Greatness and failed predictions

 

I suffer from low self esteem, I really do. The only thing keeping me sane and confident all these years has been the belief that I truly understand the great game. I have a great gut feel for it and my predictions about cricketers have rarely been wrong. I picked Steve Waugh out as my favorite, when I was all but 6 years old. I marked him for greatness as a cricketer a year before Border did after the successful WC campaign of 1987. PK and I picked out Craig McMillan as a good talent and though he never quite became great, he did look good playing quality bowling. I marked out Ganguly as a trashy test match batsman 5 years ago and my predictions haven't
been wrong.

But, and this has been the greatest failure of my gut feel, one I would gladly exchange for all predictions bar the one about Waugh, I was wrong about Ajit Agarkar. He was 19 then, on a tour to Pakistan playing their 'A' side. He hammered a 100 and picked up 5 wickets in one of those 'test matches'. I remember both PK and I being happy and overjoyed like kids who had just been gifted with a year's supply of candy. What we saw of him on the international level wasn't disappointing. He had raw pace and the ability to move it in the air. He would bowl 4 unplayable balls and 2 hit-me balls. I was so keen to see the next Kapil Dev in him then (yeah,when the Pommies were busy finding their Beefy in every Ealham, Hollioake, Chris Lewis and Freddie, some Indians like yours truly were seeking out a Kapil Dev in Ajit, ..oh well, just Ajit considering there was no one else), that I convinced myself that it was just his lack of experience and that he would get better with time. Well, we all know just how that turned out!

I had marked Ajit out for greatness, and he did show the occassional flashes of brilliance but as they say,one swallow does not a summer make. Today I finally relinquish my faith in him and admit what has been evident for a while. The guy is a cretin. And I, an even bigger one, for believing in him so long.