Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Bishen Singh Bedi was a great bowler, and a perfect gentleman too. Despite being hit for a towering six, he would still applaud at the batsman’s effort. That was in the late 60s and 70s, and much before Bryan Adams composed his ‘Summer of 69’.
But Ishant Sharma will give a hard stare with the F-word even at the slightest hint of a batsman attempting to play any aggressive shot against him. Ask Tillekeratne Dilshan, he will just smile, shrug his shoulders and walk off.
Sreesanth will irritate you with his antics and doing something silly, may even bowl a beamer without thinking much. Irfan Pathan will stare you to submission, Harbhajan Singh will take on the whole crowd at one go; the shy Gautam Gambhir can be quietly aggressive with the bat like Robin Uthappa testing a bowler’s nerves with brazenness. The usually cool Rohit Sharma will show his anger if things didn’t go his way and Virender Sehwag can tell when the opposition is scared of this Indian team. This is the Summer of 2008. And this is the best days of their life as well.
They are distinctly fearless, but can this new-generation Indian cricketers ever be called gentlemen? Frankly, they don’t care. This Team India have no intentions to be nice guys on the field—they want to play their cricket hard, and win. They are not here to be named the ambassadors. You could see that in their body language, in words and in each of the shots they play. Led by skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, this team is not afraid to take on any opposition without the fear of failure.
“I don’t think too much about my technique, I rely on my guts and intuition,” says Dhoni. Agrees Robin Uthappa, who says that he knows that fear is lurking somewhere around him. “It must here or there, but I don’t really care about it, and that’s what helps me play some of those outrageous shots against the best of bowlers,” he says.
Gambhir admits that he gives two hoots to the reputation of bowlers. “When I am batting, it’s between me and the ball; the bowler doesn’t have any role. You don’t play your shots thinking about who is bowling at you. I don’t really care if it’s Lee or Vaas or Malinga. If the ball is there to be hit or if the situations demand so, I will go for my shots,” he says.
Irfan Pathan defends those little things that bowlers keep doing. “I think staring and other things are okay. It charms the game and is good for the crowd. If you ask me, as a fast bowler I think it’s fine. But things should not go out of hands because everything has a limit,” he says avoiding the topic of sledging.
Ishant says when he’s running in to bowl, he cannot afford to look who is batting. “I agree that it’s important to know what his strengths and weakness are but other than that you don’t want to know who’s Jayasuriya and who is Ponting. I cannot be thinking that he’s my favourite batsman. That way, you can’t bowl at all,” he says. “When I bowl, I want to take all the wickets and bowl fast. That’s it,” he says.
After the captaincy of Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar, Team India got their first taste of aggression during Sourav Ganguly’s reign. His successor Rahul Dravid was more conventional—he even wrote a letter to his team members after the Nottingham Test asking them to behave. They had mixed feelings to that letter. However, this team has a skipper who allegedly kept Ganguly out, but has taken his team to a new level of aggression—giving them a free hand to go after the opposition in every sense of the word. Cricket ground is no place for being nice or friendly,but they believe that everything has to be buried inside the ground just after play.
That perhaps explains why one could see that sense of humour in these kids just as soon as they come out of the ground, the understanding to oblige every photograph and autograph hunter. It’s like the matrix—these young boys are nice human beings but they are hard cricketers in this professional world.
