Hi all of you, I am back with the 2nd diary of me. Well, earlier I was thinking to cover some more records here (may be bowling-related), but now after the disastrous performance of Indian team in the 2nd one-dayer against Pakistan, I thought to pen my views on it.
Once upon a time we have legends playing for Indian team, with a great coach to support, and hence the team looks like lions on field, and they won the 10th edition of Cricket World Cup in 2011, which was also their 2nd World Cup. After that, the coach resigns, and slowly all legends left the team and the team which looks solid atleast on paper become solid only on paper, they were called lions of home, but after 2 series now I doubt whether they are able to hold that record too.
Source: http://www.en.wikipedia.org
Indian team toured West Indies right after the CWC11, won Test series by 1-0, one-day series by 3-2 and won the 1 T20 match too, but then the downfall started. They went to England, and lost all their matches, Test series by 0-4, one-day series by 0-3 and also lost 1 T20 match, though India beat England on Indian soil by winning ODI series by 5-0. They were again able to beat WI on Indian soil by winning Test series by 2-0 and ODI by 4-1.
Then they went to Australia, and lost test series by 0-4, also not able to qualify to finals in the tri-series against Aus, and Sri Lanka. They were not able to qualify for Asia Cup also, that was played in Bangladesh. Then they beat SL in SL and NZ in India (ODI series). India played T20 World Cup, but was not able to qualify in Semi finals.
After then we saw an ad campaign depicting various Indian characters making fun of England team, and the upcoming series was termed as the ‘Revenge Series’, since England was visiting India for 3 Test-match and 2 T20 match series. The main line of ad goes like, “'DASH' ne to baja di angrejo ki pungi, kya bhartiya team baja payegi angrejo ki pungi”,and what happens? England wins the Test-series by 2-1, and leveled the T20 by 1-1. And then came the arch rivals Pakistan for 2 T20 and 3 ODI series matches. Ad campaign shows Indian players challenging the Pakistan team by saying “aane do” (let them come). Now they’ve come and come strongly, they leveled T20 series by 1-1 and won the ODI series 2-0 with still 1 match to spare. My friend joked, “Pakistan jeet gaya”, “Jeetne Do” (attitude of Indian team).
Well, what goes wrong with the Indian team? They’re not able to play. Their Bowling department is the weakest of all-time, and probably the weakest of all teams. We use to play 4 strike bowlers, mainly combination of 3 fast and 1 spinner, or 2 fast and 2 spinners, even we played with only 3 strike bowlers, so as to strengthen batting department, but. Strike bowlers are unable to take wickets, unable to stop runs, and then what option as a captain do you have. Our captain is the coolest captain, but sometimes he becomes so cool that he forgets that he is playing a competition, and aggressiveness is also required. But in last 2 matches against Pakistan, we have seen that it was the batsman who struggled. They’re unable to play even in India.
We lost a test match because we are unable to play spinners on a spinning track! Amazing eh!, we are known as best players of spin, then we lost too many wickets in 1st one-day, and again we collapsed in 2nd one day as well. The team has the likes of Sehwag, Gambhir, Kohli, Yuvraj, Raina, but it seems nobody wanted to win or even play international matches. It seems whole team is out of form. I know Pakistan bowling is world-class but even our batting team is also termed as the best batting team. I remember when I used to watch Hockey, I saw that Indian Hockey team players biggest weakness was to convert penalty corner into Goal. Here too we are seeing that every player is having a weakness, like Gambhir and Yuvraj playing balls which are outside off, and either played them onto the stumps or giving catch at back. Sehwag can’t play short-balls (infact almost all Indian players can’t), and still they are not concentrating on their weaknesses, until and unless you don’t try to learn it and overcome it, you can’t become a good player; none of Indian players are good at playing away conditions. If the opponent bowlers are getting swing and bounce, we are susceptible to fall, and get out. And I don’t even want to talk about the all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja or the strike spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, I think they’re in the team only because either they’re relative of MSD or MSD or his family owes some money (loan) to them.
And now the biggest destructor which comes to Indian cricket, which was introduced to gave Indian players more chances to learn and perform, to find out the new talents and to let them gain experience by allowing them to play with foreign players, but instead it saps everything back from them. Yes, it’s IPL. It’s a 20-over format club game kind of stuff, where you have 8-10 different clubs playing and winning.
..continued in comments..
