Ranji Trophy: Fear of failure and debilitating pressure wiped out champions Karnataka

No matter how often you win, once or a dozen times, pressure is a constant companion in competitive sport. At times the best of players melt under its intensity. At other times, these very players would seem to be made of the finest alloy.

In a swift turnabout of fortunes, Karnataka’s young and talented cricketers have experienced the highs and lows of pressure. If it lifted them to glorious heights the last two Ranji Trophy seasons, it relentlessly crushed them this year. So, how did pressure, ally for two successive seasons, turn foe?

The reasons lie within KSCA’s remarkable success. They have evolved a system that constantly throws up promising players to the extent that the state now has a glut of good cricketers. Three of them, Ganesh Satish (Vidarbha) and Amit Verma (Assam) who scored centuries for Karnataka even in their Ranji Trophy triumphant march and Ronit More (HP) a promising medium pacer who always delivered when called upon, took their tested talent elsewhere. Still the state team has at least half-a-dozen medium pacers and 10 batsmen vying with one another for a berth in the playing eleven. While this embarrassment of choice is envious, it sometimes acts counter to the interests of the team.

To be precise, the batsmen have been besieged by a fear of failure, triggered both by having to defend their being champions tag and the apprehension of losing their place in the playing eleven.

This is following the management’s predicament of juggling with five excellent openers, KL Rahul, Robin Uthappa, R Samarth, Mayank Agarwal and the talented newcomer Abhishek Reddy. Only one or a maximum of two can be pushed lower down because the middle order too has many claimants with impressive credentials – Karun Nair, Manish Pandey, Shishir Bhavane, Stuart Binny, CM Gautham and Shreyas Gopal. Likewise each of the medium pacers, Vinay Kumar, Sreenath Arvind, Abhimanyu Mithun, HS Sharath, David Mathias, Prasidh Krishna, not to mention Binny, is as good as the other.

The twin pressure, especially on the batsmen, became so intense that at different times some of them appeared weighed down by it. This was reflected by the poor showing against the arguably lesser teams, Maharashtra, Haryana and Assam. Additionally, the bravado and big talk of being champions for the next five years rather than spurring the team to greater heights did the opposite: made them edgy, nervous and leaden-footed.

Skipper Vinay Kumar who led from the front for two successive years and mopped up all the tournaments in sight – Ranji Trophy, Irani Cup, Vijay Haraze – had openly bragged that most of his players were good enough to play for India and virtually all of them were hungry for greater glory and rewards. His boast that the team was destined to rule the roost for the next five years and that it had gone through 34 Ranji Trophy matches without a single defeat seemed like a millstone around the team’s neck during that fateful match against Maharashtra.

Instead of playing freely, as was their wont during the championship victories for two years in a row, the batsmen, in particular, retreated into a shell under pressure.

This was a far cry from a team that played refreshingly superb cricket for two years running. During those times they repeatedly made light of challenging situations against Mumbai, Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu with a brand of cricket that was remarkable.

Nothing brought this superb attitude better than the quarter-final tie against Uttar Pradesh when on a fresh, green top Karnataka were tottering at 15 for three. Undeterred, Uthappa and Karun batted with supreme confidence to blast a century apiece and thus bury the opposition.

Karun was then in his debut season while Uthappa was raring to get back into the national team. Thus they, like many others in the side, were hungry for success and eager to catch the selectors eye. And some did.

Strangely though, despite unearthing more fresh and exciting talent in the form of Bhavane (who unfortunately broke his hand at an inopportune time), Abhishek Reddy, Prasidh Krishna (who were both palmed off to the State Under-23 side), David Mathais and J Suchith, Karnataka struggled to field effective teams in almost all matches this year. Besides, there was, uncharacteristically, a complete disrespect for the opposition and for this unbecoming attitude Karnataka had to pay a heavy price.

Take the last match, against Maharashtra, for instance. Karnataka needed merely a first innings lead to qualify for the knock-out. Common sense dictated that they pack the team with batsmen to grab the lead. Instead, they opted to play for an outright win, fielded four medium pacers, three of whom were rabbits with the bat, threw away the toss and thereby piled additional pressure on the batsmen, and paid for their haughtiness.

They did not respect lowly-placed Maharashtra enough and this aberrant arrogance came back to bite them where it hurt most. Sadly, the coaches, J Arun Kumar and Mansoor Ali Khan, and the travelling selectors Dodda Ganesh and Fazal Khaleel could not convince the skipper or the batsmen to first address the immediate prerequisite to their progress in the tournament.

Apologists for Karnataka might point out that the selection of KL Rahul, Stuart Binny, Sreenath Arvind, Pandey and Nair to the Indian teams robbed them of the best players at crucial times. So too the injuries to Pandey, Bhavane and Abhimanyu Mithun. But the fact is that man-to-man there was so much talent available that the absence of many of these cricketers would not have been felt at all by the team.

Of course there are whispers of prima donna issues in the dressing room and of batsmen superstitiously sticking to a certain batting order that went against the team’s interests. But cutting them some slack at the right time and better utilising their talent is what good man-management is all about. Instead the team’s coaches and managers failed to rise to the challenge.

Still, all said and done this is a very good Karnataka team which unfortunately was allowed to sink.

The shifting of the Vijay Hazare cricket tournament from flood-hit Chennai to Bengaluru where later this week the top seven teams would clash, could offer a chance for redemption. But even if that happens this Karnataka team will for long be haunted by their inability to handle pressure against even the less fancied Haryana, Maharashtra and Assam teams.