The Great Indian World Cup Dream

(Rohit Sharma attempts to pull, India U-19s v West Indies U-19s, Colombo, February 11, 2006)

While the senior cricket team is toiling hard for success on the docile pitches of Pakistan, some young guns are blazing big time for India in the Emerald island. The Indian Under 19 cricket team has made it to the final four of the U-19 Cricket World Cup! Incredibly, they haven't lost even a match in their pursuit of the ultimate glory. India now face England in the semi-finals on Wednesday. The other semi-final would be between Pakistan & Australia. Its sad that almost no one in India is following their campaign.

While the semifinal line-up looks in perfect harmony with the respective senior teams' stature, the truth is infact far from it. Other than Australia, who are almost as rampant in their campaign as their seniors, its the subcontinent teams who are the major forces to reckon with in the junior arena. Even the Bangladeshis command the kind of respect their seniors can only get in their dreams. The result of the quarter-final match between England and Bangladesh, which the English won of course, is being considered a surprise! Indian U-19s have been among the toppers in their batch since the times when Kaif used to be their captain. Then there was one Indo-Pak U-19 tour where Irfan Pathan and VRV Singh unleashed hell on the Paki kids. Shikhar Dhawan, who is making a mark for himself in the domestic circuit, was their star batsman on that tour.

Now the question arises that if our kids are frontrunners in the U-19 scene, why do they fail to blossom in promising prospects for the senior teams? If our junior team can kick butts of their counterparts comprehensively, why do they shy away from this when they meet them in the senior circuit? I somehow got a hunch that while other U-19 players improve a lot on their games before and after getting into the senior side, our juniors' game kind of stagnates at that juvenile level. One more reason can be that quite possibly we send over-19-but-certified-to-be-under-19 players to the junior matches. Since such practices are not very uncommon in the subcontinent, it explains why the subcontinent does well at the junior levels.

The current Indian ODI team has some young & promising prospects, but over the time we had problem finding youngsters who can take the burden of the international cricket with great confidence. Yuvraj Singh showed glimpses of his immense talent in his debut match; Irfan Pathan had a decent debut tour; MS Dhoni became a household name is lesser number of matches than the number of alphabets in his name, but then I look at Mohammad Asif. Here is one young speedster, bowling to the likes of Sehwag - who is riding high on confidence after scoring 250 runs just two innings back, Tendulkar - who is considered the best batsman even today, Dravid - arguably the most technically sound player and other aces of the famous Indian batting line up and he bowls with such vigor & wile that all the big names failed to save the inevitable defeat. When will India produce such confident debutantes? What do our youngsters lack? We have to look towards Australia for this answer, where every other debutante is almost as competitive & confident as the senior members of the squad. If Chappell's grand vision of 2007 world cup doesn't include grooming young talents at U-19 and other junior levels, one day India will pay dearly for that. He seems to be concerned towards building a decent bench strength and a very flexible core team. Healthy competition and perform-or-perish funda should bring the much needed professionalism in the Indian cricket, sooner rather than later.