An Open Letter from Indian Cricket Fans to Indian Team

[Haarkarjeetgaye]

yeh open kyun hai bhai..envelope mein daalke team ko mail kar dete..courier sasta hai aajkal to India mein

[Old guy]

this was touching but who cares abt fans. bcci is still making money,players are still getting richer why would they even give a damn abt us the people who actually make then rich :finger: and people like ashwin did fought.. maybe it did not showed in wickets but he battled it out with bat ,yadav gave his all bowling with pace in waca even after sydney massacre (of bowlers) kohli too showed a lot of fight after warner he was the best batsmen from both the teams! signs are clear get young players in..we might still lose but atleast they are willing to fight!

[Lord]

Kohli replies

[chainsmoker1985]

That is fine. All good things come to an end. But to say that they didn't achieve anything special apart from the WC, and that too because it was on the flat tracks of subcontinent, is not only insulting them but also insulting your own knowledge of the game. They are in decline. Yes. We should have changes in the team, yes. But they deserve credit and respect for their past achievements not harsh judgement and crass dismissal of their ability! At least we the fans can do that much for them, or even that is difficult? PS: Not justifying their poor show in last 8 months AT ALL!!

Well I guess you are right in a way and thanx a lot for making me realize that. I sometimes gets overboard in criticizing these players but what to do, they are performing so pathetically. Even Australia had a transition phase but they didn't loose like this. They are losing worse than Bangladesh. I mean, this clearly shows that after winning WC they were relaxed and thought even if they loose 10-12 matches now, it won't effect anyone coz they are now World Champions. And history proves that whenever we take it too easy in a competitive world, our end is near

[Chandan]

Well I guess you are right in a way and thanx a lot for making me realize that. I sometimes gets overboard in criticizing these players but what to do' date=' they are performing so pathetically. Even Australia had a transition phase but they didn't loose like this. They are losing worse than Bangladesh. I mean, this clearly shows that after winning WC they were relaxed and thought even if they loose 10-12 matches now, it won't effect anyone coz they are now World Champions. And history proves that whenever we take it too easy in a competitive world, our end is near[/quote'] No. We didn't take it easy. Laxman or Dravid didn't win the cup, so why would they take it easy? And Sachin has been playing since last 23 years. You have to trust his passion for heavens sake! It is quite clear that they are in decline and Sehwag and Gambhir's failure shouldn't have surprised anyone apart from maybe dumb Cheeka and co. And it'll be foolish to compare ourselves with Australia. They have a superb system with a super professional board. They may struggle for a year or two but their system will bring them back on track. I'll say that England has massively underachieved with such a system and board till now. Our players have achieved whatever they could because of individual brilliance and I'll be very surprised if you'll be able to see that again because of our non existent system and unprofessional board which does more harm than good!

[Ultimate_Game]

A year back when you defeated Australia in the World Cup' date=' we walked the streets with our heads held high. [b']When you won the tournament, we wore our blues with pride. Now, we have taken all our clothes with the slightest hue of blue and stored them away.

The very definition of a fair-weather fan who jumps on a bandwagon. Anyone can support a champion and wear "blue" when the team wins a WC but the folks who back the team are the true fans. Am pissed off with the team as well for not showing any fight in Eng and Aus but will never stop supporting them and still wear my WC winning T-shirt with pride

[chainsmoker1985]

@ Chandan, We need people like Ganguly and Anil Kumble in our Board who are strict in their approach. They are great players and they would surely know what Indian Cricket wants at this time to move forward. I mean, we just cannot keep losing abroad like this forever. I am sure, with better planning and change in the approach by our board, will surely make us win next time we tour Australia. We will be touring Australia in 2014-15 and Ricky and Hussey will be retired by then and our bowling line up, Ishant, Umesh and Ashwin will be much more experienced by then. So hopefully we will win then. And it is the passion for Cricket that we keep on producing so many great and good quality players. Now, we have 2 upcoming top-class batsmen in Virat and Rohit and I have great hopes from Rahane. Ashwin also looks a formidable batsman. What we want is an overall match winning team rather than 1 or 2 great players.

[chainsmoker1985]

The very definition of a fair-weather fan who jumps on a bandwagon. Anyone can support a champion and wear "blue" when the team wins a WC but the folks who back the team are the true fans. Am pissed off with the team as well for not showing any fight in Eng and Aus but will never stop supporting them and still wear my WC winning T-shirt with pride

Let me tell you sir, I watched each and every single ball of today's play with great hope and with great frustration and will watch tomorrow's play as well with same feelings. I might be rude sometimes but I love them a lot

[vvvslaxman]

There are so many things wrong with this Indian team. Unfixable overnight. India will be going through this phase for couple more years atleast. Bowling, Batting, Fielding... suck in all 3 departments equally. Fans just have to lower their expectations drastically. Yes India was no.1 then. After world cup everything has gone topsy turvy. I think real turning point was sending an under-strength team to West Indies after IPL. Should have sent the best team available.

[Ultimate_Game]

Let me tell you sir' date=' I watched each and every single ball of today's play with great hope and with great frustration and will watch tomorrow's play as well with same feelings. I might be rude sometimes but I love them a lot[/quote'] Know that you do else you wouldn't have made such a thread :winky:

[Ultimate_Game]

There are so many things wrong with this Indian team. Unfixable overnight. India will be going through this phase for couple more years atleast. Bowling' date=' Batting, Fielding... suck in all 3 departments equally. Fans just have to lower their expectations drastically. Yes India was no.1 then. After world cup everything has gone topsy turvy. I think real turning point was sending an under-strength team to West Indies after IPL. Should have sent the best team available.[/quote'] We are paying the price for selectors and board taking the easy way out and never making the tough calls to blood in younsters and now all of a sudden our whole batting lineup has aged overnight, which tends to happen when you don't have a transition plan in place. Every selection panel made the easy decisions by playing all the seniors hoping that they wouldn't have to make the hard decisions and the next selection panel would have to deal with it. When players liek Rohit and Rahane don't get a look-in at home against WI even after you have wrapped up the series you know where the priorities of selectors lie and how much they have betterment of Indian cricke in mind.

[CG]

There are so many things wrong with this Indian team. Unfixable overnight. India will be going through this phase for couple more years atleast. Bowling' date=' Batting, Fielding... suck in all 3 departments equally. Fans just have to lower their expectations drastically. Yes India was no.1 then. After world cup everything has gone topsy turvy. I think real turning point was sending an under-strength team to West Indies after IPL. Should have sent the best team available.[/quote'] Expectation was because we had a bowling attack which on paper was our quickest and australia's form also gave hope .

[Ultimate_Game]

Expectation was because we had a bowling attack which on paper was our quickest and australia's form also gave hope .

We lost due to our batting. Bowlers can't do jack-shyte when everytime the batting lineup gets bowled for 200 in 60 overs on Day 1 of a Test.

[bulbul]

We lost due to our batting. Bowlers can't do jack-shyte when everytime the batting lineup gets bowled for 200 in 60 overs on Day 1 of a Test.

why cant bowlers do anything.. in SA after SA bowled out for 90 something..we all know what happened next.. problem is our bowlers are little bit hyped before series starts... forget about speed and all...they are not even consistant in even single spells let alone in match or series

[Ultimate_Game]

why cant bowlers do anything.. in SA after SA bowled out for 90 something..we all know what happened next.. problem is our bowlers are little bit hyped before series starts... forget about speed and all...they are not even consistant in even single spells let alone in match or series

Bowlers can do something only for so long They played pretty well at Melbourne and were responsible for keeping India in the match till the very end. But eventually batsmen had to step up and they never did. At Sydney on a batting beauty we crumbled and bowlers can't be blamed for that.

[Number]

bowling has got us back in contest quite a few times in this series. Today and in Sydney it was bad but they were pretty much flat tracks.

[bulbul]

Bowlers can do something only for so long They played pretty well at Melbourne and were responsible for keeping India in the match till the very end. But eventually batsmen had to step up and they never did. At Sydney on a batting beauty we crumbled and bowlers can't be blamed for that.

They have had Australia down at 6 for 214 and 4 for 27 at the MCG, 3 for 37 at the SCG, and 3 for 84 here at the Adelaide Oval, only to let the game slip away

why these opportunities missed then??

[Number]

Bowlers can do something only for so long They played pretty well at Melbourne and were responsible for keeping India in the match till the very end. But eventually batsmen had to step up and they never did. At Sydney on a batting beauty we crumbled and bowlers can't be blamed for that.

Agree , we can't blame bowling after what our batsmen did at SCG. Pathetic batting on a flat track.

[vvvslaxman]

Indian bowling is not exactly a penetrative bowling attack. Umesh is raw. Ishant was supposed to back up Zak who is just back from injury. But Ishant's failure as a bowler has really hurt India. Ashwin didn't do well. But that i expected all the way. Not a single offie has done well there in the last 10 or 12 years. Swann averages 40 there. Possibly the best offie. India's traditional strength has been piling up runs and let the bowlers take their own time to pick up wickets with scoreboard pressure. I have never seen an Indian side that will run through a side consistently. They do occasionally with an inspired bowling performance. But for that to happen consistently all 4 bowlers have to be reasonably penetrative to build pressure backed up by good fielding. We are nowhere close to having such an unit. It will take long time before building such a bowling unit. Frankly i have no hope in the near future.

[Ultimate_Game]

why these opportunities missed then??

One of the reasons is that there wasn't any scoreboard pressure on Aussie batsmen at all. We had gotten out for such low scores that even with 3-4 wkts down they were never really threatened and knew that just 1 big partnership would be enough. Even if we had managed a score of 300-350 at Sydney, WACA or Melbourne I bet things would have been different as the team plays differently when chasing 350 when down 3/37 as compared to chasing just 160 odd.