Monday, June 15, 2009

India no longer T20 champions

By: Subhadeep Bhattacharjee

If the loss to West Indies in the T20 World Cup match was disappointing the loss to England was heartbreaking for Team India fans. A billion dreams got shattered when Dhoni and his men failed to quality for the semi finals. With Australia's first round exit many had fancied India's chances of retaining the crown in cricket's phata phat version. But the loss to Paul Collingwood side meant that India will no longer be referred to as the T20 Champions post June 21.

The main reason was the complete failure of the batting order in the tournament with the only exceptions being Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh and to some extent Yusuf Pathan. Gautam Gambhir was a dud in all the matches and Suresh Raina seemed to have forgotten to carry his form from South Africa. Dhoni looked completely out of sorts in the tournament his attempt to change his natural game is proving expensive him as well as the team.

The bowling lacked lustre in all the matches and none of the bowlers performed consistently in the tournament. The team's performance was so dull that even Bangladesh gave them a scare in the first match bringing back haunting memories of Port of Spain. Pragyan Ojha could only tame Bangladesh while Harbhajan Singh lost control over his line and length. Ishant Sharma did not seem to come out of the Knight Riders nightmares and the left arm trio of Zaheer Khan, RP Singh and Irfan Pathan had nothing special to talk about.

The only term that could be used to define Indian fielding in this tournament was pathetic. The Tendulkars, the Gangulys and the Dravids might not have been outstanding athletes but they always made India a good catching side but the men in Dark Blue displayed club cricket like performance when it came to manning the park. One thing which we failed to notice during the IPL was the form of our players. Apart from Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and RP Singh none of the Indian players were in great form.

The T20 World Cup is over for India with a match remaining against South Africa which they will have to play for honour. The team should put this behind and start focus their tour to West Indies which starts at end of the month. Hopefully the team will give their fans something to cheer bout from the Caribbean island.

1 comments:

Unknown June 17, 2009 at 12:05 PM  

Nice analysis, the team did seem out of touch this time, though Yuvraj Singh stood alone as far as batting is concerned. Bowling was totally out of order with exception of Ojha, who was eventually dropped. Lets hope the team does well in the Caribbean.

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