Do we criticise our cricketers too much? The question gains currency in the wake of Team England who usurped India as the top cats in the Test cricket alley only to be whitewashed by Pakistan in the Emirates.

Indian players faced the acerbity of critics far more when they lost their premier Test status in England last summer, the English apparently experiencing a less furious reaction from their fans.
Kevin Pietersen has a different tale to tell.

He is boasting that he has developed ‘a very, very thick skin’ in order to deal with criticism and it simply bounces off him now.

It is interesting that he says he has mentally switched off criticism and that he is deliberately ignoring all critics outside the England team while at the same time admitting that he used to court adulation and took criticism hard early in his career. This is a mature point of view to be expected from a cricketer past the age of 30.

Indian cricketers would love to believe that they don’t read newspapers and that they have no idea of how critical articles have been of their performances when their form dips considerably, as it has lately. But the moment a critic writes a word against them their antenna would be up.

I am told this is because their fans would have notified them of anything adverse appearing in the media. Be that as it may, the fact remains that our players take a lot more stick when they fail.

Indian cricketers also like to point out that while most writers are virtual cheerleaders of their national squads, especially in England and Australia, their own countrymen tend to judge them too harshly.

Dhoni’s team has had to face up to this more than any Indian team in history but then none of them was the world’s top ranked Test side. The current Indian team is being judged even more harshly because it had scaled the heights and whetted the expectations of a billion and more.

The Indian batsmen’s inability to handle the moving ball has been their bane. But then much the same could be said of the English batsmen’s incapacity to deal with the turning ball in West Asia.

One bowler’s doosras proved so unsettling that England were reduced to putty. Never mind if his action is not the cleanest in the world, the fact remains Saeed Ajmal bamboozled the top ranked Test side into a tame 3-0 surrender.

The point is Team India were expected to perform to higher standards if only because of super expectations, much as Brazilian soccer side is expected to perform to the highest benchmarks.

The Indian cricket fan brings a passion to the following that is difficult to disown at times of poor performance even as it is a matter of extreme pride at times of peak performance.

It cuts both ways.Dhoni & company have been under the scanner ever since the right to hold up the Test mace was lost in the England series.

The scrutiny is certain to be much more now that news reports are emerging of the kind of unhappiness a vague rotation policy that is being followed as a formula laid down by unnamed persons has been causing in the team.

Disharmony is the last thing the team needed on tour, which has come now to pose a further problem for our beleaguered captain and coach.

A captain should expect to be slammed for declining team performance even if he know as much as everyone else does about how much harder it is to for a team to bounce back when on tour.

Having endured much criticism without losing his candour, Dhoni is still struggling to come to terms with the fact that at the end of the day he has to put up his hand since he is the one in charge. Maybe, all the criticism aimed at him is justified after all.