Mental toughness, aggro and killer instinct are three oft-used and abused terms for Indian sports people. One can say there’s an element of hyperbole in this, but the reality is if one needs to compete and win at global sporting events, you must be tough as nails and have the skill sets to best champions from other nations. The mental aspect is not overstated, cricket is mostly played on the field but equally in the head. The Aussies, for instance, have used the concept of sledging to get under the opposition’s skin and indulge in a psychological game of mental disintegration for years. They combined the use of quick bowling on bouncier pitches and close in chatter to chip away. Barracking from the stands and grassy enclosures called “hills” have always acted in tandem to this peculiar inverse snobbery practised by Australian cricketers. Englishmen too did it in their own snobbish way. Indians always fell short of this psychological warfare.
We were considered “softies” — gentlemen cricketers in whites representing our country — but failing the mental tenacity test. Tiger Pataudi brought a certain flair to the Indian team in the 1960s, and unleashed a spin quartet that for most part genially and smilingly won us a handful of matches. As an English-bred nawab who captained Sussex, he even gave the poet laureate of cricket, the fiery and feisty John Snow, a talking to in one of the county matches when he refused to bowl. But at best he was skipper of an Indian team made up of disparate individuals from different regions with their own angularities and idiosyncrasies. These were amateurs, and while Vijay Manjrekar and Subhash Gupte, two Mahim Juvenile stars who honed their craft on the dust bowl of Shivaji Park, cut the umbilical cord from Indian cricket’s links with its royal past, the Nawab of Pataudi remained an iconoclast.
Many captains followed Tiger over the years, including Sunil Gavaskar, who was a defensive captain, and Azharuddin, who can only be described as middling. Their contributions both with the bat and as skipper cannot be undermined, but they didn’t at any stage in their captaincy plot a new direction for Indian cricket. That killer streak came from an unlikely source: Sourav Ganguly, always the prince, unleashed a new dimension, a cutting-edge and a hitherto unknown aggression. His demeanour and dialect was typically north Indian as he set about reinventing Indian cricket. India’s growing stature in one-day cricket also helped farm, nurture and burnish that aggression. The gene pool also threw up new faces — Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan.
The 2002 Lords Natwest Trophy final was a significant milestone, Ganguly’s own shirt-stripping persona in the balcony now etched in the hearts and minds of cricket savants. The victory left an indelible imprint of a new India essayed by neophytes. Ganguly’s own body language of an aggressor rubbed off on his teammates, and while V.V.S. Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble represented the old India, Ganguly himself along with his boys became the flagbearer of this change sweeping India. The coolies were morphing into a fighting-fit combat unit. Ganguly was cerebral, canny and brash, he knew how to get under the opposition’s skin in a major role reversal. When Steve Waugh’s Oz came visited in 2001, they faced a resurgent India, one that gave no quarter nor asked for one. Imagine Ganguly kept Waugh waiting at the toss, his mindgames were legendary, his nonstop chatter from close in fabled. Laxman, Dravid and a young tyro off-spinner called Harbhajan Singh did the rest at Kolkata.
Between what transpired at Kolkata and Lord’s, Sourav had given a spanking new directional call, one that fought to the last man, got their hands and feet dirty in the combat zone. What Laxman and Dravid achieved was nothing short of epic, but it’s not that it wasn’t attempted earlier by an Indian team. Headingley, Leeds 1967, saw India under the cosh. An English side replete with luminaries like John Edrich, Geoff Boycott, Tom Graveney, Brian Close, Basil D’Óliveira, Ray Illingworth and John Snow, among other heavy hitters, was pitted against a Pataudi-led Indian side. England scored 550 on the back of Boycott’s 246 and D’Oliveira’s 109. India managed a paltry 164 as John Snow & Co ran amok. Following on, India showed steel and resolve as they piled up 510 with Tiger smashing 147, Ajit Wadekar 91, Farokh Engineer 87 and Hanumant Singh 73, forcing England to bat again. Tiger had instilled self-belief in a ragtag outfit, making them fight the topnotch English pace attack. Unlike Kolkata, India lost by six wickets but Chandra and Prasanna made them sweat for every run.
Ganguly revolutionised Indian cricket and cricketers, he took it to an altogether new level of competence. His gameplan was audacious, his mindset always attacking, his mien aggressive and antagonistic. India has had other captains since and M.S. Dhoni was a standout. A product of the game’s democratisation, his came to be another vital tenure. While his look and feel was flamboyant, his captaincy style was understated, earning him the sobriquet of Captain Cool. He fleshed out his style and personality, and became a marque, a gold standard and an icon. Somewhere in his distinguished career, the influence of IPL took root, and he became mechanical, stereotyped, bereft of imagination in the longer format as that required better bandwidth and a longer attention span.
The baton passed to Virat Kohli. Destined to lead India from his Under-19 World Cup win days, the energetic, sassy and bold Kohli typified the quick-fix IPL generation. Kohli wants to win, doesn’t play for personal milestones nor does he encourage those with such ambitions. The self-consuming fire and deep-set obsession to win and ground the opposition at all costs mindset spread quickly in the Indian team. He changed his game, his daily fitness regimen and is now an inspiration to the conveyor belt that is throwing up more and more talent. In between there was the notorious Monkeygate pit stop in Sydney in 2007-08, that again provided a peek at a cocksure India. The nation was being mirrored by its cricket team.
IPL’s contribution cannot be undermined in this changing ethos and credo. It inspired Indian cricketers to be best of the best, to train and compete with the fittest professional cricketers. The art of war was redefined by Dhoni, and now Kohli, Tuesday’s triumph against a beleaguered England on a flat wicket is testimony to this aggro, normally an overhyped word for Indian sportspersons. Kohli has aggro and flaunts it, you can see it in his eyes and his body language. One can see how Indian fielders chirp, chipping away at adversaries, telling them why this is a new India, giving as well as they get, telling one and all they don’t roll over and die. Adelaide in 2014, when Kohli almost won the match singlehandedly, is another defining moment in our quest for perfection. The next test is overseas!
