Kohli and his men give Team India a bearded look

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Indore, October 10

Gautam Gambhir stands out in this Indian XI. The Delhi left-hander is scrupulously clean-shaven, and his face shines bright when the Indian team does its huddles. In a team of bearded men, Gambhir is the odd man out.

Over the last couple of years, the Indian team has gone bearded with a vengeance. The hirsute bug bit everyone, one by one. India’s openers are bearded, the middle order is bearded, the tail is bearded. The spinners are bearded and the pacers are bearded. We’ve seen photographs of fearsomely bearded cricketers from the 19th and early 20th century. The most famous beard in cricket belonged to WG Grace, the great, big, fat England legend. Some impressively bearded men played cricket in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 2000s, as Pakistan’s cricketers grew closer to religion, they grew beards — we can include men such as England’s Moeen Ali and South Africa’s Hashim Amla in this category.

India’s current squad is likely to be the most heavily bearded XI assembled in the history of international cricket. Pakistan’s Test captain Misbah-ul-Haq sports a very impressive beard, which seems of a secular origin. But India have got the numbers. Gambhir, two years out of the team, is clearly not up to the pace when it comes to beards.

Wriddhiman Saha, the wicketkeeper, seems to be working on a beard but it’s refusing to flourish. “I’m not sure he has much hair on his face,” Virat Kohli, the leader of the bearded XI, laughed the other day in Kolkata.

Ashwin's brand

Ravichandran Ashwin is the top match-winner of India, just as his current team coach Anil Kumble was for most of his career. Alas, bowlers don’t get the credit they deserve, even when they are bowlers of the stature of Kumble and Ashwin. Kumble won more matches for India than the team’s batsmen of his time, but it were the batsmen who were lionised, not Kumble.

Today morning outside the stadium, there was a man with two cartons of white T-shirts, which he was handing to all comers free. The T-shirts were designed to raise the profile of Ashwin. They carried his image and listed his achievements, such as becoming the second quickest to 200 Test wickets. Many spectators wore this shirt today, and some chose to hang it on the backs of their seats or the railings in front of them. 

Ashwin took six wickets in the day and ran out two batsmen.