Domestic cricket - Saluting the spirit of mediocrity

Wasim Jaffer (c)

Wasim Jaffer was slowly moving towards another first class hundred. Somewhere around noon, the Indian team for the Australian series was announced. Even after a prolific domestic season, Jaffer’s name was missing from the list. Maybe he should have got a chance – his domestic cricket statistics are on everyone’s fingertips. Maybe he shouldn’t have got a chance – age of almost 35 and average of 34 in 31 Tests do put a question on his ability to play international cricket.

He wasn’t picked and would’ve got the news while he was batting. Yet, he kept on batting like nothing had happened. And I wondered, what made him tick?

Jaffer is still a very big name; at least he was in the reckoning. What makes Ankeet Chavan go on? Or Dheeraj Jadhav? Or Jalaj Saxena?

These players are not even domestic stalwarts and may never get a chance to play for India. In all likelihood, they will only be playing domestic cricket for the rest of their lives. What makes them go on – session after session, match after match, and season after season? It isn’t an easy job – they need to manage finances, life, family, fitness, motivation, politics and God knows what else.

If you tell me that they are paid handsomely, I will ask back – is that a good enough reason? Do kids start playing cricket in India because it is monetarily rewarding? We all start because we love to play, don’t we?

Okay, the money is good. But what made Ashish Winston Zaidi or Amarjeet Singh Kaypee keep playing? There wasn’t big money in those days. There must have been something else – something strong to keep that passion alive.

What then? Not everyone should be thinking about playing for India. Is that what you’ve got to say?

Let me ask – why not? Everyone has a right to think the way he/she wants, everyone has the right to dream. And that’s where it all starts. Playing a cover drive, holding the pose and thinking you are the next Tendulkar, getting a batsman out bowled and celebrating like Dale Steyn or making a diving save and shrugging the dirt off your clothes like Jonty used to do. That’s where passion marries the soul. That’s where a dream becomes a driving force in life.

But soon comes a point in life when reality starts hitting us. Sometimes it is the lack of support from family; sometimes it is the need to support the family. Very often, it is the safety of the tried and tested career route taking precedence over the risky route of walking on a path which doesn’t lead you to the corporate world. We start giving up, but not all of us do. Some carry on.

But even those who carry on cannot avoid the cruel dose of reality. People tell them that they are not good enough to qualify as the best but that is okay – ego counters this by saying “I will prove you wrong”. But it hurts.

Soon comes a point of self-realization of not being good enough or having missed the moment when new possibilities could be created in life. It kills. The pain of the fact that a dream will never come true, yet continuing in the same field is not easy to handle. Trust me, it hurts.

You have to run the race with the knowledge that no matter what you do, you will always be counted as ‘someone who also ran’. You will never win. It really hurts.

Yet, people carry on.

And we need them to carry on. Yes, we do. We cannot do without their class, we just cannot.

Our domestic cricket is a punching bag – full of those ‘who also participated’. All those tons of runs scored in domestic cricket aren’t considered meaningful because they came on placid tracks against ‘not good enough’ bowlers. All those bowlers taking bucketful of wickets are considered to be potential failures in the international arena because those wickets come against batsmen who are way below international level. In short, our domestic cricket falls way short of international standards, is useless and must be discarded ASAP – that’s what we may say sometimes.

Is our domestic cricket ‘not good enough’?

But this very domestic cricket has given us the Dravids and the Kumbles. They proved their worth by outperforming a group of cricketers who were considered mediocre. What if those mediocre cricketers had given up? How then would we have found our greats? Does the argument sound idiotic to you?

But isn’t that what happened to West Indies? Kids who were mediocre cricketers started shifting to other games. Slowly, the kids who were good cricketers started disappearing. With time, a team which was way above greatness found itself full of mediocre talent.

We all want to see excellent cricketers representing the nation. We all want them to be on top of a gigantic pyramid of cricketers. But for a pyramid to be gigantic, the base has to be big. In the case of West Indies, the base started disappearing. Soon, the top fell down to the bottom. West Indies needed the blocks below the top of the pyramid to stay on the pinnacle but they shifted to other avenues.

They needed the mediocrity to stay on.

We need the mediocrity to stay on.

If for nothing else, then just to make up the numbers at least. Even if it cannot provide great challenges to a champion cricketer, we can at least make him believe that things aren’t easy at this level and international cricket will be a lot more difficult.

We need a dogged Hrishikesh Kanitkar to go on so that he can offer a small taste of resistance to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, of what he may face at international level. Even though Kanitkar knows that his chances of representing India were buried more than a decade ago.

We need a Wasim Jaffer to let Pragyan Ojha know what someone like Hashim Amla or Michael Clarke may do to him if he doesn’t start imparting more spin on the ball. We need a Jalaj Saxena to keep piling on runs, we need a Robin Bisht to give him tough fight – if nothing else, this will at least ensure some competition for the ‘more talented ones’. We need a Parvez Rasool to keep going on so that kids in J&K get someone to idolise – exactly what Ashish Winston Zaidi and Rahul Sapru did for UP.

These are a few names which will hardly be ever recognised on the roads, quite often be ridiculed for their limited talent and will soon be forgotten. But they matter, they really do.

These are the names deemed not-good-enough-for-international-cricket but they form a base which matters.

These are the names that have, I am guessing, stopped worrying about the occasion, or should I say, the occasion of getting selected for India. They have started living in the moment – those joyous moments of tasting success on the ground, those sad moments of tasting failure on the field. They take full advantage of the moment to enjoy the game.

They must have stopped worrying about the occasion. And that isn’t a bad way to go about things. If you enjoy the moment, the occasion may just come. But the reverse need not be true.

Indian domestic cricket is full of supposedly mediocre cricketers. But they are an essential part of the bigger picture. And I salute their spirit.

They keep fighting – their motivation must be respected as should be their passion for the game. They keep going on in spite of the knowledge that playing at the highest level is not possible for them, and they must be respected for that. Without them, our cricketing establishment would turn into rubble.

All of us want to reach the pinnacle of success in our respective lives. But the brutal reality is – not all of us will end up as a CEO, a COO, a CRO, a CIO or a CXO. In fact, most of us will not. But whatever we end up becoming, the corporate world will not be able to stand without us, if not individually, but definitely as a group. Whatever we end up becoming, we must give our best shot. It is not about just reaching the pinnacle that matters, it is also about the people fighting the storms at multiple base camps all the way to the top. No climbing up is possible without them.

Mediocrity isn’t a desirable quality but it must be respected because this is what makes excellence stand out. We must respect our domestic cricketers.

As the Irani Trophy final ended yesterday, Jaffer shook hands with everyone. As the next season begins, I am sure he will be aiming to have a good season once again.