That New Zealand and Australia are close geographically is a given -- now comes evidence that the two nations are equally close in terms of their cricket.
Kiwi skipper Stephen Fleming came up, today, with as fine an example of trash-talking as any you've seen from the Aussie masters when he dissed the side, suggested they could not bat anywhere but on featherbeds back home, and challenged them to prove him wrong.
Judging by the mails that have landed up here, there is considerable outrage over Fleming's words. I don't see why -- the guy has a mouth, he is entitled to use it; it is up to the Indian batsmen to rise to the challenge. If they fail, they really cannot quarrel with his assessment.
To me, the really interesting part of his statement is where he says the same applies when the Kiwis tour India, as they will next year. In course of an ongoing interaction with readers, the point about preparing fast pitches at home came up on more than one occasion.
Several readers asked, why? Why, they asked, can't we play to our strengths? Isn't it true that if we get thrashed abroad on fast pitches to which we are unaccustomed, we are equally within our rights to thrash others on our own pitches?
Of course it's right. And fair. The home advantage is there to be used -- and just as the likes of Australia, South Africa and now New Zealand regularly use it against us, we are within our rights to use it right back at them.
In fact, Fleming's statement is for me interesting in that for once, a captain of an overseas nation is prepared to say that it is up to his team to adapt to Indian conditions when they come touring. That is not the norm -- it is more common to see teams and captains who go out of their way to greet Indian sides with fast tracks come visiting, and whine about the conditions we have at home, talk of underprepared turning tracks, and try to project their defeats not as a result of their own inability to play spin, but as some kind of devious Oriental trap that had been set for them.
That is, frankly, bullshit.
No Indian team, after a thrashing abroad, whines that it is not used to the conditions, or the food, the umpires, or whatever. But such querulous complaints are a regular feature when teams come visiting.
While on the subject, maybe it is time for us to stop dissing our own home wins? Inevitably, when India beats a top team at home, our own newspaper and internet pages are full of comments -- by our own reporters -- about how the poor, hapless tourists were undone on "designer tracks".
Maybe it is time for that to stop. Maybe it is time for us to revise our mindset, and to think that if it is fair for foreign sides to target an Indian weakness against the bouncing ball, it is equally fair for us to target their weakness against the turning one.
So why then the clamor for fast pitches? Again, that demand has nothing to do with the tracks that are prepared for Test matches involving touring sides -- they relate, instead, to the tracks prepared for domestic competition.
To know why, glance, even cursorily, through the scorecards of Ranji matches played as late as November. Heard of Nischal Gaur? Amit Sharma? Ashwani Gupta? Shammy Salaria? Mudassar Pasha? Would their names come uppermost if you were selecting a national side? Amay Khurasia has just slammed a double century -- would you pick him to do duty, in Tests, for India on the basis of that performance?
The fact is that the domestic competition -- and the individual performances it produces -- has been devalued by the sort of tracks they are being played on. And this impacts on our national cricketing fortunes in two ways:
Firstly, the selectors have not, over the years, shown any inclination to regularly check out the Ranji games, watch the up and coming cricketers in action. They go almost entirely by scorecards -- and if you were to judge by that yardstick, we are capable of putting together an India C team that could give the current Aussie national team a very very good run for their money.
Check out this masterlist of the Ranji Trophy top performers -- then imagine yourself as a selector, one who hasn't seen most of these players in actual action. Now try picking your national side -- with, say, Raul Sanjay, average 118+, as your best batsman.
The bigger problem is that it opens up this enormous gulf between the standards applying at the domestic level, and those applying at the international level. Time and again, players climb into the side on the basis of mountains of runs made in Ranji competition -- and find themselves all at sea at the higher level. He doesn't move his feet, we then say. He doesn't have technique. He can't cope with the moving ball, he cannot handle bounce, he can't negotiate pace.
But of course he can't -- where at home does he ever encounter any of this?
An argument often used to counter this is -- look at Gavaskar, he played on these pitches, too. Which is somewhat specious. Firstly, the Gavaskars of this world happen irrespective of conditions, not because of them. Secondly, Gavaskar learnt his cricket when there were still matting wickets around, especially at the school and collegiate levels, which is where he excelled and was picked from.
Consider this: In less than two years, we have tried as many as 24 different opening combinations in Tests. Presumably, all of them were picked on the basis of home performance. Presumably, the selectors then found that none of them really worked at the highest level, hence the constant shuffling. I mean, top international teams don't play 24 different Test players in a two-year span -- we however have used up that many openers, and the search continues.
Surely, that tells a story? And surely, it is this part of the story that needs the urgent attention of a BCCI that, barring those occasions when contracts and money are involved, is neither seen, nor heard from?
In passing -- you know that all rounder we are searching for? I'd say, judging of course entirely on the basis of Ranji performances, that we have found him: his name is Dodda Ganesh, who made 59 out of a Karnataka total of 252.
On second thoughts, do we need to plant thoughts in the head of a certain Mr Brijesh Patel, chairman of national selectors, who has already shown his archeological skills by digging deep to resurrect one Mr Venkatesh Prasad?
