There is a joke where a village guy goes to an eye doctor for a check-up. The doctor asks him to read those alphabets. When the guy can’t do it, he asks him to try different glasses. He is frustrated after a lot of tries and finally the guy says he can’t read those letters because he is illiterate! Looking at some of the measures India might take after the world cup made me think of this.
When nearly all the people in a certain situation behave in a way that looks very weird to an outsider, there is something about the situation the outsiders don’t know until they are themselves in it. This is fairly easy to notice in everyday life, people who are part of such groups invariably behave in one manner and others can’t seem to understand why. Then sometime such an outsider ends up in that situation and ends up behaving just the same. Usually there is some strong reason that compels everyone to behave like that.
This is getting a little philosophical, but I wonder whether the Indian team is currently stuck in such a situation. The team has today returned (mostly getting out of the airports at midnight and some even from cargo areas like some from Pakistan) from what could be its worst World Cup campaign (okay, the ‘75 and ‘79 weren’t any better, but nobody cared about ODIs back then and nobody were taking days off just to watch them do better) and many people have given various reasons for its early exit. There is a talk about aged seniors but none of the young brigade did anything better. There is a talk about power cricket that Aussies and Proteas are playing but India never got to play against them.
What bothers me the most is India’s tendency to panic, forget their skills and play like novices in pressure situations far too frequently. It’s quite evident that it’s not limited to seniors or juniors. And it is a bigger concern because it’s not only about a World Cup loss, it’s causing us to lose even test series we should have won. Panicked batting is not new for Indian fans but lately it’s happening far too many times and even in home series. We have the necessary skills because in usual matches those are there to see, we must be preparing hard because whatever criticism may be fair for Chappell and Dravid nobody would accuse them of not preparing, but then there comes a pressure situation and it all falls apart. Occasionally the bowling but mostly it’s the batting. They just seem to throw it all away.
It’s hard to say whether Tendulkar, Ganguly, Sehwag and others are too unfit or past their prime to play against top teams because we didn’t really get a chance to see them against top teams - may be Sri Lanka to some extent. But this is the same team they had beaten handsomely on not very different pitches twice in last two years. So more than the Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan bowling it must have been the self-created pressure that caused the batting to fail miserably in both these matches. India may have prepared for over a year for this tournament but it is this tendency to just throw it all away, especially while batting, that has resulted in India losing crucial ODI and test matches over last 5-6 years. In ODIs there are all these finals over last few years and those tests at Mumbai against England, Bangalore and Karachi against Pakistan and Durban against South Africa.
Wright and Ganguly were not able to fix it and it seems Chappell and Dravid also don’t have a solution to that. This will probably need somebody who has excelled in such situations, somebody like Steve Waugh to help India overcome this. I doubt anybody from India’s past players can do it as I don’t think any Indian player has been able to do it before. This is just my hunch, but there are some current players like Mohammand Kaif who are less affected by match pressure and I think they need to play a role in future. I hope the BCCI, when it meets in Mumbai on April 6th, pays attention to this rather than the usual things that happen after such failures.