The Indian captain looks forward to an exciting summer in Pakistan
FINALLY the Indians have arrived and by the time you would be reading this, Pakistan and India would have fired the first salvo in Karachi, the venue of the first of five One-Day games. The much awaited and much talked about cricket tour is finally on.
Not only the tour is on, but the stalled cricketing ties between Pakistan and India, ties that can even pale the traditional excitement of an Ashes, are revived. Revived for how long remains to be seen, but the positive side of the resumption is that it is done in the wake of hand of friendship offered by Indian Premier Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the thaw in relations two nations that came so close to fighting a fourth war.
Under an aggressive and commanding captain, Sourav Ganguly, the visiting Indians have the golden opportunity of achieving what their predecessors failed to achieve: win a One-Day or Test series in Pakistan. To add to the bonus point of having a good captain, the other most important plus point of this team is that it is playing as a unit for the last three, four years, with Ganguly backing his players like any other good captain should.
The ‘Prince of Calcutta’, as he is fondly called, Ganguly knows the importance of the tour and after leading India to their first win in a Test in Australia, has his sights set on a rare series win over Pakistan. The following are excerpts from his press conference as well as an interview he gave shortly after arrival in Lahore:
Q: So, what are your feelings on coming to?
A: It is good to be here in Pakistan, and I am amazed to see a lot of things happening in the recent past. It is really good to be in Pakistan.
Q: As captain, have you said anything specific to the team to follow on this high-profile tour?
A: We are professional and experienced cricketers and know that this is different from other trips. I know they’ll be confident given the way we’ve played in the last few months.
Our tour to Australia was very good and if you take away the last two finals, we played good cricket. I think the players are mature enough to know that at the end of the day, only performance is going to matter. All this hype and other talk will be over soon. Once cricket gets under way every thing else will be secondary. Cricket is the real thing and that is what’s going to matter.
Q: There was a lot of talk that this is a series between the Indian batting powerhouse and Pakistan’s venomous bowling. Do you see fast pitches and Pakistani fast bowlers, specially Shoaib Akhtar, as a threat?
A: We’ll just stick to normal cricket. We were in Australia, before this tour and faced faster pitches, so it’s not a threat. The speed guns don’t matter. Brett Lee went for heaps when we toured Australia and actually the better bowler on the whole trip was Jason Gillespie who bowls in the 140 bracket. It’s line and length and if all our bowlers are fit, Zaheer, everybody, we’ve got the bowlers with enough penetration.
Q: There has been much talk about security. Are there any apprehensions about the security like there reportedly were when the team was in Australia?
A: We just trust what’s been given to us in terms of assurances. To be honest we knew we’d have to tour Pakistan. Not once did we think we would not tour. The way things were going between the two governments in the last five-six months, we knew the tour wouldn’t be called off this time. It could have been a curtailed tour, it could have been a postponed tour, but we knew the tour would go on.
We were worried about security, sure, but at no stage did we not want to go.
Q: How have you seen Indo-Pak cricket in the past and how do you see it now?
A: I did know that India-Pakistan cricket was always a big game — as far back as I can remember. It was big in the ’80s and the ’90s and it’s still the same. Probably it’s become even a bit bigger because the game has grown bigger. We play each other less frequently which probably has made every match bigger.
Q: The hype around an Indo-Pak match is seen as something of a war; do you believe it’s so tense?
A: We’ll have to try to make everyone realize that it’s just a game. It is not war, there is no shooting and no killing. Just take it as cricket and we hope we would be able to make people realize that.
Q: Do you think the team is on a high after the tour of Australia and is favourite to win in Pakistan?
A: I never believe in all this talk about being the favourite; in case of a One Day game you need to play well on the day of the match, and in Tests its a matter of playing well on five days. Obviously, we will like to win here. We have fared well in Australia so we expect to do well here as well. We did not beat Australia in the One Day games. Look at the VB series. We weren’t good in the two finals only, but we were outstanding in the other matches. Australia raised their game in the finals and they were fantastic.
Q: You think the absence of Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble would affect your team’s performance?
A: I hope Anil Kumble will get fit for the Test matches and it’s important for us. For the One Day series we have picked Murali Karthik, who is a much better bowler now.
The Indian captain looks forward to an exciting summer in Pakistan 
