Finally MS Dhoni and his brigade are back home, ending their two months of sorrows and miseries.
The tour has left them red-faced and it was quite evident from their actions after they landed in India. They made quiet exit from the airport not ready to face anyone, which is quite obvious. How would they face anyone? A team which won the Cricket World Cup a year back has hit the rock bottom and battering they received Down Under would not find enough words in dictionary to describe.
They simply looked clueless and miserable in Australia. The champions were expected put up a strong challenge but could never find their foot in the tour. They were battered in the Test series and their famed batting lineup could breach the 300 run mark only once. They were expected to put a strong challenge in the ODI Tri-series but their dismal performance continued and little did they do to justify their World Champion status. There was hardly anything to talk about their performance except the epic run chase against Sri Lanka where they chased 321 within 37 overs at the fag-end of the tour. They dropped to such a level that they actually had to depend on Australia to make it to the finals. But Australia disappointed and lost against Sri Lanka which saw the Lankans move into the finals and India faced an early exit.
If on field disaster was not enough for them, the tour saw some serious off field complications as well. A rift emerged between two senior honchos of the team Dhoni and Sehwag for power struggle, blaming each in the open and more.
India had bad tours in the past as well but showed enough resiliencies to bounce back and show the world that they are not some cheap nut. But this time that they were not able to do so and have been failing miserably in their advent.
Well now India is the current World Champion and has the finest players in their side and have it in them to intimidate any attack in the world. But that conviction somehow lacked in their ongoing tour in Down Under and the team crumbled almost in all the matches.
There might be end number of reasons for this catastrophic performance and let us just try and round on as to what went wrong for the Men-In-Blue during the Australian summer.
Firstly, the rift at the top with two senior pros struck in a battle of ‘power struggle’ saw the team go haywire. A team needs to work as a unit to have better results. But here was a team that wasn’t gelling well and everyone was busy pulling one another down. So naturally when individual starts placing his motive ahead of the team, the team is bound to fail. Same was the case here. Virender Sehwag and MS Dhoni had their own endeavors to accomplish and their off field comments did no good to the cause.
Secondly, Dhoni rotation policy shocked everyone and even the former players could not help but label it as illogical and utter nonsense. Resting players like Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir did no good to already sagging fortune of India Down Under. Eyebrows were raised on Dhoni’s intentions of favouring Suresh Raina, who was out of form, on the pretext of rotational policy. Questions were asked on why was the rotation policy only applicable to three players. It should have been applies to others also. Having this policy for three players defied logic. These kinds of experiment finds favour in a team which is performing. But here we had a team battered and bruised all over with none of the players in form. It only added to insecurity and factionalism in Team India.
Thirdly, it seems a sense of insecurity has set in within the team. The players are feeling completely clueless and are not quite sure of their fate in the team. They are not sure as to what might happen to them tomorrow. That pressure of uncertainty is playing big time on their mind and the players have become extra conscious to perform well under the conditions which has affected their normal game and has led to the team’s downfall.
Fourthly, the execution of the team has been way below par. The team never did have that kind of conviction on the ground and could never actually complement each other during the course of the entire series. India, who always had a very famous batting line up, failed miserably and could not set their feet in Australia. India had been in Australia for last two months and still failed. The bowlers also were scattered and on most occasions were hit all over at will. To sum it up, it looked like some amateurs taking on a seasoned team.
Fifthly, Captain Cool Dhoni also erred in his decision making with the team and also on field. He was bound to make mistakes because for a man who is under fire and has so much at stake is certain to crumble under pressure. He had the whole country, media, ex-players baying for his blood and he went extra defensive in his approach to perform well, which worked against the team and they paid price for it.
Well Indian Team is looking down the barrel and going by the current scenario it does not look that they would not emerge out of this ignominy if the head honchos of the team do not settle out their differences and look beyond fulfilling their personal dreams for the benefit of the team, or else it would not take much time to Men-In-Blue to bleed blue in literal terms.
By Samikshan Dutta Choudhury
