This article is a must for most of us on this forum. Though this article has India as example.But substitute India with Pakistan and you will have pretty much same story.
** Don’t rush to judge our cricketers**
In a recent column, I suggested that the subcontinent was not so much cricket’s headquarters as its heart, its passionate, unstable, throbbing core.
We are its emotional centre, we are the guardians and bearers of its unique and beautifully chaotic spirit.
It is something to behold; it is also, occasionally, the source of frustration.
Passion infuses life into subcontinental cricket; but this obsession also makes for an alarming fickleness.
Nowhere do opinions swing as rapidly from one extremity to another.
When cricket steps forth, reason usually steps back.
**
Too far, too fast**
Unquestionably part of the allure of subcontinental cricket is the endless chatter over roadside chai, the alley-way debates behind opaque curtains of cigarette smoke, where a man’s character is mangled after a poor over yet his statue resurrected after two wickets in the next one.
But sometimes we - press, experts, public - go too far too fast.
Perhaps there are too many channels searching for an angle when none exist, too many columnists (and I am hardly an exception) prone to over-analysis, too many office critics reading too much into every false shot and bowling change.
Cricketers often say the public’s opinion is irrelevant to them, that newspapers are rarely read, that TV experts suddenly assume virtues they did not necessarily possess when they played.
Part of it is arrogance, part frustration, part the reality that at jumping to conclusions we, the watchers, are unrivalled.
They are not all wrong. One day the Indians are valiant (Tests v Australia), the next they are chokers (one-dayers in Australia), the third they can walk on water (one-dayers v Pakistan), the fourth they are incompetents (second Test v Pakistan).
**
Absurd**
Acceptably, the Indian team has yet to embrace consistency but such massive shifts in opinion appear somewhat unreasonable.
Sachin Tendulkar interviewed in Lahore
Press, experts and public go too far, too fast, with our analysis
In this India-Pakistan series, for instance, the cricket has been compelling, the hosts magical, but in between some of the storylines have been baffling.
After the first Test, headlines quickly suggested that India could be the best batting line-up in the world (you’ll never hear the team say this).
By the end of the second Test, they were being compared to the Batliboi Second XI.
People who lauded India’s batting, suddenly decided batting first in Lahore was absurd.
First they say put your best foot forward, then they say that’s not your best foot!
Some years ago an Indian news magazine put Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar on the cover and claimed this line-up was the best in the world.
Wrong. We weren’t then, and we aren’t still.
Someone forgot Hayden, Ponting and those grim boys in green and yellow.
**
Bigger picture**
Indeed, in all the agonising over India’s collapse, there hasn’t been enough credit handed to Inzi’s men.
To lose the one-dayers, then the first Test, at home, in such a charged series, and then find the courage to fight back is not impressive. It’s remarkable.
After the first Test, stand-in captain Rahul Dravid was hailed as more tactically astute than Rommel and a better leader of men than Patton.
After the second Test, it was decided he needed to be sent back to cricketing school!
Fact is, Dravid hasn’t led enough for anyone to make a concrete opinion, and this swift exchange of praise for ridicule only confirms why Sourav Ganguly has more grey hair at his age than nature would suggest he should.
Of Dravid we have always known this: for him team comes first.
It is evident in his constant movement up and down the order through the years without complaint, in his dutiful acceptance of wicket-keeping responsibilities (no easy decision, for the only guarantee is that he will look bad), in his unconditional support for his captain (ask Sourav).
In a land that values individual accomplishment over team (though one senses it is changing fast), we celebrated his ability to see the bigger picture.
Yet when he declares with Tendulkar on 194 he’s a sinner!
Forget that his respect for Tendulkar is well advertised, forget that we don’t know what exactly the instructions sent out were.
What matters is the end result. India won. The rest is irrelevant.
Ask Tendulkar if he’ll exchange that victorious smile at the end of the Test for a double century and you know what he’ll choose.
Were both possible? Perhaps. But we’ll never know.
Our teams are not always worthy of our affection, but often they do not deserve our fickleness either.
VVS Laxman had people calling him the finest craftsman in the world in Australia.
An unfinished series later some want him dropped?
Irfan Pathan is earning his apprenticeship in Test cricket, impressively no doubt, but some have already dubbed him the “next Wasim Akram”.
A couple of failures and people may well say, “Oh, see how cricketers are hyped”. Yeah, but who hyped him?
Sometimes we need to just let the game unfold and celebrate the competition and enjoy the deeds of skilled young men, rather than damning them too fast, or indeed praising them excessively.