BOMBAY, 30 May 2003 — Not since 1972, when Farokh Engineer, Bishen Singh Bedi, Srinivas Venkatraghavan and Dilip Doshi played for various counties in England has there been a representation of Indians as this year.
Virender Sehwag for Leicestershire, Javagal Srinath for Durham, Yuvraj Singh for Yorkshire, Rahul Dravid for Scotland, Mohammad Kaif for Derbyshire and Harbhajan Singh for Lancashire will bring an Indian flavor to the County Championship though they will be playing in different divisions. The England County Championship is also divided into two groups and there is a promotion/relegation for the teams from one division to the other.
Dravid, Kaif and Harbhajan are to join their counties in the first week of June and their performances will be followed with interest by Indian cricket lovers who have no international matches of team India to follow. Although the standard of county cricket has gone down considerably since the days of Engineer and company the remuneration for overseas players has gone up by a huge margin.
Only recently there was a report of how Scotland who have engaged the services of Rahul Dravid went on a fund raising journey to meet his remuneration.
The report said how Indians living in Scotland had pledged some money so as to be able to have Dravid in their midst.
On one level it showed the generosity of the Indians but on the other hand it also showed that the Scots famous for their tight fistedness were not going to dig into their own pockets to fund the Indian vice captain’s stay there.
The fuss that is being made about Dravid’s fees does make it look as if the Indian star who is one of the nicest chaps going, has asked for a bit high remuneration. Considering the fact that the same Scotland administrators would have done somersaults to raise funds if an Australian star like Warne were to be involved, the difficulties in raising the funds for Dravid seem a bit exaggerated. The simple truth is if you cannot afford Dravid then don’t invite him but don’t make it look as if you are doing him a favor. Another simple truth is that if you pay peanuts you will only get monkeys and not a classy player like Dravid.
By far the best news is that the youngsters Yuvraj, Kaif and Sehwag will be playing during the Indian off-season.
More than anything else it will give them a chance to iron out the chinks in their batting and learn how to develop and build a long innings. The big plus about being a batting professional is that a player can develop the stamina for a long innings and
get to play and hone his skills in the one day competitions which are better than the longer versions of the game there.
Harbhajan Singh if he goes in June will have to watch out because the bowler professional is expected to bowl the most and get most of the wickets. So whether he likes it or not he will have to bowl lots of overs.
Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble bowled heaps of overs in County cricket and had shoulder injuries and unless Harbhajan watches it he may also have an overworked shoulder. A batsman can chuck his wicket away after scoring 60 or 70 runs but a bowler cannot take himself off and county captains once they give the ball to the overseas pro tend to look the other way till the end of the day’s play even if the bowler is turning out to be ineffective.
Harbhajan also needs to remember that Lancashire is the county that expected Saurav Ganguly to sit and socialize with some of his teammates whose idea of fun was to down a dozen or so pints in the bar.
That Ganguly refused to be a part of that and earned for himself an unnecessary snooty reputation is only due to the fact that he did not try to beat them in the pint-drinking contest. There was of course no report about how any of his County colleagues tried to make him feel at home by welcoming him to their house which is such a naturally Indian thing to do whenever there are visitors to our country. In any case it takes two hands to clap and Lancashire players are as much to blame in alienating Ganguly as the Indian captain himself.
For Indian cricketers brought up on playing in front of good crowds even in the Ranji Trophy, the lack of spectators at the County games will be a huge demotivating factor. The grounds are full only on weekends and for the limited overs matches but for the three and four-day games there will only be the pensioners and the odd spectator at the ground. It is extremely hard to get charged up to perform in such a bleak scenario and after some time a sense of boredom starts to creep into one’s play and when that happens then the sense of responsibility also diminishes to a great extent. If one is an established player like Ganguly was then it is even harder to concentrate on all the matches and one yearns for rain so that one can stay in the dressing room and relax, read or just go to sleep.
To players like Yuvraj and Kaif it is a great opportunity to show that they can play the long innings and though the standard is not great we in India still think that if a player gets runs or wickets there then it is a top achievement. See the way every time Sehwag scores a half century there is a photo and big headlines about his doing so showing how much of a complex we still have about overseas cricket even though the standard can sometimes be worse than our Plate Ranji competition.
So if Yuvraj and Kaif get centuries they will do their chances to be considered for Test matches no harm at all. Right now they are an integral part of the Indian limited overs side but both want to play in the Tests and recognize that Test cricket is the ultimate test of one’s skill, abilities and temperament.
