Indians Great, Greater, Greatest?

Ramachandra Guha in The Hindu

Choosing the ‘Greatest Indian After Gandhi’ is di icult when the present exerts such a strong pull over our view of the past and there is a wide variation between how the ‘greatness’ of an individual is assessed by the aam aadmi and by the expert, says Ramachandra Guha




Nations need heroes, but the construction of a national pantheon is rarely straightforward or uncontested. Consider the debate in the United States about which faces should adorn the national currency. The founding figures of American Independence — Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Franklin — are all represented on the dollar bill, albeit on different denominations. So are the 19th century Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant. In recent years, right-wing Americans have campaigned for their hero, Ronald Reagan, to be represented on the national currency. This, it is said, is necessary to bring it in line with contemporary sentiments. Of 20th century Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is represented on the dime, and John F. Kennedy on the dollar. Both were Democrats. Republicans now demand that the pantheon feature one of their ilk. In 2010, a Congressman from North Carolina, Patrick McHenry, canvassed for a law mandating that Ulysses S. Grant be replaced on the fifty dollar bill by Ronald Reagan. “Every generation needs its own heroes”, said McHenry. The American hero he was anointing for our times was Reagan, “a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking”.


Turn now to that other large, complex, cacophonous, democracy — our own. After India became independent, the national pantheon offered to its citizens was massively dominated by leaders of the Congress Party. Mahatma Gandhi was positioned first, with Jawaharlal Nehru only a short distance behind. Both had played important roles in the freeing of the country from colonial rule. Both were truly great Indians. That said, the popular perception of both was helped by the fact that the party to which they belonged was in power for the crucial decades after Independence.


Newspapers, the radio, and school textbooks all played their role in the construction of a narrative in which Gandhi was the Father of the Nation and Nehru its Guide and Mentor in the first, formative years of the Republic’s existence. Until the 1960s, the dominance of Nehru and Gandhi in the national imagination was colossal. When, in that decade, the American scholar Eleanor Zelliot wrote a brilliant dissertation on B.R. Ambedkar and the Mahar movement in Maharashtra, she was unable to find a publisher. But then the Congress started to lose power in the States. In 1977 it lost power for the first time at the Centre. The rise of new political parties led naturally to revisionist interpretations of the past. New heroes began to be offered for inclusion in the nation’s pantheon, their virtues extolled (and sometimes magnified) in print, in Parliament, and, in time, in school textbooks as well.


The Indian who, in subsequent decades, has benefited most from this revaluation is B.R. Ambedkar. A scholar, legal expert, institution builder and agitator, Ambedkar played a heroic (the word is inescapable) role in bringing the problems of the untouchable castes to wider attention. He forced Gandhi to take a more serious, focused, interest in the plight of the depressed classes, and himself started schools, colleges and a political party to advance their interests.


Ambedkar died in December 1956, a political failure. The party he founded scarcely made a dent in Congress hegemony, and he was unable to win a Lok Sabha seat himself. But his memory was revived in the 1970s and beyond. His works began to be read more widely. He was the central, sometimes sole, inspiration for a new generation of Dalit activists and scholars. Obscure at the time of his death in 1956, condescended to by the academic community until the 1980s (at least), Ambedkar is today the only genuinely all-India political figure, worshipped in Dalit homes across the land. Notably, he is not a Dalit hero alone, his achievements recognised among large sections of the Indian middle class. No one now seeking to write a book on Ambedkar would have a problem finding a publisher.


The (belated) incorporation of Ambedkar into the national pantheon is a consequence largely of the political rise of the subaltern classes. Meanwhile, the pantheon has been expanded from the right by the inclusion of Vallabhbhai Patel. Paradoxically, while Patel was himself a lifelong Congressman, the case for his greatness has been made most vigorously by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP leaders and ideologues speak of Patel as the Other, in all respects, of Jawaharlal Nehru. They claim that if Patel had become Prime Minister, Kashmir would have been fully integrated into India. Under Patel the country would have followed a more pragmatic (i.e. market-oriented) economic policy, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Western democracies against godless Communism. Nor, if Patel had been in charge, would there have been (it is claimed) any appeasement of the minorities.


The BJP reading of history is tendentious, not least because Patel and Nehru were, in practice, collaborators and colleagues rather than rivals or adversaries. To be sure, they had their disagreements, but, to their everlasting credit, they submerged these differences in the greater task of national consolidation. Theirs was a willed, deliberate, division of labour and responsibilities. Nehru knew that Patel, and not he, had the patience and acumen to supervise the integration of the princely states and build up administrative capacity. On the other side, as Rajmohan Gandhi demonstrates in his biography of Patel, the man had no intention or desire to become Prime Minister. For Patel knew that only Nehru had the character and personality to take the Congress credo to women, minorities, and the South, and to represent India to the world. 


That the BJP has to make the case for Patel is a consequence of the Congress’s capture by a single family determined to inflate its own contributions to the nation’s past, present, and future. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party recognises that a pantheon cannot consist of only two names; however, in their bid to make it more capacious, Congressmen place Indira and Rajiv alongside Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Thus the ubiquitous and apparently never-ending naming of sarkari schemes, airports, buildings, and stadia, after the one or the other.


The preceding discussion makes clear that political parties and social movements play a crucial role in how the national past is conveyed to citizens in the present. Indians admired by parties and movements, such as Ambedkar and Patel, have had their achievements more widely recognised than might otherwise have been the case. By the same token, great Indians whose lives are incapable of capture by special interests or sects have suffered from the enormous condescension of posterity.


Consider, in this regard, the current invisibility from the national discourse of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. Married to a man chosen by her family, she was widowed early, and then married a left-wing actor from another part of India. She joined the freedom movement, persuading Gandhi to allow women to court arrest during the Salt March and after. After coming out of jail, Kamaladevi became active in trade union work, and travelled to the United States, where she explained the relevance of civil disobedience to black activists (her turn in the South is compellingly described in Nico Slate’s recent book Colored Cosmopolitanism). After Independence and Partition, Kamaladevi supervised the resettlement of refugees; still later, she set up an all-India network of artisanal cooperatives, and established a national crafts museum as well as a national academy for music and dance. Tragically, because her work cannot be seen through an exclusively political lens, and because her versatility cannot be captured by a sect or special interest, Kamaladevi is a forgotten figure today. Yet, from this historian’s point of view, she has strong claims to being
regarded as the greatest Indian woman of modern times.

Earlier this year, I was invited to be part of a jury to select the ‘Greatest Indian Since Gandhi’. The organisers did me the favour of showing me a list of 100 names beforehand. Many of the names were unexceptionable, but some strongly reflected the perceptions (and prejudices) of the present. For example, Kiran Bedi was in this list, but Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay wasn’t, a reflection only of the fact that the latter did not live in an age of television. There was also a regional bias: compiled in Delhi, the preliminary list did not include such extraordinary modern Indians as Shivarama Karanth, C. Rajagopalachari, and E. V. Ramaswami ‘Periyar’. There was also a marked urban bias: not one Indian who came from a farming background was represented, not even the former Prime Minister Charan Singh or the former Agriculture Minister (and Green Revolution architect) C. Subramaniam. Nor was a single Adivasi on the list, not even the Jharkhand leader Jaipal Singh.


Since this was a provisional list, the organisers were gracious enough to accommodate some of these names at my request. The revised list was then offered to a jury composed of actors, writers, sportspersons and entrepreneurs, men and women of moderate (in some cases, considerable) distinction in their field. Based on the jury’s recommendations the 100 names were then brought down to 50. The names of these 50 ‘great’ Indians were then further reduced to 10, in a three-way process in which the votes of the jury were given equal weightage with views canvassed via an online poll and a market survey respectively. The results
revealed two striking (and interconnected) features: the strong imprint of the present in how we view the past, and the wide variation between how the ‘greatness’ of an individual is assessed by the aam aadmi and by the expert.


Here are some illustrations of this divergence. In the jury vote, B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru tied for first place; each had 21 votes. The online poll also placed Ambedkar in first place, but ranked Nehru as low as 15th, lower than Vallabhbhai Patel, Indira Gandhi, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Even Sachin Tendulkar, A.R. Rahman, and Rajnikanth were ranked higher than Nehru by Net voters. In the jury vote, the industrialist J.R.D. Tata and the social worker Mother Teresa were ranked immediately below Ambedkar and Nehru. Vallabhbhai Patel was ranked fifth by the jury, but an impressive third by Net voters. This suggests that like Ambedkar, Patel has a strong appeal among the young, albeit among a different section, those driven by the desire to see a strong state rather than the wish to achieve social justice. Nehru, on the other hand, is a
figure of disinterest and derision in India today, his reputation damaged in good part by the misdeeds of his
genealogical successors.The most remarkable, not to say bizarre, discrepancy between the expert and the aam aadmi was revealed in the case of the former President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Only two (out of 28) jury members voted for Kalam to be one of the shortlist of 10. On the other hand, Kalam was ranked first by those surveyed by market research, and second in the online polls.


What explains this massive variation in perception? The jury was motivated perhaps by the facts — the hard,
undeniable, if not so widely advertised facts — that Kalam has not made any original contributions to scientific or scholarly research. Homi Bhabha, M.S. Swaminathan, and Amartya Sen, who have, were thus ranked far higher than the former President. Nor has Kalam done important technological work — recognising this, the jury ranked the Delhi Metro and Konkan Railway pioneer E. Sreedharan above him.
In the popular imagination, Kalam has been credited both with overseeing our space programme and the nuclear tests of 1998. In truth, Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, U.R. Rao and K. Kasturirangan did far more to advance India’s journey into space. Kalam was an excellent and industrious manager; a devoted organisation man who was rewarded by being made the scientific adviser to the Government of India. It was in this capacity that he was captured in military uniform at Pokhran, despite not being a nuclear specialist of any kind.


A key reason for Abdul Kalam’s rise in public esteem is that he is perceived as a Muslim who stands by his
motherland. In the 1990s, as there was a polarisation of religious sentiment across India, Kalam was seen by many Hindus as the Other of the mafia don Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood was the Bad Muslim who took refuge in Pakistan and planned the bombing of his native Bombay; Kalam the Good Muslim who stood by India and swore to bomb Pakistan if circumstances so demanded. This was the context in which Kalam was picked up and elevated to the highest office of the land by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP wanted, even if symbolically, to reach out to the minorities they had long mistrusted (and sometimes persecuted). In this rebranding exercise, the fisherman’s son from Rameswaram proved willing and able. A second reason that Kalam is so admired is that he is an upright and accessible public servant in an age characterised by arrogant and corrupt politicians. As President, Kalam stayed admirably non-partisan while reaching out to a wide cross-section of society. He made a particular point of interacting with the young, speaking in schools
and colleges across the land, impressing upon the students the role technology could play in building a  prosperous and secure India. A.P.J. Kalam is a decent man, a man of integrity. He is undeniably a good Indian, but not a great Indian, still less (as the popular vote would have us believe) the second greatest Indian since Gandhi. Notably, the Net voters who ranked Kalam second also ranked Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay 50th, or last. At the risk of sounding elitist, I have to say that in both cases the aam admi got it spectacularly wrong.


III

A nation’s pantheon is inevitably dominated by men and women in public affairs, those who fought for independence against colonial rule, and thereafter ran governments and crafted new laws that reshaped society. One of the appealing things about the exercise I was part of was that it did not choose only to honour politicians. The longlist of 50 had actors, singers, sportspersons, scientists, and social workers on it. Commendably, in their own selection of Ten Great Indians since Gandhi, expert as well as aam admi sought to have a variety of fields represented. Collating the votes, a final list of 10 was arrived at, which, in alphabetical order read: B.R. Ambedkar; Indira Gandhi; A.P.J. Abdul Kalam; Lata Mangeshkar; Jawaharlal Nehru; Vallabhbhai Patel; J.R.D. Tata; Sachin Tendulkar; Mother Teresa; A.B. Vajpayee.
Reacting both as citizen and historian, I have to say that six of these 10 choices should be relatively uncontroversial.

Ambedkar, Nehru and Patel are the three towering figures of our modern political history. J.R.D. Tata was that rare Indian capitalist who promoted technological innovation and generously funded initiatives in the arts. Although in sporting terms Viswanathan Anand is as great as Sachin Tendulkar, given the mass popularity of cricket the latter has had to carry a far heavier social burden. Likewise, although a case can be made for M. S. Subbulakshmi, Satyajit Ray or Pandit Ravi Shankar to represent the field of ‘culture’, given what the Hindi film means to us as a nation, Lata had to be given the nod ahead of them. It is with the remaining four names that I must issue a dissenting note. Taken in the round, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s achievements are of more lasting value than Indira Gandhi’s. If one wanted a non-Congress political figure apart from Ambedkar, then Jayaprakash Narayan or C. Rajagopalachari must be considered more original thinkers than A.B. Vajpayee. Mr. Vajpayee’s long association with sectarian politics must also be a disqualification
(likewise Indira Gandhi’s promulgation of the Emergency).

As for Mother Teresa, she was a noble, saintly, figure, but I would rather have chosen a social worker — such as Ela Bhatt — who enabled and emancipated Indians from disadvantaged backgrounds rather than simply dispensed charity. My caveats about Abdul Kalam have been entered already. In the intellectual/scientist category, strong arguments can be made in favour of the physicist Homi Bhabha and the agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan Although I wouldn’t object to either name, there is also Amartya Sen, acknowledged by his peers as one of the world’s great economists and economic philosophers, and who despite his extended residence abroad has contributed creatively to public debates in his homeland.

To choose 50 and then 10 Great Indians was an educative exercise. One was forced to consider the comparative value of different professions, and the claims and pressures of different generations and interest groups. However, I was less comfortable with the further call to choose a single Greatest Indian. For it is only in autocracies — such as Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea and Bashir Assad’s Syria — that One Supreme Leader is said to embody the collective will of the nation and its people.


This anointing of the Singular and Unique goes against the plural ethos of a democratic Republic. To be sure, one may accept that politics is more important than sports. Sachin Tendulkar may be the Greatest Indian Cricketer but he cannot ever be the Greatest Indian. But how does one judge Ambedkar’s work for the Dalits and his piloting of the Indian Constitution against Nehru’s promotion of multiparty democracy based on adult franchise and his determination not to make India a Hindu Pakistan? And would there have been an India at all if Patel had not made the princes and nawabs join the Union?


In his famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar warned of the dangers of hero-worship in politics. In a less known passage from that same speech he allowed that a nation must have its heroes. That is to say, one can appreciate and admire those who nurtured Indian democracy and nationhood without venerating them like gods. In that spirit, one might choose hundred great Indians, or fifty, or ten, or even, as I have ended by doing here, three. But not just One.

An Ode to India's Batting Triumvirate

Show me a hero, wrote novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I will write you a tragedy. Sporting heroes come pre-loaded with the tragedy gene. A Muhammad Ali who goes one fight too far, a Kapil Dev who is carried around till he breaks a record, a Michael Schumacher who returns to the scenes of his triumphs but as an also-ran—sport is cruel. The sportsman’s dilemma is simply stated: should he retire when the performances sag or give it one last shot so he can go out on a high? At either end of the performance scale, the temptation is to carry on—either to prove yourself worthy, or to establish there is life in the old dog yet.

Australia’s Ricky Ponting was on the verge of being dropped when he made a century and then a double against India, and must be wondering now how far he ought to push. His inspiration to continue playing, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, are probably wondering too. They have had phases before when nothing went right, but it was business as usual soon enough.

Last year, Dravid made more runs than anybody else in world cricket; the previous year, that record belonged to Tendulkar. Great sportsmen hate to go gentle into that good night; they, like fans on their behalf, rage against the dying of the light. For over a decade-and-a-half, these two, V.V.S. Laxman and the oldest of the group, Sourav Ganguly, gave India their best batting line-up, their greatest victories and their top ranking in world cricket.

Tendulkar made his debut in the same year as the Berlin Wall fell; Nelson Mandela was still in jail, and Mike Tyson was the world heavyweight champion. Now pieces of the Berlin Wall decorate homes of tourists who have visited the site, Mandela has graduated from being a president to a concept, and no one knows who the heavyweight champion is. But Tendulkar plays on, a boyish eminence grise in a country whose average age is nearly the number of years he has been an international cricketer.

Pundits have been calling for the heads of the champions, but what is startling is the reaction of the average fan. That no effigies were burnt and no players’ houses stoned after the Australia tour suggests a level of indifference that is painful to behold.

Clearly, we are in the mourning period; in sport, mourning sometimes precedes the end. But mourning can also be a period of celebration. These cricketers have meant something special to a nation shaking free the coils of mediocrity in so many fields and emerging self-confident and ready to take on the world on its own terms.

At 18, V.V.S. Laxman decided to give himself four years to make it as a cricketer; plan B was a career in medicine, the profession of his parents and many relatives. At 22, Rahul Dravid told a friend, “I do not want to be just another Test cricketer; I want to be bracketed with Sunil Gavaskar and G.R. Vishwanath.” Sachin Tendulkar was 17 when he responded to the standard query on the distractions of big money thus: “I will never forget that it is my success on the field that is the cause of the riches off it.”

 How distant the 1990s seem now. A new India was dawning. A feted finance minister breathed life into the vision of a prime minister whose version of glasnost and perestroika was filed under the less romantic label of “market reforms”. Politicians tend to make poor poster boys of their own reforms. Happily, Tendulkar presented himself as the candidate.

It all seems ordained now, but that is only time imposing order and meaning to events. Tendulkar had everything—he was a Test cricketer at 16, and by 19 had made centuries in both England and Australia. He was so obviously mama’s boy—the manager on his first tour of England, Bishan Bedi, spoke of how all the older women wanted to mother him and the younger ones seduce him—and patently non-controversial. And he had the best straight drive in the business; and in the early days a fierce way of handling the short-pitched delivery that reduced those fielding on the leg side boundary to mere ball boys and collectors of the cricket ball from the crowd.

Received wisdom is that India’s climb to the top of the rankings began with that epic Calcutta Test against Steve Waugh’s Australians, who had won their previous 16 Tests in a row. Laxman’s 281 and the 376-run partnership with Dravid ensured India won the match after following on.

The more likely candidate for the turnaround is the Headingley Test of 2002. India won the toss on a seaming track made-to-order for the England bowlers. Nine times out of ten, they would have, as a defensive measure, fielded first on winning the toss. But this was a new India and new captain Ganguly decided to bat. India played two spinners and didn’t pick opener S.S. Das who had made 250 against Essex in their previous match, preferring Sanjay Bangar for his medium pace bowling and adhesive batting.

It worked. India made over 600, with centuries from Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly, and won by an innings. It was reward for boldness, imagination and supreme self-confidence.

For a decade and more, that middle order (now strengthened by the arrival at the top of Virender Sehwag) planted the Indian flag on grounds all over the world—at Leeds and Adelaide, Multan and Harare, Kingston, Johannesburg, Nottingham, Perth, Galle and Colombo.

Individual records came as byproducts of team efforts. Tendulkar’s driving on either side of the wicket was sheer joy. As a 16-year-old, he attacked the leg spinner Abdul Qadir, hitting him for 27 runs in an over. It wasn’t an official international, but it brought together the batsman’s impetuosity and creativity in one nice packet. He was actually beaten in flight once, but trusted his instinct and his forearms to hit high into the crowd.

Where were you when Tendulkar made his Test debut? In India, opposition parties were coming together under the banner of the National Front and projecting V.P. Singh as the “clean” alternative to prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. V.P. Singh took charge while the Indian team was in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was taking his first steps towards cricketing immortality. Those not yet born when Tendulkar made his debut are well over the voting age now.

It is a difficult idea to get your head around—the idea that one individual has been a part of our national consciousness for so long. For those who see everything in black and white, it is easy to ask for the heads of our cricketers; the ingratitude of fans is a running theme in sport. But Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman have an influence well beyond runs made and victories achieved.
For one, it is entirely possible that Indian cricket itself might have taken a long time to recover from the match-fixing allegations a decade ago. Skipper Mohammed Azharuddin confessed to having manipulated results and without the obvious integrity of men like Dravid and Laxman, and those who have retired like Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad, the game might have been destroyed.

Significantly, these batsmen brought to the game an Indianness, the inherited technique and uniqueness of a nation that is sometimes reduced to the cliche, ‘oriental magic’. You can bowl to Laxman anywhere you want, and he will use his wrists to send it between fielders on either side of the wicket. There is no apparent effort, only the most elegant of bat swings, visually all curves and gentle arcs. Laxman’s bat makes no angles to the wind.

Dravid, the man who chose to “walk” when on 95 on his debut at Lord’s, formed a wonderful relationship with Laxman. They have taken over 300 catches between them at slips, and they relax, as Dravid explained, “by talking about our families, the plumbers and carpenters when we were building houses and so on”. When you saw a serious look on the ever smiling face of vvs at slip, it was probably because he had just realised that plumbers in Hyderabad charged more than those in Bangalore. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the camaraderie, and the fact that nearly every catch was taken.

These three players have played 118 Tests with each other. For Tendulkar and Dravid, make that 146. That’s nearly two years in number of days, and if you add the one-day matches, the travel, practice days and camps to that, that’s more days spent in each other’s company than many couples stay married.

Dravid has scored more runs for India than Tendulkar in the same period, a statistic that is not widely known or appreciated. One of the great sights in recent years has been his authoritative square cut or the pull that brooked no response, played while his helmet dripped honest sweat over a long innings. Year after year, we believed when he was batting that god was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

In their growing years, players make huge sacrifices, leading an almost monastic life, the focus on the game and nothing else. By the late 30s, when other professionals—the accountants and managers who do not cause a nation to stand up and demand their resignation—are looking to settle down, the life of a sportsman is over. Your brief career is done, but you have a lot of life left. How do you cope if you are not into the media or coaching or the cauldron of politics known as cricket administration? Especially since cricket is all you know. At 30, Tendulkar was asked what his favourite book was, and he answered with child-like charm, “I haven’t started reading yet.”

The players may not fully understand their future yet; but ironically, we do not fully understand their present (or past) either. The Owl of Minerva, wrote Hegel, “spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk”. We understand a historical condition just as it passes away. In the next couple of years, as we come to a greater understanding of what Tendulkar and company meant to us, let us not regret anything crass in the manner their twilight years were handled. Indianness and integrity have been important aspects of the cricket of the threesome. Indian cricket needs to handle such stalwarts with dignity and maturity.

There is a sense that an Indian team will change from being an old-fashioned one (in terms of behaviour, “old-fashioned” is a compliment) into a modern, unimaginative one where joy, sorrow, exasperation, irritation, ecstasy, sense of achievement, aggression, love and all emotions are expressed with a four-letter word or its many Indian versions involving close relatives. Virat Kohli is a superb batsman and a future India captain, but his response on getting to a century in Adelaide was juvenile. The Kohlis and others like him need to learn from the earlier generation about self-respect and respecting the game itself.

Not that the older lot have been pussycats, rolling over to be tickled. Initially, Dravid’s shyness was mistaken for weakness, but not after he responded to an Allan Donald taunt in the course of his first century in South Africa. The Bangalore boy told the fastest bowler in the world to assume an impossible anatomical posture, not in those words exactly, but in a crisp, short phrase.

The message went home not only to that bowler but to all bowlers around the world. No one tried riling either Dravid or the other two again.

Indian cricket may be at the crossroads; the retirement of the great players will see the end of a civilisation as we know it. But the Tendulkars, Dravids and Laxmans—seen by many as part of the problem now—can easily be part of the solution. India’s next series outside the subcontinent is in Zimbabwe in July 2013. Then come the series in SA and New Zealand. Time enough to rebuild.
Not so long ago, we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to spit at them. Our great players deserve better.

---

(Suresh Menon is editor, Wisden India Almanack, and author of Bishan: The Portrait of a Cricketer.)

India's reinstatement of Ian Bell was a testament to their sportsmanship, not to cricket's supposed moral superiority

The oldest cricket cliche of them all

Ian Bell acknowedges the crowd after his second stint at the crease following his reinstatement against India. Illustration: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

A question: what connects the increase in 1923 of the cost of brewing licences, the British Army's use of dum dum bullets in the Boer War, modern Toryism, Arthur Balfour's opinions on Tariff reform, the lack of bilingual librettos in modern opera, the refusal of Lancashire mill owners to limit the working hours of their employees, and the theft, in 1921, of 1,000 cigars and a consignment of Trilby hats by the theatrical agent Marmaduke Miller?

The answer is that they were all, according to the Guardian "not cricket".

Unsurprisingly enough given its overuse, the cliche eventually lost its currency. But the myth persists that cricket adheres to a stricter set of ideals than other sports. There are a set of stumps pitched permanently on the moral high ground. And so, when MS Dhoni recalled Ian Bell to the crease last Sunday, the phrase "not cricket" was dragged out and dusted down by a couple of the commentators on Test Match Special.

My friend and colleague Rob Smyth wrote a good little book trying to fathom exactly what the spirit of cricket is. But one of the most telling definitions I've seen recently came from Steve James. "I was captain of Glamorgan for two full seasons and in both we won the MCC's Spirit of Cricket award," he wrote last Sunday. "But I've no idea what we did or what it was for." The spirit, Steve rightly points out, is a morass of contradictions. It is permissible for a batsman to stand his ground if he knows he has touched the ball, but it is a sin for a fielder to claim a catch that has touched the ground. It is against the spirit to "dispute an umpire's decision by word, action or gesture," but the DRS now encourages players to do exactly that.

As the Guardian has proven, it is often easier to point out what the spirit of cricket is not than what it is.
And what it is not has, over the years, encompassed just about everything. One of the earliest appearances of "not cricket" was in the Guardian, back in 1888, in a report of the opening match of the county season between Nottinghamshire and Sussex. "The Notts Committee agreed with the Marylebone Club in their endeavour to put down leg play," we are told. "It was not cricket, said Mr Oates, and people would not come to see play of that kind." Leg play! Perish the thought.

In England cricket first flourished as a game played by blackguards, rogues and gamblers, matches were played outside village inns for vast wagers, and results were bought and sold. It was the Victorians who recast it as an altogether more upright activity. "Not cricket" next crops up in the Guardian in a report of a sermon given by the Venerable Archdeacon Wilson at Rochdale Parish Church on 4 February 1894. "Cricket encourages a love of fair play," he told what we can only assume was an enthralled audience. "It is a moral training that operates far outside the cricket field." As for football, well, "the dishonourableness and ill-temper of its controversies is best described as 'not cricket'."

And yet anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the way the Grace brothers played the game will know that they committed sins against "the spirit" that went way beyond playing the ball to the leg side.
Back in 1864, for instance, "not cricket" makes its very first appearance in these pages in a report of an incident in a game between Surrey and '18 gentlemen', one of whom was WG's elder brother, Edward. "Finding Jupp holding his ground at the wicket in defiance of the most insidious and trying balls," Grace "resorted to the expedient" of bowling a series of three "full pitch deliveries which culminated at 30 foot high and descended on the wicket at an angle unprovided for in the practice of the game."

Jupp, assuming it was an errant delivery, hit the first of them to leg (gasp!) for two. But then "turned sulkily" away from the next two deliveries and allowed them to take their course. The third of them landed flush on the undefended wicket. "There were bursts of hisses from the spectators, who did not conceal their disapprobation for Mr Grace's bowling. They stigmatised him as an 'old woman' and his bowling as 'no cricket'. "The Sporting Papers took up the question, and numerous correspondents angrily support either side," the report continues. "The main accusation against Mr Grace's new trick is that it is "not cricket". That it is quite legal we may assume, as the umpire did not decide against it."

And there's the rub. To this day there is a tension between the letter and the spirit of the laws. What a team is allowed to do and what we think it ought to do can be two quite different things, and when it comes to winning matches players often prefer to give the first precedence over the second, while the press do the reverse.

When Rob's publisher designed the cover for his book, they chose to use one of the most iconic photographs in the history of cricket: Andrew Flintoff with his arm around Brett Lee in the moments after England's victory at Edgbaston in 2005. And understandably so – for many people it seemed to capture the essence of the spirit of the game.

And yet there are people who worked alongside Flintoff in the England team – who insist on staying off the record – who argue that this was the moment that spoiled him as a cricketer. From that point on, they have told me, he became too obsessed with the public perception of him as 'good old Freddy', the guy who always plays the game in the right spirit. When he was appointed captain for the 2006-07 Ashes, he was too friendly with the opposition, too keen to have a laugh during the game and a beer after it. England even brought in a sports psychologist before the third Test at Perth to try and toughen him up. Flintoff himself hinted at this when he wrote, in the forward to Matthew Hayden's autobiography, that the friendships he developed with the Australians changed the dynamic, bringing "a respectful edge to the proceedings" in the middle.

And so to Trent Bridge last Sunday. Some will always argue that MS Dhoni's decision – prompted, reportedly, by the insistence of Sachin Tendulkar – to recall Bell showed weakness in his team's will to win. Others, myself among them, would say that it was simply an impressive piece of sportsmanship, albeit no more so than Paolo Di Canio's refusal to score in an open net when the former Everton keeper Paul Gerrard was down injured, or Andy Roddick arguing that the line judge was wrong to call Fernando Vedasco on a double fault when he was down match point in the 2005 Rome Masters.

The credit is India's alone. The decision was a testament to their character and sportsmanship, not to the moral superiority of the sport they play. The prattle about other sports learning from India's example seems insufferably pompous coming from a game whose history has been as riddled with controversy as cricket's has.

What is talent in sport?

Is it just natural ability or the consistency that comes from perseverance?

Harsha Bhogle

June 17, 2011




My father believed - as was the norm with respectable middle-class families in the years gone by - it was important that his children were good at mathematics. If your child was good at mathematics, you had imparted the right education and fulfilled one of your primary duties as a parent.

He often quoted to us what his friend, a respected professor of the subject, used to say: "There should be no problem that you encounter in an examination for the first time." It meant you had to work so hard that you had, conceivably, attempted and vanquished every situation that could find its way into an exam paper. It begs the question: if you did achieve 150 out of 150 in an exam (which my wife very nearly did once, much to my awe), was it because you were extraordinarily intuitive or because you had worked harder than the others, so that you didn't "encounter any problem in an exam" for the first time?

In other words, is getting a "centum" (a peculiarly Tam Bram expression) a matter of genius or a matter of perseverance? It is an issue that many intelligent authors around the world have been debating for a while, and one that is at the heart of sport. Would anybody who solved a certain number of sums get full marks? Would two people, each of whom put in 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell's threshold for achievement) produce identical results? Or are some people innately gifted, allowing them to cross that threshold sooner?

We pose that question a great deal in cricket when we argue about talent. Players who play certain shots - the perfectly balanced on-drive for example - are labelled "talented" and put into a separate category. They acquire a halo, and in a near-equal situation they tend to get picked first. "Talent" becomes this key they flash to gain entry. And yet it is worth asking what talent really is.

Is it the ability to play the on-drive or, more critically, the ability to play that on-drive consistently? It is a critical difference. Consistency brings in an element of perseverance that you do not normally bracket with talent.

Let me explain. I have often, while watching Rohit Sharma bat, said "wow" out loud. I probably said it because I saw him play a shot I did not expect him to. Or maybe it was a shot very few players were able to play. Just as often, I find myself going "ugh" with frustration at him. It is probably because, having had the opportunity to go "wow", I now expected him to play the same shot again. And so, without explicitly stating it, I am invoking the assumption of consistency to assess talent. The old professor of mathematics would have said, "Play the shot so often that it is no longer a new shot when you play it."

It is while I was debating this in my mind that I became aware of why Sachin Tendulkar paid such high compliments to Gary Kirsten for throwing him balls. Tendulkar wanted to perfect a shot and needed someone to throw him enough balls to attain that perfection, so that when he attempted it in a match he wasn't doing it for the first time. And in a recent conversation he said he was at his best when he was in the "subconscious", not distracted by the "conscious", and able to play by instinct - which he had perfected through practice.

Now we often call Tendulkar a genius, and yet, as we see, the talent that we believe comes dazzling through is, in essence, the product of many hours of perseverance. Is Tendulkar, then, the supreme example of my father's friend's theory of doing well at maths? And assuming for a moment that is true, shouldn't we be honouring perseverance because that is what it seems "talent" really is?

And so it follows that when we complain that all talented players don't get to where they should, we are in effect saying that they didn't practise hard enough to be consistent. Maybe it means we should all use the word "talent" more sparingly; not bestow it on a player until ability has been married to hard work long enough to achieve consistency.

This is also the starting premise of a new book I hope to continue reading - Bounce by the former table tennis champion Mathew Syed. I am delighted by its opening pages, one of which said "talent is overrated". It is something I have long believed.

Sehwag Interview

It has been 10 years since your first international game. How has experience changed your batting?
To be fair, I count it only as eight years. I became a regular only in 2001. Till then I had only played few games after my debut, against Pakistan in 1999. As for my batting the best part about it is I have never changed it. I have never changed my thinking, I have never changed my batting style. I have batted the way I batted in local tournaments and then first-class cricket, and I have applied the same approach in international cricket. Because I knew I had got success at Ranji level, I was confident I would get some success in international cricket too. But I was never expecting to become the first Indian to hit two triple-centuries, and become only the third player to do that after [Don] Bradman and [Brian] Lara. But that's destiny.

Would you suggest the same approach to a youngster who comes to international cricket: just play the way you have been playing?
A youngster should know his game first. If he knows his game he can modify it at the top level, if required. But if he doesn't know his game then it is difficult to get success at international level. You will get success occasionally but not regularly. If you know your game you can handle pressure, you can handle any kind of situation, back yourself and play your own game and get success.

But with so many coaches who pass through a player's career, is it not difficult for the youngster to maintain his own game?
The most important thing for any athlete is to know his ability. If you know your ability and have even a little bit of a strong mindset, you can get success, because your ability takes you to success. Then things like technique, hard work and practice come automatically, because when you get success you want more. Then you will work hard on your fitness, on your batting, on your technique, and you will want to learn how to tackle various situations, and start talking to a lot of experienced players.

Were there instances where coaches or senior players tried to change something in your batting?
There were a lot of players who gave me suggestions when I was young. At times they were very good suggestions and I took them seriously, applied them to my batting and got success after that. I will give you a very good example. Mr [Sunil] Gavaskar asked me why I stood on the leg stump. Instead, why didn't I stand on the middle stump because if I did that I would cover more area. He said, in any case I did not move my feet, so if I'm on leg stump then I'm too far from deliveries outside the off stump, and risk nicking them. But if I stand on the middle, I'm in a better position to play the delivery. This was around 2006, when England came to play India.



"If you know your ability and have even a little bit of a strong mindset, you can get success, because your ability takes you to success. Then things like technique, hard work and practice come automatically, because when you get success you want more"




The same thing was pointed out by Mr [Kris] Srikkanth, who even suggested I stand on the off stump because I'm very good on the on side and I can pick the ball easily off the pads. According to him, if I'm standing on middle and off and my front leg goes across, the impact will be outside off and I will negate the lbw factor. Also, I have lots of time to play the shot.

So now, depending on the wicket I change the guard: if the wicket is flat then I can manage to stand on the off stump, because nobody wants to bowl into my body as I will easily hit them for fours. So they will pitch it outside off. And if the wicket is doing a little bit, I stand on the middle stump. And I have tried these things straight in a game and never in the nets.

Many former cricketers, especially, tend to believe your game is based solely on attack. Do you agree?
I don't think so. Yes, my game is very aggressive and very positive. I love to play my shots and love to hit fours and sixes. I love to score runs rather than defending or leaving the ball. That is an important aspect of my batting: I don't want to waste balls in any form of the game. When I was growing up we would play a 10-over or 15-over game, and the asking-rate would always be high and I would end up scoring 30 or 40 runs in 15 balls, so I built that mindset right from the beginning and still continue to bat in the same manner.

There is this story about you declining a nightwatchman, where you said you were not an able batsman if you couldn't last 25 balls at the end of the day. Is that true?
It is true. What is the difference between batting at the end of the day or at the start? If you make a mistake you'll get out. So I don't think a batsman really needs a nightwatchman, but it is totally an individual decision. Whenever a captain or coach asked me for a nightwatchman I would say, "No, why? If I can't survive 10 or 20 balls now, then I don't think I'll survive tomorrow morning." I believe that's the best time when you have the opportunity to score runs, when everybody on the field is tired and you can score 20 runs off those 20 balls.


"If somebody is constantly bowling outswingers or outside off, even if he is bowling on length, for me it is boring cricket" © Getty Images




When you take guard, what goes through your mind?
When I take guard I like to clear all the negative thoughts out of the mind first. That I do by singing a song or a bhajan [hymn]. Then, if there is a ball to be hit I will hit it. It doesn't matter if it is the first, fourth, 12th ball. But if it is a good ball I have to respect it, because you cannot hit every ball.

What are the thoughts you look to drive away?
When I take guard, thoughts like "hit the first ball for a four or six" or "try to defend" enter my mind time sometimes. That is a time when my mind is preoccupied with various thoughts. But if my mind is blank, then I will play according to the merit of the ball. So if I'm singing a song, I concentrate hard on getting the right lines and finding a rhythm. And when I'm concentrating on something I'm automatically concentrating on the ball.

So that's your way of switching on. How do you switch off?
Once again by singing a song or talking to the umpires or the batting partner and sharing jokes or something else. But I avoiding speaking about cricket. Yes, you can check about what your partner felt about a particular ball, but not too often. And when I'm in the dressing room and I'm going back to the middle to bat, I just like to chat. If I stay quiet I'm in trouble.

Do you like the bowlers bowling at you?
I'm very happy if the bowler makes me play because then I get opportunities to hit boundaries. If somebody is constantly bowling outswingers or outside off, even if he is bowling on length, for me it is boring cricket. But if somebody is bowling to me, it is a very, very good opportunity for me to play a lot of options.

[Glenn] McGrath, [Muttiah] Muralitharan, [Chaminda] Vaas and [Jacques] Kallis are bowlers who always knew how to frustrate me and play on my patience. But it all depends on how I'm batting: if I'm in the groove then I can stay happy without playing a ball.

Let me give an example. In Multan, where I hit my first triple-century, in 2004, the last half hour the Pakistanis were bowling to an 8-1 field and they were bowling wide outside off stump and I was just leaving every single ball. I played nearly two to three maiden overs. I was batting on 220-odd, so it didn't matter.

Another instance was in Melbourne, when I made 195. In that first session we were just 50 without loss. I had to leave alone balls, defend at times and pay respect to good bowling. But after lunch I opened up. So it is not that Virender Sehwag only tries to score runs, but sometimes I play according to the situation or conditions.

How much in advance do you plan for a Test?
The night before the game I do watch videos to make my plans. Then, if both teams are practising I like to watch the opposition bowlers. A good example I can provide is when I came back during the 2007-08 Australia series. During the first two Tests I was watching all their bowlers closely, how they used their fingers, and I would share my insights with Robin Singh [India's fielding coach] while I was sitting on the bench. The moment I got the opportunity to play in Perth Test, I was ready. So it helps a lot to study the opposition.



"In Adelaide I told Tendulkar that I was absolutely tired. The reason was I was concentrating from both ends: not only when I was taking strike, but I was also thinking how I would face the ball when I was the non-striker. That was the first time something like that happened. Even during my two triple-centuries I was physically tired but not mentally"




There would have been pressure to perform in that series, considering you were not even in the original pool from which the squad was picked?
No, because I was confident despite having flopped for the whole of 2007. Then I even had a bad domestic season, scoring hardly 30-40 runs in the six Ranji innings I played. But I knew if they picked me a big one would come soon. You cannot flop the whole time. I went to Australia with a lot of self-belief and confidence, and I scored 30 and 40 in Perth, then 60-odd in the first innings in Adelaide, and got a big century in the second innings.

There was a first that happened in the first innings in Adelaide. I told [Sachin] Tendulkar that I was absolutely tired. He was curious. The reason was, I was concentrating from both ends: not only when I was taking strike, but I was also thinking how I would face the ball when I was the non-striker. I was putting pressure on myself because I wanted to score runs. I knew the wicket was good, the attack was not great, so I could, if I worked hard, get a hundred. That was the first time something like that happened. Even during my two triple-centuries I was physically tired but not mentally. But in Adelaide I was totally exhausted during those 60 runs. I hope that was the last time, and now I enjoy myself when I'm at the other end.

Tendulkar has said that when a player goes through a bad patch his technique remains the same, but every time you enter the ground it is your mind that keeps changing. Can you relate to that?
It is true. Referring to my batting in 2007, I don't think there was anything wrong with my batting or that I was making any mistakes. But in such a scenario the mind likes to deal with the situation in two ways: score quickly, or play with extra caution. But what remains the same is the technique; what does change is the mindset. You are asking too many questions and you are not concentrating on the ball and that's what was happening to me in 2007, which was the worst phase of my life.

I worked hard to come back and did some breathing exercises, used the [Rudi] Webster [psychologist who worked on and off with the team] method of backing myself and it worked out well. I didn't change anything in my batting. The only thing that changed was the mindset, the biggest change.

Did anyone, a selector, former player call up and lend a helping hand?
Srikkanth was the first to call me and tell me not to get disheartened. He motivated me, saying I'm a bloody talented player, and that when I came out of the bad patch I would score a double- or triple-hundred. He just asked me to spend quality time with my family, and when my time came I would score big runs.


"Ganguly was a good reader of the mind, and that's why he was such a great captain" © Cricinfo Ltd




His words came true on my comeback, after I scored a double-century in Sri Lanka, triple-ton against South Africa and more than 1000 runs in Test cricket. So if a youngster is not scoring runs and is out of the team, even an SMS to him will give him a lot of confidence. He might think, "At least Viru bhai has belief in me". Apart from Srikkanth, Anil bhai [Kumble], [Rahul] Dravid, Tendulkar, [Sourav] Ganguly, [VVS] Laxman said the same to me. I felt good.

Do you think that since you enjoy your batting it helps you build those big innings?
You can say that. I love to hit fours and sixes. When you are doing that you are enjoying yourself and people will enjoy your batting and you are not tired mentally. You are not concentrating very hard - you just see the ball, hit the ball, and if you see the gap hit it there. If you hit those fours and sixes, you have the comfort to relax every few balls.

Sourav Ganguly once said this about you: "The best way to know how Virender Sehwag's mind works is to sit next to him in the players' balcony when India are batting. Every few minutes he will clutch his head and yell, "Chauka gaya" or "Chhakka gaya". That's his way of expressing disappointment at somebody's failure to take advantage of a ball that he thought deserved to be hit for four or six. That's how he thinks, in fours and sixes."
He was a good reader of the mind, and that's why he was such a great captain. He knew what the player was thinking and he would back him and give him the confidence by saying, "You can play the way you want to play, nobody will touch you, nobody will drop you."

It is absolutely true. Even now, if you ask anyone in the dressing room, I still say the same things. But that is for me, not for the player in the middle because if I was there I could easily hit the ball for a four or six, but I'm not blaming anyone else.



What do you focus on in the nets?
I try to hit the ball along the ground, especially against fast bowlers. I also like the bat to come down in the right position and check if my body position is correct. If I'm really watching the ball carefully then automatically I'm in a good position to hit it down the ground. The last two to three minutes I like to hit fours and sixes, but if I'm batting for, say, 15 minutes, the first 10 I concentrate and in the last five I experiment with the shots.

John Wright had a simple way with you. In his book he writes, "All I say is, 'How's your mom, hope she is well? And what are you going to do today?'" He [Sehwag] would say, 'Watch the ball, play straight.'
Because we never discussed cricket it was good. He would come to me and ask how I was feeling. I would say "good". Then he would ask how my mom's back was. I would say, "Little bit of a problem, but she is managing really well." He would then ask, "So what are we going to do tomorrow?" I would say, "Watch the ball and play the ball." I would tell him, if there is a ball to be hit, I will hit it, and as a coach I know you will back me, and you have to back me. We had a lot of laughs. That helped me a lot as there was no pressure on me from either Wright or [Sourav] Ganguly. That is their job, to give confidence to the player and let him do what he wants because everybody wants to perform at international level. That is the key.

Did Greg Chappell give you any sort of valuable tips?
No.

What about Gary Kirsten?
Kirsten was himself an experienced player with more than 100 Tests and 150-plus ODIs. He knows what players want to do at international level, and the best way is to give the player his space and talk to him and give him confidence. The best thing after Kirsten has come in as a coach is optional practice. He says, "If you think you want to practise, you come, but if you think you are happy staying back in the hotel, that's fine, but do your fitness." That's his way of coaching. He is not like some captains and coaches who force the player to come to practice. And if he thinks something is wrong in your batting he comes and tells you that he has noticed over a couple of months that you've changed something in your batting. And he makes the player aware of what his thoughts are on the changes and leaves it to the player to implement his suggestions.

Can you cite an example?
There were a couple of occasions when my front foot was not going across. He pointed that out, and said my front foot was going in front of the wicket and if it went across towards the off stump, I would cover more area. So if the ball is pitched outside off and comes in and my front foot is straight, there is a lot of gap between bat and pad. These are small adjustments that are vital.

I checked with him once about how whenever I played towards midwicket or square leg the ball usually went in the air. He said, "It doesn't matter if your feet move or not, but your head needs to be in front of your body. When that happens the ball will go along the ground." I practised and noticed it worked. The same thing was told to me by [Sachin] Tendulkar and [Rahul] Dravid. I knew it myself, but you still need people to point it out from time to time.



"I have asked Tendulkar many times what the zone is. He tells me that's when 'I see nothing except the ball'. I have asked Rahul Dravid the same thing. He says sometimes when he is in really good form, he sees the ball and not even the sightscreen, the non-striker, the umpire or who is bowling. I ask how that is possible. I have never entered that zone"




Would you agree batting is not always about technique, it is about adjustments?
In my view, if you have good or bad technique it doesn't matter. But you will survive if you can adjust your game at international level, you are mentally strong, you know your strengths and how to score runs. When you start the game coaches will tell you to do stuff in a particular way and kids do that. But the moment you start first-class cricket the coach needs to tell you "try this, try that" instead of "do this, do that". If you feel comfortable you can take it, otherwise leave it.

Sunil Gavaskar and Ian Chappell have always stressed that you are not just about hand-eye coordination. That you can play all those shots because of one important factor: balance.
They are right. It doesn't matter whether you move your feet or not, if your head is still and body is in balance, you can score lots of runs. This I learned from Tendulkar. He pointed out that if your head is still you can see the ball clearly and pick the length quickly. If the head is not still, you will make mistakes. That's why I don't have trigger movements and my body is still and I'm balanced and I have lots of time to play the ball. Why do you want to go towards the ball? Let it come to you, then you can play it. Tendulkar, in one of my first conversations with him about handling quick bowlers, said, "If you're confident about playing a shot, just go ahead and play. Don't hesitate, because then you will make a mistake."

What about being in the zone? Tendulkar said that what people call the zone, he calls the subconscious mind. "… All you need to do is look at the ball and play and the body is going to react. The concentration is such that you don't think of anything else." What's your definition of being in the zone?
I have asked him many times what the zone is. He tells me that's when "I see nothing except the ball". I ask how that is possible. I have never felt something like that. I have asked Rahul Dravid the same thing. He says sometimes when he is in really good form, he sees only the ball - and not the sightscreen, the non-striker, the umpire or who is bowling, he just sees only the ball. But I have never entered that zone even if I've scored triple-centuries twice. Maybe I will enter that zone they talk about in future.

Perhaps you are always in the zone?
You can say that, maybe. Perhaps the definition of zone is different for me. They have both experienced what I have never experienced. Right from the time I was growing up there would be people moving along the sightscreen, but I would never get distracted. But if somebody shouts and says there is someone near the sightscreen then I will stop and move the guy.

When does the bowler get the upper hand against you?
I can handle swing movement, but when there is seam movement I cannot handle it properly. In New Zealand in 2002 the wickets were really not good for batting and I struggled and scored something like 40 runs in four innings. Nobody did well except for Tendulkar and Dravid. So later I started to spend a lot of time at the wicket. I would cut if it was outside off and flick if it was on my legs. I found out that works on a bad wicket: to stay at the wicket.


"If Kirsten thinks something is wrong in your batting he comes and tells you that he has noticed over a couple of months you've changed something in your batting" © AFP




Are you hampered by doubts or insecurities?
When I faced the likes of Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee for the first time I had a little bit of fear in my mind. My thoughts were, "Would I be able to face them? Would I be able to play them? Would I be able to hit boundaries?" There were so many questions, and fear also that if the ball didn't hit my bat it might hit me on the body. Those doubts come when you are sitting in the dressing room or walking towards the wicket, and that is when I sing a song and drive away those thoughts. Once you play that first ball then you relax and say, "They are good bowlers, but I can hit them for fours and sixes also."

Tendulkar recently told me that he still gets butterflies in the stomach when he goes in to bat. I was surprised, since he has played for 20 years. He said, "True, but the game is like that. If you think you are on top of the game then you will start going down."

You possess one of the most uncomplicated games, free of clutter, yet you have been influenced by mind specialists like Rudi Webster and Paddy Upton. How come?
Basically there are a lot of frustrations inside and you are telling the person who is listening to you all the rubbish. I'm just trying to clear my mind and heart. Once I've taken all that out of me I'm relaxed and happy. Nowadays I do that with my wife and she is a good listener. Webster and Upton have been good, and they have pointed out examples of good and great players and how their minds would work. Webster told me how Viv Richards, regardless of his form, would always walk like a tiger. Richards knew that everybody was scared of him so he would never change that. So the message to me was, "No matter what the situation is, you need to behave like a champion. And at some point you will deliver." So I think, I've scored two triple-centuries, I have scored [one of the] fastest hundreds, and such thoughts give me confidence and I walk out with belief.

Tendulkar has been an integral part of your career. What's you favourite Tendulkar innings?
When he was there in Multan during my first triple-century. Because I batted the full day with him. He always likes to chat and can get serious and caution you not to hit unnecessary shots. During that innings he told me, "If you try to hit a six I will hit you on the bum." He gave me a simple example - about my Melbourne innings in 2003, when I tried to hit a six on 195 and got out. Till then India were in a good position, but after that we couldn't make a big score and we lost the Test. So he made me realise my mistake. That is why I didn't hit sixes in Multan, but when I was near 300 I told him that I was going to hit Saqlain [Mushtaq] and he could hit me on my bum!

Is there one shot of Tendulkar you would like to have?
His cover-drive, but I don't think I can do that probably because of the lack of feet movement.



"In my view if you have good or bad technique it doesn't matter. But you will survive if you can adjust your game at international level, you are mentally strong, you know your strengths and how to score runs"




What's the best compliment you have got from a bowler?
I don't think any bowler has given me good feedback. Shoaib Akhtar was telling me in Multan that I was only hitting him to third man, so the next ball I hit a straight-drive. "Now you have to accept it was a better shot," I told him. He accepted it.

What is it about spinners? You seem to just get turned on by them?
I was a middle-order batsman who was too good against spin and hit sixes consistently in Under-19 and Ranji cricket, and I still have the same confidence. Once Gary Kirsten asked me, "What would you do if there is a long-off, long-on and deep midwicket?" I asked, "Gary sir, do fielders matter to me?" He burst out laughing.

Any big hitter, like Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Tendulkar, all can hit a six but they don't want to get out. There is a 1% risk.

Let me give an example: I was batting on 291 at Chepauk, against South Africa. I told Paul Harris, "Come round the wicket and first ball I'll hit you for a six." He accepted my challenge and the very first ball I hit him for a straight six, and there was a long-off, long-on, deep midwicket and a deep point. I was so tired and he was bowling on the pads and I was getting bored. So rather than spending 10-15 minutes to get to the triple-century I gave him good advice.

Obviously that confidence comes with experience. On the topic of clearing the field, Andrew Strauss made an interesting comment after your match-turning two-hour mayhem in the Chennai Test. "He plays a game most people are unfamiliar with. He almost manipulates the field. You change it, and it's like he says: 'Right, I'm going to hit it somewhere else now'." Do you really do that?
I don't think so. Because I just said fielders don't matter to me wherever they are standing. If there are two slips and two gullies I will still hit them there. But yes, if they change the field and then bowl according to the field and they are getting success then I'll try and change my shots. I did that against Australia a couple of times when they were bowling into my body and had placed two midwickets, a square leg, a deep square-leg - there were five to six fielders on the leg side. So I went outside leg stump and tried to hit to point or cover and get fours but they didn't change their line or the field. But that happens once in a while.