly, everyone is waking up to the reality that ultimately, it was the players that performed well below potential.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has received his fair share of criticism, as will the captain of a team that has played such miserable cricket. And to think that, in the immediacy of the World Cup victory, he was the man with the golden touch, the man who could do no wrong!

In no other team sport does the captain enjoy as much authority and responsibility as in cricket. In football and hockey, captaincy doesn’t extend too far beyond wearing the armband and going out for the toss. Cricket entails the skipper to think on his feet once the playing eleven has been finalised, to make decisions on bowling changes and field placements, on which roller to use, on whether to enforce the follow on or not…

Indian cricket history, as chequered as the performances of the national team over the years, is replete with tales of skippers hard and soft, uncompromising and pliant, abrasive and soft-spoken. The one common thread that has bound all individuals who have led India is the pressure of expectations that has always accompanied them like a double-edged sword.

From C K Nayudu, India’s first Test captain, down to Dhoni, no one has been impervious to pressure. Saying that, over the years, these pressures have changed almost beyond recognition. Nayudu became the captain almost by default even if he was the best man for the job, because that was the era of the British and of Indian royalty; Dhoni’s elevation was better charted even if his initial appointment in mid-2007 did come as a huge surprise.

In recent times, a conscious effort has been made to add substantially to the rather anaemic literature on Indian cricket. Chetan Narula’s Skipper — A Definitive Account of India’s Greatest Captains is another tome towards that end, a labour of love and undiluted passion notable for extensive and exhaustive research diluted somewhat by extraneous references that the author might have deemed necessary but that have blunted the cutting edge substantially.

Today’s generation, desperate for instant gratification and not always patient enough or driven enough to go back in time, might not find the energy to devote the attention Narula’s book deserves. That’s a real shame because as self-styled cricket lovers, it is imperative to have some knowledge of how Indian cricket has grown from modest beginnings to become the force it is today, the misadventure in England notwithstanding.

C K Nayudu, Lala Amarnath and Tiger Pataudi, among others, are giants of Indian cricket — Narula refers to them as Braveheart, the Godfather and Alexander respectively! — but the mystique has for long remained unexplored.

To many Indians, the ‘real cricket’ began in the Sunil Gavaskar era, when live television made an appearance; Narula delves into the past, focussing extensively on the Nayudus and the Amarnaths, towering personalities who haven’t necessarily been celebrated the way they ought to be.

To Narula’s credit, he has managed to speak at length to several of India’s skippers, as well as to writers close to the protagonists. There is inevitable bias in some cases, especially in the ‘slam Chappell’ part towards the very end, but that in no way detracts from a compilation well worth a read for anyone who likes to think of himself as a genuine and ardent Indian cricket fan.