04.09.07
All ’bout kirket
The Indian cricket team lacks 2 things: Killer Instinct and Self Belief.
Killer Instinct - Something totally totally lacking. We are an extremely kind, humane team. Specially in the middle overs when our bowlers are content to allow the batsmen to take their ones and twos and consolidate their innings and get ready to knock us out in the final stages. I’ve seen this happen for all the games. Someone like Harbhajan Singh is only intent on stemming runs and not making the break throughs. Opposed to Kumble who is always looking for a break. You can see that when Murali is bowling… he’s only looking for wickets because that interrupts the flow and reduces the runs. Is also an extremely positive way to play. Both our spinners and pace bowlers let us down in the middle overs. Having part time bowlers like Tendulkar, Ganguly and Sehwag just gives the game away. Pathan is a good bet, since he can both bowl and bat. It was very odd that he was tested in the batting order all over and succeeded and his bowling was also reasonably good, but he was never allowed to perform for the World Cup.
India plays as a team- (read: everyone plays when everyone else also plays J). Meaning, once the openers put up a good stand, everyone chips in. If we lose our opening partnership quickly, we falter.
Self Belief - Looks at the Australians - they always look like they’re winning. The body language is there, the batting is positive and they are always on the attack. India seems to be defending too often. And we do a bad job specially with the terrible fielding.
The most important thing is to be positive, look like winning, want to win and then win.
Cricket isn’t about technique and how much you play as per the cricketing text book. Cricket is about winning. Teams that had greatness in the last 10 years 10000 plus players India(tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid), West Indies (Lara), Pakistan(Inzimam) have not been the best teams. West Indies have been total failures. Pakistan totally unpredictable- a lot of failure, with brief flashes of wins. Teams that did not have any legends or icons, teams that were not dependent on the success of one person, teams that did not rally around one individual, teams who were just that .. TEAMS … and played as a team actually WON.
Australia is a very good example of that. So also South Africa. These are TEAMS. India needs to have a team and be a team. We need to move from TEAM Tendulkar to TEAM INDIA.
In many ways one good thing about the current team is that we are not ‘Tendulkar dependent’. The team can now play even if Tendulkar is out quickly. So we do not falter or give up in case Tendulkar fails to fire. I think the main reason for this is that Tendulkar has failed to fire, a little too often and the team has started getting used to not expecting too much from the little master. One big issue with the way Tendulkar plays is that when he’s not dominating the bowling he always fails. All innings where Tendular has taken 25 balls to score 5 runs he’s totally failed to move ahead. He is an attacking batsman by nature and he should attack from the beginning and totally dominate the bowling. He should be allowed to go there and attack right from the beginning. It’s a bad idea to bring in Tendulkar at the bottom of the innings (even No 4 for him is the bottom). He is someone who can last the entire 50 overs and should open.
We also should start dropping players when they do not perform. What’s the logic in having Sehwag hanging around till he discovers form? Maybe he should hang around in the domestic circuit so that we can try some other player and develop a bench rather than persist with a person who is out of form. It’s fine that he played well in the World Cup but you don’t have someone around for a year so he can just play a few matches. Cricket isn’t just about the World Cup, every match matters and this is another thing that is wrong with India. We take the World Cup seriously and not the other matches? Ganguly is the poster boy for ‘the dropping’. He came back big time, since he had no option. We need to send this message across, failure is not an option. Only if you play can you stay.
Nothing really beats the will to win. You can win if you want to win. Losing is not an option. Mark Waugh put it very correctly. Teams like England, Australia, NZ play to win. Bangaldesh winning is 100% will. Sub continent players play for individual glory. No wonder we have 3 cricketers in our team in the 10000 Plus runs category .. and we still lose to lesser teams.
What do we need to do?
- Drop players who do not play.
- Have 5 bowlers. Teach the bowlers to bat, rather than the batsmen to bowl. Bowling is a lot more complicated that swinging the bat.
- Improve on the fielding.
- Develop bench strength
- Have media channels go slow on the analysis. It’s really amazing how even one loss is taken so seriously. Enjoy good cricket.
