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Stop Bashing Azhar

I am in a tiny minority today. A minority that believes Mohammed Azharuddin is not exactly the awful captain he is being made out to be. His critics have no clue as to how decisions are made in cricket today. They are also being foolishly misled by the deliberately unfair propaganda against Azharuddin. Propaganda strategically timed to keep him under further pressure. To try and defeat India in the World Cup by, first, crushing the spirit of its captain.

In fact, I would go further and say that we are being stupid and churlish when we criticise the Indian captain in such a foul way that it undermines his self confidence. At the same time we expect him to win matches for us under more and more difficult cicumstances.

This kind of pressure is absurd and foolish. It can only hurt India, not Azharuddin.

First, we must learn to differentiate between Azharuddin the player and Azharuddin the captain. Azharuddin the player is brilliant and has the finest batting record in one day internationals and test cricket. He is quick, stylish, and was (till recently, until the attack against him reached such a vulgar crescendo) extremely reliable. He holds the world record in one day internationals and has delivered, again and again, under trying conditions. His persistence is legendary. His spirit is strong and he rarely gives up. What is more important, he has the safest pair of hands in the team. He has caught out 150 players in one day internationals, which in itself is another world record. However, it must be admitted at the same time, that in the current series his scores have been awful.

But, then, so has been the pressure on him.

Azharuddin, the captain, is capable if not always exciting and, even in this World Cup, we have seen him win some spectacular victories. But the persistent carping, the ferocious criticism, the open demand for Ajay Jadeja to replace him, appears to have finally frazzled him. You can almost see the bewilderment on his face as his simplest comments are torn out of context to embarrass him, put him under further pressure.

In a sense it all began with Manoj Prabhakar and his wink wink nudge nudge campaign. Though Prabhakar never came upfront to name the person who, he alleged, offered him a bribe to lose for India, he kept turning the needle of suspicion towards Kapil Dev and Azharuddin. Luckily for India, both had clean, immaculate records and there were not many people ready to believe Prabhakar. But the campaign unnerved Azharuddin and, reserved as he was, he became even more cautious while interacting with his team mates.

Then came the turn of the media to knock him. The captain of a losing team is always friendless. For the media, this was the best time to sharpen their knives and show their skills in butchery. This is when Imran Khan stepped in to criticise Azharuddin's "body language". India's biggest problem is its skipper, said the former Pakistan captain, much to everyone's delight since Azharuddin by now had become the nation's pet hate. Look at Wasim Akram, they said, see how he leads his boys, look at his body language, watch him go for the kill.

In fact, to further buttress the argument against Azharuddin, our sporting lexicon was altered. We suddenly discovered a desperate need for "the killer instinct". We wanted the body language of our players to become more aggressive, more desperate, ignoring the fact that the greatest stars of Indian cricket had never felt the need to change their style to win matches.

In fact, that had always been the genius of Indian cricket. Our own style. Skillful but laid-back. Aggressive, never murderous. A quick flick of the wrist, a deft stroke, a neat jab we have shown achieves far more than the ferocious body language of our adversaries. Our fast bowlers were never fast enough. Yet they got wickets with their persistence, their accuracy. Our spinners were the best in the world, cunning and unplayable. We did not believe in bodyline. We never made those hugely demonstrative acts on the pitch. We were not evangelists. We never tried to convert a simple, God-fearing cricket match into a full scale war against the infidels. Our captains never looked skywards and beseeched God to come to their support. In fact, we rarely went beyond the game and tried to transform it into a Kurukshetra.

That was our strength. That was our power.

But suddenly poor Azharuddin finds that all this is his disqualification. His heel of Achilles. The fact that he does not rave and rant, that he does not demonstrate this typically Western idea of "the killer instinct", that his body language does not show that he is out to kill, destroy, demolish, devastate his rivals instead of simply beating them at the game through superior thinking, smarter strategy, better play. To impress the millions of people who now watch the game worldwide (and the huge galaxy of experts who comment on it in print, before the TV cameras and on the Internet, online) he has to learn the mystique of meanness, the virtues of viciousness.

In other words, he has to unlearn the game as we in India have traditionally played it. He has to forget the fact that this is just a game, to be played with skill and expertise. Instead, he must replace it with gladiatorial glamour. Azharuddin the cricketer must become Azharuddin the matador. He must spill blood on the field as it were. He must transform what is a mere game of cricket into another Kargil. He has to vulgarise his style in search of "the killer instinct", the so-called "body language" of victory.

I love to watch India win. For me, it is a victory of style over naked power and aggressiveness. It reflects our devilish and laid-back attitude to the game, our genius for true sportsmanship, a forgotten virtue in today's fierce battlefield of sports.

As the whole world hurtles towards a boring and predictably aggressive game, where style, cleverness and sporting spirit is being replaced by brute force and an overdose of steroids, we stand apart, with the Sri Lankans and now Bangladesh to prove that there is another way to play and win at cricket. Not by bowling bodyline or making rude faces at the adversory or kissing the ground to thank God for victory. Victory lies in our own ability to think and play well, not in intimidating others. Nor in beseeching the old man in the skies to come to our rescue as the thirteenth member of the squad.

That is why I disagree with those who bash Azharuddin and want him replaced, midway through the World Cup. This is not how we play cricket. We have won the World Cup in the past, we have beaten the best teams without compromising on our style. Why must we do it now, just to please Imran Khan or the blood thirsty media? No, this is not war. This is cricket and we must win it as cricket. No more. No less.

If we must win wars, let us be better prepared to win in Kargil. Or in the Mushkoh Valley. Lord's is no substitute for Drass. You cannot punish Azharuddin for the sins of George Fernandes.

And to compare him with Wasim Akram would be heresy. Akram plays for God while Azharuddin plays for India.

Pritish Nandy

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