BCCI must look into India’s poor performance
The Indian cricket team’s dismal loss against England in the Test series has exposed its weakness in the longer format and clearly, it is now time that both players and their selectors giving equal attention to all three forms of the game. Monday at the Oval, India suffered its worst series-defeat in England since 1959 after it lost the fourth and final Test by eight runs. Being the ODI world champion and the number one test team as well, few, if none, had expected that India would surrender so easily to the English team without even putting up a semblance of a fight. There are of course many reasons the pundits have attributed to India’s below par performance. Chief among them was the absence of pace spearhead Zaheer Khan who was injured during the first test match itself and had to return home. Zaheer Khan’s presence was key to the Indian bowling offensive as he could have reverse swung the old ball with ease and picked up some crucial wickets on the way. Additionally, Virendra Sehwag’s absence from the first and second Test Match also served as a body blow to India. Even when he returned to the field, he had not fully recovered from his crippling shoulder injury. As a result, his characteristic blitzkrieg-like attack was missing. His partner Gautam Gambhir also performed miserably. And then of course he had to miss the second test on grounds of injury. To make matters worse, India’s middle order, comprising VVS laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina, also failed to put up good show. Not one of them hit a single hundred. Even Sachin Tendulkar got just two fifties, which is below his standard. Captain MS Dhoni also failed to lead from the front during the crisis period. His own batting performance was extremely poor and he continued to blame his batsmen for the debacle. Amidst all this ruin, Rahul Dravid was the only one who remained firm and scored 488 runs which included three centuries.
India’s bowling too was sub-standard with Praveen Kumar getting in some late swing but his pace was still too slow to trouble the English batsmen. The pace duo of Ishant Sharma and Sreeshanth also floundered in their line and length. This allowed England’s batsmen to pile up runs at will. Star bowler Harbhajan Singh also did not live up to his reputation and failed to leave his mark. Overall, India’s bowlers performed just as poorly as its counterparts in the batting lineup. The team was horribly under-prepared and unfit for English conditions. It has been rightly pointed out that the seeds of destruction were sown by the BCCI which had drawn up a monetarily lucrative schedule that nonetheless left players with little time to recover from previous games or recoup from the injuries. One can only hope that the powers-that-be at BCCI realised the same.
