We’re at a time now when everything Mahendra Singh Dhoni did all week will be made to sound baffling. From skipping optional practice sessions (which are eponymously optional anyway) to reposing confidence in the skill of young Ravindra Jadeja, from surfing on the coastal waters of Barbados to sounding strained in the press conferences, everything he did will be questioned, debated, castigated, lambasted, decimated, flayed, annihilated, slaughtered, butchered and alternative deeds opportunistically suggested in a seamlessly convenient fashion. Invariably, every high-profile defeat of the Indian Cricket Team in evenly contested tight tournaments is followed instantaneously, incessantly by a cascade of rhetorical tomfoolery making the game of cricket and its various intricacies seem ridiculously simple enough for a normal couch potato to go livid and splutter a pantomime over the failure of the best 11 cricket players in a country of a billion. And we proclaim ourselves as ‘fans’. Going from dancing about on streets in immeasurable glee over a Tendulkar 200 to furiously setting alight effigies of the same XI folks in a matter of days, the gulf never is difficult to sail over. We lose the right to be called fans. Volatility ain’t a tenet of fanship. Here are a few straight reasons why a few other equally competent cricket teams got the better of us in a fairly competitive cricket tournament:
There are plenty of reasons that deserve to be picked as the first. But I’ll go with one that has found us wanting for more than a decade and a half—short pitched bowling. Curators in our country have for long been under the misdirected belief that dead wickets where batsmen can choose the spectator in the crowd for catching practice, is a so called ‘sportive wicket’. In addition to our glaringly apparent paucity of quality pace bowlers to acclimatize our rockstar-batsmen-on-dead-wickets to some vitriolic chin music in the nets is a further dent. Can’t blame the pacers actually; the kind of pitches we prepare in India, no budding cricketer will want to be a fast bowler. The endeavour would be associated with long hours of tenebrous toil and the mental preparation to accept getting bludgeoned out of shape, out of recognition, out of reputation. So long as batsmen bat big on staid wickets and win us games, we don’t acknowledge the pressing need to add significantly to our bowling repertoire. But to suggest we haven’t unearthed a solution for the short bowling muddle in 15 years reflects a little too much on the quality of strategic planning that has been going around in the team all this while. We see so many folks (besides the coach) dressed in the practice outfits, seated in dugouts and surfing through their laptops all the time. Really, what do they do? Would it have been so incomprehensible to unearth the plainly obvious strategy that the Aussies would go for the batsmen’s helmets from ball one with 3 quality bowlers who hurl at speeds which wouldn’t allow the willow to get a whiff of the leather? Is it rocket science that Chris Gayle cannot hit comfortably across the line and struggles with the subtle machinations of pace from the pacers? Loss after loss, and we continue to fail strategically. Strategic planning (assuming it exists), fundamental issue.
On a more pragmatic note, the track at Barbados which hosted us for a couple of disasters was hard, bouncy and had loads of moisture. I would be seriously interested to know from Dhoni how two fast bowlers would be ideal on a track of that nature. Humbly accepting Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of the Indian Cricket Team has better cricketing acumen than you and I put together, I’m curious as to how fast bowlers in the 15 can be benched on tracks that were tailormade to launch their careers. Dhoni’s tactics worked perfectly in St. Lucia, a wicket on which the ball mated with the surface, then with the air resistance and then (provided it had some vigour left) with the willow. The Indian team was always meant to beat even the best teams on the St. Lucia’s and the Feroz Shah Kotla’s (Greame Smith will doubtlessly agree).
In bilateral series, we more often than not, emerge handsome victors. South Africa in 2010, almost-Sri Lanka in 2010 (in atrocious Bangladeshi conditions wherein all you had to do to win the match was to win the toss), Sri Lanka in 2009, New Zealand before that—we end up packing the series mid-way in the most emphatic manner. When travelling to a neutral venue, adapting to different environments, coping with the tremendous pressure of a virtual-knock-out format— is the challenge that awaits, we’ve disappointed. Same players playing all through the year. Virtually unchanged order of players in the teams on both sides from a recent bilateral obliteration and yet, we fall short at the big stage when it matters most. Watching them go about their business this week, and in the last 3 ICC events, I wondered if they’d been robbed of the authorization to play free, uninhibited cricket. If body language, approach, alacrity on field, spring in the general mood of players on field, batting run rate are anything at all to go by, the Indians were an afraid lot in Bridgetown, Barbados this week. Afraid of the fear of losing. Afraid of the heat they would inevitably have to try negotiating in the event of a glitch. Unable to back themselves to succeed. Isn’t it also a little too pitiable that a Murali Vijay has performed better for Chennai Super Kings than for the Indian Cricket Team, that a Yusuf Pathan has his way virtually 8/10 times he wears his purple franchise jersey, that Pragyan Ojha and Rohit Sharma have been unable to replicate their DC magic while playing for their country? I often flip through Star Cricket and wonder if the 2007 T20 bliss was a one-off, not in terms of the questioning players’ ability to reach the pinnacle again but in terms of the valour and spirit on display from an Indian cricket team, and with regard to serious doubts as to whether we will ever see an Indian team with such a mindset ever again.
And no, Sachin Tendulkar wouldn’t have helped greatly. Might’ve done a Tendulkar in both the games and taken us to the semis, so what? Would that have solved the impending need for revamp in cricketing infrastructure and mindset that we find ourselves grappling without? Yes, of course! The spoony Indian media would’ve feasted irresistibly on quixotic stories, replete with fantastic and glee-inspiring odes to the genius we’ve always had as a convenient fall back option to botch up all the blatant chinks in our armour. The bloke with the divine officinal willow who could make all minute facets of the game seem irrelevant. Sad truth is, we will remain a highly followed and cheered international cricket team in the post-Tendulkar era too. And as of today, I’m not sure we will repose confidence in the hope.
There exist plenty of evidently indelible stains on our cricketing fabric. No short-cut routes exist to bury the hatchet on this one. Must invest on making quality wickets, strategizing and training assiduously to detail. Nothing can be made to substitute the fundamental requirements for engineering a quality cricketing structure in this country. Not even Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
Signing off with regards and congratulations to Mahendra Singh Dhoni and army for an unanticipated remarkable ascent in world cricket in the last 6 months. Awaiting zealously a serious relook at fundamental requirements of a cricketing structure that carries a lot of expectation and promise.
Sameer Dharur,
Self-proclaimed Biggest Fan Of The Indian Cricket Team.
0 comments:
Post a Comment