Team India shouldn’t head back to square one
I have no compunc- tions about the team losing; after all, that is the nature of sport, one team must lose. But it is the nature of surren- der which was galling.
heteshwar Pujara winning the Emerging Player of the Year from the ICC this week has been some solace after the walloping handed out by the South Africans to India in the ODIs.
Whether this is the spur the team needs to improve on its form on the tour remains to be seen.
India’s performance in the ODIs was as baffling as it was disappointing. I have no compunctions about the team losing; after all, that is the nature of sport, one team must lose. But it is the nature of surrender which was galling. After the string of series wins through the year, who would have thought that the results would be so adverse The defeats were abject.
The first match was lost by 140 runs, the second by 134. These are whopping margins in one-day cricket by any yardstick. In the third match too South Africa, after a sputtering start, had scored in excess of 300 and the pressure was entirely on India before the rains came down.
When M.S. Dhoni said that his team could have chased this score on a flat Centurion pitch he was clearly doing this for the consumption of fans back home, not with any degree of conviction. The bald truth is that India had been outplayed in every match in every department of the game.
Why and how this happened to the number 1 ranked ODI team in the world is the question Indian supporters are legitimately asking. Was the itinerary ill-conceived (no warm-up matches before the ODI series) or is the team still no good playing overseas? There is no obvious answer. I reckon it was a combination of a few factors of which the two mentioned above were the most significant. If I have to offer some defence for the Indian team’s performance, it would be by drawing a parallel with England’s utter failure against Australia (as yet) in the ongoing Ashes series.
England have lost the first two Tests so badly that they hardly looked the team which had won the previous series between the two teams barely six months back. Indeed, the last time they played in Australia, England had won impressively. Now they appear completely shell-shocked and mediocre — in batting, bowling and fielding.
This shows that most teams thrive in home conditions and struggle overseas. The era of absolute domination — like the West Indies enjoyed in the 1970s and 80s and Australia from 1990 to 2005 — is over. Even South Africa, who have been the most consistent side in international cricket in the past 4-5 years, have had setbacks recently against Pakistan, both in Tests and ODIs.
Clearly, the gap between teams in the top cluster in the game — India, England, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — is very narrow. Fortunes swing one way or the other, depending on whether they are playing matches at home or away.
In one sense, this is good for the fan. Upsets and uncertainties add to the glory of sport. And yet, from a team’s point of view, such ups and downs reflect that it has not settled into a groove that makes for consistency.
India appeared to have crossed the obstacle with some terrific performances in 2013 before the current tour. Winning the Champions Trophy — as well as five other ODI series — and whitewashing Australia 4-0 in the Test series suggested that the team was on an upward spiral that might be difficult to arrest easily anywhere.
Defeat to South Africa in the ODI series, therefore, is a big let-down and unless the performances improve dramatically in the two Tests, India might find themselves in the same situation they were in at the start of this year.
Which means back to square one. An unedifying thought for M.S. Dhoni surely.
