Easy rider

Ramnaresh Sarwan has had the fortune, or misfortune, of having been singled out by the world at large. In Guyana, the raw, simmering South American country of his origin, he has been called the New Rohan Kanhai ever since he stepped into teenhood. All through the Caribbean he has been branded the finest West Indian batsman since BC Lara, before even having made a Test hundred. When Ted Dexter watched him bat in England two years ago, he concluded that this boy of 20 would end with a Test average of 60, a mark that Garfield Sobers and Vivian Richards could not touch.

These perceptions of Sarwan are understandable because nothing he does appears forced, a trait rarer than imagined. In the field, his slight, taut frame makes easy, brisk movements. His batting has the quality of natural solidity and unexaggerated busyness, full of strokes but without biff or flamboyance. He can even send down loose-limbed legbreaks as if Test cricket were a net; their casualness sometimes breaks partnerships. He has, what's the word - class. On the field Sarwan is a 22-year-old; outside it even more so. His demeanour is boyish, neither coached nor sportstar-ish, and if there is an intense side - there must be - it is stored away for appropriate times. During this chat, he seems genuinely excited by what he says is his first interview to a non-West Indian publication.

Sarwan is Hindu, part of the Indian community that migrated to the Caribbean in the middle-1800s. Like most East Indians, he likes watching Hindi movies and listening to their music, though he doesn't have the faintest what the words mean. Sheepishly he will tell you that he cried at the end of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (listening to the title in his Guyanese accent can be entertaining too). As he returns to India (he has been here before on an A tour), his curiosity about the land of his ancestors is well alive, and he will doubtless find India's is in him.

Sarwan is now at the point in his career where the Young Prodigy has faded from popular awareness, and real expectations have replaced the excitement of watching the bloom. You could have made 0 and 0 in your first-class and one-day debuts, but that is forgivable if you are 16. When you are part of a team that has lost more than it was thought possible, and in a batting line-up that has collapsed in more ways than believed possible, critics will sharpen pencils. Particularly if you have shown a penchant for getting out successively in similar fashion (this summer, against India it was Ashish Nehra dragging him wide and having him nick to slip; against New Zealand it was mistiming pulls from outside the off stump); and you still have not scored a hundred despite getting past fifty 13 times. Never mind that 13 scores of above fifty is more than either Sachin Tendulkar or Mark Waugh, two of Sarwan's batting heroes, had managed after 24 Tests.

"Now is the time." Sarwan is in the middle of explaining that these are days meant to be seized. He means, of course, the hundred. "I've got to say, it's in the back of my head all the time now. It wasn't there earlier, but now it is. Hopefully, it will come to the front of my head!

"It's something I have to work on. I blame it on bad shot-selection. It's more or less a mental thing, I have to work on my concentration. The 100 means something to me. I don't want to be remembered as a good player who just got 50s and 60s. I don't want to get myself into a situation where at the end of my career, I'm pushing myself really hard. I think now is the best time for me to score hundreds because I'm fit and and I'm young. Now is the time."

It must be frustrating for Sarwan and his followers, but they must both know that it is only a matter of time. Because of his precocity, Sarwan has been pushed to the next level before he has known it; learning, thus, has always had to be on the job. In schools under-12, he scored a century and was instantly fast-tracked into playing for the Georgetown Cricket Club senior team, facing fast bowlers twice his size and age. He remembers having to make adjustments to get used to the pace.

Yet, that was nothing to playing against Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed on Test debut, in the summer of 2000. The bowling was of a quality he had never seen before; and so was the competitive edge of international cricket. "I wasn't nervous, but against Wasim I was a bit tentative," he recalls. "When I was on 29, I tried hooking him, and he swore at me. At that point I realized that this was not going to be easy, and they would try and get in my hair."

Sarwan did find a method of responding to such situations. Later that year in England, his first tour with the senior team, when Andy Caddick reminded him that it was time to change the diapers, it was met with a laugh. Yet, cricket and its mind-games were not the most difficult part of that trip. In between Tests, Sarwan had to return home for the funeral of his girlfriend, who died of pneumonia at only 18 years of age.

Life moved on and Sarwan proceeded later that year to Australia, where boys really become men. His team was trounced 0-5; Sarwan himself played three of those matches - and averaged nine. Brett Lee's pace particularly, proved a harder proposition than he imagined.

"I didn't really get down on myself," he remembers about that period. "I was still staying positive although I wasn't scoring runs. I was getting encouragement from the players, and my coach, Roger Harper. There were times when things aren't going your way. Most of all, that tour taught me how to adjust to situations quickly and become mentally tough.

"Looking at Australia sort of encouraged me as well. They are always positive. When they find themselves in tough situations you can see that they dig deep. For example, when [Adam] Gilchrist and [Justin] Langer won against Pakistan [chasing 369 to win from 126 for 5, at Hobart in November 1999]. I would say Steve Waugh is number one in that sense. I admire the way he handles the situation when his team is in trouble."

Yet it was in Sri Lanka last season that Sarwan ran into the finest bowler he has come up against - Muttiah Muralitharan. If playing Murali and averaging 53 in West Indies' 0-3 humiliation was an education, watching Lara waltz his way to two hundreds, one double and a fifty in six innings was even more of one.

"Without a doubt, Murali is the most difficult bowler I've faced. He's always testing you. He doesn't give you anything and makes you work for every run. I think Brian was amazing. In the first Test I think he wasn't picking him but he swept his way to a 100. But from then on, he started to pick him and he started to hit him wherever he wanted. I don't think I've ever seen someone play such difficult spin bowling with such ease."

In India, West Indies will be without Lara, and Sarwan must put the spin lessons to use. There is nothing to indicate that he will not. He is a sunny chap with a special talent and the ability to take life in his little stride. If he is able to drive himself he will, as he says he wants to, come to be remembered as one of the great batsmen that West Indies has produced. Now, of course, is the time.