COACH KUMBLE

It’s a good choice for Indian cricket. Now, give him the room and time to deliver

THERE WEREN’T TOO many dissenting voices over choosing Anil Kumble as the Indian coach, ahead of then front-runner Ravi Shastri. To start with, here is a player who has aided and abetted more Test wins than perhaps any other contemporary of his and who still is, by a fair distance, the country’s leading wicket-taker. In his prime, there wasn’t a more conscientious cricketer than him, whose obsession for perfection and eye for detail was fabled, his tactical and technical acumen revised and recalibrated with the changing nature of the game. These traits more than compensate for his lack of coaching experience.

Most importantly, Kumble has the wholesome backing of the advisory committee, comprising his contemporaries and best pals Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly. In fact, once Kumble’s name began to do the rounds, it was certain that he would be hired, even if it meant snapping continuity that Ravi Shastri would have promised or experience that Tom Moody embodied. There is a touch of romance in imagining the Fab Four and Kumble coming together to once again drive Indian cricket forward. It seems a match made somewhere in India’s cricketing paradise though one wonders why Kumble was handed just an year’s term, which most often is too less for a coach to deliver tangible results.

But there are other wider concerns, like how Kumble adjusts to the changed dynamics of the dressing room. In sport and especially in the context of Indian cricket, eight years is a long time. The present generation of cricketers — barring a few who are cut of the old cloth — are different in their priorities and perspectives, in attitude and ambition. How Kumble strikes a balance between his own perceptions and theirs will hold the key to his success as coach. It helps that Kumble is not an incendiary presence. It would also be interesting to see how he embraces Virat Kohli’s philosophy of unbridled aggression. For, Kumble was always a moderate, not a hardliner. There is yet another note of caution: He is no magician who will deliver instant results and mould the team into an all-conquering, condition-proof side in a twinkle. He himself hadn’t tasted much success, in the team and as an individual player, overseas, until late into his career. The expectations from him should be moderated by a touch of pragmatism and, most crucially, patience. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS SIGNAL THE need for change in Pakistan’s strategic outlook. There is alarm over India’s recent moves in Afghanistan and Iran, two of its neighbours that feel threatened by Pakistan. The Indian PM has gone to the US after the two issued warnings to Pakistan over safe havens in Pakistan still available to terrorists who strike across borders. Ignored in this chessboard are two developments that will benefit the entire region: Trade corridors linking South Asia westwards and northwards.

Pakistan variously sees the new scenario as the Great Game by America and Encirclement by India. Pakistanis repeat their India-never-accepted-pakistan platitudes but they also ask some searching questions outside of the textbooks: If there is a dronetipped Great Game unfolding against us, then why are we keeping on our territory elements that the world fears?

The most favourable development for the liberation of the tongue-tied has been Army Chief Raheel Sharif’s decision to take on the Taliban, of both Pakistani and Afghan varieties, in North Waziristan. More questions have, however, cropped up after this liberation about such “immune” people as Hafiz Saeed, and Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Red Mosque in Islamabad who can get innocent Pakistanis killed through al Qaeda. Pakistanis no longer take the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad purely as an act of aggression by America. They are not sure any more about the American drones that killed such