India’s early exit from World 20-20.

I am writing this post after a rather comforting though anxious win in first ODI over WI in the Caribbean. It has been quite a while, and no point digging old graves but let me keep up with this Indian tradition and do my bit. I have been etching to write something on this, but sometimes there are more important matters on hand than a mere game. So what went wrong and what could have avoided this?

First nothing kills like overkill: BCCI never cares for the players or the love for the game when it is up against the Gandhi backed notes. So the IPL went ahead although there was not much gap between the finals and the bigger, more important WC. I don’t know how big a factor fatigue was because Australians as they themselves claimed were all charged up and raring to go but fizzled out in very first round. And then there were teams like SA who too have played without a hiatus for long and their games were lot more competitive and demanding because all the times they squared up with Australia (Some 10 ODIs, 6 tests, 4 Twenty-20s), there was some no.1 ranking on the line. But what differentiates India is how IPL is theirs and not SA’s (13 of the 15 SA players for WC squad did participate full time in the IPL), how they carry a lot more burden with their representation and how these petty games also gained the stature of life and death in this cricket crazy, bizarre nation. Did I emphasize crazy enough? Nope ok again, a really crazy nation.

What IPL does but never tells: It divides the players into leagues, who succeed at the cost of one-another. Harbhajan is now a Mumbaikar, Sreesanth’s dosa comes all the way from Punjab, Gilli is leading at the cost of Laxman and much more. Suddenly the all united men in Blue, don’t seem to be united at all. The team had no special camp to gel together after they were made to go after each other in gay madness for a month and half. From slap-gate to the things which don’t make into the news a lot goes down in these silly games. Calling press conferences to show off the united front just shows the differences.

Half-fit side: Too much cricket and too little rest made Zaheer, Riana, Sehwag, Yuvi and all not give their best. I hope it rhymes! Whatever, If poor fielding was in anyway associated with that, then we know why we lost more than we won.

Sehwag: well you may say India has a lot of fire power, but only Yuvraj comes anywhere close to the sultan of Multan when it comes to instilling fear and intimidation in the minds of the bowlers. His one-off match-winnning innings and otherwise brisk starts were missed. More than anything, i guess Gambhir misses him.

Leaving till very late: Well we can get out of any hole and all players are capable has been the mantra that has gone down well, but there should be a lot of hunger to go along with talent to achieve that. This team lacked the bite that they had in the first WC. Losing to England, the mother of all chokers that too in twenty-20 just goes to show how awful it was.

The world has caught up: Now the bowlers around the world know how to put the breaks on scoring, we saw that in all the matches. They all have come up with an ace up their sleeves but ours still lack the bite, over-reliance on batting did cost us dearly. The SA, Pak, Sri, Ban spin attacks are better than ours and what to say about the pace battery! More so the bowlers have learnt how to bowl to India's big hitters.

Jadega: Oh man! He couldn’t have scripted a worse start to his career, could he? To his credit bowled well and if he had just batted at run a ball, his selection would have turned out to be a masterstroke. As a bowler as good as Ojha and a batter now we could have an all-rounder. But the much-touted Warne prodigy just went down and took the team with him. We can’t burden the loss on his young shoulders alone though, Dhoni played an ace too.

The Captain cool: coming to the point of Dhoni, well he is all captain-cool and has won us many matches, his record as captain has been very good till date but how do you measure coolness in Cricket? Does it mean playing safe? Does it mean no worries; there is plenty of time still left to win the game? Instead of fastening the seatbelts and driving he sometimes prefer a walk, against NZ, 3rd test this season and then against England at home in the 2nd test he showed how he was too defensive for his own good. Being defensive and waiting for things to happen in twenty-20 is not very different from digging one’s own grave and with this attitude one can never ever become a world-beater.

Twenty-20: This format is the most unpredictable in Cricket and one should not hinge a lot of thought into what goes down as the result.

TO SUM UP: India is too talented a side especially for shorter formats of the game to go down like this, the faster bowlers do have a lot to learn and without Zaheer or with unfit Zaheer we do have a lot of problems. But most probably this would only be one tiny black blemish on otherwise good record of the men in blue and this Windies tour will kick the blue out of the Men in blue. Ironic!
IPL is a great investment to nurture talent and bring out names that could have gone into oblivion or taken a considerable more time to make their mark. It puts them in scenarios where they played shoulder-to-shoulder with the legends of the game and grew in tight matches. But 14 games/team for that is just outright madness and greed! And nothing, just nothing kills like overkill!