The champions are down and out. Who would have expected to see the reigning champions of T20 to bow to all the nations in the super 8s!!! They have been humiliated and thrashed by the teams. It seemed one team after the other seemed to be saying: we will score less and then beat the champs out of their skin. As it was apparent, West Indies chasing down 153 without the services of Gayle, England made a simple target of 153 look like a stiff peak to climb, and then South Africa making the mockery of the so called best batting lineup of team India by defeating them by 12 runs in a run chase of a meagre 131. It’s such an irony. The team which was considered to be strong enough to defend the titles have been humiliated and beaten left and right!!! But actually the so talked about and talented team getting thrashed so badly leaves a lot of scope for discussion, which would be there for long time to follow. Where did it all go wrong?
The coach blames the IPL as too tiring to leave the players highly exhausted. Others are blaming the tactics of Dhoni as a captain for this debacle. Some others see the injuries of Sehwag as a big setback to India’s hopes. I feel very different. Does anybody remember the contributions made by Sehwag to the last T20 championship? It was nominal as far as I can recount. But the team won. It was all due to the fact that the team had that hunger to win. The appetite for victory seemed to have vanished this time around though. The body language of the players seemed over confident right from the day one. There was a sense of arrogance in everything that the captain spoke off. The players never seemed to be playing as a unit. What other testimony to the fact one can provide other than the run out of Dhoni in the match against South Africa for which he seemed like blaming Yuvraj. I think I am not speaking baseless, as it was clearly evident that when Dhoni came on to run for Harbhajan, his act of not responding to Yuvi’s call for a single when there easily was the chance of getting one, was testimony to the fact that the level of arrogance and egoism in the mind of the captain knows no bounds now. If as a captain you start behaving so rowdy, then there must be some serious issues which will resurface very soon.
People say “practice makes a man perfect”. In that sense more Cricket should not be detrimental to the performance of the players. So the Coach blaming IPL for everything seems baseless. Even the players like De-Villiers and Dilshan played all the matches their teams played in the IPL. But their performance reflects them as better players after IPL. So in that sense IPL has been a positive for the players’ performances. The devil lies in the minds of the players. Don’t they feel ashamed to be humiliated again and again by teams which don’t have as much talent as them? No, they won’t. The easy success has really got into their heads. That’s the reason why they don’t seem to care about anything else. Or was it that some new endorsements and shooting for some new brands were scheduled for some of them during this time frame??
When Ravi Shastri commented on Raina's batting that he felt ashamed seeing Raina play against the short pitched delivery, it was not just his thoughts. It was the thought of all the Cricket crazy fans of India. I felt ashamed when the Commentator said, “These Indian batsmen couldn’t play on a fast bouncing track. They are not able to play on slow turning pitches. Should they be provided with a pitch tailor made for medium pacers and medium pacers balling at them? Perhaps then they may play fine.” Well said Mr. Commentator. But I feel even such facilities won’t get them going. Because they lack the basic element to get going, that is the hunger to win. At least such sorts of comments should light the fire within the team. But no, they won’t get their acts right. What’s the use? They are anyways getting lots of money from the brands they endorse. Playing good cricket doesn’t get them even 10 % of their earnings. But the basic thing that they are forgetting is that the brands they get to endorse is directly proportional to their on-field achievements.
I see most of my friends have started disliking Cricket due to such incidents, such indifference and poor show by the team, such act of irresponsiveness and such arrogance shown on part of the players. Actually, in a cricket crazy nation like India, Cricket is a religion with players as gods and demi-gods. And when human beings gets that status, the complacency, the sense of arrogance is bound to creep into their heads. And such is the case with Mahendra Singh Dhoni at the time. The small town boy from Jharkhand has risen to such a status so soon, that the success has got into his head and corrupted his senses for the time being. But the sooner the better it would be if he realizes that the fans in India are fast in making gods of the cricketers and then even faster in bringing them to dust. The blunders that he made in this series are worth mentioning. The very first one was that he did not show faith in the purple cap winner of the currently concluded IPL. Instead he stuck with the bowler who had a below par run in both the seasons of the IPL. True, I am speaking about fastest Indian baller at the time, Ishant Sharma. But speed has never been the criteria for a bowler's success. Even Praveen Kumar was a better option seeing his form in the IPL. His decision to send Jadeja up the order, before Yuvraj and himself has already been a much criticized one and I don’t feel like criticizing that any more. His decision to play R.P Singh in place of Irfan Pathan, even though the latter had pretty much decent figures against the West Indies, is something that needs to be thrown light on. If somebody had to go it must have been Ishant, not Pathan. Can he clarify these decisions? I don’t think he can. And the way he bats now-a-days, makes me wonder if he is the same batsman who used to give shivers to the ballers till some time back!!! Where is Mr. Cool, who loses temper on media for coming out at him with some allegations?
All said and done, it’s high time the team must regroup, rethink and get going, because this team has really been a very good one in the recent times. So the think tank of the Indian team has to get together and come out with the best decisions in interest of better show by the team. And I am pretty sure, if they come up with correct decisions and can make the players focus on their games rather than the plenty of distractions all around, the team will become invincible. So BCCI needs to step into the matter like a strict dad and get the morally down and distracted team and more so over the captain, who should be leading by example rather than getting arrogant and egoistic, going. You must be feeling this is as nothing more than the frustrations of a cricket crazy fan on his team's loss. But believe me this is something even you would be thinking at the time, and would agree to it. So, too much of lambasting the Indian men’s Cricket team done!!! That’s for the time being. Keep watching for more.
