Post Mortem of Indian Cricket Team

It is said in cricket that it is easy to pinpoint errors after the loss but difficult to judge before it starts. Actually if you had followed my blogsite I gave India very little chance of advancing to semifinals but they beat me on predictions by not even qualifying for the Super 8s.

As you all know the excitement of Cricket World Cup 2007 is just starting but unfortunately two of the most followed teams in the Indian subcontinent, India and Pakistan, are out of the tournament. So, I thought why not analyze the Indian team and see what really went wrong with our team.

First, here was our team:

Opening Batsmen- Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virendar Sehwag, Robin Uthappa

Middle Order- Rahul Dravid (Captain), Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Virendar Sehwag, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Dinesh Karthick

All Rounders- Irfan Pathan, Virender Sehwag, Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Wicket Keepers- Dinesh Karthick, Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Fast Bowlers- Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth

Spinners- Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh

Fielders- Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Dinesh Karthick

Note there are only fifteen players in the team but some players qualify for more than one position.

Opening Batsmen:
India's opening batsmen are the World's best; there are no two ways about it. You won't get any better. On one hand you have the best ODI batsman Sachin with 40 tons, on other hand you have Ganguly who is arguably second best ODI batsman in the world. Then Sehwag on his day is the most destructive ODI batsman and Uthappa is what Sehwag was six years ago.

In simple words this is the best and it doesn't get bigger than this in terms of statistics but on field we had so many deficiencies even in our best part of the game. Moreover cricket is not about what used to be, it's about what is now. We found that Sachin was batting in middle order, which he has not done in recent past or leading in to WC. Then did why our captain ask him to play in the middle order?

Ganguly was in form but not as we know him. Uthappa came a cropper, which was expected as he was a youngster with hardly 3 or 4 matches under his belt. This again raises the question, why did the selection team pick such a youngster for a major tournament like WC and why did Dravid play Uthappa ahead of an all-rounder like Pathan?

I think we just had too many openers unnecessarily for WC. We could have picked someone like Kaif or Raina ahead of Uthappa for the simple reason they have played more.

Middle Order:
The middle order also did not come that good. In the game against Bangladesh, once Ganguly got out, others failed to chip in and India bundled out like a pack of cards which was sorry to see for an Indian cricket fan.

Also the running between wickets was very poor, anyone watching cricket with bit of sense could say that we should have picked at least one of the two - Kaif or Raina, which would have improved our fielding and running between wickets a lot. By putting Sachin in middle order we further weakened our middle order.

Except Dravid, there was no experienced solid middle order batsman who could wage a battle against strong teams (it was a different matter we did not even need to face them). Players like Dhoni, Yuvraj, Sehwag or even Sachin for that matter should understand what type of responsibility is required to play in middle order.

All Rounders:
Did we have anyone called as all-rounder? Oh, we never did for like the past 10 years and all we had at most were batsman like Sachin, Jadeja, Sehwag, Ganguly, Yuvraj, etc trying to fill in that 5th bowler slot.

Still they did the needful with Sehwag being the best among them for his ability to bowl at death. Who can forget his impeccable bowling against South Africa at ICC Champions trophy 2002?

Now there was one guy touted as the next Kapil Dev and still possess excellent average in both bowling and batting. Then why wasn't he used in this WC? Yes I am talking about Irfan Pathan. Yes of course his form was not that good but there is classic saying in cricket that "Form is temporary, Class is permanent".

Pathan has lots of class in him. He could have commanded a place in the team ahead of Uthappa in terms of his batting alone. It was sorry to see Dravid backing a couch potato but not Pathan.

Wicket Keepers:
This could a quiz question for the WC 2007. Which was the only team in the WC that had two specialist keepers? (I know the Aussies have two but that's a cover for Gilchrist who wanted a two or three match rest.)

Answer: India. Correct answer! And you win cash prize of 1 Lakh rupees and free ticket to India vs Sri Lanka match in the WC 2007.

Seriously, why did we need two keepers - because Mr. Dravid doesn't need to keep for even one match? Being captain, couldn't he even do this small thing? If at all Dhoni would have got injured then Karthick could have reached Caribbean in 3-4 days, which meant losing one match that could have been filled in by Dravid.

Thus this points to a question why do we need two keepers? In simple words Mr. Dravid likes Dinesh Karthick. Why this favoritism? Also Dhoni needs to work on his keeping more than giving advertisements. His keeping lacks some general technique and he is covering up with his batting which is not good.

We could have had both Raina and Kaif instead of Karthick and Uthappa in which case we would have had youth with sufficient experience for WC. The problem with Dinesh Karthick and Uthappa was that they had no match experience leading into such a big tournament like WC.

Fast Bowlers:
I feel this set of fast bowlers were the best India has ever had in world cricket in the past 15 years. I have followed the Indian cricket team for the past fifteen years and seriously it's only of late that I can proudly say that we have great fast bowlers.

On one hand we have the great upcoming swing bowler Pathan, then we have Zaheer who with his experience is damn good. And now I want to dig a little on Indian media.

The Indian media highlights Zaheer's WC 2003 experience as his performance in the finals, it's another matter that none of them bowled well that day and only he gets highlighted. But why, Media, do you forget he was India's highest wicket taker in WC 2003 and he was the best in the show overall.

I call it ridiculous. Judge him by overall performance and not just one match. Also Munaf Patel is good upcoming fast bowler along with Sreesanth. Ajit Agarkar with his so called all rounding abilities still gets to find a place in the team though I seriously don't know when he will ever make it permanent.

Agarkar always comes a cropper when he is put under even a little amount of pressure. This means he should remain a standby pacer at most rather than a frontline. Also I would have had both Sreesanth and Pathan ahead of Agarkar because he just lacks basics in bowling under pressure. He has been around for nearly 10 years now and still is 2nd or 3rd fast bowler and rather than the leading paceman.

Spinners:
Our spinners Anil Kumble and Harbhajan were world class, one with so much experience behind his name that he has done it all seen it all and another a really established spinner. But that was only on paper.

Anil Kumble should have retired from ODI cricket 4 years ago along with his compatriot Srinath in the last WC. He obviously was a passenger in the team and blocked the place for Ramesh Powar who could have made a world of difference to this already very heavy headed team.

Fielders:
Everyone knows it, we have the worst fielding set in the world, maybe along with Pakistan. Then of late we had a good set with people like Kaif, Yuvraj and Raina.

Only one of those was selected and he was also not 100% fit. Other two were dropped for I don't know what reasons. Dropping Raina is a bit understandable as he is a youngster and needs some time in Ranji trophy to regroup but I would have had Kaif in my team any day.

People talk about his batting ability but what about his running between wickets, runs saved and his continuous encouragement? Please give me a break with your selection, you couldn't seriously have told him to go back and correct your technique in Ranjis. He has been around for more than 7 years so that his strengths and weaknesses are well known.

And who did not have weaknesses? Everyone has them. If you were to believe me, even Sachin did. Sachin cannot score boundaries when the score is 85-100 even when he has 40 tons behind his name and it's a fact.

With all this I would have had Kaif for Dinesh Karthick any day. Why can't people remember it was Kaif who instigated the collapse of England vs India in that WC 2003 match. Who knows, if that run out would have been affected England could have won that match and our whole WC 2003 could have been different?

Overall:
Our team was very good on paper and would have won WC 3 times in a row but unfortunately this cricket WC was not played on paper. Instead it was played on something called a cricket field, which required things like strategy, captaincy, fielding, running between wickets, pressure, team skills, etc to name a few.

And all that counts for 50% and skill set counts for 50%. With our strong skill set even if we had got 50/50, our other abstract factors were so bad that we just were too exposed in this WC.

The ideal team if our coach and captain had used more mind than heart was:

Dravid ©
Sachin
Ganguly
Yuvraj
Suresh Raina
Sehwag
Kaif
Dhoni (wk)
Pathan
Powar
Harbhajan
Zaheer
Agarkar
Munaf
Sreesanth

Well as they say there no ifs and buts in cricket, what happened is the past and we should look towards the future. Bad luck for both Dravid and Chappell but there was something much more than luck that was wrong with them.