In 1991, South Africa made their first tour following their return to international cricket. The final one-dayer was played in Delhi, a day-night affair which the visitors won in the 47th over. The Indian team then left for Australia, and two days after that ODI , they were playing a warm-up match in Lilac Hill, Perth.
The following day they played a Western Australia XI and were all out for 64. They lost their first three-day game to New South Wales by an innings.
Five days were not enough. They lost the Test series 4-0, and the authorities decided that this wouldn’t happen again. Yet the sequence of hurried departure, lack of preparation time and ultimate defeat has been repeated often. It happened in England in 2011, and Australia the same season where India lost every single Test.
And now it’s set to happen again. If India win in South Africa — they go straight into a Test match without a single warm-up game — it will be despite the schedule which sees them leave soon after the Sri Lanka series and arrive just three days before the first Test in Capetown.
We were told in school that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Clearly the BCCI officials went to a different school.
Kohli’s lament
“As usual we are cramped for time,” said the Indian skipper Virat Kohli, speaking during the pointless home series against Sri Lanka. We need to look at this in the future, he said. “We don’t look at how many days we have got to prepare before we go to a particular place to play.”
And then he seemed to slip in a pre-tour excuse. “Everyone starts judging players when results come after Test matches. It should be a fair game, where we get to prepare the way we want to and then we are entitled to be criticised.”
So, either don’t criticise this team if it does badly, or acknowledge how well it has done despite the handicap of late arrival. No Indian captain should be forced into such an embarrassing situation, or contemplate the rug being pulled from under his feet even before the team has left India’s shores.
It is not a uniquely Indian problem, however. Modern cricket does not pay much attention to acclimatisation. There are too many matches, too many formats, and too few opportunities for that. Players are expected to be in such fine fettle that they can go to bed in Mumbai, wake up in Cape Town and get ready for the toss after breakfast. But they are not machines or comic-book superheroes.
Effect of television
It might be the ‘Superman’ effect of television — which is where heroes are seen in action most often. No one expects Kohli to catch bullets in his teeth or clear a building in a single leap, but cricketers tend to merge in the imagination with the superheroes.
Television injects players with an ‘otherness’ that distances them from reality in viewers’ minds. It is easy to forget that they are human, and, as Kohli himself pointed out echoing Shylock unknowingly, they bleed when they are cut.
Those who play all three formats are triply handicapped. They have to acclimatise not only to the conditions but to the different approaches the formats demand.
Acclimatisation seems to be a bad word in today’s cricket administration. In 1971, India had eight first class matches before their first Test in England, ahead of their first series win there. In 2014 that had been reduced to two.
Test matches are played back to back, which means that recovery from either injury or poor form is virtually impossible. Hence the vital importance of the first Test in a series, which India have tended to lose when playing away.
By the time the team finds its feet, the series is over; certainly these days when the five-match series is going the way of the black rhino and other animals facing extinction.
Lack of time to acclimatise is seldom the only reason for a team’s defeat, but it is a contributory factor, and in India’s case, has been largely responsible for its poor away record even in the Tendulkar Era which ended with no series wins in either Australia or South Africa.
Last month, England arrived in Australia three weeks ahead of the first Ashes Test, and still lost the first three Tests. Acclimatisation-deniers will see that as proof that familiarisation is no guarantee of success while the opposite camp will take that as further evidence of the greater need for it.
Before his first tour of England, Bishan Bedi was advised by Frank Worrell never to “sit on the grass”, a practice common at Indian grounds. Today’s players don’t need such advice. They are widely travelled, familiar with the opposition and know how to look after themselves. Yet a few more days getting acclimatised to the weather, the pitches and crowds would have been a great help.
