To suggest that Bishan Bedi “landed up” uninvited is ridiculous © Getty Images

Ricky Ponting owes Bishan Bedi an apology. The spinning great was invited by Australia’s bowling coach and team manager to the nets to help the Aussie bowlers. And Bedi, who believes knowledge should be shared, was only too happy to oblige. Yet the Australian captain has said, “I don’t know how Bedi landed up there.” It is rude, and shows a regrettable lack of grace from the captain of the No. 1 team in the world. Gate-crashing team practice is hardly the kind of sport international players are wont to indulge in, and to suggest that Bedi “landed up” uninvited is ridiculous.

Especially since Bedi has, over the years, been one of the most generous of players, magnanimous in sharing his experience with the young and old. Even in his playing days, Bedi was always ready to help out a player, regardless of whether he was a team-mate or in the opposition. In 1972-73 against England when he and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar claimed 60 wickets between them in India’s series win, he took time out to bowl to the struggling opening batsman Dennis Amiss. The coaching session worked so well that Amiss made 112, 158 and 99 in Test matches in Pakistan that followed, and never looked back after that.

In the 1980s, on a turner in Bangalore, Bedi, approached by the Pakistani spinners for advice told them, “On a spinning track, the most dangerous ball is the one that does not spin.” It was a lesson offspinner Tauseef Ahmed and left-arm spinner Iqbal Qasim took to heart. They claimed nine wickets each in Pakistan’s 16-run victory in a low-scoring match. Bedi was called anti-national then by narrow, parochial minds. He responded that he was part of a brotherhood, and bowlers had access to his knowledge and experience any time, anywhere.

Spinners who have come with touring sides have made it a point to seek out Bedi. In recent years, Shane Warne, Daniel Vettori and Monty Panesar have all benefited from sessions with the articulate Bedi. “I told Jason Krejza to bowl more slowly,” he said speaking of the offspinner in the current Australian team. “He bowls too fast for an offie, and that is asking for trouble against batsmen like [Sachin] Tendulkar.”

Such generosity is not unusual in the game. Players who respond to a larger call than mere nationhood have contributed to its folklore. The Australian legspinner Arthur Mailey, chastised for showing the Englishman Ian Peebles his grip for the googly, said famously, “Cricket is like art. It is international.” He was speaking for all true cricketers.

Wasim Akram agreed with that sentiment when he helped India’s Irfan Pathan with some fine tuning. On an earlier tour, perhaps embarrassed by his deputy Javed Miandad calling Manoj Prabhakar a chucker, Imran Khan passed on useful tips to the Indian bowler.

In none of these instances did the opposition complain about receiving the advice. Or insult an ex-player for being helpful.

	Ricky Ponting: at the middle of Australia's muddle © Getty Images

Till the other day, Ricky Ponting was the finest captain in contemporary cricket, one who led by example, and got the best out of his players as captains are meant to. He was - not without reason - expected to be the link between generations, his own and the next, perhaps Michael Clark’s.

His Test record is impressive. Only five defeats in 46 Tests, and 33 victories, statistically the same as Steve Waugh’s.

And yet he is up against the oldest and most unfair rating in the game - when teams win, it is due to teamwork, team spirit and all those wonderful things, but when teams lose, it is the captain’s fault.

He was up against a leader who has a hundred percent record, having won both the Tests he has led in. A leader, who, has that single quality prized above all else by Abraham Lincoln - luck. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is younger, and less experienced, but he was lucky with the toss in Mohali, and that made the crucial difference.

The captaincy-team debate is rather like the driver-vehicle debate in Formula One. Can a great driver overcome the handicap of a poor car? Can a poor driver win a great car? Man for man, this Australian team is inferior to India, and the score at the halfway stage reflects this. Now is the time for great captains to come to the aid of the party. A team with Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist did not need particularly deft handling. But one with Cameron White, Peter Siddle and Brad Haddin does. At least till these players develop into the kind they have replaced.

A thought experiment: How would Dhoni have handled this Australian side playing against an Indian side led by the struggling Ponting? Would he have been able to inspire the strike bowler into embarrassing the batsmen rather than his captain? Would he have kept India’s famed middle order in check with his limited resources? Ponting would certainly have played the Australian bowlers better than he did Ishant Sharma in Mohali. If the captains exchanged teams, who would you put your money on?

The answer is so obvious it doesn’t bear repeating - yet within that answer lies the essence of captaincy. Captains can raise a team’s play only so much - Mike Brearley made his reputation in 1981 when he turned a 0-1 start by England (under Ian Botham) into a 3-1 series win. Tiger Pataudi, brought back to lead when he was long finished as a batsman, pulled level after India trailed West Indies 0-2 in a home series (before the visitors finally won 3-2 in 1974-75). These are two cases of captains changing the fortunes of an inferior team.

If the Delhi pitch for the third Test follows the curator’s instructions and turns out to be a turner, responding to Anil Kumble as it has done so often in the past, the toss will be all-important. If Australia bat first, they have the batsmen to run up a huge score, and that will act like an additional bowler putting pressure on the Indians. Ponting has gone on about his team’s new-age cricket, a claim that looks hollow now. But a small thing like an Indian rupee coin can still make him sound like a sage and restore his aura as captain.

	Mahendra Singh Dhoni's time will surely come. But it is not yet © AFP

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is clearly a long-term India captain. He brings to his job a flair and an obvious enjoyment of its possibilities that is thrilling. To lead a team with seven players senior to you, four of them ex-captains, requires a combination of self-belief and indifference to the pettiness that hierarchies can throw up. Dhoni’s decision to be himself, both as a person and as an attacking player made this outing one of the most relaxing he has had.

Which brings us to the question: should he be asked to continue after his brilliant showing in Mohali, or should the job revert to Anil Kumble, the original choice as skipper? And the answer has to be: Let Kumble continue as captain; Dhoni was a stop-gap arrangement.

While young cricketers need to be given a chance to succeed, veterans must be given a chance to fail, and Kumble has not failed. He is a tough customer, as Ricky Ponting will agree, and in cricket as in most things it is usually wise to follow the dictum: don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.

The two men who handled Kumble’s duties in the second Test - bowler Amit Mishra and captain Dhoni - did very well. Who should be dropped from a winning team to accommodate a captain and player who has rendered yeoman service to the country, and is the first choice leader?

It’s a tough call, and will have to be handled with delicacy and tact. On the one hand, you cannot insult a player who has been one of the most distinguished in the annals of the game, and not give him a chance to return after recovering from injury. On the other, you cannot discourage a younger bowler who has begun his career so well. In all probability, Mishra might be sacrificed, but there is something to be said for playing five bowlers, especially since the batting has clicked so well.

A radical solution might be to drop Sourav Ganguly - after all, he is calling it a day and cannot be part of any long term planning. However, there will be a school of thought which believes that playing the extra batsman means India can sit on their lead for the remainder of the series. This is a defensive approach, and unworthy of a side that has just put the world champions in their place.

The recent Sri Lanka series will remain a blot on Kumble’s record but he could not have budgeted for the combined failures of the greatest middle order in the world. Dhoni calculated correctly, and kept himself out of that series. His time will surely come. But it is not yet.

With home series against England to follow, Kumble should be spared the crick in the neck from having to constantly look over his shoulder. This is an occupational hazard of Indian captains. In the recent past, the selectors have sometimes shown good sense by appointing a captain for the long term as they did with Rahul Dravid. Kumble too deserves such consideration. But I suspect that the remaining Tests against Australia will be seen as a trial period.

	With minimum fuss, Rahul Dravid has moved to become one of the top slip catchers in the game © Getty Images

Mark Waugh, holder of the Test record with 181 catches, said he hoped Rahul Dravid made a pair in the Mohali Test and would be dropped for the rest of the series, and presumably forever. Dravid, in case you are wondering why Waugh should be so unkind, has 176 catches, and should soon overtake the Australian.

There might be debates over who the greatest Indian batsman is, or which of the spinners deserves to be No. 1. But one such assertion is beyond argument - that Dravid is the greatest slip fielder we have had. And in keeping with both with the character of the game and the character of the man himself, it is not something that has used up column inches in newspapers or whatever it is that is used up in cyberspace.

Dravid is not a flashy catcher at slip - his anticipation gets him into position quickly and there is no need for desperate lunges or dramatic dives - but few edges go past. He is superbly balanced, focused and a study in the art of positioning, especially against the spinners. That 97 of his catches have come off the Anil Kumble-Harbhajan Singh combination underlines the effective role he has played in the careers of India’s two most successful spinners. With minimum fuss, as always.

In their early years in Test cricket, India had the occasional outstanding fielder in the covers - Lall Singh ran out Frank Woolley in India’s first Test in 1932, to reduce England to 19 for 3 at Lord’s - but few reliable catchers close-in. The slips were a safe haven for the slow-moving or those approaching retirement, and if the edges were kind, then the catches stuck.

It wasn’t until Tiger Pataudi took over as captain and laid special emphasis on fielding that the specialists emerged. There was Ajit Wadekar at slip, Chandu Borde, and later S Venkataraghavan at gully, and those two superb catchers, Abid Ali and Eknath Solkar at short leg. Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath joined the group at slip.

Since then, India have had effective catchers - Gavaskar finished with 108 catches, and towards the end of his career was more keen to get to that century than any other. Mohammed Azharuddin had 105, and he was brilliant. Not all of V V S Laxman’s 105 catches were taken at slip. Before this series is done, Tendulkar will join their ranks - his tally before Mohali stood at 98.

There is something special about Dravid at slip. In the one-day game, he was happy to stand wider than normal, but in Tests he is the orthodox fielder, taking his bearings from the batsman and the extension of the return crease. As a catcher he is more in the Mark Taylor mould, brilliant without being flamboyant rather than in the mould of a Mark Waugh, who too was exceptional and didn’t care who knew it.

For all its obsession with figures, there is no reliable method among statisticians of the game to include such things as catches dropped or boundaries conceded in a fielder’s figures. What percentage of the catches coming to them did they actually latch on to? Great catchers drop some too, but the percentage is almost insignificant.

Dravid can take heart from Waugh’s concern over the record. But we need to remind ourselves that when he quits, he will leave behind two gaping holes - one in the middle order as a batsman of the highest class, and one at slip as the best India have produced.

	What an opportunity to shake off the recent failures, what an opportunity to save the careers of his colleagues, what an opportunity to stamp his name on a memorable Test win! © AFP

Most cricket lovers have a recurring dream: their team is losing a Test match at Lord’s (or Eden Gardens or elsewhere). But they come out to bat, and take the game by the scruff of its neck. Beginning with a cover drive Walter Hammond would have been proud of, they go on to hit the dangerous fast bowler over his head into the stands.

The details might vary, but the result is the same - they make a spectacular century in about an hour, and take their team to an incredible win. As the nation exults, they remain modest sportsmen just doing their job.

But it is not just those of us whose fantasies mock our abilities who have such dreams. International players do too. It is a feeling that unites the spectator and the performer, for after all, many spectators live through the performers. When Rahul Dravid hits a boundary, he does it for them, when Anil Kumble takes a wicket he is doing it for those beyond the boundary too. So much for the cricket romantic.

On the final day of the Bangalore Test, one man was given the opportunity to play out our collective fantasies. India’s target of 299 in 83 overs was difficult; history, geography (the state of the wicket), psychology (the continued failures of a once-great middle order), economics (a bad loss might have seen mass changes and loss of income), common sense (this was the first Test of a four-match series and the team might never recover), logic (India’s recent pathetic fourth innings record), the weather (bad light or rain was imminent) were all against India.

And yet.

What would we have given for a Sachin Tendulkar to have taken the game by the scruff of its neck and shaken it up? Here was contemporary cricket’s greatest batsman, on contemporary cricket’s greatest stage. What an opportunity to shake off the recent failures, what an opportunity to save the careers of his colleagues, what an opportunity to stamp his name on a memorable Test win! Great players have to perform great deeds, rising above the conditions that would defeat the lesser players.

It is unfair, I know, but fantasies don’t have to be fair or logical. The pitch was not an easy one to bat on, but it wasn’t impossible, and here was a bunch of four players who between them had made 21,576 runs in the 76 Tests they had played together, more than half of India’s 40,966 runs. There was pressure on them to quit, pressure to score runs, pressure to justify their places, pressure to keep running so they would remain in the same place.

Yet one Tendulkarine innings would have drowned all cricketing sorrows. Had Tendulkar carried India to a win, he would have gone past Brian Lara’s record, he would have been returned by a grateful nation to the pedestal from which he has recently slipped. Wasn’t that motivation enough?

In practical terms, I suppose India could have held back Rahul Dravid as an insurance policy, asked the openers to get off to a flier and paved the way for the middle order, now given a chance to erase the memories of Sri Lanka with one calculated effort.

Sadly, despite this fantasy element, sport does not work that way. There is national pride to be considered, the loss of interest (and therefore money) in a losing team and a whole lot of other elements to be considered before a team can take on a challenge unfettered.

For long now India have been content with the bird in hand and refused to speculate about those in the bush. This, I suppose, is the right and mature way. But for once, wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have seen a wrong and immature approach that might have led to victory?

After all, millions fantasise about scoring a century and taking India to a win, but only a few get the opportunity to do so.

	Sourav Ganguly's silence following his remarks has led to speculation © Getty Images

Quite the remarkable thing about Ganguly the captain was that he was both Brahma and Shiva - creator and destroyer - of team spirit. And now he has done the Shiva act again. The retirement announcement that caught everyone by surprise was made with a fair amount of decorum. Now it seems Ganguly is reverting to type.

He has spoken ill of his team-mates, charged that every Tom, Dick and Harry has played for India. “Everything is possible in Indian cricket,” he is quoted as saying. “When Greg [Chappell] dropped me, TP Singh was my replacement. Where is he now?” He took a swing at the previous selection committee too, saying, “If the present committee had come three years earlier, the situation would have been slightly better for me.”

All this during an important series which the player has said will be his last. Those who expected him to pull out the second most popular quote in sport (after “we waz robbed”): “I was misquoted”, are waiting still.

Ganguly’s silence is hardly reassuring. His nudge-nudge, wink-wink style, has already given rise to needless speculation. For example, who was he talking about when he said that some players have “changed their hairstyle more than they have scored”? About the only player it cannot refer to is Virender Sehwag who hasn’t much hair left to style.

That Ganguly has his grievances cannot be doubted. But there is a time and a place to air them.

He has presented the board with a nice problem. Do they ignore the code of conduct and condone his outburst simply because he is playing his last series? Do they appoint a committee to look into the matter? Just how far back should the governing body bend to accommodate a player apparently determined to pursue a scorched-earth policy and cause havoc before he leaves? The board must ask for an explanation, and act quickly.

	Sourav Ganguly will bow out as India's most successful captain © AFP

Sportsmen, especially those from the subcontinent, are not known for going gently into the night; they rage against the dying of the light. Or, to put it less poetically, they usually have to be dragged out of the team kicking and screaming. Whether Sourav Ganguly jumped before he was pushed or it was part of a deal he struck with the selectors is immaterial. In the end, it was done with dignity. The question that hangs like the monsoon cloud over the Australia series now is - how will this affect the other seniors?

The last dignified retirement was Sunil Gavaskar’s two decades ago. Ravi Shastri too went on his terms once his media career was ready. Gavaskar called up a few journalists during a Test in Bangalore, thanked them for their support and then broke the news. He made 96 in his last Test on a turner, one of his finest innings. He finished with 188 at Lord’s, his last first-class innings. Strangely, not one of his 34 Test match hundreds was made at Lord’s.

Since then, Kapil Dev went on for too long, a pathetic figure with little sympathy in Mohammad Azharuddin’s team. Azharuddin himself stopped tantalisingly at Test No. 99, having extended the use of his supple wrists to counting tainted money. Javagal Srinath couldn’t work out a happy ending to a successful career, and neither could Dilip Vengsarkar. The lesser performers, by definition, would not have been able to anyway.

In the early part of his career, I had written Ganguly had the potential to finish as the country’s finest left-hand batsman. When we met later, he suggested, half-jokingly, that he was aiming higher: how about the best-ever, left or right? But already his contemporaries Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid had begun to pull ahead, and it was not even an academic possibility. Yet, Ganguly had one thing neither of the other two had - a wide-angled approach to captaincy. He enjoyed the challenge, and made up for tactical shortcomings with man-management not seen since the days of Tiger Pataudi.

Like Tiger, he initiated a self-confidence movement in the team. He got the players to believe in themselves, supported the youngsters, and showed when required he could play politics with the best of them. When results mattered, he had the results. His was one of the most interesting phases of Indian cricket, as he led the team to victories abroad, in England, in the West Indies, in Australia.

The manner of Ganguly’s farewell is bound to lead to all manner of speculation. He was the most vulnerable of the five seniors – Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman being the others. Will he be dropped if he fails in the first Test against Australia, or the first two? Now that he is quitting, would it not make sense to pick his replacement for the last two Tests and thus prepare the new man for the series against England and Pakistan? Or will Ganguly travel around the country, playing all four tests no matter what, and have a series of farewells like an ageing rock star?

This is a new situation for Indian cricket. There will be mourning in Kolkata, but no effigy-burning because there is no one to blame. It must be very frustrating for Ganguly’s fans. Yet, their hero has played 109 Tests, led in 49 and finishes as India’s most successful captain. It is an impressive record. I suspect posterity will treat Ganguly much better than his contemporaries did.

	Come on, say something © Getty Images

The silence emanating from the likes of Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting is strange. It is un-Australian and uncomfortable. Is this Australian team so focused on redecorating their house after the recent retirements that they have no time for taking potshots at their rivals? Or is the Indian media doing their job for them, putting pressure on the top five players with endless discussions about retirement plans?

Hayden famously said at the start of a series in which Australia were expected to steamroll India that Indian batsmen were selfish and more worried about individual performances than team results. Glenn McGrath then chipped in with something or the other. Shane Warne, always ready to jump in where angels fear to tread, could be relied upon to add his bit. Whether this was a chapter out of Steve Waugh¹s book on mental disintegration or not, it was lively, it was rude, and it put bums on seats.

This Australian team is either quietly confident or quietly diffident. It is the quietness that is startling. Ponting has said his tactic in the previous series consisted of denying Indian batsmen runs in the hope they would get themselves out. This is like Muhammad Ali revealing he won his bouts by whispering jokes into his rivals' ears every time they were in a clinch. Steamrollers must be made of sterner stuff.

John Buchanan, manager of the previous team to India, and interviewed on a daily basis ever since he became an honorary Indian by attaching himself to one of the IPL teams, said a fortnight ago that this was an Australian team that could win the series in India; more recently he was quoted as saying that this is a diminished team that lacks the aura of the past.

All the clichés and pre-series predictions came alive in the warm-up match in Hyderabad. Australian bowlers struggled just as much as their batsmen did, and it was left to one of the Indian century-makers, Rohit Sharma, to make the first condescending comment: the offspinner Jason Krejza is not a bad bowler, Rohit said, after carting him all over the park. Krejza might have finished with 0 for 123 in 20 overs and 0 for 76 in 11 overs, but “I didn’t think he did all that bad”, the batsman said. The tone was reminiscent of the condescending comments English and Australian players made in the days when India were not expected to win anything.

Written off before the series has even begun: that might just be the spur the visitors need to get their act together. One of sport¹s biggest mistakes is to underestimate an Australian team. India were clearly the superior side in 1969-70 in India, in 1977-78 in Australia, in 2004-05 in India, and yet lost all these series.

A cricket match with Australia might begin with the toss, but a cricket series usually begins with uncalled-for comments from their players. As I write, there are five days to go before the Bangalore Test, so there¹s time yet.

Political correctness is the enemy of frisson in sporting encounters.