Star vacuum or strategy? Team India’s new era – Dominance intact but superstar void looms large | Cricket News

Team India (Pic credit: BCCI)

NEW DELHI: What West Indies cricket wouldn’t give to have a problem like India’s.Two days ahead of the second Test here at the Ferozeshah Kotla, the vast gulf in standards between the two teams again permeates the narrative following India’s innings and 140-run win in Ahmedabad. Yet, there has also emerged a singular meeting point between victor and vanquished, between world cricket’s unceasing top dogs and the longstanding fall guys.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Both teams — and by extension, their administrators and stakeholders — have, in their own unique ways, been left dealing with the absence of any megastar presence in the series.After years of eulogising hero worship, Team India is now taking a U-turn and bravely trying to wish away what has in recent times been termed its ‘superstar culture’. The move has largely been hailed as a commendable bid to foster a more inclusive, cohesive team culture geared towards consistent success across formats.

The West Indies, who are still wishing their superstars never dimmed and faded away and extinguished their light all those long eons ago, can’t quite fathom India’s problem of plenty. On Wednesday, Darren Sammy, the Windies head coach, went so far as to term the endemic decline of the sport in the Caribbean a “cancer in the system”.“We’re open to criticism but the root of the problem didn’t start two years ago. It’s something that started way back. It’s like a cancer that’s already in the system. Our problems don’t lie on the surface. It’s rooted deep into our system,” Sammy said. “I mean, last time we won a Test series in 1983, my mother had me,” the affable Saint Lucian quipped, only partly in jest.For the head coach, the lack of any impact players which the younger crop of fans will flock to watch and emulate is an existential crisis. That makes it imperative for the West Indies to believe the stars will shine again, or there’s no point in playing on.

Importantly, Sammy admitted, perhaps for the first time a person in his position has done so in West Indies cricket, that he has been struggling to sell the idea of playing for a cohesive ‘West Indies’ team to the younger crop of cricketers. It’s a problem which didn’t exist back in the team’s heydays of the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s. “Now, as a coach when I call a player and I tell him he’s been selected for the West Indies, I’m just hoping that he accepts the selection,” Sammy rued.It’s a problem India’s newer crop of cricketers — who went through their paces at the Kotla hours after Sammy railed against the system — would be hard pressed to understand, given the vast talent at the country’s disposal and the mad scramble to hold onto places.The team’s bold new vision of the future under head coach Gautam Gambhir and chief selector Ajit Agarkar, however, isn’t quite the finished product yet.“The smaller nations, (with) their inability to bring huge crowds to the game or bring big sponsors to the game… you’re really and truly testing their funds,” the great Brian Lara said the other day, but that’s relevant across the board, not only to the weaker teams.So even as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s still-radiant drawing power appears to have been sacrificed at the altar of team cohesiveness, it has paradoxically been replaced with an identical centralization of power in Indian cricket — the appointment of Shubman Gill as Test and ODI captain and T20I vice-captain.Gill’s coronation is an acknowledgement that Indian cricket needs fresh megastar replacement, not nameless, faceless winning machines. A sport is nothing without its stars. The empty stands in Ahmedabad did not make for a pretty picture, for it was a reminder that Indian cricket is now in the void of transition, hopefully only temporarily.The team may hold structural and financial sway over world cricket but that dominance is tied to the faces which define it. Indian cricket needs to shed star privilege, but it still needs star impact.If the West Indies are battling cancer, India’s dominance has started to feel sterile. The script is unlikely to change at the Kotla, and the stands are unlikely to be fuller.