Chandu's 'chamatkaar'

India’s new manager-cum-coach Chandu Borde has proved once again that unlike foreigners, an ex-Indian cricketer can motivate the present lot of cricketers during an important tour.

What more proof does one need than the current performance of the Indian team’s tour of Ireland, where they managed to beat second ranked team in the world South Africa for the first time on neutral territory.

The way the Indians came back after losing the first game, showed the grit and determination of the present team under the leadership of Rahul Dravid, which had lost its way during the 18-months of Greg Chappell’s regime as the coach of the Indian team.

The first thing Borde did after taking over the new job, though on temporary basis, was to go back to the basics of opening the batting with India’s most successful pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly and the pair immediately responded with a century partnership in the second of the three One-Dayers, which India won quite comfortably, before wrapping up the series 2-1 with a win in the rain-hit third and final tie on a wet Sunday.

Though the credit for this victory should go to the players, some per cent should be credited to the three coaches – Borde, Venkatesh Prasad (bowling) and Robin Singh (fielding) and the support staff -- for installing the belief that they can beat South Africa despite six to seven players being on casualty list.

The point to be noted here is that Borde, along with another ex-India captain Ajit Wadekar, had made it very clear that Sachin Tendulkar should open the batting as long as he thinks he can deliver the goods even when Chappell was contemplating on his dangerous experimentations, which did more harm than any good to Indian cricket.

Their simple explanation was that a batsman who has scored over 12,000 runs as opener, including 37 of his 41 ODI tons should continue to open the batting which he had started against the Kiwis at Aucklad on March 27 some 13 years ago when regular opener Navjot Singh Sidhu was declared unfit. The little master scored a fine 82 off just 49 balls, including 15 boundaries and two sixes, to cement his slot as an opener.

In fact Tendulkar too had made it very clear, before agreeing to come down the order reluctantly, that given an option he would put his hands up to open the innings and not settle for any other position even though he has scored four centuries coming at number four position.

Even though he had to wait for 79 matches to score his first ODI ton, Tendulkar seemed in real hurry to make up for the lost opportunity scoring a world record of 1894 runs, including nine hundreds and seven fifties for an impressive average of 65.31 in 1998.

In fact as an opener, the champion batsman, who became the first batter in the world to cross 15,000 ODI runs on his way to the first of his two ninety-plus scores against South Africa in the Future’s series has scored a whooping 12,000 plus runs.

After scoring ducks in his first two ODI matches against Pakistan in 1989, Tendulkar scored his first half century against Sri Lanka at Pune in 1990 in his ninth ODI match to win his first of the many Man-of-the-Match awards. Since then he has never looked back amassing 2436 runs in 65 matches against Sri Lanka (average 45.96) even though his best average is against the West Indies (1571 runs off 38 matches for an average of 54.17).

Though he had a relatively poor average against South Africa, his two ninety-plus knocks has done him no harm and along with his ex-skipper Sourav Ganguly (26,000 ODI runs between them) looks all set to plunder many more century stands against the Englishmen.

So the point that even a 72-year-old veteran Indian cricketer can help knit a winning combination has been driven home hard and may be the BCCI’s obsession for a foreign coach will have dented somewhat after India’s fine performance so far.

One should not be surprised if the Indian team in general and Sachin-Sourav pair in particular come out with flying colours during the tour of England by winning the forthcoming Test and ODI series comfortably.