The champagne can wait

If India has a (slim) chance of winning the cup, it is only because it can mobilise the vast and manic cricket public to back them

Vikram Bedi Delhi

Diehard followers of Indian cricket will have noticed, and might even have partaken of, our cricket culture's World Cup fetishism. We seem to have been looking forward to World Cup '07 since, well, World Cup '03! For at least two years now the Test series featuring India have been at an even greater discount than usual.

Indeed, the devaluing of Test cricket has a lot to do with India's surprising, shocking victory in 1983. Those of us who merely like one-day cricket but positively adore Test cricket, the original, truer, subtler version of the game, have, most unpatriotically, come to regret that great upset win. It was badly timed.

The advent of colour television coincided with the distortion of Indian cricket culture by the nexus between big money and big media. Cricket became a commercialised, macho-nationalist mass spectacle. To be fair, a lot of good also accrued to the game, more so financially. But that famous World Cup win was no unmixed blessing, no early sign of the Indian cricketing nation as 'graced' and 'chosen'.

World Cup '07, then, has been so eagerly looked forward to for so long because — although many of us feel like we are 'shining' (or is it 'poised'?) — we still aren't quite sure of ourselves. We want to prove ourselves as a nation that has, finally and definitively 'arrived': hence a World Cup victory is an ever-elusive sign of national 'grace'. To stretch the religious metaphor further: one-day cricket as the 'calling' and 'mission' of an entire nation!

Please do not get me wrong, one-dayers are fun, and the World Cup more so. I fully intend to dive into the festivities, including the endless analysis and blame game. The feverish rounds of cricket talk about which players were innocent and which culpable. I hate admitting it but I must say that India has little chance of winning the cup. Nor, for that matter, do the Lankans or the Pakistanis.

Here I go: the Indians have, as usual, picked the wrong side. What is the venerable Test match-specialist Anil Kumble doing in the one-day squad? What is the often brilliant, erratic and too intense S Sreesanth doing in it, too? Can Robin Uthappa really handle Shane Bond, Shaun Tait et al, even if the pitches are flat? Is Dinesh Karthik really a worthy specialist batsman, or is he merely a good keeper who bats well? Why has the stout, gallant and wily Ramesh Powar not been selected?

Hasn't Virender Sehwag lost his touch? Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel and Zaheer Khan will take wickets, but can they keep the runs down in the slog overs? Will Harbhajan Singh really take wickets in the middle overs, or will he be frightened into merely trying to avoid getting hammered? MS Dhoni is already a great one-day batsman, but is Yuvraj Singh really up to playing the higher-than-last-time quality of fast bowling he will be challenged by (Bond, Mitchell Johnson, Liam Plunkett, Andrew Flintoff, Jerome Taylor, and perhaps Shuan Tait)? Sourav Ganguly is back, with the old confidence (now, less ostentatious) but is Rahul Dravid authoritative enough to be a great leader?

Most of all, doesn't the very fact that the World Cup is such a big deal in our commercial cricket culture automatically mean that the side will wilt under the stress of sheer, excessive expectations? The Indian cricketers will, one fears, be too spooked by the spectre of what might happen if they under-perform. Probably half this squad fears for the inevitable purge that will be inflicted on the team should it fail to, at least, reach the semi-finals. The World Cup is surely too high-stakes a game for their play to be calm and self-trusting enough.

The Lankan batsmen, except Kumar Sangakara, cannot play the fast stuff well enough to contend for the cup. Sure, they have Muttiah Muralitharan, which means that they live in hope, but most sides will look to play him out cautiously, in deference to his unique greatness, remembering that he can bowl just ten overs a game. And Chaminda Vaas is in steep, aged decline. An expensive Lasith Malinga, with his ridiculous round-arm action, can strike, but can he spearhead the Lankan attack? Mahela Jayawardene may be a popular and shrewd captain but, like Dravid, lacks the ability to lead by the compelling force of example. It seems clear, then, that the Lankans will have to live another four years in nostalgia of the 1996 victory, much like us Indians (impossible?) yearning for the second coming of the World Cup!

What of the Pakistanis, the ostensibly talented side that, more often than not, forgets or cannot be bothered to play well; mercurial is, I believe, the sporting clichÈ I am looking for. Well, if their showings in South Africa are a guide, they are just plain awful presently, too dependent on too few players.

Their young openers aren't much good. Their best batsman, Mohammad Yousuf, is a singular hope, though he can be suspect against top-notch fast bowling. Abdul Razzaq's game with both bat and ball is on the wane, while Shahid Afridi is more often missing than in play. There's no specialist bowling quality, either, not unless Mohammad Asif and Shoaib Akhtar overcome doping charges and injury, and not unless Umar Gul is in harness, too. The Pakistanis are (still!) poor in the field, and in running-between-the-wickets — a telling weakness. Pakistani fans, too, seem fated to spend another few years wistfully pining for the bygone Imran Khan-led glory of 1992.

A prediction, then, painful though it is: this World Cup will see the start of a new era of domination by the Anglo-Saxon countries. (Only on-field, of course, off it the Indians will rule!) The remarkable rise of the South Asian post-colonial cricketing nations witnessed in the 80s and 90s looks set to end and, worse, reverse. Young talent is either absent or under-trained and undisciplined. Admittedly, fielding and fitness have improved massively, and India and Sri Lanka now have reasonable fast bowling stocks, but it is still hard not to worry about what will happen when, soon, the Sachins, Dravids, Muralis, Jayasuriyas, and Inzamams leave the scene.

As for us Indian cricket devotees: maybe we want the World Cup too desperately. One fears the sporting gods dislike being worshipped so ardently! But then again, maybe one is being too pessimistic. You never quite know…maybe Sehwag will…and Sachin will surely…like last time…!

If India has a (slim) chance of winning the cup, it is only because it can mobilise the vast and manic cricket public to back them. If they can, somehow, build momentum by feeding off a public that starts praising, trusting and believing in them, this Indian team perhaps has the wherewithal to become an irresistible force. Is it too much to expect the Indian cricket public to not afflict the Indian players with the 'bahut pressure hai, bhai ' disease (the tagline of a faux-ironic ad campaign on the eve of the last World Cup).

This World Cup will likely to be quite closely contested. Even the Aussies have been proven to be less than superhuman, finally put in their place by, of all teams, England and New Zealand. Win or lose, we are in for great fun. Who cares for the Olympics in India, anyway!