It was a repeat of last’s years performance for Indian in the T20 World cup, It was an action replay in fact. It was indeed a shameful performance. I believe following are the key reasons for the debacle
1.Most important, Dhoni’s captaincy
2.IPL Fatigue , lack of Commitment and complacency
3.Bad team selection
4.Poor Performances from Zaheer, Yuvraj and Jadeja
5.Inability to face bouncers
Let me start with talking about Dhoni’s captaincy. I felt the decision he took was exactly opposite to what was required to win a match. He was stubborn in his decisions. A sense of arrogance could be felt as well. Dhoni’s mistakes can be listed as below
A. Team Selection – On a Fast Bouncy pitch you play with two seamers and innumerable part spinners. Just three Specialist bowlers in Zaheer, Nehra and Bhajji. This was big mistake. If this was not enough, a crime was committed by picking the same team for the next game on the same pitch. On a fast track such a Barbados, Vinay kumar was left out
B. Decision to Bowl for the second consecutive time. Until the Match against West indies, 4 out of 5 matches in super eight were won by team batting first.
C.The reason given to bowl first on a Barbados pitch was to take advantage of the moisture in the pitch. Whom do you bring in to bowl the first over? Its Harbajan singh. No doubt he did a wonderful job at that. But on a Slow St Lucia pitch Bhajji is not opening the bowling , but its Nehra. Baffling ….
D. Raveendra Jadeja does need a special mention. No doubt Jadeja was and is an integral part of ODI and T20 National team. After conceding 36 Runs in two overs, was selected to play the second match as well. Nothing but ridiculous.
Pity Jadeja had a bad day on office, but he should not have played the second game at all
IPL Fatigue : In my Last year’s article I had quoted Vishwanathan Anand who had said, To win a tournament you first need to be eagerly looking forward to play it. After 45 Days of rigorous cricket i can bet, all the players would have preferred to give the tournament a miss if given a chance. After 45 days of intense non stop cricket, this was a tournament where they are not accountable to anyone and hence that intensity dropped.
Bad team selection : How else would you attribute the selection of Piyush chawla above Pragyan Ojha or an Amit Mishra? What did M Vijay do that Robin Uttappa did not? Honestly I believe guys like Yusuf Pathan, Rohit sharma are quite contend with their IPL performances.
Bad performance from some of key players Zaheer in particular, especially if you are only one of the three specialist bowlers. Zaheer was horrible and I think he should stop playing T20 cricket to keep his good works in ODIs and Tests. Else he is going to go the Ishant way. He keeps bowling just good length deliveries and occasional Yorkers at the death. Where are the Bouncers gone? Pity a guy like Pollard and Bravo can bowl unplayable bouncers, but zaheer’s and Nehra’s deliveries are not rising above knee length. Yuvraj, Is just concentrating on building in belly. Whats surprising is that Fielding has been below par
Inability to play bouncers was only one of the reasons for the T20 debacle. Still we could have won that game against West indies. It was a big shame to see Gambhir struggle against short pitched stuff. Our catching and Fielding lacked intensity
Having poured all my grievances out, I still believe nothings lost yet. We still are the Number 1 team in test and No2 team in ODI. Both of these achieved under Dhoni's captaincy. So, its only fair to give them some rest and see them bounce back like they did is last few seasons
Top performance for India in this tournament were Raina and Harbajan. Nehra to some extend and sadly no one else. IT was a collective failure. Suresh Raina is soon becoming one of the most reliable players for india. He has surely matured as a complete cricketer. His hardwork is clearly visible in his performace on the field
Hoping to see some Test Matches live though. Just tired of Watching T20s.
Happy Cricketing
