by Kartik Kannan
When Brian Lara scored his first double century against Australia in Sydney in the summer of 93, he was ecstatic. He finally finished with a polished 277, and the first piece of advice he receives in the dressing room from Sobers, the legend was ” You’l have to start your next innings from zero”.
The context of that statement was whatever was done today was great and its reached its peak for this innings, and for the next innings one would have to start building from scratch and concentrate to carve another masterpiece. More so an artist needs a reminder to come back from the heady world of his wonderful past and to focus on the present, with the knowledge that every masterpiece takes time, effort and dedication to conceive.
A very similar notion applies to teams rebuilding from where its core players go over the hill. The best teams are those that have ready replacements and apply the science of supply chain management to team building. The greatest work that has been done in this regard is the Australian Cricket team, which has been a masterpiece in motion for quite some time now. In the mid 80’s the nucleus of the Australian team was disturbed so badly with the retirement of many greats like Lilee,Chappel,Hughes and Rodney Marsh. Now that was suddenly a huge void to fill, and the Australian team of the 80’s struggled to find ready replacements. They had a rookie team consisting of untested players like Steve Waugh, David Boon, Geoff Marsh,Bruce Reid,Simon Odonell and Craig Mcdermott. The team lost the 86 ashes 0-3 to Gatting’s England, and when they came to the Reliance World Cup in India, they were rank outsiders, but they had men who were willing to stretch it out, ,men who knew what it takes to lose, and more importantly part of a system called the Australian Cricket Academey(ACA), an exercise in excellence. The ACA was conceived in the mid 80’s to create a great infrastructure to produce Australian cricketers of the finest quality, and it didn’t pain the Australian Administration to start from scratch after losing quality players to age and the Packers Circus.
The ACA exercise paid off and they persisted with a team, who they believed was a team for the future, inspite of the poor success record. Border’s men came from nowhere, as they had nothing to lose, and built a team that thrived on keeping their cool on tense moments, and playing aggressive in-your-face cricket and went on to rule the world of cricket. The team had been successfully built, but if the domination had to go on, Australia had to churn out champions regularly. This need was met by the vision of the ACA in a manner that some of the stalwarts of Australian cricket were forced to retire(like Ian Healy,Waugh Brothers and Dean Jones) because of the abundance of the talent being thrown up. The team rebuilding exercise had the Australians rising like the Phoenix from the ‘Ashes’ that it found itself in. Similar success stories have happened without academies being built, but with a strong domestic competition and a worthy example is the South African team, post Cronje and post the 2003 World Cup, but few can sustain the drunk power that the Aussies had over the cricketing world for over 20 years.
The West Indies have been at the opposite end of the spectrum, having managed to build a brick or two but the waves of uncertainty have often washed the bricks ashore despite a Lara, Chanderpaul or Sarwan standing tall amidst the ruins. After Richards’s departure they never seemed to have the swagger of the team that Lloyds and Richards built by just chewing the opposition with a bubble gum in their mouth.
To build a team, one needs a few star performers and a good measure of allrounders who understand the importance of discipline and clear role definition.
India surprisingly, finds itself at the crossroads of another team to be built. The fab five would be gone sooner or later, as signs of senility have crept in to the great tree that shielded Indian cricket. Its time to develop some strong roots underground so that the tree grows up to be a big one wearing the weight of a billion hopes that rise and fall with Indian Cricket. Its good that decisions are being taken in favour of that in blooding players like Virat Kohli, Raina,Ojha and Badrinath for the Lankan tour. The roots so far have taken its time to be built and India through its NCA and MRF pace foundation has begun throwing talent in the gallery. Its upto the talent to fight the lions in the ring and be part of a cricketing empire that just ‘came’ ’saw’ and ‘conquered’!
