Those with a penchant for history will probably remember the 15th of April 2019. Maybe not with a lot of emotion, but with a feeling of relief . Because finally the 15-member squad, that had probably been spoken about more than the army going to a war, for India going to the 2019 World Cup was announced on Monday.
Everybody had an opinion on it. Switch on the TV and ex-cricketers spoke of it. Walk on the street and the average Joe would be heard flowingly give his opinion. Even journalists and writers, who, otherwise refrain from voicing such opinions were picking their squads.
There was one common question that most sane opinions were pondering over, which was who would serve as the back-up god forbid something happened to MS Dhoni in England.
Rishabh Pant or Dinesh Karthik? Youthful flamboyance or Steely calmness? Well, those who fought for the latter got their way. 15 years after making his debut in the UK, Karthik will head back to the Old Blighty as the reserve wicket-keeper batsman to Dhoni.
There is always a winner and a loser in such cases, isn’t there?
No one would blame Pant if, for the next few days he asked to be left alone. Because it indeed is time to introspect. If the current chairman of the selection panel says he isn’t as good with the gloves, then he’s got to work at it.
Before he gets into the rigours of it, however, it would do him a world of good if someone told him a story of how players grow and get better with age with some help, along the way.
There was a cricketer, who first played for India over 10 years ago. A former Australian captain, seeing him on first sight, wanted him in the Indian Test squad straight away.
The selectors weren’t as sure. His captain had faith in him and kept picking him. He kept flopping. The murmurs kept increasing as to why MS Dhoni kept on persisting with Rohit Sharma, why this faith that almost seemed delusional was been shown on a player who had all the shots in the book but couldn’t get anywhere near scoring runs regularly with so many chances at him.
At 23, the selectors had had enough and omitted Rohit from the 2011 World Cup squad. It left him devastated, but help from Abhishek Nayar, who incidentally also helped resurrect Karthik’s career, came and a new fitness regime got him back on track.
But when he got selected back, runs eluded him and on a horror tour of Sri Lanka in 2012, he was the laughing stock for everyone.
Yet, after all that, Dhoni was there for him and I don’t know if God came to his room one night and told him this- but at the start of 2013, he pushed Rohit to open the batting.
There are decisions which help players gain confidence, gain self-value. But there are those few and far between them that change careers. This one from Dhoni did exactly that for Rohit- he became a world beater since that day.
Pant at 22 may not be as outrageously gifted as Rohit, but what he does have in common with that version of the right-hander is the shots in the book coupled with impatience.
What he must understand from this story is the importance of hard work and that players take time to evolve to get better, to be world beaters.
What he must hope for, however, is for a captain to back his style of game. Pant is a modern-day cricketer, make no mistake, he will bring innovation to the game, but some tightness and improvement to his overall game would help put some confidence into that skipper and that would help him be that world beater which Rohit is today.
Who that captain will be? Time will tell. For the sake of Indian cricket, we must hope this exclusion does him as much good just like the one in 2011 did for Rohit.
