Cheteshwar Pujara has been the boy/man on the burning deck more times in his career than otherwise. For Saurashtra, it was a regular phenomenon. he'd stay and bail them out more often than not. Right now, he, Cheteshwar Pujara, as captain of India A is watching players desert the ship one by one standing on one side. And he can do precious little.
He could do something for Saurashtra because someone from the team would stand up and stay with the young man and help him in his turnaround resistances which have become stuff of Indian Ranji and Domestic folklore. Not here....no sir, India A is not Saurashtra..no one believes...no one stays to play a team game.
West Indies A team has rubbed the flamboyant India A names in the Northants mud. After plundering their bowling first for 329 bright and shiny ones, West Indies A banded together to ambush the Indian boys. Maybe revenge was the motive - the first test loss still galling - whatever it was, West Indies A are helping us sift the chaff from the true nuggets.
Well played West Indies A, they have all but won it. Formalities remain in this first match of the Triangula List A tournament in England.
India A 116/6 off 24 in reply to 329 by WI A. Pujara battling on regardless.
Scorecard
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A related article appeared in Hindustan Times today,
IPL, U-19 cricket not a ticket to the big league, written by Aakash Chopra.
Let me declare at the outset one thing - what I say below has nothing to do with how India A has performed today because I had read the article much before today's match had commenced. So it isn't knee-jerk stuff.
I completely agree with Aakash Chopra on the followed principles he draws a line against.
Representing their respective states and playing against seasoned campaigners in the Ranji Trophy wasn’t considered important enough while fast-tracking them into the big league.
Representing India ‘A’ is as close as you can get to playing for the country and is perhaps the last litmus test to assess if you’re ready.
The possibility of a player donning India colours without having played even state-level cricket, is preposterous. What kind of message would these selections send to hundreds of players who’re toiling hard in the domestic circuit?
I have been a firm and consistent believer that playes must be put through their paces at the domestic level and different situations before selecting from the best of the competition. Of course good, testing pitches and well-matched teams are a prerequisite, but that is up to the BCCI to figure out how.
I also completely agree with Chopra on the age-faking issue. Also, I agree that age-group cricket must feed the domestic structure and not the international team.
Now the fast-tracking business. It is here that begin to differ with Aakash Chopra on a couple of points - Firstly, it is not a new phenomenon, and Second, while IPL may be the current motive as he says, this problem is from very much long before IPL. Somehow, I'd wish he didn't restrict his vision and cricketing history to IPL in the article...it is misleading and hides a long standing problem I have frequently raised my voice against using the examples of Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Reetinder Sodhi and Irfan Pathan.
Way back, a couple of seasons of domestic cricket before selection to senior team was looked upon as fast-tracking. Aakash Chopra having been in the thick of things and with a sense of history and awareness might bear me out on this. So fast-tracking is a relative measure over eras, but the principle is the same.
I'm sure many players have been fast-tracked or not, and some have succeeded while others have failed or not sustained it. Some may have come back to make amends later.
The problem with India's fast tracking is that it is no longer a case-by-case approach where the standars...the bar is kept high and not lowered to accomodate age. Second, it is imitative. It didn't just begin by watching Pakistan pitch young greens into the fray...no sir, the most recent spate/phase began with the advent of Kapil Dev.
As a 19 year old, he was selected for the tour of Pakistan with the senior side after a mere 18 domestic matches of all kinds in all. Mind you, the hype around him was for an entire season before actual selection...so in effect he was being spoken of as an Indian potential just a couple of seasons into the circuit. To me that was fast-tracking, but a very different one from current scenario. It was case-specific and need based. India needed a pace bowler and this bloke began with a 6-fer and a couple more in his first First Class match against Punjab which contained Yashpal Sharma and Pandove as the main players. And he was quick even if he built up his famed stamina gradually. I saw him at the Abbas Ali Baig benefit match at Kotla purely to judge the hype around Kapil. That was the first time I saw Kapil Dev. In fact, Kapil played two more first class matches in Pakistan to take the tally to 20 before his debut. He was player no 141 for India in Test matches.
Any number since have been fast-tracked.
Ravi Shastri was picked straight from age-group cricket and flown to New Zealand. He had just seven First Class matches to his credit before that. In those days that was fast tracking. Like Kapil's case, his selection was case-specific and reasonably mature men made selectorial decisions. They would be influenced by as many factors as current selectors but the basis of asessing a player's capability was different and a little more honest.
Yograj Singh - Yuvi's father - was meanwhile smouldering for a couple of extra seasons when he felt he should have been selected alongside Kapil if not before him. The talk about him was on for two seasons or more...alongside Kapil's name and was only divorced from Kapil's name a couple of years after his lone Test match.
The current Chairman of Selectors had almost 50% of his First Class cricket before test debut in the age-group format. Plenty of University, Vizzy, U-22,U-19 cricket for him mixed with a bag of Ranji, Wills, Deodhar etc.
Kirti Azad was sent to the World Cup based on two seasons. His test debut came later.
Maninder Singh played only 15 Ranjis...everything else in his First Class roster was age-group till then..before playing his first Test at Karachi. One season into Ranji.
Laxman Sivaramakrishnan - he played just the three FC matches in all before being sent to Pakistan with the senior team. One Ranji, one Duleep and one Irani trophy match. What he had was age group other than that. His next eight First Class matches came along with the touring senior side in Pakistan and West Indies. In the fifth Test at Antigua on that tour of 1982/83, he played his first Test. This was fast tracking by those ay's standards.
Compare this to Sunny Gavaskar who played five full seasons of all kinds of First Class matches before selection. For Aakash Chopra's current cricketers, there is also a Cheteshwar Pujara who is doing it as he suggests and is not being fast-tracked like he might have been back then.
Next is player number 166 - Navjyot Sidhu. He had a mere nine Ranji matches before his debut against West Indies at Motera. Two of those nine FCs were against the visiting West Indians he eventually debuted against as part of selected teams to play the visitors. All other matches before that were various age-group cricket matches in various age-group trophy tournaments.
Chetan Sharma played all of six Ranji level matches before being played against the visiting Windies in a couple of tour matches and then pitched into the ODI team. By this time, ODIs had opened up as a route to fast-track. A year later he was playing Test matches for India. Everything other than those Ranji matches before his fast-tacking were age-group cricket.
Curiously, Azza, like Sunny, and now Pujara, had to play at least 4-5 seasons before his test debut. No fast tracking here.
Manoj Prabhakar had only nine Ranji or Duleep or Deodhar level matches before his ODI debut. A year later he was playing Tests. All other were age-group trophies and university cricket.
We then come to Ankola, Tendulkar, Kambli and Ganguly and the more recent era which all are familiar with.
It is at this point that the corruption began. Sachin's advent was at a time when cricket in India was changing. Sachin himself re-wrote all rules for Indian cricketers and sportspersons. The off-field hard-earned battles won by Sunny and Kapil paled in a trice. No longer Palmolive...Sachin couldn't sell Palmolive as a 16-17 year old!
It is at this point that push became shove. Parents began to see Sachins in their sons. The flood and competition began. Satellite TV came on. The badlands had been breached and cutthroat competiton to be the next Sachin began. Selectorial values changed too...they found it exciting to spot a youngster who could play the big fellas. If there wasn't a youngster in view, they'd cook up one or push in another.
The concept of pre-peration via domestic cricket had taken a beating for at least a decade by then. Now, it collapsed completely shattered. Domestic cricket became a myth...so much so that people now ask,
"what use playing domestic?"Yuvraj and Kaif severed up the remaining strands which held back learning cricketers in a necessary finishing school. ODIs had opened an alternative door.
Now what Aakash Chopra talks is T20...like ODIs of the 80s and 90s, they are the fast-track vehicles. U-19, U-22, U-23 have a history of fast-tracking.
The Pathans, Ishants...they are chaps who have been peeled off their natural growth to be stuck into the big league.
Now you need to balance your vision and fears here....children in India today have begun to do many things earlier than children of yesteryears. Young men are working alongside their degree courses today...quite a
majboori just a couple of decades ago. Not now...you have to have that CV before you have finished your degree in college!
It is bringing forward unfinsihed raw products which wilt as much as some blossom with challenge. Those that wilt, might have done better with a bit more of nurserying. Cricket is no different.
While I agree with Aakash on the principles of his article, I cannot agree with his limitation to current times and IPL as reasons. The same problem was there before and ODIs served as today's IPL...but it never emerged as a problem like today because all together, there still was lesser overall cricket and number of players involved then in comparison to now. Then, some adherence to selectorial principles was there then which is now very tenuous.
The conceptof discounting domesti cricket and extra-fastracking is now coming from a generation of selectors who have seen their kind of fast-tracking in their time.
That may appear snail's pace today!
Why only cricketers, organisers or selectors be blamed by Aakash, let him read around and listen to the voices of now...domestic cricket's validity and value is questioned by them! Improvements need to be made in the domestic structure but some exposure is required...at least three years shall we say? Going by Kapil Dev's and others' experiences?
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PS: Details of each players' careers are available at
Cricket Archive and which I have employed to refresh my memory. I find their statistical database useful and easy to access and search. Intuitional. Unlike Cricinfo's, which at least my uncomprehending mind hasn't been able to explore for domestic data and FC data. That is if they have Indian domestic cricket data in their database. Do visit Cricket Archive for your domestic data requirements for we have no worthwhile BCCI website to call our own and use for our Indian cricket requirements.
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