Teachers' Day Special: Teaching cricketing footsteps to a nation in the Wright way
Time always puts things in perspective; separating the obvious from the obscured with a finesse such that there can never be any other antidote to clear the muddles. The lack of muddles in Indian cricket in the present times too can then be put into perspective. By rewinding the clock back in time to the start of the new millennium when Indian cricket seemed to be in absolute chaos – touching rock-bottom that no Indian cricketing fan would have remotely envisioned even in his worst nightmares – and the light that shone upon it, ending the disturbance and clearing the air to a freshness never perhaps seen before.
This is not a tale like often seen in movies where the audience is treated to gripping plot-lines as the actors swing back and forth between the past and the present. It is a story more on the lines of a real-life adventurer who doesn’t know till the last minute how his adventures are going to impact his life; whether for good or for bad.
This is the adventurous tale about the resurrection of Indian cricket, by a coach and and the unlikeliest of pupils – a twosome – who went on to lay the foundations of one of the strongest cricketing teams for everyone to behold at. Even now, surrounded by successes that are considerably bigger and indeed most emphatic, John Wright and Sourav Ganguly’s unlikely partnership is an anecdote worth reminiscing about with pride and fervour.
When India won the World Cup in 2011, it was befitting to see the team-members hoist Gary Kirsten onto their shoulders and give him a much deserved lap of honour. But it also brought into focus the same milestone that John Wright had missed when India failed to live up to its expectations in an another World Cup final, eight years ago, in 2003. But where the Kiwi seemed to have missed getting onto the winners’ wagon at South Africa, back home in India – and all across the world where Indian cricketing fans lived – even the loss brought back a solidity and consistency that the team had been missing for quite a while.
The result of the 2003 World Cup was then the sort of climax that movie-goers love to retell, with the hero finally rising up to the occasion and bludgeoning the villains all over the park, after starting off as an underdog initially. John Wright and Sourav Ganguly too had quite an unceremonious start, with their partnership facing hiccups in the form of allegations about Ganguly’s seeming dominance over his overly-meek coach, with naysayers even proclaiming the partnership to falter even before the bigger challenges could come their way.
It was amidst these skeptical mindsets that Wright and Ganguly took to their respective job-roles; defying the circumstances surrounding each of their appointment within the squad and the odds, time and again. Thus, while neither Wright nor Ganguly were quintessentially cut out to be heroic figures, their six-year long partnership ended up elevating them as iconic representations for Indian cricket.
When the challenges, trials and tribulations came their way, the whole nation saw the Indian cricket team taking strides so huge on the backs of these two figures that they broke all precedents set as far as coaching and captaincy aspects were considered. Rather than cowering and bowing meekly to the might of the so-called superior sides as the cynics had predicted.
Be it the successful – yet controversial – series against Australia at home in 2000-01 where Harbhajan Singh, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman ran riot around the distinctly much-better balanced visiting team; or the impudent-like NatWest Series which saw the captain waving his jersey at Lord’s tossing aside India’s well-preserved reputation of maintaining etiquette and decorum. These were then the winning platforms that the Indian team had stepped on, prior to making it to the World Cup. And though they almost lost their way in the initial part of the tournament – losing quite miserably to the Australians – the way in which they brought their wayward World Cup journey to heel, was a turnaround worth bragging about.
Ganguly – aggressive and audacious, taking gambles and banking on youngsters to perform while Wright – the very epitome of calm and serenity that shrouded a calculative mind so decisive that each victory drove home his ability to coach and guide a mercurial cricketing side like India. The differences between the past and the present could never be wider as they are when considered in this context. The present-day Indian team boasts of a talent pool so immense that the whole team seems to be a perfect blend of fail-safes. The term mercurial doesn’t feature at all in the list of adjectives that are generally used to describe the contemporary Indian cricket team.
Today, the captain’s successes have allowed him to take a centre-stage when it comes to choosing the team and rarely are his decisions questioned. But back then, it seemed as though Sourav Ganguly had to fight tooth and nail to be able to exercise his right to pick a player of his choice to be a part of the final playing XI. The likes of Gary Kirsten and Duncan Fletcher receive unanimous support in today’s times, when they let their captains talk with their tactics – even in losses – rather than themselves make a verbal riposte.
But more than a decade ago, John Wright had to fend off scepticisms each time the team came close to losing a match or lost a match. The next two years after the World Cup – till Wright’s retirement – saw the pendulum swing in favour and against the duo at regular intervals, even though India’s post-World Cup success saw the team notch some substantial wins Down Under and in Pakistan, rather than ending abruptly with their World Cup heroics. Still, trust somehow wasn’t easily given as it is being dispersed presently, as though people believed that trusting in Wright and Ganguly would somehow jinx the team’s good run and affect it adversely.
Time thus puts into perspective this aspect about the Indian cricketing team. The self-belief that John Wright and Sourav Ganguly gave back to the country after the troubles that completely surrounded and overwhelmed some of the nation’s leading cricketers, paved the way for the assurance that Duncan Fletcher and Gary Kirsten – before him – are receiving, and have received. In that, John Wright and Sourav Ganguly need to be thanked – perhaps a million times over – for the way they allowed the sport to regain its place of honour by thoroughly blotting the wrongs with achievements that still linger on, without fading away at all in the wake of all these recent mammoth garnering by the Men in Blue.