Cricket: The Worst Phase For Team India?

The Perth massacre of the Indian cricket team by Australia marked the third consecutive loss in the present India-Australia Test Cricket Series and the seventh consecutive overseas Test loss in the past seven months for India.  Such defeats that make a mockery of a cricket test match. No fights, no resistance, no determination—only abject surrender mindless and lacking any application.

Just imagine! A team that only recently occupied the No.1 position in Test rankings suffers an innings defeat when the opposite team scored only 369 in the first innings—not exactly a mammoth total by test standards. But India is immensely capable of doing the impossible! They make 161 and 171 respectively to offer a series-clinching win to Australia on a platter. No surprise then that Aussie skipper Michael Clarke want many more astounding victories to make a meaningful assault for the No.1 position.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, rated as the most positive and winning captain India have ever produced, now holds the overpoweringly generous record of conceding six innings defeats—more than any other Indian captain. Meantime he earns a ban for the fourth test starting in Adelaide on January 24 due to slow over rate. The divine hand? This frees him from playing test matches for at least seven months.

For a change everyone is taking the blame for the debacle. Dhoni says he is responsible, the Indian cricket Board Chief Selector says the Board takes the responsibility! The only thing that is always above ‘blame’ is the magnificent IPL (Indian Premiere League T20)—extravagant cricket tournament in the shortest format of the game. This is the reason why nobody can pass on the buck to anybody as everybody needs everybody for the big bucks to roll in from the IPL. So better get consolation with ‘You see! This can be called the worst phase of Indian cricket. But it happens to every team sometime or the other. So, don’t blame IPL. Corrective measures will be taken.’

More questions come out of such assurances. Is this the worst phase only so far? What corrective measures? If you finally decide to drop the seniors—you cannot do that till IPL is over—how do you go about replacing them? Do you have cricketers who can fit the real cricket format—test cricket?  Do you call all top batsmen in top gear suddenly falling and continuing falling in heaps a natural phenomenon that affects every team? How do you define a team as ‘good, competitive and aggressive’? If you can have flat and lifeless pitches a home in the interests of the big bucks why don’t you then apply your money power to have the same specially made for India overseas instead of the juicy, green and bouncy pitches?

Ad Rating points for Indian cricket show a declining trend at the moment. The ratings should crash so that cricket is brought to the level of any other game played in India. Till then, nobody will be able to take the correct decisions or measures for the game of cricket in its truest form.