'Had we picked the side, 2007 would've been different'

Subash Jayaraman: How old were you when you chose to be a wicketkeeper, and was anyone instrumental in your decision?

Kiran More: I started at a very early age, with a tennis ball. My brother was quite famous in Baroda in the tennis-ball tournaments. And he made a name as an outstanding wicketkeeper. You want to be involved all the time. You bowl, bat or you can keep wicket, or you go and stand somewhere. That is how I took up keeping.

SJ: Through district, state or first-class cricket, did you have role models?

KM: We had a couple of wicketkeepers in domestic cricket who were playing for Baroda. When I started playing school cricket, I watched Bob Taylor and took a lot of things from him, imitated him. That is how I got my basics of wicketkeeping. Bob Taylor was one of the finest wicketkeepers. He played till very late in his cricketing career, but he was outstanding.

SJ: What are the basics a good wicketkeeper must have?

KM: Your stance, where your hand is positioned when you catch, your feet movement, body posture, hand-eye coordination is vital. Just like how the batsmen and the bowlers have a good stance, wicketkeepers also. Also, the height at which you take the ball. Wicketkeepers tend to miss a lot of matches because of finger injuries. If you get your basics right, you won't get hurt often.

SJ: What exercises did you do to keep fit?

KM: I was a kho kho player in the early stages of my cricketing career. There was a mixture of cricket and kho kho that developed my fitness. Kho kho is one of the fastest games and is domestically played. It is a very active game - you are diving and getting up.

No specific exercise for my wicketkeeping. There were no trainers. It was just about watching senior cricketers. I followed my yoga routine that I picked up at an early age. I was a student of BKS Iyengar, and that helped me in my career.

SJ: When Adam Gilchrist came along, teams started looking for batsmen who can keep wicket rather than the other way round. You were a pure gloveman. How do you assess this, and is that a good way to go about it?

KM: I think wicketkeeping is key to the team. If you are a good wicketkeeper and a good batsman then it does help you and the team. If the wicketkeeper is not sure about catching the ball and is missing a lot of chances, captains won't like it. Talking about Adam Gilchrist, he was a good wicketkeeper and had a great record as a keeper. But he was an outstanding batsman.

[Now] people make you feel that wicketkeepers should be better batsmen than keepers. Wicketkeeping is very key to the success of a player's batting too - if he doesn't keep wicket well, and is missing a couple of catches, he is going to miss out on his batting because it is going to affect his concentration and confidence. I think when you look at Gilchrist or a lot of other wicketkeepers who played as wicketkeeper-batsmen, you will see that they were fine wicketkeepers as well. I feel that wicketkeeping is key to the team's success. MS Dhoni has more than 500 victims in all forms of cricket.

SJ: If you look at Pakistan in the World Cup, they tried Umar Akmal in the first four matches, he is a part-time wicketkeeper, and they got someone else to open. Then they brought back Sarfraz Ahmed, who is a wicketkeeper first, and they used him up the order as well.

KM: That is what I was telling you. Umar Akmal might be a good batsman, but he is not a good wicketkeeper, and that was affecting his batting as well. I always believed that Sarfraz Ahmed should be keeping. I think we can call him a specialist wicketkeeper. According to me, the wicketkeeper is the best allrounder. He is the main captain. You have to bat, you are the best judge of the match, you know the situation - the captain and bowlers take updates from you on the batters and you set the fielding positions even if you are not the captain. You are in the best position. Even the captain is not there; at best he is in the slips. That is what has made MS Dhoni so successful - he knows what is happening from behind the stumps. It is a very difficult job to captain and keep wicket, but MS has done that job outstandingly.

SJ: Who had the best technique behind the stumps?

KM: I think Ian Healy was outstanding as a wicketkeeper. He was a more traditional wicketkeeper. Jack Russell from England was outstanding - he was one of the best wicketkeepers they ever had. They are two guys that I can name.

SJ: You kept wicket to two of India's greatest bowlers, Kapil Dev and Anil Kumble? Did you have any preferences?

KM: Keeping wicket to fast bowlers is always easy. Kapil had a beautiful action. I found it very easy to keep to Kapil because he had more outswingers. You knew what was happening. He bowled a great line, a lot of balls used to come to the wicketkeeper.

Anil was a terrific bowler, but he was the toughest to keep wicket to on the third and fourth day due to the wear and tear on Indian wickets. He used to get that variable bounce. Anil was also the most dangerous bowler to keep to because of the height from which he used to deliver the ball, and he was a lot quicker through the air. The first two days was not an issue.

SJ: In terms of the technique required while keeping to spinners, especially on pitches in India, how difficult and different is it, and how do you train for it?

KM: To keep wicket in the subcontinent is always difficult - the ball doesn't come to you, you have to catch the ball. Keeping wicket in Australia and South Africa is easier. England, again, on a few wickets it is very difficult - like Lord's or Leeds, where the ball dips in the last yard for the fast bowlers and changes direction. So it is more difficult to keep wicket in grounds in England. It is not easy to keep to fast bowlers. For spinners it is not a problem. But in the subcontinent, keeping to fast bowlers is very difficult because the ball doesn't come to you and it keeps low. So you have to bend all the time.

Keeping wicket on turning tracks is easier than keeping on flatter tracks. On flatter wickets sometimes for two hours you won't get a ball and then a ball will just come after three hours for a caught behind and you drop the ball. You lose concentration. On turning tracks it is enjoyable to keep wicket. It is challenging. There are more chances of getting victims.

SJ: There is a question from a listener, Srinivasan. You had the Mark Boucher incident where he got hit in the eye by a bail and lost his eyesight. And Saba Karim was once hit in the face by one from Kumble. You didn't wear a helmet while keeping. But if you were playing now, would you think about wearing protection? What do you think has changed in the wicketkeeping technique that people are wearing helmets now?

KM: I must say, thank God I didn't get any injuries because watching cricket now, playing without a helmet is scary for me. In those days you had to do everything, including standing up to the fast bowlers without helmets. But keeping wicket without helmets is like hell because of too many innovative shots - the reverse sweep, the Dilscoop - it is very dangerous standing up to the stumps. I would advise everyone to wear helmets. I was lucky that I didn't have any injury to my face. If protection is available, why take chances?

I will also tell you that the wicketkeeping techniques have gone down. I feel that there is more work being done on fitness but less on wicketkeeping technique, like the hand position while keeping wicket or position while standing up - the head position. I don't see any classy wicketkeepers in world cricket as there were.

SJ: Can you talk about your memories from the 1987 World Cup?

KM: In the 1987 World Cup, we thought we would be in the final. We were playing very well. We were one of the favourites, playing at home. We lost to Australia by one run, we then beat them in Delhi. We beat New Zealand in Nagpur. We qualified for the semi-final. We thought England were one of the best teams in the World Cup. We came to Wankhede. We had an advantage because of the turn. We thought that the match was in our hands, but due credit to England, they were outstanding. I thought that we had one of the best sides in that tournament because our track record was outstanding since we won the World Cup [in 1983]. We dominated world cricket in the '80s - winning the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, dominating the tour of Australia in 1985-86, winning the ODIs in England in 1986. We thought we had a big chance to win the tournament in India, but we lost by a whisker.

SJ: There is this iconic image of you and Javed Miandad from 1992. A lot of people sent in questions asking about what was said between you and Miandad. Can you elaborate on that?

KM: In 1992, we were playing Pakistan for the first time in the World Cup. There was a lot of hype. We would listen to hockey matches, and India v Pakistan was huge in world hockey. In the 1980s Pakistan were always the better side and we were the underdogs.

They batted very well initially in that match. They were about 70 or 80 for 2. Sachin [Tendulkar] was bowling well. There was an appeal down the leg side off Sachin's bowling. I thought Javed was out down the leg. He told me, "Aap appeal kyun kar rahe ho?" (Why are you appealing unnecessarily?) I replied, "You mind your business, I will mind mine." So that is what started it off. We kept on chatting all the time while he was batting. He said, "We will finish it off and will win this match." I am talking in a better version. India v Pakistan matches have more of gaalis (abuse) because the languages are pretty common - Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu.

There was another appeal against Javed. I flicked the bails and jumped and appealed again, and he started imitating me. He was telling me, "Kai ko appeal karte rehta hai?" (Why do you keep appealing?) And that is how umpire [David] Shepherd stepped in and shouted at Javed: "Why do you keep doing this? I will pull you out."

Javed was quiet later, but he was still chatting. I used to keep the gloves up to my face and said a lot of things. Javed got frustrated because of his batting and I kept telling the bowlers to bowl up to him because he could not drive. He was quite content trying to play to fine leg. A lot of pressure started building on Pakistan. Imran [Khan] was run out from extra cover at the non-striker's end, and the pressure was on Javed again. He kept shouting at me, I gave it back to him. The whole team was giving it back. That was how it went, and then India won the match. That was a great feeling. People in India told us, "Don't worry if you didn't win the World Cup, you won against Pakistan." That was like India winning the World Cup. There was no stone-throwing when we came back from the tournament!

SJ: A question from a listener, Karthik: can you talk us through your difficult times as the chairman of selectors?

KM: The unpleasant part was that in 2007, we didn't pick the side. We worked for four years till 2007, and before the World Cup, we had finished our tenure. We requested the board if we could select the World Cup squad as it would be easier for us to do so than for the next set of selectors. But we didn't get a nod from the BCCI. So a new selection committee came in and that was their call. The team we wanted was not the same as the one that went to the West Indies. But the 2011 side had a lot of youngsters who we had backed in 2007. So we are very happy that we went about building a side.

You can't build a side in one or two years. If you have plans for the next World Cup, you should start thinking about it now, not one year before it. You have to give opportunities to each and every player and give them a few ODIs before the next World Cup. You must have a mixture of experienced guys who have played more than 100 ODIs and those who have played 50 ODIs, so that there is experience going into the World Cup. I wish we could have selected that team - it might have been a different story.

SJ: This comes from a former India cricketer - Hemang Badani. His question to you is that he had scored 60 not out only two games before he was dropped and he never played for India again. He was wondering why he was dropped, with you as the chairman as selectors.

KM: There is always competition. There are very close calls that need to be taken. It is not that the selection committee was biased. At that time he had competition from Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif and Ganguly, and there was Dravid and Tendulkar and Laxman. Maybe he was in at the wrong time.

I played with one of the greatest left-arm spinners in Indian cricket history - Padmakar Shivalkar, I kept wickets for 14 years for him, and he never got to play for India. He got nearly 600 wickets in first-class matches. In those times he didn't get an opportunity. That is what happens in cricket - it is always a close call that you have to take. Sometimes they go right, they may go wrong also. The intentions are good.