|
When was the last time an Indian cricket team did
well when anointed with the 'favourites' tag?
Chances are, most of us won't remember.
Unfortunately for cricket-lovers across the land,
the ongoing series in the Caribbean hasn't been an
exception to one of Indian cricket's most enduring
rules.
Rahul Dravid's team, which at different points in
the recent past has been described as 'dynamic',
'flexible' and 'vibrant', was the overwhelming and
undisputed favourite when it landed in the West
Indies. A comprehensive win in the one-day series
was considered a formality, a triumph in the Test
series a long-overdue imminent reality. But with
five days left for the completion of the tour, it
has to be conceded that things haven't exactly gone
according to plan. The one-day series was lost and
the first three Tests drawn. Brian Lara's captaincy
has been praised by almost everyone who has seen
him marshalling his inexperienced troops, while
Rahul Dravid's team has, to put it mildly,
struggled.
Was it a case of complacency, or was it simply a
case of too much cricket? One suspects that the
answer lies somewhere between the two.
Only the most passionate supporter of Indian
cricket would continue to claim that the scoreline
at the end of the third one-day international could
have been 3-0 in his team's favour instead of being
1-2 in the West Indies' favour as turned out to be
the case. While it is true that India could have
won the second and third matches with a little bit
of luck, it is also a fact that their batting was
inconsistent, the bowling poor and the fielding
mediocre. The team did not look like the outfit
that had annihilated Pakistan and England in
consecutive one-day series in the calendar year of
2006.
Cricketers and fans the world over are clamouring
for a reduction in the amount of matches being
played, and the performances of some of the Indian
cricketers certainly indicate that they would
heartily endorse this view. Yuvraj Singh and Irfan
Pathan, two of India's best performers of the
2005-06 season, have had a harrowing time on the
tour so far, and the latter is not even an
automatic selection in the frontline Indian Test
XI. It's been a depressing slide for the talented
all-rounder. Yuvraj, who not very long ago was
scoring tons of runs (literally!), has been plagued
by a run of poor scores. What these players need
more than anything else is the three Rs - rest,
relaxation and recreation - rather than the three
Ds - discipline, dedication and determination.
The Indian team has of course given a much better
account of itself in the Test series. Dravid and
Chappell have reason to believe that God was a West
Indian, for they would have surely won the second
Test at St. Lucia had rain not washed away an
entire day's play. But then, they were guilty of
not winning the very first Test when the
opportunity presented itself. That the last three
West Indian wickets batted for as many as 21 overs
is a damning fact that will haunt the inexperienced
bowlers in the Indian line-up for a long time.
It was also baffling why the Indians did not
display a greater degree of belligerence in the
fourth innings of the third Test when all the
batsmen, VVS Laxman included, have spent a lot of
time in the middle. History wasn't on India's side,
for not many teams have reached a target of 392 in
88 overs on the last day of a Test match. But they
could have given it their best shot and jolted the
confidence of their opponents, who had dominated
the first four days of the game. A more assertive
approach was expected from the Dravid-Chappell
combine, whose dynamism has come in for a lot of
praise in the not-too-distant past.
All this will be forgotten if the Indians get their
act together at Kingston's Sabina Park and end up
doing what they haven't done on West Indian soil
since 1971. Talent, they have in plenty, but do
they have any petrol left in the tank?
|