The good news is that Hyderabad cricket is at its nadir and it cannot get any worse. Even Hyderabad cannot beat their recent miserable performance. What has gone wrong? How has one of the most feared teams in Indian cricket plunged into such despair? Who is to blame?
I find answering these questions extremely hard, for Hyderabad cricket is administered by friends, roommates and teammates. One of the reasons why I have refrained from writing on Hyderabad cricket is that more often than not I would compromise my readers by not being able to speak the truth. But now I guess it’s time to bare my soul.
In the golden era of Hyderabad, cricketers of immense talent were being churned out at will but not anymore. School cricket which had always been treated with great deference is no longer a priority. Schools once hired the best of coaches and gave the students all the support that they could possibly want. Over time this changed and both parents and the school today choose studies over the sport.
Once cricket grounds were aplenty but now, one can barely find a field. Practice nets, cricket equipment, new balls and excellent coaching are now next to impossible to find. Talent scouts of immense experience once visited matches regularly and selection nets and trials were a continuous process but with the quality of the cricketer, even the quality of the scout has plummeted. They no longer know what to look for. Though the secretary of the association more often than not chose who played and who didn’t for nepotism existed even then, talent then was so profuse and the system then was throwing up so many cricketers that the people in power could but abuse a few, unlike today where in order to play cricket at representative levels, all you need is to be born in the right place or know the right people.
From the lowest rung of the league the climb to ‘A’ Division was once almost as hard as the effort that it took to get into the state side itself. Most ‘A’ division teams would have first class and at times former Test players of immense experience. You had to be on top of your game to get runs at this level and at times it was easier to score against a few Ranji teams than against some of these teams.
Today, all that is gone. Hyderabad cricket is destroyed and if the BCCI is not careful this affliction could spread to other states.
I feel the greatest curse that has hit cricket is the shift from technique to aggressive cricket. A shift that has seen the side-on game ‘open-up’ and become chest on. Excellent pitch covers ensure great batting tracks that further ensure that cricket becomes a batsman’s paradise.
The commercial coaching system has started to push youngsters into becoming batsmen rather than bowlers; simply because results are easier to deliver.
Worse still, the cricket association has lost control over coaching as academies have sprung up on every street and corner. Instead of looking for proper cricket coaches, parents enroll their kids into academies where coaches have contacts with the administration.
As a result, unworthy cricketers soon started to climb the ladder by using such academies. Within a decade that pool of talent of which Hyderabad used to be so proud of eroded leaving glaring holes in the system. Today, all of us old timers are terrified of the question, has the nightmare become a reality? Has Hyderabad stopped producing cricketers?