Buffoonery over brilliance

A small Indian contingent waited outside the dressing room for several hours after India had sealed the second Test at Trent Bridge. As the cricketers celebrated with beer and bhangra indoors, the fans frolicked with drums, flags and posters outside. Glimpses of their heroes were met with loud cheers; anyone within earshot was mobbed.

Amid the frenzy, Sreesanth emerged. Almost no one took the initial step of greeting him; one young man even sniggered, "Don't approach that fellow, he might hit you." It took a pleasant smile from Sreesanth to break the ice, following which he obliged with autographs and photos. He was so charming that one young girl asked, "Sreesanth, are you nice only when you wear your glasses?"

And therein lies the single biggest paradox in the Indian team at the moment - Sreesanth's normalcy off the field compared to his maniacal instincts on it. Nobody, not even the bowler himself, knows which Sreesanth is going to take the field on any given day. Very rarely has India seen match-winning potential and extreme buffoonery combine so explosively. When it comes off, like at the Wanderers last year, it makes for gripping theatre; other times, like at Trent Bridge, it's slapstick.

Sreesanth baffles. Before the start of the fourth day of this second Test, he spent 15 minutes asking the groundsman to clear up the footholds at the Pavilion end. When play began, he was running in from the Radcliffe Road end. A high-velocity beamer, a huge front-foot no-ball and a shoulder-barge capped a wretchedly erratic spell. But he still conjured up gems amid the rubbish. When least expected, a perfectly pitched away-swinger would beat the bat; another would hustle the batsman. Like some random number generator, one ball in ten would surprise.

What Sreesanth could have done with was some introspection. Here was an ideal chance to play second fiddle, an opportunity to sustain the pressure at one end while Zaheer Khan got aggressive at the other. Had Sreesanth made the batsmen play more often, it was he who had the better chance of taking wickets, what with them trying to see out Zaheer at the other end. Instead he turned showman, waiting for the cameras to focus on him, and responding to a few sledges from the crowd. "I think he has a great example in Zaheer," said Rahul Dravid at the end of the match. "Zaheer has been as aggressive as anyone, without going over the top - just performing and getting wickets."

Coming from a state that's a cricketing backwater, Sreesanth was bound to be overawed by all the attention. Three years back he was a first-change bowler for Kerala in the second division of the Ranji Trophy; now he's expected to win Test matches. It's a gigantic leap and one that few 24-year-olds can achieve seamlessly. There's a lesson for Sreesanth to learn from Tinu Yohannan, his predecessor from Kerala who managed just three Tests, unable to cope with the expectations. India cannot afford to lose another talented youngster as they did the likes of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Sadanand Viswanath, Maninder Singh and Vinod Kambli.

So how does the team get the best out of him? A rap on the knuckles is an easy short-term solution but here is a young lad who needs careful handling. Greg Chappell, it is learned, knew how to deal with him - coaxing and admonishing in equal measure.

Team-mates have in the past been exasperated with Sreesanth's "naatak" (theatrics) but acknowledge that he is a vital member of the side. The good thing is, he has been talking to India's bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad, who rarely bowled a ball in anger during his playing days - except once, when taunted by Aamer Sohail in a high-pressure World Cup quarter-final. "It's a concern," said Prasad when asked about Sreesanth's on-field antics, "but we're trying to tell him not to cross the line. We need to respect the game and the rules. He needs to focus on his cricket rather than the other stuff."

Dinesh Karthik, one of Sreesanth's closest friends in the team, will no doubt understand his situation, having struggled to come to terms with international cricket when he was first picked, before returning far more assured. A chat with Mahendra Singh Dhoni, another superstar from a traditionally non-cricketing state, could help. Seeking out an elder statesman like Anil Kumble, a highly aggressive yet unassuming bowler, wouldn't be out of place either. Nobody is asking Sreesanth to mellow down - in fact he needs all the aggression he can summon - but more channelising, and less Bollywood, will be the way to go.