|
CAFE
COM:PORT
CHAT JOCKEYS
EVENTS
|
The Ajit Wadekar Chat
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:19 IST)
Hi everyone, there seem to be a few questions in the room already. You are welcome to ask any questions which I will not hesitate to reply as I have retired now from cricket. You can shoot off now.
Ramakrishnan (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:18 IST)
Mr Wadekar: Do you think it was an unwise decision for the selectors to drop Rahul (Dravid), Venkatesh (Prasad) and (Anil) Kumble against Pakistan???
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:22 IST)
Ramakrishnan: Well they shouldn't have been dropped at all, whether it was against Pakistan or any other team. Both of them are as good, as permanent members of the team as Sachin, Azhar, Saurav or Srinath and so on and so forth. Venkatesh Prasad was ranked first in the Ceat ranking, while Rahul Dravid was chosen by the critics as the best player of the year. The selectors should not think of dropping them at all even in their dreams.
Amita Mishra (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:18 IST)
Good evening Mr Wadekar: What reason would you attribute to the terrific form of the Indian team at present? What has happened that they have started faring so well?
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:30 IST)
Amita: I suppose the team seems alright provided they are selected properly by the selectors against a particular opposition and different conditions. The changing and chopping course adopted by the present selectors is wrong. It appears they seem to have grown panicky since the Indian team had not been performing well.
This is the kind of phase which any international team goes through for some time. Like what has been happening to English cricketers for almost the last four years. The same thing happened to the Australians before Bobby Simpson took over as manager of the team. This is exactly what happened when Sachin took over as captain, when this bad phase started for the Indian team.
There was no need to get panicky and keep changing players even if they were not tried on the tours. Thankfully, this phase has been short and we have started doing well. Apart from this I feel we have yet to get good spinners, in which we were always traditionally good. We had spinners like Subhash Gupte, Ghulam Ahmed, Bishan Singh Bedi, Prasanna, Venkataraghavan, Chandrashekhar and quite a few others. This is where we must be on the lookout. Then our team will be really well balanced, as we have quite a number of medium and fast medium bowlers in Venkatesh Prasad, Srinath, Kuruvilla, Mohanty etc. Our batting is really strong and if we change our attitude towards winning we should be able to do much better.
Nitin (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:27 IST)
Mr Wadekar: What is the reason that not many players in Indian team are coming from Bombay and Maharashtra? Today, Karnataka is dominating. Also, the fact that except Tendulkar, no other player from Bombay and Maharashtra has safe chances for getting selected?? In short, why has Bombay and Maharashtra lost to other states???
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:35 IST)
Nitin: Well as along as number of players from Mumbai (not Bombay these days) are not seen in the Indian team , the reason is very obvious -- it is the regionalism which may be taking place when it comes to selection. Mumbai has been doing extremely well with most of their top batsmen in good nick. Like Vinod Kambli, Sanjay Manjrekar, who are quite experienced whereas youngsters like Wasim Jaffar, Jatin Paranjpye, Ajit Agarkar the all-rounder, Amol Muzumdar who is knocking double centuries most of the time for quite long and also bowlers like Kuruvilla and left arm spinner Nilesh Kulkarni. If you go through these names, with their latest performance they should be in the Indian team. Obviously, the selectors seem to be having different ideas. And that may be the reason that we don't see much of Mumbai players in the India squad.
Nitin (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:37 IST)
Mr Wadekar: How did you decide to be a cricketer?? And who is your mentor???
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:51 IST)
Nitin: Well I suppose my entry into cricket was a fluke. I never played in my school even though I was born in the place called Shivaji Park, which has produced lots and lots of cricketers, not only for the then Bombay team, but also for India. I was supposed to be a little bit scholarly and stood first in the final school examination and was itching to go for engineering, as such I joined Elphinstone College, well known for the studies in science.
It so happened that the college had a extremely good team with 11 players, all Ranji Trophy players with Arvind Apte as captain of the team. They did not have a 12th man to carry water on the field during the drinks interval. My neighbour Baloo Gupte, younger brother of Subhash Gupte was a leg spinner in the college team, we used to travel together to college in the same bus, he just asked me casually then whether I would like to carry water on the field during the matches for the college team which would fetch me an allowance of Rs three per day for the playing days. Well, I jumped at it, I used to do my practicals, go late to the practise and get penalised by the coach Madhav Mantri -- uncle of Sunil Gavaskar and a very big stickler for discipline. He would make me run 4 or 5 rounds on the field.
The inter-collegiate tournament started and till we reached the final, I used to finish my practicals in the morning and go to the ground right at lunch time. I would have a hefty lunch, take water on the field during the drinks intervals and go back to my college for classes. It so happened that in the final one of our fast bowlers fell sick and could not come to the ground, so I was included in the team in his place. I had practicals, so the team fielded with just ten players till lunch, at which point I joined them. My captain was furious -- for that matter, I guess if I was to be in his shoes I would have been furious too. He said that I had joined the team just for the lunch, and not for playing for the college. That hit me badly, and I took a vow that I would prove that I could be a better cricketer than my captain. I changed my class timings to the morning, got into the team, played for the college and for the state soon after.
suwarn (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:34 IST)
Sir, Sunil Dev in his interview on Rediff On The NeT said that "no army should have two generals". Obviously, the reference is to the presence of Mohammad Azharuddin. What are your comments on this?
azhar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:47 IST)
Mr Wadekar , what do you make of Sunil Dev's comment : "No company should have two generals" ?
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:38 IST)
Suwarn: I think Sunil Dev must have read Azharuddin wrongly, or Sachin wrongly. Azhar is a perfect team man. I have seen him from close as a manager, and he would always play for the team and not for himself. Same is the case with Sachin. He is the best batsmen in the world at the moment and would try to adjust his style and the game according to the situation for the benefit of the team. I suppose there is no truth in the statement made by Sunil Dev.
mukesh (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:39 IST)
Hello Sir.. What do you think about the match fixing thing.. how much truth is there in Manoj Prabhakar's claim?
Manoj Nair (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:41 IST)
Mr Wadekar: Whom would you believe, Justice Y V Chandrachud or Manoj Prabhakar???? Please comment??
Kirti (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:42 IST)
Sir, a question, please reply candidly: Whom would you believe Y V Chandrachud or Manoj Prabhakar?
rahul (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:42 IST)
AJIT SIR, i think everybody on this chat right now would like to know the answer to one question IS THERE BRIBERY/BETTING amongst indian cricket players??
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:56 IST)
Manoj/Kirti: Well I suppose Chief Justice Chandrachud has already given his verdict, it is imposssible for one player to fix a match when it is a team game. It is very difficult for him to get out, the bowler has to bowl the perfect delivery and if it is a catch the fielder has to accept it gracefully. So there are three persons who would get definitely involved in something has to be fixed. Apart from this, if that batsmen gets out there are other bastmen who may get more runs like Sachin, Azhar, Vinod, Rahul so on and so forth. As long as I was manager of the team I never had any oppurtunity to suspect anybody doing such kind of things. So to me Chief Justice Chandrachud is right.
suwarn (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:52 IST)
Mr Wadekar, isn't bugging illegal? And, yes, of course, you were misquoted, but didn't you use the two words, "bugging" and telephone? Or did the mediaperson just dream it all up?
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 8:4 IST)
Suwarn: Bugging is just impossible, and I was not only misquoted but it was wrongly typed. You have got to have permissions from the competent authority to do this bugging, and which hotel would allow such kind of foolish thing?
ravi pandit (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:41 IST)
Hello Sir, This is ravi from Abu Dhabi. I personally feel you have done a great job in combining your sports and academic acheivements. What do you think about your active involvement in the cricket administration at the national level so as to save it from the degradation it is suffering these days?
Ravi Pandit: Well Ravi the situation is not that bad as you are thinking. Our team is really good and what it needs is a good selection and a proper direction . The present coach Anshuman Gaikwad is quite good in planning the strategy and very knowledgeable about the finer points about the game. He also knows all the current players extremely well, as he was a national selector for nearly 4 years. So the future of Indian cricket is quite bright provided Anshuman gets a longer period to work on the boys. If you are not aware, to manage the Indian team or for that matter to captain the Indian team too, is not only different but also a bit difficult as compared to other International teams of different countries. We have all kinds of religions, languages, culture, eating habits etc and to get them together to play as one single unit would certainly take longer period, hence the manager should be given a long rope to make the team into a one single fighting unit.
uds (Wed Feb 4 1998 7:51 IST)
Ajit.....Dravid why not an ODI player?
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 8:8 IST)
UDS: Yes, like you I'm also surprised why Rahul is not considered good enough for one day games. His performance in the last year's one day game only shows that he has got almost 1000 runs with an average of about 45 to 50 a game. He got the best player award for his performance in the 1996-97 season, any good player can adjust to any type of cricket in view of the fact that even in Test cricket sometimes one is required to get say 100 runs in 15 overs for which one has to play much better than what he would generally play in one day games. Rahul is certainly capable of playing such dual roles.
Raj (Wed Feb 4 1998 8:4 IST)
Mr. Wadekar: In my opinion, you are the best cricket captain India has ever produced. Do you have any solutions/advice for the present Indian captain?
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 8:13 IST)
RAJ: At the moment the most succesful Indian captain is Azhar with whom I had a chance to work as a manager, for nearly 4 years, of the Indian team. He is quite capable of planning the strategy, getting the best out of the players and earning the respect of his colleagues and that of his opponents too. Most important aspect of his captaincy is that he has some luck with him, and you know that luck always favours the brave. So Azhar always has to be always positive and go for the win.
Mr Ajit Wadekar (Wed Feb 4 1998 8:15 IST)
Sorry friends I have to leave abruptly as I have a pressing appointment in another 10 minutes time, I enjoyed chatting with you and hope to be back soon with you. All the best.
|
