Sehwag, Gambhir's smug overconfidence exposed; Team India needs to wake up and smell the coffee
When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly
search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat – Pat Riley, respected basketball player and coach and now President of Miami Heat.
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Riley was preaching from his years of experience as a basketball player
and coach, but judging by the happenings over the last year or so, more
so in the last one month, the Indian cricket fans wouldn’t be wrong if
they thought his words above were directed at Team India. The dust from
the overseas humiliations in England and Australia had barely settled
when senior members of the Indian cricket team were unabashedly
belittling the two series losses and proudly boasting of their
impressive home record.
“
We also won 2-0 (at home against Australia in 2010),” interrupted Virender Sehwag,
when a journalist began to question him about the back-to-back
whitewashes following India’s defeat at the Adelaide Test, before going
on to blame Father Time for their poor performance. “
The time is not
good for Indian team, for individuals, so maybe that's why we are not
scoring runs. The moment the time changes, the next year we will see, or
in the coming series, we will see our top order giving starts and
middle-order coming in and score big hundreds. It happens.”
Only, it didn’t happen. Neither did the top order provide starts, nor did the middle-order score big hundreds.
Sehwag’s fellow opener, Gautam Gambhir, also toed the same line as his Delhi teammate.
“…When we go overseas, every country prepares wickets to their own strengths,” he had said at Adelaide.
“So once the other teams come home we need to prepare tracks to our
advantage as well…If we can prepare rank turners, that’s where their
technique and their temperament will be tested…That’s where we would get
to know whether they are mentally strong. That’s where they will be
tested, and we’ll see how good they are against spin bowling.”
Only, the visiting England team’s temperament and mental strength
against the dreaded Indian spin attack was superb. This, after not being
put up against any specialist spinners in two out of their three
practice matches.
Captain MS Dhoni wanted to take the toss out of the equation
after winning the Ahmedabad Test and demanded a pitch that turned from
Day One. In other words, he wanted the pitch to play to what he thought
was his team’s trump card and almost got the Eden Gardens curator fired
for not heeding to his demands. Bafflingly, this was after his team had
taken a 1-0 lead in the series on a not-so-much-of-a-rank-turner at
Ahmedabad. That match had been won by performances — from young
Cheteshwar Pujara, Sehwag and Pragyan Ojha
— and not the turf. But it did seem like Dhoni wanted the easy way out
for the rest of the series. He was joined in chorus by his teammate,
Virat Kohli, who found nothing wrong in asking for turning pitches and
used the tit-for-tat argument.
“
Why not (turning pitches)?
We were given flattest of tracks during practice matches in England and
Australia and then suddenly presented with a green top during the
Tests,” Kohli had said.
“During practice matches, we would face those 120 kmph bowlers. If they
wanted to be fair to us, they could have provided us with same kind of
tracks for practice matches, like what were used in Tests.”
Kohli then took the liberty of using England’s 0-3 whitewash by
Pakistan in the UAE as an example of their ineptness in playing spin. “
That
particular series, there wasn’t much turn on offer but England couldn’t
negotiate one quality spinner (Saeed Ajmal).They lost the battle in
their heads.”
Only this time, it was first in the head
that the battle was won by the Englishmen. England dug deep into the
reservoirs of mental strength and always had a man for the situation. In
Ahmedabad, even in adversity, there was captain Alastair Cook’s
composure that kept them from a bigger embarrassment. In Mumbai, it was
Cook’s silky strokeplay and extraordinary temperament, and the
talismanic Kevin Pietersen’s dazzling flamboyance in the first innings;
followed by the magic of Monty Panesar’s fingers in the second innings
that exploited the Wankhede pitch like never before. In Kolkata, Cook
defied the Indian bowlers even more and never broke a sweat, literally,
while in Nagpur, it was James Anderson’s swing on a pitch more suited
for a graveyard and a partnership between an out-of-form Jonathan Trott
and debutant Joe Root that came to their rescue.
On the other
hand, India can at best boast of Kohli and Dhoni’s gutsy partnership in
Nagpur that won India the majority of three sessions. What about the
rest of the 12 sessions?
England took their defeat in the first Test in their stride and turned
out confidently at the Wankhede — adding a second spinner in Panesar to
their bowling attack on Mumbai’s red soil. India, meanwhile, fielded
three spinners in what clearly appeared to be intimidation tactics than
trying to win the game.
The pitch has more twists and turns than a
roller coaster; now let’s see you maneuver Ravichandran Ashwin, Ojha and
Harbhajan Singh around it. Only, England did, and how!
The host broadcaster’s series advertisement chiding the English team was
brought off the air after the defeat in the second Test as the
Englishmen rubbed salt into the wound by beating India at their own game
— spin.
A humiliating 10-wicket loss wasn’t enough as Dhoni
stuck to his guns — and his pitch demands — for the third Test at
Kolkata and watched his team lose by seven wickets. Perhaps his logic
was right. You don’t want the toss to decide the outcome of the match
and would rather both teams have a shot at winning the match, than a
high-scoring draw. But the way the Indian team casually approached the
games was the worrying factor; the way Dhoni wanted the pitch to win the
match for his side was lamentable.
India needs to wake up and
smell the coffee. A lot has happened since the day they last held the
top spot in the ICC Test rankings: The Occupy Wall Street protest began
and ended, tyrannical Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was captured and
killed by his rebel countrymen, the world population crossed the seven
billion mark, Queen Elizabeth II marked her diamond jubilee, the “God”
particle was discovered, and India experienced the biggest mass
revolution since the independence struggle and the largest power outage
in world history, to name a few.
India need to realise that they
were the best Test team in the world more than 17 months ago; Sachin Tendulkar rescued them from sure defeat against England in Chennai more than four years ago; and the now retired duo of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman did so against Australia at Eden Gardens more than 11 years ago.
It is high time the Indian batsmen, in particular, realised that the
team’s ever-reliable middle-order is long gone, save for one veteran
soldier who is on the verge of calling it a day and probably incapable
of single-handedly digging the team out of the ditch.
One of
Dhoni's clichéd go-tos during media interactions after a loss is that
the seniors have to start taking the extra bit of responsibility and
ease the youngsters in. It is high time that Sehwag and Gambhir realise
that
they are the seniors Dhoni is talking about. The
duo need to back up their talk with performances and stop taking their
spot in the eleven for granted. Sehwag, in particular, will be one of
the senior most members in the side, even older than Dhoni, when
Tendulkar hangs up his boots. He needs to stop relying on divine intervention and riding on previous highs, and start performing like an experienced player.
Dhoni, as captain of the Indian team, must have long realised the boons
and banes that come with the job and must stop giving excuses like “
We tried our best and that’s what’s important”, “
the expectations are too high”
and this debacle was not as bad as that one, etc. A poor patch,
injuries to your best players, high expectations from fans and other
limitations are faced by captains around the world and Dhoni isn’t the
only one. It is up to him now how he leads this younger-getting side
through the much dreaded transition phase. And if Dhoni is not up for it
and wants to concentrate on his own performances, he should set his
pride aside and inform the selectors of the same.
Kohli, who knows that everyone expects him to step into Dhoni’s shoes, should stop blaming Lady Luck for losing matches
and refrain from relying on external factors to win them. His recent
comments and antics (remember the middle-fingered salute to Aussie
fans?) spell inexperience, which is a far cry from his performances such
as the hundreds at Nagpur and Adelaide under pressure, which make you
want to forget his boyish greenness.
Expectations from a team
which not so long ago was on the summit of the sport and won the World
Cup are definitely high, but what was most disappointing about the
latest setback was the lack of intent — physical, not verbal — from most
members of the side.
It’s a long, winding road back to the
top for India — one that is bound to be filled with numerous internal
and external obstacles along the way. The team needs some direction, the
right leadership, the proper attitude and most importantly,
self-motivation, if they are to reestablish their status as a world
beater in the next couple of years.
10-15 runs short,concedesEngland skipper Morgan
