The World Cup debacle

I did not want to write about the debacle of the Indian team since I was too disappointed and upset at what transpired in the Caribbean Islands. But I thought that if I don’t write it now, I would never do it and hence just jotting down my random thoughts.

The Indian team is never as good as it is made out to be when they win and they are not as bad as they are made out to be when they lose These are not my words (one Cricinfo writer wrote something meaning this) but these are words that I am completely in agreement with. The Indian team is not as bad as it looked like on the field when they lost to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. I am one of those thousands of fans who still could not come to terms with the fact that India are out of the world cup even before the actual fun has begun. 2 days of irresponsible cricket and we are out of the tournament. Now that the Super 8 stage of the competition has started, it is really painful to watch other teams play each other.

When we restricted Sri Lanka to 254 in the first innings, I was really looking forward to the Indian chase with the hope that they will easily chase this down. Uthappa started pretty strongly but as has been his wont, lost his wicket when trying to go for a shot one too many against the guile of Vaas. Ganguly was taking his own sweet time to get settled and thus was putting pressure of himself and then finally holed out to mid-off. I will have to write something about Ganguly here - Ever since he has gotten back to the team and has scored all those half-centuries, I personally thought that none of the innings meant anything to the team and I did not find him to be very convincing in even one single innings. His shots were clumsy and it looked more like he was trying to just stick around to keep his place in the side (and also prove his detractors wrong). Then came Sachin's dismissal. Got a really faster one and bowled through an inside edge and it was a sorry sight to watch Sachin walk back to the pavilion, what with the thought that this was Sachin's last World Cup innings lurking at the back of my head. But even after that, I thought we could have won the game, what with Sehwag sweetly timing his strokes and Dravid giving him great company. But once Sehwag and then Yuvraj departed, that is when the feeling that India are going to get out of the WC slowly started sinking in.

Looking back at the performances of the guys in the 2 games we lost, it is really hard to place the blame on one individual for the loss. May be, Dravid who as captain has to share most of the blame bcos I always think it is never a good idea to chase in a high pressure game and hence winning the toss & inserting the opposition in was not a very good decision. Coming to team composition - Dravid missed the point by having both Sehwag and Uthappa in the team. Both are identical in so many ways (their shot making, temperament, technique to name a few) and hence if we had played only one of the two, we could have played someone like Dinesh Karthik who could have been useful in the middle order. They say its no use crying over spilt milk and so let me stop my own post-mortem right here.

If there is one thing that we can also put some blame on, then it is the way the tournament structure has been designed. I thought that there was some merit in Dravid's statement that the structure of the World Cup was bad in that if a team has 1 bad day, then they are out of the tournament. I mean, look at the world cup winning expeditions of Pakistan in 1992 and Australia in 1999 where they both had lost 2 or more matches in their first 3 games. But they went on to advance to the next round and ultimately win the whole thing, bcos the tournament's structure during those editions was kind to teams which had couple of bad days. I am not saying that if the structure was different, India would have won the whole thing. But we would have had the chance to watch our team play for 6 more games. And it is the fact that we deprived ourselves of the chance to play those 6 games that is hurting us all so much (frankly, how many of us believed that Indian will go all the way) and trying to find some uncontrollable reasons to blame (like the tournament structure) for our exit.

Now, all eyes are on the BCCI meeting on April 6th and 7th. I am sure heads are going to roll, starting with Dravid being stripped of the ODI captaincy atleast. Greg Chappell most probably will be the next big casualty and will be relieved of his coaching duties. Then comes the big question mark - will Sachin be dropped? Being the big Sachin that I am, it pains to see that things have come to a point where we are discussing Sachin being dropped from the team. But I think the BCCI folks will not be taking such an extreme decision. Even if I were write as a neutral observer, I will say that Sachin is definitely good enough to be in the team bcos everybody in the team has been as inconsistent as Sachin in the past few months. Apart from that, he still has a good 2-3 years of cricket left in him. So, if you were to drop Sachin, everybody in the bating order should be dropped, for even Dravid has been very inconsistent in the last few months. While on this topic, this article is a good read. It exactly echoes my thoughts on the subject.

Other than that, folks like Harbhajan, Agarkar, Pathan and Sehwag will find themselves out of the team. Agarkar is decent most of the time and picks up important wickets but then he gives up runs at some really crucial points when we can ill afford to give them up. Plus, his batting is such a disappointment that he hurts us. When someone like Munaf or Zaheer do not score runs, we are not disappointed a bit. But this guy, who has feats like a test century at Lord's and fastest 50 by an Indian batsman to his credit, hurts us literally by batting in the most irresponsible of manners. Whatever happened to the Harbhajan of 2003, nobody knows. Though Sehwag looked to be in good touch in the game against SL, the Indian team has reached a point where we can not afford of the luxury of having Sehwag in the team, what with his 1 in a 10 hit rate.

Like many have written, this disastrous campaign might actually be good for the game of cricket in India. The euphoria around the cricket team was just a huge bubble waiting to burst. The only sad part is that this bursting of the bubble has happened at the most inopportune of moments. If our folks are really serious (which is evident from all the outpour of anger against the team and the players), then the unprecedented and undeserving hype surrounding the game & the cricketers will die down, which is always good. (Already there is talk that businesses are contemplating reworking their contracts with the cricketers whereby they will be paid a good 30% less than what they are getting right now) It might even lead us, as a nation, to treat cricket as just a sport, nothing more, nothing less. And more importantly, take victory and defeat in stride without resorting to passionate and extreme responses. I think the time for that has come and I sincerely wish that this world cup humiliation will help us achieve that.