‘All rounders’ don’t look the part; back to the specialists, then

Watching India lose a Test in England that many thought they had sewn up early (before the threads were loosened), told us something about generational change. The flag-waving was premature. Teams need a settling-down period.

Teams also need to have the right man in the right slot, not someone who on a good day can be a batter and on another day (not necessarily within the same Test) a bowler. Shardul Thakur and Ravindra Jadeja made India long for specialists. Kuldeep Yadav and one of Dhruv Jurel, Nitish Kumar Reddy or Abhimanyu Easwaran could be replacing them.

Sometimes careers overlap in sports, one top player having arrived on the scene just as another is leaving. The baton exchange between Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli is a good example. The two crossed each other as Tendulkar was returning after his final innings. Kohli hit the next ball for four; the continuity was uncanny. It doesn’t always happen, of course. Tendulkar himself made his debut only 32 months and 11 Tests after Sunil Gavaskar played his last, but the three of them in turn became the face of Indian batting, the wicket most desired by the opposition, and in the later cases, the stars of social media as well.

Sandwich generation

And then there is the sandwich generation — the players whose careers overlap to some extent with one generation, but find themselves overtaken by their successors pretty quickly. The sandwich generation is caught in-between, not good enough to threaten the earlier one consistently and unable to score over the one following for reasons of age and opportunity: too much of one and too little of the other.

The expression ‘sandwich generation’ was first used in the 1980s in a social context. It is relevant in sports too. In tennis, for example, when the Big Three of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal began fading out, the next generation might have nursed ambitions of replacing them.  These three among them have won 66 of 79 Grand Slam titles since the Swiss legend’s first Wimbledon title in 2003, but it wasn’t the next generation of the Medvedevs and the Zverevs who took over, but the following one of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The last two are not just the future, they are very much the present, and those born in the 90s have missed the boat.

When the Tendulkar-Dravid-Sehwag-Laxman-Ganguly generation was at its peak, the likes of Ambati Rayudu, Hemang Badani, Mithun Manas, Vijay Bharadwaj had to play on without with any real expectation of finding a permanent place in the national team. As the careers of the older men were coming to an end, hope might have been rekindled. But then came Kohli, Rohit, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, and they could only watch as the new generation casually dashed those hopes.

It is thus in sport; birthplace might matter, but not so much as the birth date, as many players who have had long careers in first class cricket overlapping with those of established stars have discovered. Had he been born a few years earlier or a few later, Amol Mujumdar, who made 260 on his first class debut, might have played over 50 Tests. But he was born within months of the Big Five, and that sealed his fate although he became a Ranji Trophy giant.

Wheel turns

And now the wheel is turning again. Kohli, Rohit and Ashwin have bid goodbye, and many of those who might have nursed ambitions of breaking in would have watched the exploits of the new generation with rising panic. The new stars — not all of them guaranteed to play for India — are mostly fearless teenagers waiting for their call while those born in the last century can see their chances begin to slip away. The captain and candidate to extend the Gavaskar-Tendulkar-Kohli line, Shubman Gill is only 25 and will be breaking the hearts of many contenders.

India made five centuries in the Leeds Test, Jasprit Bumrah had five in an innings but the Test was won and lost in the third innings when India looked too easily satisfied with the early runs. Skipper Gill will learn to be tougher and more demanding; transition is never easy. Still, if only there were someone in the top half who could bowl and in the bottom half who could bat.