India Vs England PERFORMANCE IS REALITY
Before speaking about the “debacle” at home let’s recap the last year! India reached the dream of any cricket team to win a WorldCup, a trophy which fans & players consider the biggest prize in their cricketing career.
Post the World Cup, Indian players played IPL & after which they toured West Indies, the touring team had many big names “rested” which surprises me till date coz post the Windies tour India was traveling to England so players would have got good match practice in Windies before the all important “battle for No.1″ would begin.
India was 1-0 in West Indies & in the final test match we needed about 84 runs in 15overs with 7wickets in hand. Being an Indian fan sitting late night at home I wanted India to go for it! Not because it was gonna fetch us a win but it would also send a message to ENG that the Indian team is going for win in every game & not a series win!
That didn’t happen we won the series 1-0, went to England, complained of injuries, player rifts & went to lose test matches by innings within 3 days & earned ourselves a 4-0 loss! Till date I hear people it’s difficult to win in England but in 03 we drew a series there in 07 we won a series there so our performance should have been better or we should have been competitive not a clueless team no?
Not many people gave attention to the England loss maybe coz the media didn’t make it the prime time news as Anna ji was fasting then & yes corruption is rightly the bigger issue than a cricket series!!
Also MSD had led to 2WC wins, made India the No.1 test team, won a CB series, won a series in New Zealand, drew a series in South Africa! All this happened within first FOUR years of his captaincy. This was the first series he failed.
Life moved on… India hosted England for an ODI series which we won 5-0 & labeled it as a mini revenge for the tests lost many believed that India has moved on. India later then traveled down under next where again our last decade performances have had many an inspiring tales whether be the 03 win in Adelaide, where we drew the series 1-1 or the gritty fight back at the WACA in 07. Again 2011-12 series down under was India’s best chance to win a series in Australia, as an optimistic Indian even I felt England was a nightmare I didn’t know that the 4-0 of England would become 8-0 at the end of the Australian tour, again the test matches would end on the 3rd or 4th day morning.
“The Australian wickets don’t offer much for the spinners, my role isn’t to take wickets it’s to contain”- R.Ashwin in a press conference & when he said this he had conceded 140 runs in 30overs 0wickets& MSD’s statements about uncertainty of him continuing to play test cricket in the middle of the series, Viru’s statments on team selection all this didn’t make me feel once about a rift or players not gelling with each other! What it made me feel was didn’t find the players analyzing where we are going wrong!
What are we not doing which the Indian teams of 03 & 07 did! Whether be with bat or bowl! They surely did something what we have always missed last year. It was to compete & that’s the attitude they carried where they wanted to prove to themselves that they can score, pick wickets, win matches out of the sub-continent.
There has been a pattern which has become synonym with Team India post the 2011WC win! “Blame game” “Excuses”.
Example:
1.4-0 in England was due to Injuries, well this year RSA also toured England they had Boucher injured it still didn’t affect their goal of winning a series there.
2. India got knocked out of the Asia Cup coz Sachin batted slowly vs Bangladesh/ the players got overwhelmed due to Sachin’s 100 that they forgot a match has to be won. No one saw the full tosses we bowled in those last 10 overs!
3. India got out of the wt20 this year coz Australia purposely lost to Pakistan! & they were scared of facing India! Really?? Australia had just thrashed us 2 nights before
4. Ooops sorry we lost that game coz in the 15 min interval there was slight rain & it changed the conditions completely!
Not once have we accepted our failures as collective team failure,
1.4-0 in England was due to Injuries, well this year RSA also toured England they had Boucher injured it still didn’t affect their goal of winning a series there.
2. India got knocked out of the Asia Cup coz Sachin batted slowly vs Bangladesh/ the players got overwhelmed due to Sachin’s 100 that they forgot a match has to be won. No one saw the full tosses we bowled in those last 10 overs!
3. India got out of the wt20 this year coz Australia purposely lost to Pakistan! & they were scared of facing India! Really?? Australia had just thrashed us 2 nights before
4. Ooops sorry we lost that game coz in the 15 min interval there was slight rain & it changed the conditions completely!
Not once have we accepted our failures as collective team failure,
then how are we ever going to learn?
To add to all this England’s tour to India was termed as the “revenge” series! After beating the BlackCaps we were sure our spin duo were going to make the Englishmen dance, not once did we analyze our weakness & their strength.
Revenge for what? Losing 4-0 in their back yard? Then shouldn’t the revenge be when we beat them in England? Neither did England nor Australia call for green tops, seaming wickets they were proper cricketing wickets, we made a mess out of it then… So to make our home series easier we called for “rank turners” & we have fallen shamelessly.
Yes the ideology of “rank turners” did work for us in Ahmedabad, many fans & media channels called it “the first step for 4-0 revenge” only a handful noticed England’s strength their captain Alastair Cook who on following on took his team past India’s total & made India bat again. This in some ways was a win for England, an innings which inspired the team that they can compete in these conditions. Results are in front of us they have outplayed us in the last 2 test matches! Whereas we are still stuck on the pitches we want, not analyzing the game we should play on the field.
Loved what Rahul Dravid recently said “In sports words like revenge don’t have place, you play for pride & self respect” it is time our players start proving not to the media not to the fans not to cynics but to themselves that they are the best & deserve to play for India
Even today there will be many Indian fans hoping for a rainy day tomorrow so that the match can be saved; do we really want to save the game in this fashion? Would prefer losing than having a draw coz of rain. Look at the recent Adelaide test match between Australia & South Africa the result was a draw but both teams battled it out till the last ball. Du Plesis a debutant played one of the best match savings innings & Peter Siddle bowled for the team!
Our players too have the ability, have the skills it’s just that we should stop trying to beat the opposition & rather compete & try to win games. I admit our team is going through a transitional phase, we can’t win overnight, there will be a vacuum left by players who have left & pressure on the ones who have replaced them and that is where our aim has to be to prepare the gennext to be confident, competitive to fight till the last ball. To make the bat or ball in your hand decide the outcome of the game not excuses. At the end of the day
“WORDS ARE WORDS, REASONS ARE REASONS,
EXCUSES ARE EXCUES,
ONLY
PERFORMANCE IS REALITY”
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