by Kartik Kannan
India seem to finally seem to rise from the phoenix, whenever they play at home. Their home ODI record since the second half of 2005 has been enviable. One of the things with playing on home turf is that the youngsters start their career in a familiar environment, before their true test comes abroad. This is not to discredit worthy performances by Indian youngsters abroad, but the fact that experimentation in a line up at home, gives India a flexibility that throws up youngsters who seem to play with a certain fearlessness.
When you were in school and couldn’t figure out math, how often did the teacher ask you to repeat the familiar models taught in class and then tackle the homework questions? The reason for an approach was to first build confidence, apply the same basic principles, so that inch by inch you learn to apply these concepts with the homework questions . The world outside isn’t too different and its only when you are young, can you experiment and understand what makes you brilliant and how do you slowly build those short cuts to solving problems.
The Indian team, which was in a metamorphosis stage, after the Ganguly Chappell spat, has seen a lot of youngsters who have been part of the experiment at home, which has richly paid dividends. Irfan Pathan, though made his debut in 2004, shot to fame with his batting, against Sri Lanka in the home series of 2005, which India won 6-1. The same series had India experiment with M.S.Dhoni , who has now come a long way to be the man at the helm for India.
The next set of experiments happened in the series against England in 2006, where Suresh Raina became a polished diamond, from the stone that he was for the first 5-6 months that he played ODI cricket. Similarly many such experiments proved really vital for India giving youngsters space to hone their skills like Rohit Sharma, R.P Singh, Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa . Though a couple of them might have shone into prominence for some performances abroad, a pat needs to be given to their formative period whch largely happened to be on Indian soil, against visiting teams. R.P Singh found his rhythm in the Sri Lankan/South African series of 2005, and then graduated to being a crafty bowler that India has had in its fold. Ishant Sharma’s came of age against Pakistan, in a 5 wicket haul at home, but the formative years on home ground, made sure that he had developed nerves of steel when he went down under and became the scourge of the Australian batsmen. Robin Uthappa made his star studded debut with a blistering 86, that paved the way for an Indian victory and continued the good run in the home series against Australia, where his power hitting assured India that a successor to Virender Sehwag is in the offing.
If you had noticed, since the year 2005, the core of the Indian nucleas has changed, and 9 men out of a bunch of 15 in the current squad are people who made it big due to the constant experimentation in the Indian team line ups. 60% of the squad is consists of people who have been blooded since 2005, and the rest are the Indian mainstays with over 8-9 years of experience, which makes India inch slowly towards attaining the best team tag. Sometimes, when you are left with a bunch of youngsters in the midst of a transition, the best tonic is to wait till the flowers boom at their own pace, and thats exactly what India has done, by giving these young men enough time to experiment and hone their skills in home series, that has sparked off an excellent run of consistent performances since the T20 world cup, barring the 2-5 loss to Australia.
So the next time, an unknown Indian youngster walks into an home series, don’t switch the Television sets off. Life isn’t just about the thrills of watching Sehwag and Sachin bat, but also the joy of seeing how a young bud grows to be the beautiful flower that you see in a Sachin or Saurav.
