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DEAR REDIFF

Tendulkar talks tough - again!

There is only one occasion when Tendulkar departs from his normal mild-mannered self - and that is at the end of a cricket tour. Therefore, unlike the hypothetical goose I mentioned above, I for one was least surprised when, immediately after his team lost the Cable and Wireless ODI Series 3-1, Tendulkar went "Boo" with a vengeance.

"I have been very patient with the boys," says the captain. "I am still prepared to go that extra mile to help players perform to their potential. But if the performances still do not come up to the mark, then the players can expect to be dropped. There is no point in players going out there in the middle and being unable to assess the situation, and realising what is in the best interests of the team. If you play individually, for your personal interest, you are only going to ruin your own chances, and that of your team."

That there's fighting talk!

But the problem with fighting talk is that it rarely sounds convincing coming from a powder puff - and Tendulkar, for all the reports of his reading the riot act in the team dressing room, is a powder puff, not taken seriously by his team-mates who seem to view him as a softie, a sucker for a sob story, and not the kind of person who can, with calculated ruthlessness, wield the axe where deserved.

A case in point was afforded in the fifth Test, when Tendulkar dropped Saurav Ganguly from the eleven. You had to be blind in both eyes to miss the fact that if one player was not in form and deserved to be rested, it was Mohammad Azharuddin. Trouble is, though, that Tendulkar with his convoluted sense of cricketing morality blames himself for having deprived Azhar of the job as captain of India - and has, ever since, been reluctant to ever get tough with his former captain.

With what result? An off form Azhar played, weakening the side. While an in-form Ganguly sat out - and yet another centre of resentment was built up in a side that is already brimming with individual angst.

Does that last point sound too harsh? Am I over-reacting when I say that this is a team divided? Think again - or rather, go back to the final stages of the Indian defeat in the third one-dayer, when the last seven wickets collapsed in a heap, and the team slid to defeat after being ideally poised for a win.

What was the enduring memory of that disastrous hour? This - Nayan Mongia, one of the seniormost players in the side, sitting in the players balcony, the cynical smile on his face contrasting remarkably with the worried expressions of his team-mates. Mongia was obviously more concerned about his having been dropped, more inclined to think of the defeat as a personal vindication, than concerned about the team's performance. And no matter how good a player you are - and there is no doubt that Mongia today is one of the best keepers in the world - that attitude is ruinous to a team.

Again, Mongia and Ganguly are not isolated instances of breeding grounds of resentment. My point here, however, is not to elaborate on every single instance, merely to underline the fact that this is a team divided against itself. And what such a team needs most is a strong, even ruthless, captain. A classic example is Imran Khan, who inherited a volatile team, including the fiery Sarfaraz Nawaz, and by sheer dint of personal forcefulness, wielded it into a fighting unit like few others to have taken to the cricket field. And Imran did it by being no respecter of personalities - if you did not perform the way he wanted you to, out you went, the captain preferring to gamble on an enthusiastic newcomer rather than a jaded, self-satisfied senior pro.

That is what Sachin talks of doing, here - the trouble, though, is that he has spoken identical words before. At the end of the Titan Cup and before the team left for South Africa was one instance. At the end of the South African safari, after a totally needless collapse saw India throw away a golden chance to win the trophy was another.

On both times, the tough talk was not followed up by the promised action - with the result that today, Tendulkar finds himself in the position of a gunfighter striding into the OK Corrall with nothing but blanks in his Colt.

So what am I saying, here? Just this - that if Tendulkar is not to go down in history as a player who passed up on a chance for greatness simply because he did not have the moral courage to act tough as required, he has to stop shooting with the lip, and put his foot down with a vengeance. It is not enough to say that non-performers, and selfish performers, will be axed - he has to be seen to be tough. And the time to start is right now - when, on May 6, the team for the Independence Cup is selected.

I am looking forward to that particular exercise with a good deal of curiosity - because it will afford me, as indeed all cricket fans, with an indication of whether Tendulkar actually means what he says, for this once at least. But if, as I suspect, we find the team for the I-Day Cup packed with pretty much the same names as did duty in the Caribbean, then I'll only feel reinforced in my opinion that Tendulkar forgot to load his gun before striding out for the critical shootout.

This - and I must stress this with all the emphasis at my command - is not to be interpreted as an attempt to kick Sachin Tendulkar when he is down. I do not believe that Tendulkar should be removed as captain - though time and again I have had occasion to question some of his decisions. Simply because it is stupid to put a man in the job, and then dump him again before he has had time to learn his lessons. We did that with Azharuddin, remember? Appointed him for political, rather than cricketing reasons, backed him while he blundered his way to defeats abroad and some meaningless wins at home, and just when he looked as though he was beginning to learn (isn't it interesting that the only tour game won by the Indians, in both South Africa and the Caribbean, was the four day game against Guyana under Azhar's captaincy?), we dumped him unceremoniously.

Logic indicates that such a course can only produce disaster. Pick captain, dump captain as he starts growing into job, pick replacement captain, dump replacement captain... at this rate, the team will always be skippered by a novice, and that is disastrous. So, Tendulkar to stay, by any logical criterion.

But Tendulkar to also - by the same logic - realise that his tenure is not about to end day after tomorrow, and that he has been invested with the moral authority to hold his team-mates accountable for their performance, or lack of it. For if you sit back and view the twin tours just ended in perspective, you will realise that the most important reason for India's failure was not lack of talent, or even the superiority of the opposing teams, but simply that India never, ever, played to potential.

It is Tendulkar, and he alone, who can ensure this happens. And the way to do that is by getting tough, as and when merited. And the time to do that is now.

Having said that, I believe that the board, too, has an urgent responsibility - to provide the captain, ASAP, two things he has been asking for, for a long time now. The first is a sports psychologist - and the panicky batting in the Barbados Test and the St Vincent one dayer, the earlier panic at Durban, are enough reasons to justify that request. And the second is a qualified fitness trainer, not an Ali Irani-type whose forte is putting band aids where applicable. A good, top quality fitness trainer would have been able to utlise Srinath better, spot when the injury was liable to become critical, rest him at the crucial moments and get more out of him as required. Again, the classic example is Allan Donald - remember how he flew out of India at the fag end of the tour with a heel problem, despite the fact that SA needed his services in the crucial third Test? And how he stormed back to swamp the Indians in the first Test of the away series, just two weeks later? While the contrasting example is a Srinath, being made to play even tour games, though Ali Irani subsequently went on record to say he knew that the bowler's shoulder was not on par throughout the tour. What kind of physical trainer are you, then, if you know your best bowler has a problem, and do not recommend to the captain that he be rested for tour games, and meaningless one-dayers?

No, the Indian team needs a professional, and needs one in a hurry.

The other thing that Tendulkar said, and with which I agree, is this: "It is never easy to cope with people's expectations. I wish to state this to millions of supporters of Indian cricket. We have a few good young talents, but we need to let them mature. They are not finished products yet. By building so much expectations around them, you only put on more pressure. Let them mature, let them grow. So much of hype can affect their performance."

Very true. Before the RSA tour, when he was asked what he foresaw, Tendulkar said, "This is a young team, a new team. I for one do not foresee any results before a year from now - what we are beginning is a period of growth, or learning."

It is not Tendulkar who went into the twin tours talking of sweeping all ahead of him - but rather the media, and the fans, who did the talking. Today, those expectations have been belied, and the backlash is at its peak. Which, of course, is true to our type - first we elevate an individual, or entity, to a pedestal without their say-so, then equally suddenly and brutally bring them crashing down because they did not fulfill expectations they never held out in the first instance.

So, on balance, I would be inclined to give Tendulkar that year he asked for, a little under half of which remains to go, before scrutinising the performances with a more critical and less tolerant eye. With, however, this proviso - that if in the interim Tendulkar does not learn to say Boo where required, then he will find to his own cost that the team will never grow, never gain toughness, never stand tall...