The invisible captain
Sambit Bal
It's the contrast that showed him up. India had the better resources and a
better understanding of the conditions, yet England got the better of them
for well over three days in the second Test in Ahmedabad, which is as much a
tribute to the leadership of Nasser Hussain as it is an indictment of Sourav
Ganguly's lack of vision and imagination.
One of cricket's oldest truisms goes like this: the captain is only as good
as his team. This is largely correct. Could Clive Lloyd have led the current
West Indian team half as successfully? Could Steve Waugh inspire Bangladesh
to start competing at Test level? Unlikely. It is unreasonable to expect a
captain to transcend the limitations of his team.
But surely, good captains make the best of the available talent. And great
captains - Hussain, on the evidence of his performance in Ahmedabad, is on
his way to becoming one - can make their teams appear better by making the
opposition perform below their best. Hussain's England were a far weaker
side than Ganguly's India, but Hussain was the wily field marshal to
Ganguly's boy scout, and ultimately, that made a big difference.
This is being harsh on Ganguly, who, we have argued several times before, is
India's best captaincy bet. But it is clear that Ganguly's poor form with
the bat is casting an ominous shadow over his captaincy. While Hussain
imposed himself on the match with his manoeuvre-a-minute captaincy, Ganguly
was only visible while misfielding or hopping about to Andrew Flintoff's
rib-crunchers. For the most part, the Indian side seemed to be on
auto-pilot, running to a predictable, pre-charted course.
Ganguly's withdrawal was all the more palpable because he has been always
been a players' captain and has shown himself to be capable of flair and
imagination in the past. What's more, he has always been eager to make his
presence felt in the field and let the opposition know who the boss is. He
might not have won Steve Waugh's friendship when India played Australia
earlier, but even Waugh had to grudgingly accept that under Ganguly, there
was a hard edge to the Indian side.
It is understandable that his abysmal batting form should weigh down on
Ganguly. But it would be unfortunate, both for him and India, if Ganguly the
batsman obscures Ganguly the captain so overwhelmingly that he is reduced to
a mere figurehead.
He had an opportunity to reassert himself on the last day of the Ahmedabad
Test. Admittedly, Hussain had left him with a less-than-sporting target.
About 25 runs less and eight overs more would have kept the match more open.
But weren't India the stronger side? Didn't they have seven batsmen, four of
them among the best in the world and a No. 7 who can belt the ball a mile?
After being dominated for three quarters of the match, wasn't this a chance
to put the pretenders in their place? Of course, to lose a Test match to
sheer bravado would have been foolhardy. But to be resigned to a draw
without giving victory a chance betrayed the tentativeness of a captain
besieged by personal failure.
The openers had done their job by seeing off the first hour. From 70 for no
loss, Indians could have made a go for it for the next couple of hours.
Nothing would have been more appropriate than Ganguly at number three,
playing one of his one-day innings. A 40-ball 50 with three slashed sixes
would have set it up nicely for Tendulkar, Laxman and Sehwag. Worst-case
scenario: Ganguly could have been out for a duck. But if Tendulkar and
Dravid, with 150 Tests and 11,531 Test runs behind them, couldn't have been
trusted to bat out two sessions against a bowling attack with a combined
collection of 95 wickets, we might as well play Test cricket with
Bangladesh.
Ganguly's batting is already a liability. He is in danger of making himself
totally dispensable if he lets his batting ruin his captaincy.
Sambit Bal is editor of Wisden.com, India.
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