On

’s captaincy, or the lack of it

On his troubled relationship with dad Vijay

Edited excerpts from ‘Imperfect’ with permission from HarperCollins India

The early nineties was a bad time to be in the India team — there was just too much mistrust, envy and hatred among senior players. I remember when Kris Srikkanth was made the captain in Sharjah, one senior remarked, ‘Look, a constable has been made the commissioner.’ What chance did Srikkanth have as captain?When we had a different captain few months later, yet another senior said to me, ‘Good we lost the match. This captain won’t last too long now.’ So it was a horrible time to be a part of the India team, and it showed in our performances too, especially overseas and against Pakistan who were led by a senior who had his heart in the right place.On the unpleasant dressing room atmosphereI played for India at a time when the dressing-room atmosphere was not enjoyable at all. What I disliked most was the excessive respect that the seniors expected. The seniors from the north were all addressed as ‘paaji’. People got up every time they walked in. This didn’t help team-building at all.It was because of such things that the gap between us youngsters and the seniors was too large – it didn’t even feel like a team since no one could speak or behave freely.For a typical team meeting, we would all assemble in one hotel room, usually the team manager’s. We would all cramp into that one room. The seniors sat in the chairs and the sofa, some sprawled on the bed or the sofa while the juniors sat upright on the floor.Meetings were generally scratching the surface on tactics and strategy. The approach was never thorough. Often they would end in five minutes. Kiran More would leave the room angry. ‘Is that it? Is that our team meeting? Is this how we are going to win tomorrow?’ He would ask as he’d walk back to his room. More was not one of those big star players in the team, but was ready to give everything for Indian cricket. He would always get bumped up the order if the second new ball was taken while the bigger names went down a number. He was a real fighter.These meetings, therefore, were more a formality. Even though we spoke Hindi on the field – Punjabi and Marathi were the other dominant languages off the field – our team meetings, for some reason, would be conducted in English.I found Mohammad Azharuddin ’s team talks as captain quite funny. They were mumbling monologues. They sounded exactly like the old short-wave radio transistors. Like the sound waves on the radio, the volume of his voice would also go up and down. Those of us sitting away from him would try to catch and make sense of whatever we could hear.Sometimes we would exchange glances and even suppress a laugh when his voice went really low, and we couldn’t hear a thing. We’d see his lips moving though.As a tactician, Azhar wasn’t great. The main feature of his captaincy was to leave things to the Almighty. That’s why he wouldn’t tamper too much with what was happening out there, and would do just the basic, textbook stuff with regard to bowling changes and field placements…. As captain, when the opposition seemed to be getting away with the game, Azhar would sometimes get all of us together during the drinks break, not to give us a pep talk to lift us but to seek advice. Everybody would give their inputs, and based on it Azhar would sum it up saying, ‘Okay, so I will bowl Raju for three overs from this end, Mannu (Manoj Prabhakar) three overs from that end, and Kapil Paaji and Sri after that.’He would then go take his fielding position, relieved that the next seventy-five minutes were sorted. It meant he need not think about captaincy for a while. He could now concentrate on what he enjoyed, his fielding.This approach was responsible for some out-of-the-box and brilliantly successful moves Indian cricket witnessed – like Tendulkar bowling the last over against South Africa to win the Hero Cup semi-final in 1993. He was happy to go along with other people’s advice; he did not have an ego in such matters. Perhaps he was smart in knowing his limitations, something that takes a lifetime for the not-so-smart to realize.I had no relationship with my father to speak of. The overpowering emotion that I felt towards him was fear. I have made peace with it for a long time now. Vijay Laxman Manjrekar, who played 53 Tests for India and notched 3,208 runs at an average of 39.12, was a troubled soul post retirement. A disturbed, frustrated and angry man is what his three children had as a father.Yet, he would often be a profoundly wise man. In the few conversations that we had, he would tell me, ‘Treat cricket as a game, not as your life.’ He obviously said this from his own life experiences. We, his family, could see that he had made cricket his life. He was not quite prepared for life outside cricket. Life after cricket must have been tough for him. He now had to work nine-to-five in a public-sector company. It was like asking a lead guitarist to sit behind a desk and do a clerk’s job. He tried, but he wasn’t cut out for it.At one stage, he tried his hand at cricket coaching, but he didn’t possess the tact required to handle young cricketers. A story goes that once former India opener Chetan Chauhan came to him for some advice. ‘Sir, what’s wrong with my batting?’ Chauhan asked. My father told him, ‘There is nothing wrong with you, but something is wrong with the selectors: they picked you.’At one stage, he (Vijay Manjrekar) tried his hand at cricket coaching, but he didn’t possess the tact required to handle young cricketers. A story goes that once former India opener Chetan Chauhan came to him for some advice. ‘Sir, what’s wrong with my batting?’ Chauhan asked. My father told him, ‘There is nothing wrong with you, but something is wrong with the selectors: they picked you’