Kolkata: 2016 U19 World Cup: Ishan Kishan, Rishabh Pant, Washington Sundar.
2018: Prithvi Shaw, Shubman Gill, Shivam Mavi.
2020: Priyam Garg, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ravi Bishnoi.
2022: Yash Dhull, Shaik Rasheed, Vicky Ostwal.
The Indian youth cricket team has, over the last four World Cups, thrown up an awesome assembly line of talent which saw them make their fourth successive World Cup final in style on Wednesday night. Come this evening, they will be in line for their fifth title when they take on England (6.30 pm UAE).
The performance of the U-19 Indian teams have now acquired such an aura that everytime a World Cup comes around, the expectations are nothing short of a title. The mental toughness and cricket sense that they show time and again belied their age and was once again manifest in the way skipper Dhull and Rasheed stitched together a 204-run stand against Australia on Wednesday night.
A look at the current lot and there is no doubt that future of Indian cricket is in safe hands, though one must admit that there is always a slip between the cup and the lip when it comes to that quantam leap from the junior to the senior level. A glaring example of that is Unmukt Chand, captain of the World Cup winning squad in 2012 who scored a crisp, counter-attacking century against Australia in the final. Almost 10 years down the line, Chand is now a forgotten man in Indian cricket who has gone on to join the Big Bash League.
While there is no doubting the abundance of natural talent, one must give the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its arm National Cricket Academy (NCA) due credit for putting the right ‘process’ in place - a favourite word of Rahul Dravid, it’s last director and currently the Indian senior team’s head coach. It will be surely be no exaggeration to say that Dravid had played the Dronacharya of sorts to the current of youngsters who are now ruling the roost in Indian cricket - first as coach of the U19 and India ‘A’ teams (for three World Cups between 2016 and 2020) before taking over the NCA role in 2019, where he brought about a sea change in the public perception about the NCA with coaching process and emphasis on meritocracy.
The NCA had been acting as the hub for grooming the young talent and Dravid had played his part in grooming the current lot in the West Indies till he took charge of the senior team in last November. With the Covid acting as a deterrent, he had drawn a plan to keep the team morale high and the coaching team - led by former Indian internationals Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Sairaj Bahutule - had been interacting with them virtually and giving inputs on individual practice sessions.
A legacy, which Dravid has now passed on to erstwhile teammate VVS Laxman - who had been in the team dugout throughout the campaign. The Indian team's journey had been a rocky one in the Caribbean to start with, with six of their players including Dhull and Rasheed testing positive for Covid-19 and having to go through quarantine for nine days.
Laxman, during this phase, had been giving pep talk to the stricken players on zoom calls and has been playing his part in strategising with the team since the knockout stages. The social media went agog with clips of Laxman giving throwdowns to the Indian batters - and Dhoull & Co will be interacting with him more in the coming days.
While the affable ‘VVS’ may have been more visible as a mentor of IPL franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad or in the Com Box, he had also been a hands-on batting consultant of the Bengal state team for more than five years now. An assignment which brings him down to Kolkata before the domestic season, where he spends enough time with unheralded names like Abhimanyu Eashwaran, Sudip Chatterjee at the nets to fine-tune their game.
He has the patience, not to speak of the tactical nouss, to carry on producing the assembly line of talent from the NCA. The challenge before Laxman will be to nurture the assembly line of young talent harnessed by his predecessor.
