risks? Fortunately maine yeh article padh liyaa aaj ke TOI mein, kya apt article likha hai unhone...š
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/S_Tharoor_Are_we_afraid_o f_risks/articleshow/2291609.cms
The temptation to see, in Indian cricket, metaphors for larger issues in our national life (secularism and diversity, for instance) is often irresistible. It is one to which I have succumbed in the past ā even while being conscious that one should always be wary of making too much of anything that transpires on that theatre of the fleeting, the sports field.
In January I wrote about my epiphany about the new India during the first cricket Test against South Africa in Johannesburg. Sreesanth's extraordinary hit over Nel's head for six ā in reaction to the South African paceman's attempt to intimidate him ā encapsulated, I argued then, all that is different about the new India: courage, assertiveness, a refusal to be cowed, a willingness to take risks and ultimately the confidence to stand up to the best that the outside world can flung at us ā well beyond the cricket field.
It turns out I spoke too soon. I have just spent the better part of five days watching India's cricketing leaders sell themselves, and the country, short at the Oval. After piling up a lead of 319 in the first innings, Rahul Dravid declined to enforce the follow-on against a demoralised and all-but-beaten England team. Dravid, a man I used to respect, sought to justify this pusillanimous decision by claiming his bowlers were tired.
This, despite the pace bowlers having had a good night's rest before the end of the England first innings, and having bowled barely 20 overs each in the previous day. I have heard from reliable sources that our bowlers were in fact raring to go: the disgraceful decision was not theirs but was sought to be pinned on them. There is only word for that, and it is not a pretty one.
The logic of the decision, according to its defenders, was simple: one-up in the series, India wanted to eliminate the slightest chance of losing. But there were barely two days left, and a gigantic lead: while nothing is impossible in cricket, a defeat was next to inconceivable. England had their backs to the wall: they had shown no capacity to bat through two days. They would have had to make 500 in record time to set us a target, and then bowl us out in two sessions, to win.
This would have called for such an abject performance by India with both bat and ball, against the run of play in the entire series, as to be improbable: even in a fantasy scenario for England, the best likely outcome for them would have been a draw.
But by batting again, India completely undermined itself. The drooping shoulders of the English team received a perceptible lift: then, when Indian wickets clattered, the formerly demoralised Englishmen were energised. Instead of having to bat through two days to save the Test, their batsmen only needed to survive a bit over one day. The decision also signalled to the opposition that the Indian team leadership did not have enough faith in its own bowlers to bowl the English out a second time, and in its own batsmen to chase a possible 100-run target in the fourth innings.
When you have so little faith in yourself, why should your opponents fear you? Dravid's decision emboldened his opponents; they played in their second innings like men who had just learned that they did not need to respect their adversaries.
If this self-inflicted belittling was shameful enough, even sadder than all this was the complete lack of the will to win. The Indian captain knew, of course, that not enforcing the follow-on made a draw the most likely outcome, and he didn't mind. As long as we can win the series 1-0, Dravid and his ilk must have told themselves, what is the need to try to win 2-0? This was exactly the sort of thinking that had abased India in the bad old days, when India routinely played out meaningless draws out of fear of defeat. By being afraid of losing, we helped our opponents not to lose.
The gutlessness of the decision was sought to be defended as one that could only be appreciated on the field of battle. "If I was sitting in an armchair," Dravid said, "I too might have disagreed with the decision." (By that logic every actor can reject every theatre critic's view of his performance.) But many experienced cricketers I spoke to at the time saw it for what it was. Dravid's own embarrassing innings of 12 off 96 balls, the slowest dozen runs ever made in the history of Test cricket, was emblematic of the problem.
The cricketer Steve James described it as a "pedestrian innings" which "portrayed a man full of fret and fear". England, he added, "can thank the Indian captain's timidity".
When I wrote about what Sreesanth's attitude betokened, I stressed that it didn't matter that India lost that Test series, because my point was not about cricket. It was about a state of mind ā a state of mind that will also change the Indian state.
What Sreesanth demonstrated in Johannesburg was an attitude that has transformed the younger generation into a breed apart from its parents'. It is the attitude of an India that can hold its nerve and flex its sinews, an India whose self-confidence is rooted in the sober certitude of self-knowledge, an India that says to the future, "come on; I am not afraid of you."
Dravid demonstrated, haplessly, that the dead hand of the older India still clings on ā an India that is afraid to take risks for fear of failure, an India without the courage of self-belief, an India that is all too willing to settle for 1-0 than go for 2-0. This is the India that did a deal with the Kandahar hijackers rather than the India that threw out the intruders of Kargil. We have the capacity to be, in any field of national endeavour, both kinds of country. But I have no doubt that the attitude I saw on the fourth day of the Oval Test is unworthy of what the real India is shaping up to be.
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Fantastic article, it summed up my thoughts also. Infact after watching Chak De...mujhe aur gussa aata hai cricket team par. The kind of adulation, fame and most imp MONEY they get compared to other sports...uske muqable their performance is almost NIL. This also applies to our Foreign policy, Defence policy...everything. Chinese Ambassador audaciously claims Arunachal Pradesh as a part of China...and we don't even protest. Pak keeps on abetting anti India activities aur hum bhaichare ki baat karte hain. Same is our attitude towards large scale Bangladeshi infiltration in NE and other parts of India...hum reaction, "don't care". We delay our Missile/Nuclear programmes under US pressure. We don't want to implement Uniform Civil Code bec'se we are afraid of offending some communities. We don't want to roll back reservations, votes nahin milenge otherwise.
Matlab ki hum mandir ke ghante ki tarah hai, jiska jee aata hai bajaa kar chala jaata hai. š¤¢
Cricket
Anupamaa
