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I really don't think a title was necessary there; yes, everyone is talking about it and i just wanted to add a little something that isn't on everyone's lips already.
India, as we all now know is out of the World cup - ousted before the 'real' cricketing action begins. To give India company is our good ol' neighbor, Pakistan. So, this is I guess as close as our two countries will get to really being brother-like!
I don' see any point in ranting here; of course i was livid on the day and it in fact, took in a couple more days for the fact to really sink in. Since then we have seen several reports and blogs by famous and unknown indians, dissecting, analyzing and apportioning blame. personally i see little point in adding to all the ranting. what is that going to achieve? apart from letting my fume out, it serves very little purpose. but i have been collating some thoughts on this and what i am about to unleash on the reader who has reached this blog willfully or by error, is simply a precis of that, if you will.
I will focus on 3 individuals here. I'll start off with the one who deserves the least blame for this debacle. Mr. Greg Chappell, ladies and gentlemen.
What sense does it even make, baying for his blood? it was in fact in very poor taste to ask him if he considered his security adequate, especially in the aftermath of Woolmer's murder. But it is easy to blame him, since the hard-nosed aussie hasn't exactly said things people like to hear.
To start off, when his 'experimentation' was in full swing and India went through a phase where it seemed like they could do no wrong, people grudgingly nodded assent to his methods. And then came India's tour of the Windies, where that period came to a rude halt and then suddenly everyone started talking about the experimentation being 'too much'. I cannot recall any instance where Chappell actually said, this is what i was aiming for. I think the closest statement to that that actually emanated from his lips was something to the effect that we are now on the track he envisioned, which was that the players must not be stuck into certain roles within the team. The more flexible the team's structure, the more resilient its character.
Finally there is only so much a coach can actually do. it makes no sense to say, he has to go now since he was being paid so much. what does that even mean?!
the next individual is one who needs to cap some of the blame even though i'd hate to put some on his head. Mr Sachin Tendulkar needs no introduction anyway.
in all the previous outings (World cup games) where India seemed to possess some tooth, most of that tooth was largely on account of this gentleman. Of course, he wasn't exactly a gentleman there; he more or less resembled an angry tiger in those games and we all know what happens when you get too close to angry tigers! The Indian team in 1996 was pretty ordinary in my opinion. But at that time, Sachin was in such magnificent touch that it mattered little. even in that infamous semifinal against Sri Lanka, no one realized that the pitch was so difficult to bat on while he was around. 2003 again saw him reprising that role to great effect. though the India-Pakistan game would have to be the defining game for Sachin's batsmanship in that world cup, to me it was the sheer manner in which he played most of the games. For instance, the one against New Zealand. though we had lost a couple of quick wickets, he had decided that Oram (or was it Twose?) was going to get whacked that day! And only a truly fantastic catch saw the back of him.
the past few games have seen the team 'think tank' allotting him the role of 'sheet anchor', 'team shephard', 'the guide' and other ridiculously nonsensical roles which is far from the way the man has played his game. while his body has certainly been weighing him down, i think the manner in which he has been playing (and please do not quote recent statistics on him now!) has brought him down to being very mortal on many occasions when just last world cup, he was that sachin again! he may know what is wrong and so on, but i think that indian cricket now has to look for serious replacements for sachin. and by that i don't mean that he be sacked from either the ODI team or the test team. It's just that if he falls cheap, we are still almost like lost sheep. and till we find a suitable replacement where Sachin can go and play the way he has played his game for most of his cricketing life, this role allotment nonsense is no solution at all.
the third and final individual is John Q Doe, you average Joe, the next door neighbor, your common indian individual.
what has he to do with this world cup debacle? in my opinion, his contribution (among these three) has been the worst.
o.k. suppose we sack these 11 (or 30, whatever) and usher in an era of 'youth, energy' and whatnot. will that settle the problem?
certainly not. because all this has already been done.
When the betting scandals rocked the cricketing community in India, many Indians suddenly were disillusioned with cricket as such. and then came that India-Australia series with Laxman's piece de resistance. and suddenly cricket became popular again.
Episode 2: India losing a series of finals and several games to lower rated teams. come Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell, exit Ganguly. the next period was almost a honeymoon era in Indian cricket. we had a record sequence of wins chasing and suddenly, the youth brigade had appeared.
then why are we back to square one?
i think that John Doe has been instrumental in the amount of money, attention adulation and everything else that you now generally associate with cricket. All the endorsements come these cricketers' ways because JD will buy it happily. if we are the kind of people who can elevate someone to a pedestal on day one and then bury them deep the next, the players would have to be raving schizophrenics to deal with this on an everyday basis.
yes, their heads are addled quickly, but why?! that is a natural consequence of all this attention that comes their way and that will continue with any new players too. people fell for Dhoni's looks and batting and unfortunately, the loss to Bangladesh saw in its aftermath, his personal property being vandalized by nutjobs who have no bloody right to do anything and who are incapable of anything else.
so, these players might cap all the flak and everything else and maybe the new team India will see a lot of new faces. But take it from me: this situation is bound to reoccur unless we as Indians let the players do their job and not elevate them to the status we have given them.
the real culprits here are in my opinion, the BCCI. these stinkers run the show, are money-grabbing scum who care little about the game, worse, know even less. they encourage all the endorsement crap since it brings them all the more revenue. A cricketing board whose market share is nearly 33% of the world's cricketing revenue has no excuse whatsoever in not being able to provide the right practice conditions. make better pitches, not the feather-beds on which our batsmen roar, but cower in pusillanimity when confronted with bouncy wickets. let them survey all the cricketing countries and make a sample pitch in India which resembles the kind of pitch you might encounter in each of these countries. this has to of course, be periodically revised, but yah, the BCCI has deep coffers too!
these scoundrels who run the game will do nothing of that sort and all they are actually capable of is passing the buck and labeling someone scapegoat. if the average Indian fan has to be livid with someone, it really ought to be the BCCI. but who raises these questions?
and a final word about the players' attitude. This again is something that goes towards all Indians. We seem to, by and large, harbor the notion that hard work is something 'anyone can do', and that it is talent that is really the key to anything. it is my feeling that this mental attitude is largely present in most Indians and that is due to faulty reasoning and high prejudice.
even most kids in school will tell you with a glint in their eyes that the only points they lost were on account of 'silly mistakes'. the teachers feel that that is a totally rectifiable situation and the students here feel that since they had the answer almost right, they possess the inner ability or talent and are happy. and the 'silly mistakes' remain till at one point these people become only that: silly and asinine.
the virtues of working hard are never stressed anywhere, and this has nothing to do with sport in particular. We have always been the elegant batsmen, the stylish classy players who don't need to earn our runs, the safe pairs of hands who don't think it necessary to dive to prove high levels of fielding and all that load of crap. who in his right mind would make a statement about 'strategically fielding certain players in certain positions so as to mask some inabilities some players might have'?!
it is the same thing that happened with Indian hockey. we were all about elegant stick play that we never adapted to astro turf. and now, while teams like Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Korea find the new surface to their liking and their way of playing, which is basically running their opponents hard, we come back with weeping players after a dismal performance in the world cups, the Olympics, the champions trophies and what not. i personally think that it is something right in our attitude and till that mentality changes, we will continually attempt to square the circle without realizing that it is impossible.