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None to shout about

I would like to congratulate Pakistan on finding, to use a cliché, a lotus among the debris. Since we live in a cultured world it's good manners to join in when your neighbors have something to celebrate about, and debutant Younis Khan has given his country a marvelous 107 as the perfect excuse to burst those firecrackers.

If it hadn't been for him, Pakistan would have lost without any saving grace. For us in India, the writing on the wall says there will be no such saving grace in Bangalore. Or in any of the five ODI venues to follow. The debutants are being blooded with unfailing regularity now, but none of them seem capable of making us hold our breath anxiously as he nears the triple figure mark. Forget triple figures, these days we let out a sigh of gratitude if a new comer chalks up 20.

The last major batting discoveries were Dravid and Ganguly four years back. They both burst on to the scene with blaze and pomp and heralded what we thought would be an era of multi-talented batsmen being dug out from all the four corners of the land. Unfortunately, beyond a Ramesh, the excavations yielded little else. At least nothing that could come close to what we were expecting. Today we're biting our nails to the bone trying to figure out who can possibly replace Dravid if he gets any more indifferent.

Pakistan, meanwhile, had already found a Yousaf Youhana to replace an out of form Inzamam-ul-haq if need be. And that's not all. Abdur Razzaq made his Test debut in Australia last year and walked away as the player of the series. The future does not look dismal for Pakistani cricket. Their aging heroes will not walk away into the sunset leaving vacuums behind.

But for us, the vacuum is big and getting bigger. If the top batsmen seem dispirited the young ones are struggling to find their off stump (as Prem tells me of Jaffer). So why is it that we are failing to discover and nurture talent the way Pakistan does? Is their's a story of the sheer luck factor only? Theories abound, with none making sense enough to explain the divide between 'us' and 'them'.

Theory one says (and this has many takers) that the Indian players are pampered so much by the public they become soft. In Pakistan, the players are pampered only when they beat India, which means they escape assassination attempts for the time being. Naturally, this makes for a team which tries harder to win than lose.

The Indians have no such incentives, knowing that fans will even crowd around the 12th man who had the privilege of seeing his team mates sink from close up.

Theory two says that the PCB is better than the BCCI because of its policy of non interference. This could be because the PCB is usually in such a state of flux, where chiefs get sacked with alarming regularity according to the whims of the PM, that players and coach are ignored and told to 'carry on and do your best.' According to many, the BCCI, to prove its hegemony mucks around with a player with such enthusiasm they kill his fire and reduce him to a bundle of nerves by the time he reaches centrestage.

Theory three says that a new player these days comes in thinking not about how many runs he should score but how soon can he start endorsing a product. The public in India would rather see a cricketer than a mere actor give them a sales pitch. Because this kind of consumer preference has not caught on in Pakistan (at least in such a big way as in India) the cricketers there concentrate more on the job they are supposed to do.

There are more, but as I said, none of them are sound enough to console us fans. And so we dream on, wondering when a Younis Khan this side of the border will take his place in front of the crease and give us something to celebrate about.

Sujata Prakash