Whether Shane Warne was the greatest spinner of all time is a matter of opinion, and if Sunil Gavaskar felt that Warne wasn’t the best, he deserves his opinion, even if his timing let him down, which He was sorry. ,
The more important part of his television interview with Rajdeep Sardesai was the one where he said of Warne that “he was always looking to live life to the fullest, king size as they call it and he did and probably because That he has lived life in this way, because of which his heart could not bear it and he died so soon.
an old Indian prejudice
He was expressing an old Indian prejudice, which has been handed down over the generations: that to be a good player, you have to be a ‘decent’ person who doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol or live a king-sized life. At least not publicly. Players of Gavaskar’s time and earlier who were conscious of their public image were (and most were) careful to appear pure as driven ice. If you drink, you have done it sly, and so on if you smoke.
Maybe if Warne was an Indian, he might not have played international cricket. His expulsion from the cricket academy at the age of 20 would have sealed his fate; He was also sidelined amidst calls that leg-spinners take longer to mature than any other type of bowler to finish with one run for 150 in his first Test.
Things began to change in the new century, but it is not known how many talented players lost out on Indian cricket because they looked rough or were caught smoking or even grew their hair long.
I remember an award ceremony at the university where a long-haired player (who had won a major award) was told by the chief guest, a senior cricket board official: “Go hair cut, you are not Sunil Gavaskar!” Two messages were in that short sentence: Long hair is bad. You are not the great player like Gavaskar that you want. Interestingly, the player giving the advice was already a first-class cricketer.
India produced (or wanted to produce) cookie-cutter players with similar defensive strokes, similar drives or cuts and similar impeccable behavior records. We were overcoached as players and over-advised as humans. And we had no system of mentorship or man-management to ensure that the talented players who were different didn’t slip through the system.
Tiger Pataudi often said that one of his regrets as captain was that he could not extract the best from Salim Durrani, who was called a ‘brave talent’. Pataudi believed that if you are good enough to play for India, you are good enough to handle your problems.
mavericks in the middle
In a team the Mavericks had to expect their captain to be wiser than the system that had produced them.
That is why Harbhajan Singh, who was expelled from the National Cricket Academy, played more than a hundred Tests. He was supported by his captain Sourav Ganguly.
Later ‘Bad Boys’ Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were retained along with MS Dhoni, and now both have led India, and have shown similar understanding of players outside the cookie-cutter system. It has seen two unconventional yet exciting talents, Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant prosper.
This has been a significant change in Indian cricket over the past quarter or so, the acceptance that players can have different temperaments and different ways of doing things but they can be just as valuable to the team as they are. Gentle players who incorporate coaching manuals. Not coincidentally, this period marked a change from official-power to player-power.
Had Vinod Kambli, a talented player whom no one understood or wanted to understand, played under subsequent captains, his career could have been longer and more productive. Whatever the opposition, whatever the home advantage, you can’t get a double century in Tests without going out of the ordinary.
I think the same goes for Sadanand Viswanath, a brilliant wicketkeeper who could have developed into a tough batsman but was not of the ‘Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’ school of cricket, meaning That he did not face fools happily even though some of the fools were superiors or officers.
Perhaps teen sensation Laxman Sivaramakrishnan is also from there. Players take on a reputation for being difficult or aloof, and the label stuck.
Warne was lucky to have Allan Border in his corner, and once he matched his talent with performance, there weren’t too many dissenting voices. Someone – a selector, a captain, a senior player – must be prepared to support the talent for such players to succeed.
Ganguly understood it like Dhoni and Kohli and Indian cricket benefited as a result.