Young Men - Natives and All

A look at the young men performing in IPL.

Let me reel off some names first up - David Hussey, Wriddhiman Saha, Dwayne Bravo, Manpreet Gony, Shaun Marsh, Shikhar Dhawan, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Abhishek Nayar,Rohit Sharma,Piyush Chawla, Pragyan Ojha, Yo Mahesh, Rajat Bhatia, Suresh Raina,Ross Taylor, A Dinda, Swapnil Asnodkar....

Some of these names are already big ones on the international stage, or on the verge of being. Many others are unknown. These are the young performers who have pulled their weight in IPL for their respective teams.

There are many others who haven't fired....not one of the Indian U19 team bar Jadeja, has done anything of note. Some young men who were big to begin with haven't done as well either...Ishant Sharma is a case in point. A few others haven't yet played.

Not all of them will go on and play for their countries...David Hussey is on the verge of...Taylor and Bravo are already in....difficult to say when Shaun Marsh will play for Australia at this stage...but what has these performances done to them.

For starters, a good number of cricket watchers around the world know about them and their game now. That's a beginning.

The few already in national squads have gained experience in being the main engines of their teams at a young age.

T20 and the rest of cricket are different worlds, but some basic qualities are common to all forms. One needs to be able to play, and play under pressure; one needs to be agile in adapting to the quickly changing game - that can only develop deeper thinking about the game and their game: this experience has added much to those who were looking to gain cricketingly from it.

When I supported the formation of leagues in cricket, and argued for a reasonable number of them around the world, this is what I had in mind.

Imagine as and when even Associate Member country players join in when there are more leagues around the world. W ould it not be beneficial to them?

Not that it will automatically make these young men test class players....no, that is not the purpose of T20....the players have to come in with a basic level of the game and temperament as we have seen...but what T20 does is to provide them with another platform to demonstrate their skills to all rather than languish anonymously beneath unmoving layers of established and establishment.

The least it does is earmark some players who could be promoted on to 50-50 and further from there.

Let me take Rohit Sharma's ( Mumbai Mamba as I christened him back then) example.

I was impressed by some aspects of this youngster when he revealed himself to the world on the big stage. There were some aspects of his game and temper that I questioned...the main one being his ability to concentrate for longer durations and use better judgement in shot selection in different games.

His coming to the fore may not have been possible by traditional methods in an increasingly crowded and layered structure. Yet, he needs to go climb up through those layers. The temper aspect of his game can be honed in this cauldron to an extent....if he is a smart player (which I think he is) he'll take the advantage gained here by being the lynchpin for his team in the middle order and apply it to his other game forms, for more fruitful and faster all-round growth.

The thing is T20 has one earmarked him, identified his strengths and suggested some weaknesses, and the exposure now gives him the regular opportunity to work on those aspects for a crucial season or two in the domestic set up so that he could play for the country if he comes good in this development.

It's a sort of a clinic...this T20. Identifies, provides the valuable platform of performance-based identity which allows one to work further on oneslef with a clear purpose.

Often, in many countries, the domestic structure is such that this sense of purpose could be lost easily. You could either stagnate despite good performances because that crucial breakthrough or the handful of critical opportunities didn't come through, or, you could lose all purpose in the mediocrity of it all. The latter happens everywhere....players become comfortable with a situation.

Give them another channel...something which offers some advantages which should have been already part of the domestic deal...keep them actively thinking of progress instead...it can do wonders to the truly talented.

If you ask David Hussey if yesterday's exercise was worth anything at all, I'm sure he'll look at you in a sort of a way that would suggest that you should be doing things other than cricket watching. If you asked Wriddhiman the same, you'll probably be the recipient of a stream of relieved words tumbling...stumbling...out of the dark pits of anonymity depressed between many many layers of establishment.

This is the role for for leagues...mind you...even if not one of them go on to play for their countries later. It is a correction of errors by various boards who, like players, became comfortable with an existing situation and slept deeply and comfortably on the thick layers of establishment. No...unlike the said princess, they didn't even feel the pea under the many layers beneath them for they were thick-skinned after all.

In many ways, ICL and IPL were an experiment which took forward the Stanford concept (Stanford actually is an inter-country tournament, for WI is a conglomerate of countries, and that goes a long way in keeping the edge alive among supporters of the game there). It was important that they succeed so that other boards ( or whatever form of investment and infrastructure ) could go ahead and set up other leagues. A failure would have been disastrous...not as much for the boards and ICC (though in the longer run they would have lost out to more enterprising enterpreuners), but it would have been disastrous for players who had just espied a window in the game they have dedicated themselves to...

The spin-offs of success are already there to see...Stanford is going ahead with expanding the league in that part of the world. There is talk of another league or two coming up elsewhere...perhaps in the Southern hemisphere...there is talk of inter-league championships...this can only be beneficial to everyone involved with the game. In times to come these leagues will become more inclusive, promote and draw talent from diverse sources.