Forgotten Indian Cricketers: Part One

I was reading an article on Cricinfo the other day and I came across this name - Jacob Martin. I couldnt place the name immediately but it had a very familiar sound to it. I did a little digging around and it all came back to me -
Jacob Martin! A young right handed middle order batsmen out of Baroda, who for a very brief period was expected to fill the role of sheet anchor role in the Indian middle order, a sort of a second Rahul Dravid (this was before Laxman had found his footing & Calcutta 2001 was a few years away).
Martin might as well been that player had it not been for a rather disappointing tour of Australia 1999-2000. Mind you that was wretched tour for everyone involved on Indian side. Both cricketers and viewing public were shell shocked.

Here's a quick review of the tour provided by Cricinfo -

http://www.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/153771.html

It was the lowest point of Indian cricket but it led to the catharsis that was the Ganguly-Wright era.

Being reminded of Jacob Martin, my mind began wandering, trying to remember of those countless other players through the 1990's (especially late 90's), many who burst into the national team and who along with core players like Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Javagal Srinath etc were expected to transform Indian cricket team into a world beating superpower. Many of them were not given enough opportunities while others were simply not good enough.

But first lets put things in a little perspective before I proceed

1) Through the 90's the Indian team were a mess. They just didnt fully realize it till the end of the decade. With the retirement of stalwarts who led the team through the 80's (Vengsarkar, Shastri, Gavaskar, Srikkanth) the team was in transition which was obviously neither well thought out nor well handled. This resulted in a lot of players persisted with despite being on the decline (Azhar, Sidhu) and others who were simply dead weight.

2) Indian batsmen were brought up on heavy dose of flat tracks aka belters. This allowed batsmen to play with a certain amount of freedom and expansiveness which could never be replicated outside of the sub continent. India's home strategy often rotated around the batsmen putting up huge scores on the board and the three pronged spin attack (Anil Kumble, Rajesh Chauhan, Venkathapathy Raju) would exploit the dust bowls to maximum effect and destroy opposition.

3) Openers werent tested enough. Their mission was to bat out the first session of the day where the ball would swing a bit and post lunch was time to cut lose. And the team management did themselves no favors by often experimenting with non-specialist openers (eg: Laxman, N.Mongia, M.Prabhakar etc) in an effort to squeeze in an extra batter or bowler. It was quite obvious to see that this narrow minded approach would not work outside of the dead pitches of India. As a result, genuine openers were being set up to fail since they usually had to face international fast bowling on swinging, bouncy conditions with little experience outside the domestic circuit.

4) Lack of quality fast bowlers. After Kapil Dev's retirement circa 93, Javagal Srinath and Manoj Prabhakar were the only pace options. There were several occasions were Srinath would be the lone fast bowler on the team. As a token measure of his mere presence, he would be asked to bowl a handful of overs before letting the spinners take over. He was later joined by Venkatesh Prasad around 96

5) As a result of above India could never really compete outside the sub-continent. The batsmen (few exceptions - Tendulkar, Dravid) could never consistently handle the pace, bounce, swing et al and the three pronged spin attack would not be as much a threat as at home. So while Kumble was the chief wrecker at home, on the away tours it was Srinath and Prasad would had to do the heavy legwork to keep India in the game while Kumble provided containment.

6) Therefore as much as India won at home, they were burdened by their poor record in places which really mattered like Australia, England, New Zealand, SA and West Indies. Soon questions were raised by commentators as to the true ability of the Indian team and the nature of the demoralizing defeats abroad began to take its toll in the sub continental performances too.
Overall there was a lot of negativity within the Indian team and amongst the cricketing public. Losing seemed unavoidable. Several players were brought into the team to fill gaps were quickly replaced because they couldnt provide the instant results the selectors were looking adding fuel to the fire of insecurity and team groupism. Thankfully today selectors are willing to provide more opportunities/chances to the younger players in order for them to settle down and blossom. A refreshing attitude inculcated by folks like Ganguly and Srikkanth (and several others) who have faced first hand the effects of callous selections. I hope and pray this trend will continue well into the future.

In my next article I will talk about of some of the more unfortunate, forgotten cricketers from the Indian National Cricket team.