Why Team India is in a state of free fall

[anotherhawkeye]

After the second Test, many Indian cricket fans felt that our performance couldn't get any worse. I was one of them. Well, it just did. In the first Test, we were at least in the contest for a long, long time. In the second Test, we battled hard for three days. This time we lost the plot on the very first day. Now we have even lost our No 1 Test ranking. After the ill-fated 1974 England tour, when we suffered the ignominy of being bowled out for 42, this is our most humiliating series loss in 40 years. I am convinced that it can’t get any worse. But who knows, there’s one more Test to be played. What went wrong? Almost everything. That’s how it is when Sehwag gets out on the first ball in both innings, when Dravid drops sitters in the slips and then walks without nicking the ball and when Tendulkar is run-out by a Dhoni shot. There’s a sense of disbelief all around. Nobody expected Team India to surrender so abjectly. We hugely underestimated England’s hunger and ability. Conversely, we also overestimated our own ability. The very fact that we casually went into the first Test without much preparation illustrates this. Now we are in a state of free fall. We have lost the plot. Nobody, including the great Tendulkar, seems strong enough to stem the rot. And Captain Cool MS Dhoni looks absolutely clueless. Ganguly would have reacted much more smartly and positively in such periods of crisis. These defeats will leave deep scars. Hopefully, the BCCI will be less callous in planning its future tours. Cricketers hiding injuries must also be heavily penalised. This is our worst batting performance in recent memory. Last night, despite being on a king pair, Sehwag didn’t even bother to block one ball. Surely, he is a genius and the most exciting batsman in the world. But that does not mean hitting the first ball you face for a four every time. Let us not forget that after he had been dropped from the team for a year, Sehwag showed a lot of common sense in mixing sound defence with brutal attacking shots in his early comeback games. That’s why he was so successful in Australia in 2007-08. Unlike Sehwag, you cannot blame Gambhir for being casual. But he seems to be struggling in England. Once Dravid is gone, India seems thoroughly exposed and helpless like a baby. Both Tendulkar and Laxman fell to equally reckless shots in the first innings. The trio of Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman are still capable of playing good knocks. But the selector should judiciously start working towards a proper transition policy. There’s no point saying we don’t have anyworthy repalcements. There may never be. But that’s not the point. The point is that everybody has to go sooner or later. And how do we make the transition painless. If I have plenty of faith in Cheteswar Pujara – his match-winning 72 against Australia in 2010 Bangalore was perhaps the greatest Test innings by an Indian debutant -- Rohit Sharma and Manoj Tiwary. Tiwary’s 188 – 11 fours and eight sixes -- against New Zealand in the Emerging Nations tournament in Australia earlier this month underlined his class once again. If they find a captain who believes in them, like Ganguly had faith in Sehwag, Yuvraj and Harbhajan, they will serve Indian Test cricket for a long, long time. Dhoni batted with aggression in both the innings. That’s the way he should always bat in Tests. But his keeping and captaincy has collapsed under pressure. Let us accept one thing: he is the finest ODI and T20 captain that India has seen. But let’s hold our judgement on the Test captaincy bit. Test captaincy isn’t as much about instinct as about strategy. Do you see any strategy in place? Last night experts were pointing out how he wasted one fielder throughout Amit Mishra’s spell. Praveen Kumar and Mishra bowled their hearts out. They get 10 out of 10 for trying. Even Ishant and Sreesanth tried hard but they were simply not good enough. I would prefer Munaf and RP in the next game. To sum it up, we didn’t really respect our No 1 Test status. As I have said before, we did not get our ranking by eking out hard-fought away wins against top teams such as England, South Africa and Australia. Wegot it by beating lesser teams home and abroad. We loved the rank; but we were not desperate to maintain it. It can still be 3-1 at the end of the series, but 4-0 seems a clearer possibility. http://author.toiblogs.com/Addictions/entry/why-team-india-is-in-a-state-of-free-fall

[Jersey #10]

we are just enjoying the free fall! It's like sky diving. The higher you go, the longer you fall...gravity