Did India Deserve it ??

Well, after an insipid performance like this, tongues will definitely be set wagging and you will surely have esteemed experts like Chetan Chauhan, Ajay Jadeja and with due respect, Mohinder Amarnath rip the Indian cricket team to shreds. Yes, we have lost the series with Australia taking an unassailable lead at 4-2 with only one more match to go in Mumbai. But the crux of the matter is not whether India was complacent against a supposedly “weakened” Australian team or whether Sachin Tendulkar should retire from the game for he cannot or does not have the so-called “genius” ability of finishing off matches. The Crux of the matter is where from here and did India actually deserve to lose this series.

My friends call me the “Usual” because I make the same mistakes again and again and hence a monotony of sorts sets in and I guess a lot of you will also label India’s performance in this series as the “Usual”, that of having come so close yet so far, in fact far enough to be in the danger of losing the series 5-2, a series which they could have actually won 5-2!! But I choose to look at it with a different perspective.

First n foremost, I do not understand the term “complacent”. What does this word mean and why is it used so frequently? Whether India lose to Bangladesh, New Zealand , England or a “weakened” Australia, it is all down to that god-forsaken word. Fine, the team could have been complacent after the 1st match(although Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar did provide a fantastic rear-guard action) which they lost, they could have been complacent after taking a 2-1 lead, but how the hell can any team be complacent after being already behind 3-2 with only 2 matches left to play. And probably every possible Indian cricketer knows the fact, that Australia, regardless of the playing XI is fiercely competitive and ruthless, then how the hell can the team be “complacent” ? It is as if, the low-on-English experts couldn’t think of any other word and hence chose the one word which is like the combiflam of cricket-performance literature. A word for all defeats, no matter how close or how comprehensive.

Secondly, I agree that Australia lost a lot of players during the course of the series, so much so that they were in danger of having to call a few Indian players playing Ranji trophy, to come play for them. But the core of the team was still intact. Any batting line-up having Ponting, Hussey, Watson in the top 4 calls for serious consideration. Now people will say Watson is still new to International cricket, but then so are Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli and Praveen Kumar. Having looked up Cricinfo’s database, I have just learned that all three of them have played less matches than Watson!! Their fast-bowling battery had Mitchel Johnson(who was voted ICC player of the year), Peter Siddle(voted emerging player of the year), Ben Hilfenhaus who had a fantastic Ashes series and the upcoming Doug Bollinger who at best only bowls at a lowly “90” miles an hour. Surely they would have missed Lee who has often been a thorn in India’s flesh, but compare them to an all-of-a-sudden-Irfan-Pathan like Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar who often bowls the first 7 overs for 15 and bowls the next 3 for 51 and Munaf Patel who at best always looks sleepy on the field even while bowling! Only Nehra had been performing up to the mark and India missed Zak more than Australia missed Lee. India definitely had a better batting attack on paper, but that has been the case for ages now. Sehwag does not want to learn percentage cricket, which means you can also block a few deliveries or take a few singles once in a while, Gautam Gambhir suddenly looked out of sorts after having had a phenomenal year and with Yuvraj you never are quite sure what he would produce, such is his swagger and body language. So that leaves you with only Sachin and Dhoni as the 2 most reliable players and who could match up to Ponting, Hussey and Watson. What people often forget is that it does not matter which player is missing from the team, for the names on the team-sheet have a job to do, and whoever goes out and does it to the best of his abilities often decides the course of the match. In the Australian outfit, there were players who put their hand up and performed, while the Indian counterparts floundered just at the wrong time.

If you do a final analysis of the series that has transpired, 4 out of the 6 matches have been really close in which 2 of them could have gone India’s way had the players maintained their calm and played with what Geoffrey Boycott calls the “common sense”. As much as my heart pains to write this, But still Sachin should not have played the infamous Misbah scoop. He just didn’t need to. India required 18 of 18 at that stage and Jadeja was already on suicide-mission mode. However, I still cannot take anything away from that innings, for it was one of the greatest ODI innings of all time and for some it would even better the one that he had famously scored at Sharjah. Similarly Harbhajan after playing an exhilarating innings by anyone’s standards should not have gone for that mindless heave across the line of Siddle, which left the off stump out of the ground and severely dented India’s chance of scooping the first one-dayer. Having already scored 49 of 31 balls, 8 of the last over wouldn’t have been that difficult, had he shown more application. However, the match reached that stage only because of the mind-boggling partnership that he shared with Praveen Kumar and thus he is also acquitted of all charges of losing his head. Such has been this series that Dhoni, apart from 2 matches, would find it difficult to fathom as to where India seriously lost it. Apart from the toothless batting in the first 15 minutes at Guwahati, India had matched the Aussies, stroke for stroke, move for move. I personally feel India’s middle order lacks a calm head, something in the Dravid mold, for we have too many flamboyant players and Dhoni cannot be always expected to act as the cooling balm during those intense situations of a crisis. Apart from that, I cannot really pin-point any major chinks in India’s armor. Now people will say that India’s bowlers were not up to the task and they leaked a lot of crucial runs. But then at least they did not concede 80 odd runs in 10 overs to a set of tailenders nor did they give away 350+ runs in a single ODI innings. And this is exactly what I am talking about. Australia raised their tempo just when the situation demanded them to, and that is why they are the no.1 side in the world at the moment. Hauritz came good in the first ODI, Bollinger turned into a beast in the 6th and in the middle Watson and Hussey took over.

However, not all is lost for the Indian team, especially Dhoni who will be in the firing line for the series loss. A captain’s job is a poisoned chalice and the poison starts to take effect once the team starts losing and the entire blame surprisingly always lies with the hapless captain. But once the initial resentment dies down, he can get down to business with his strategy for the next series which is a long one against the Islanders(SL). The situation is similar to what generally happens in the English Premier League, where my room-mate often feels that just because Manchester United have lost to Chelsea, they are doomed and would do no good. But Manchester United have often lost to Chelsea and still managed to win the Premier League(4 freaking times on the trot) in the past and India have their own Rooney in Dhoni and Ferguson in Kirsten. They just need to pick up their Fletchers and Carricks and go about their task and the “Premiership”(Read:World Cup) wouldn’t be far away.