Are Dhoni and co ready to prove selves?

Cricket teams — more particularly India’s — don’t have it easy on overseas tours these days. There has been widespread criticism — not entirely unfounded — of the inability of the players to perform as well abroad as they do in India. But it must also be said that the manner in which overseas tours are being planned have been of no help too.

Consider this: the tour of New Zealand kicks off today with the first of five one-day internationals. A two-day game then precedes the two-Test series. It’s a month of intensive international cricket without any buffer to find lost form or experiment. This is a hugely disconcerting roller-coaster ride for players surely.

Not too long back, cricket tours allowed sufficient time for acclimatization. The first tour I went on, to Pakistan in 1982-83, was of 100 days duration! It included six Tests, five ODIs and half a dozen other first-class matches preceding and in between Tests.

While the international calendar nowadays is indeed choc-a-bloc and short series’ are the trend, I believe that cricket loses flavor if players are rushed from one contest to another without enough time for adjusting to the prevailing conditions. In some ways, it also makes the contest skewed if not unequal.

The charm of cricket lies in the fact that conditions are not standardized, unlike in several other sports. For instance, the weather and pitches in the West Indies are vastly different from that obtained in England or India. The challenge for players is to come to terms with these conditions.

There is a difficulty quotient attached to this obviously and only high quality players excel consistently. This is why batsmen like Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman — to name a few from India — were tagged as great. This is also why bowlers like Warne, Muralitharan, Steyn — again to name only a few — are considered titans.

In my opinion, modern players are suffering because of inadequate time to adapt and adjust to conditions so as to express their talent to the best of their ability. Of course the hurly-burly of modern life does not permit very long tours, yet going headlong into international matches puts a very big onus on players.

This is not to make excuses for India’s dismal record overseas, especially in the last two years. After the World Cup victory in 2011, India have been whitewashed in England, Australia and recently lost to South Africa. The only series not lost was against a weak West Indies side in 2011.

This is a demeaning record for a side which hopes to be rated as the best in the world. In the present context, India have a terrific chance to redeem themselves this year, what with tours of New Zealand, England and Australia scheduled. But for that the players will have to be at peak form.

England’s rout in the recent Ashes series shows how difficult it can be even teams with an accomplished record of playing overseas. England had not only beaten Australia in mid-2013, but also on their previous tour Down Under. Despite starting as favourites, they were cleaned up 0-5 this time.

If India show mettle and spunk they could finish the year as top-ranked in both ODIs and Tests. This would be a terrific achievement for it would be achieved despite playing several matches overseas and would stymie criticism that Indian players are tigers at home and pussy cats overseas.

Are captain Dhoni and his young side physically — and more importantly mentally — ready for this gruelling challenge?