Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (18 page)

By the end of the Cape Town match the players were much more used to the conditions and this augured well for us going to Johannesburg for the third Test. We were taking the game very seriously, even though it was a dead rubber. We played well from the start and Rahul Dravid, batting at number three for the first time in the series, scored a fantastic hundred. He played the fast bowlers late and helped us to a position of strength. Sourav too batted extremely well at number five and we scored 410 in our first innings, which put South Africa under pressure for the first time in the series. The bowlers followed up with a good effort to give us a handy first-innings lead.

In our second innings it was once again Rahul and Sourav who did the business. We could sense victory and were buoyed by the opportunity. Our bowlers prised out the South African top order fairly quickly. Even when there was a partnership between Daryll Cullinan and Lance Klusener for the eighth wicket, we knew we were within striking distance and just needed to keep plugging away.

We finally got our breakthrough, in the form of Klusener, and were just two wickets away from a hard-earned victory when the skies opened up. It was a torrential downpour and it soon became clear that we had lost a great opportunity to win a Test match in South Africa.

I was distraught. We had done everything we could to win the match and here we were being deprived by the rain. I felt cheated by the forces of nature. I went to the umpires as soon as the rain stopped and said we were ready to play even if the outfield was a little wet, but they were within their rights to say that they couldn’t permit a restart unless the conditions were fit to play. The Test series ended 2–0 in favour of South Africa, but that scoreline didn’t reveal just how close we had been to making it 2–1. It left me disconsolate and in my disappointment I locked myself in the bathroom and just cried.

The other disappointment in this match was that VVS Laxman, then a youngster, fractured his finger and was faced with having to go back to India. Distressed, Laxman was sitting in one corner of the dressing room in tears. I tried to console him, saying that injuries happen, but that he shouldn’t worry too much about them as he had a long career ahead of him. In hindsight it was a prophetic statement!

India had not won a series in the Caribbean since 1971 and I looked on this tour as a major opportunity to leave the disappointment of South Africa behind. The conditions were different again from those in South Africa, and we needed to adjust quickly. However, our preparations suffered a serious jolt when Srinath, our leading fast bowler, was ruled out of the tour because he needed shoulder surgery. Abey Kuruvilla, a tall fast-medium bowler from Mumbai, performed admirably as his replacement, but the situation illustrates a very serious problem I faced in South Africa and subsequently in the Caribbean.

On tours like that, I believed we really needed three quality fast bowlers but unfortunately I never had more than two. In South Africa, Abey Kuruvilla was not even part of the squad. Even when I was desperate to have him, the selectors refused to include him. After making his Ranji Trophy debut in 1991, Abey had played five seasons of first-class cricket by then and would have been a handy bowler in South Africa. As it was, after good opening spells from both Srinath and Prasad, we failed to sustain the momentum. In the West Indies, we would once again rue the absence of a quality third seamer.

Despite losing Srinath, we played well enough in the first two Tests in March 1997, at Sabina Park and Port-of-Spain. Both matches ended in hard-fought draws and for once it seemed that we had managed to adjust to the conditions, with our batting looking solid against the West Indian pace quartet of Curtly Ambrose, Mervyn Dillon, Ian Bishop and Franklyn Rose. By the time we went to Barbados for the third match of the five-Test series on 27 March, I was feeling confident that we could do something special.

We started well at the Kensington Oval and managed to bowl out the West Indians for under 300, thanks to some fine bowling from Venkatesh Prasad, with 5–82, and despite a Shivnarine Chanderpaul century. As I write this, Chanderpaul has now played more than 150 Test matches in his career. He has been one of the most consistent middle-order batsmen for the West Indies for close to two decades, which is remarkable. We followed up the bowling with a good batting effort and managed a small first-innings lead. I scored 92 and was wrongly given out to an Ian Bishop delivery by umpire Lloyd Barker. Replays showed that Bishop had overstepped by at least four inches and it was a key moment in the match. As things turned out, Lloyd Barker wasn’t able to officiate for much of the match after that because – as I was told by the stand-in umpire who replaced him – he had had to go to hospital with a serious headache and couldn’t focus properly.

In the second innings our bowlers did well to dismiss the West Indies for 140 on the third day of the match. This time Abey Kuruvilla picked up 5–68 and we needed 120 runs to win, on a pitch that was increasingly uneven, with plenty of wear and tear for the West Indian fast bowlers to exploit. We picked up two of those runs without loss in the few overs we had to see out at the end of Sunday’s play. On that track we knew that scoring would not be easy the next day, but we also felt that one good partnership should be enough to take us to victory.

Monday 31 March 1997 was a dark day in the history of Indian cricket and definitely the worst of my captaincy career. And yet it had promised so much. In fact, over dinner at a restaurant in St Lawrence Gap in Barbados the night before, I remember having a joke with the waiter, who was predicting a West Indian win. He was confident that Ambrose would bounce India out the next morning. Now, in the first innings of this match, Franklyn Rose had bowled me a bouncer and I had pulled him into the stands for six. So I reminded the waiter of the shot and jokingly said to him that if Ambrose tried to bowl me a bouncer, I would hit him all the way to Antigua. I was so confident of our chances that I pointed to the fridge and said he should immediately chill a bottle of champagne and I would come and open it the next day and pour him a glass to celebrate winning the match.

Instead, we collapsed for a miserable 81 all out, handing the West Indies a 38-run victory. Frankly, there can be no excuses for such a poor batting effort, even though it was a difficult track. I certainly don’t want to point fingers at anyone for the defeat, as that’s not my way. In any case, I was part of that team and as captain it was my responsibility to steer us to victory. I did not get the feeling that we were over-confident, yet none of the batsmen apart from Laxman even reached double figures in the second innings and it was one of the worst batting displays I have been part of.

I myself got out for just four. In my anxiety to get a feel for the ball I got a tentative edge. I should either have left the ball alone or tried to counter-attack. The defeat left me totally devastated and I shut myself in my room for two whole days trying to come to terms with the loss. I still feel the pangs of that defeat when I look back at the series.

After eventually losing the five-Test series 0–1, we went on to lose the ODI series as well. The good start to the tour had given way to a complete lack of application and that proved catastrophic in the end. The best example of this ineptitude was the third one-day game, at St Vincent, where we needed 47 runs to win off the last ten overs with six wickets in hand. Rahul and Sourav had set up the platform and we should have strolled to victory. Again and again I instructed the batsmen not to go for big shots and to play along the ground, saying there was no need for any risk-taking with the asking rate under five runs an over. However, all our middle- and lower-order batsmen kept playing the ball in the air. The loss of a few wickets resulted in panic, which in turn led to a number of suicidal run-outs. It was infuriating to see the team lose from a winning situation.

At the end of the match I called a team meeting and lost my cool with the boys in the dressing room. I spoke from my heart and said the performance was unacceptable. I said that losing matches in which the opposition play better cricket is one thing – I had no problem with such defeats – but losing a match that we had completely under control suggested there was something seriously wrong with the team.

I was extremely upset with the way we were playing and both Anil and Srinath came to my room in the evening to try and calm me down. Anil said that I should not blame myself for the defeats and that we would learn from the mistakes we had made in South Africa and the West Indies. However, things were really starting to get on top of me. I hated losing and as captain of the team I felt responsible for the string of miserable performances. More worryingly, I did not know how I could turn it around, as I was already trying my absolute best.

Not long after the series was over, I confided in Anjali that I feared there was nothing more that I could do to stem the tide of defeats. Losing a string of very close matches had left me badly scarred. I had given it everything and was not sure that I could give even 0.1 per cent more. The fact that we failed to chase down 120 had nothing to do with lack of talent. It was because we batted horribly on the day. It was hurting me badly and it took me a long time to come to terms with these failures. I even contemplated moving away from the sport completely, as it seemed nothing was going my way. Anjali, as usual, managed to put things in perspective and assured me that things would surely get better in the months to come. Looking back, it was just frustration getting the better of me.

The string of defeats came to a temporary halt when we drew a two-Test series in Sri Lanka in August 1997 and then beat Pakistan 4–1 in the Sahara Cup, a one-day series in Toronto, in September. The tournament was memorable because Sahara had not only lent their name as sponsors but senior officials like Abhijit Sarkar were personally there to ensure that everything was in order and players felt comfortable. This win was all the more satisfying because we played without Srinath, Prasad and Anil Kumble, and we had a young bowling unit. Sourav Ganguly was the star performer for us in the series, winning four Man of the Match awards on the trot.

There was one rather strange incident during the second match of this series involving Inzamam-ul-Haq. While it appears funny in hindsight, it wasn’t at the time. During one of the drinks breaks when we were batting, having bowled Pakistan out for 116, one of the Pakistan players who wasn’t playing in the match took out a bat for Inzamam – to the great surprise of those of us watching from the dressing room. We initially thought he was taking the bat out to get it autographed; only later did we realize that Inzamam wanted it in order to charge at a few fans in the crowd who were taunting him because of his physique!

When we came back from Toronto to Delhi, there were more than 5000 fans to receive us at one thirty in the morning at Delhi airport. The police were finding it difficult to control the crowd but I insisted that the team should wave to the fans before we left the airport. It was a grand homecoming. However, the satisfaction of beating Pakistan was short-lived, because within weeks we had lost a three-match ODI series in Pakistan.

In the second game, which we won, I remember telling our off-spinner Rajesh Chauhan how to play Saqlain Mushtaq’s doosra ball. I gave him a mini-lecture for five minutes or so and told him to give the strike to Robin Singh, who was batting well at the other end. To my surprise, Rajesh ended up hitting a six in the last over and won us the game! However, we didn’t really celebrate, as there were armed guards outside our hotel rooms for security reasons, something that made us uncomfortable and put a dampener on things. The deciding match of the series belonged to Ijaz Ahmed, who smashed our bowlers to all parts of the park on his way to 139, winning the game for Pakistan comfortably.

When we got back to Delhi this time having lost the series 1–2, the fans who had queued up just weeks earlier were nowhere to be seen. To cap it all, I also remember that those of us who were flying on to Mumbai were asked to pay excess baggage. I told my team-mates that we should just pay up and not argue.

The defeat in Pakistan added to the pressure that was building on me and an incident from the home Test series against Sri Lanka in November–December 1997 perhaps gives an indication of how I was feeling at the time. As captain, I was expected to deliver a winning performance in the three-Test contest. I had not done well as a batsman in the first two Tests, both of which ended in draws. To add to my misery, the second Test at Nagpur was a washout. A section of the media was having a go at me before the third Test in Mumbai, which started on 3 December 1997, and a lot was written about my poor form. It was a crunch situation and I needed to deliver both as batsman and captain.

On the first day I went in to bat with an hour left and was unbeaten on eight at the end of play. I had not batted at my best but at least I had survived. As the overnight not-out batsman, I needed to rest but as has often been the case with me, I couldn’t sleep. By 10.30 p.m. I had started to feel very agitated. To get out of the stifling environment of the hotel, I called my friend Atul Ranade and asked him over. When he arrived I told him that I wanted to go for a drive and to visit the Shivaji Park temple.

It felt good praying at well past midnight. It gave me a sense of calm again and helped take my mind off the game. Then we went to the Siddhi Vinayak temple and finally, on our way back to the hotel, decided to have a milkshake at Haji Ali. Strange as it may sound, Atul and I sat on the roadside at 1 a.m. drinking milkshake and relaxing. We talked about anything but cricket and I was feeling much better when I went back to the hotel. I even managed to get some sleep and the following day I made 148.

Unfortunately it didn’t bring the win I needed, even though at one point we were in a great position. At a crucial moment in the innings we dropped a catch which would have put them under tremendous pressure. To add to our frustration, it also started drizzling and the game was stopped. I felt it was a combination of missed chances and bad luck that cost us the match.