The Legend of Fab Four

Cricket like most other sports evokes great nostalgia in its followers. While growing up, I came across all kinds of nostalgic expressions about sportsmen from the grown-ups in their thirties, forties and fifties. They would often reminisce about Gavaskar and Vishwanath’s batting, the furious fast bowlers of West Indies or the enchanting spin quartet of India from the 70s and 80s. I spent my childhood in the football crazy city of Kolkata (I still like the name Calcutta though!) and therefore the likes of Pele, Maradona, Garrincha would regularly pop up in conversations. While doing so these grown-ups would almost always inadvertently undermine the contemporary greats like Zidane, Ronaldo, Romario, etc. Any competitive equation between players would remind some of the days of their youth when the famous Borg-McEnroe rivalry would be the highlight of the big tournaments.

Similarly, years later when my peers from now would watch a contemporary superstar bat with a kind of flair not even imaginable today, they will not forget to bring up that they saw Tendulkar destroy the best bowlers of the world even on his not-so-good days and that they were fortunate enough to witness the Fab Four of Indian Cricket in their prime. Add Virender Sehwag to the mix and it becomes the Fab Five.

That group of four players intimidated the opposition bowlers like no other middle order in my memory did. Hardly any of them was close to being physically intimidating. But with over 40 thousand test runs and 100 centuries, they could be a towering presence on any rival team. Comparing the current Indian middle order with them would be a grave injustice to both. Yet, the current crop fails to give the viewer the kind of confidence they would every single time. The opposition captain would always have a thought at the back of his mind that if one of them settles down, could take the game away from them.

Ganguly who was arguably the least accomplished of the four (in Test matches) could also be a bowler’s nightmare on his day, not to forget the kind of debut series he had; that is every batsman’s dream. No one needs a reminding of what Tendulkar or Dravid could do to the opposition. Both had the power to bring the bowlers to their knees in their own unique ways. And then there was VVS Laxman! He wasn’t called Very Very Special for no reason. Sambit Bal wrote this of Laxman on his Cricinfo profile – “At his sublime best, VVS Laxman is a sight for the gods. Wristy, willowy and sinuous, he can match - sometimes even better - Tendulkar for strokeplay.” Bal wasn’t necessarily exaggerating.

They were good against almost all kinds of bowling. But it would be unfair to even debate the prowess of these players against the spinners. I have rarely seen anyone as nimble on his feet as Dravid was, though he wasn’t necessarily a smasher of the spin bowling as his contemporaries were. It would be unfair to Very few others would be able to match Laxman in hitting a spinner against the line and scoring that heavily. Even Warne, probably the greatest of them all, was made to look like a part-timer. That is one area where the current middle order looks ages behind the Fab Four; especially on the overseas tours, they have a tendency to make a hero out of an upcoming not-so-accomplished spin bowlers – the likes of Moeen Ali in England and Nathan Lyon in the ongoing Australia tour. They either go over-aggressive against them and loose wickets or go into a shell (as a consequence of losing those wickets) and become over-defensive and tend to lose their wickets in being cautious.

While Kohli certainly is the contender for the position of no. 1 batsman in world in ODIs, he still has a long way to go before even could even imagine taking a leap for that spot in the Tests. Pujara without a doubt looks the most stable and composed of them all, whereas it is still too soon to do any critique of Rohit Sharma. If he does any justice to the kind of talent he is believed to possess, he might as well go on to become the best of the lot. Ajinkya Rahane is a typical Mumbai batsman – he has got a fair amount of everything required to make a great batsman – but the flair.

The Fab Four are also important because they didn’t just play together for most part of their careers, they virtually owned their spots in the batting line up.  When Dravid was in the twilight phase of his career and there was a lookout going on for the player who might take up the no. 3 position, the primary criteria that was being sought after was a pure batsman with a classical technique and a stable head and thus Pujara was deemed best suited owing to his old school classical approach to batting, lacking the hurry of a modern-day limited over batsman. Similarly the pre-requisite to take the no. 4 position, that Tendulkar used to occupy, would be his ability to impose himself on the opposition much like the Little Master did. Virat Kohli, deemed Tendulkar’s successor, was the natural choice. Rohit Sharma would have made a strong case in that direction had he come true to his much talked about talent.

All being said, this young crop of players still have their best years ahead of them. We can only hope they will go on to chart their own legend that youngsters like me would someday swear by and will them their Big Four or Big Five or some other fancy name!

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