Downtime............

They say every good thing has to come to an end and this Indian cricket team is no exception to it. An inspired West Indies team ended Indian cricket teams honeymoon by beating them 4-1 in just concluded one day series. Cricket is a game played in the minds and this time the Indian think tank had no answers to challenges put up by a mastermind call Brian Charles Lara.
A Windies tour has never been good for Indian team since the great Sunil Gavaskar retired but this time expectations were higher than ever before. This same Indian team had beaten Sri-Lanka, England at home, had ended South Africa's winning run in one-dayers and had beaten Pakistan in Pakistan. After all this triumph nobody would have even thought that West Indies will put any challenge to this almighty Indian line up.
It turned out to be most terrible display of cricket by talented Indian cricket team in recent history but I think West Indies never got the due praise for their success. It was not just a 4-1 one day series win; it was an insult of the greatest chasing team in the history of one day cricket. They were made to suffer back to back defeats while chasing and were made to look stupid when they were trying to post a good total. I think West Indies did their home work correctly and was rewarded for their hard work and sincere efforts.

Here are some key aspects that changed the face of the series.

1. Complacency: - India started the series as favorite’s and was a bit complacent. West Indies on the other hand had a new skipper in the form of Brian Lara (A courageous decision made by a brave cricket board. No cricket board has ever reelected somebody as captain at the age of 37) and had won a one day series 4-1 against the Zimbabwe. And still were found preparing very hard for this tour. The energy of the guys was amazing. Indians looked tired, loose, out of socks. Still nobody thought that West Indies stood any chance. This was a first mistake. Indian team management should know that India have even failed to beat poor Zimbabwe side on their own turf. They are poor, susceptible and venerable when they are asked to play on foreign land. Even the best of Indian teams in past 20 years have failed to do well abroad. But management was not in a mood to consider all these things while making their decisions.

2. Team Selection: - The first sign of poor history reading was shown by the team selected for the tour. Playing abroad needs experience and it was the same thing that Indian team lagged. Their persistence to leave out players like Ganguly, Laxman, Kumble and Zaheer did a lot of harm. Amongst the people named above, I thought Laxman should have been included in the team. I can agree that Laxman is not great when it comes to running between the wickets and fielding. But he is a class batsman who has scored runs against all oppositions. His slow but confident innings would have been enough to get winning totals for us in West Indies on those slow pitches.
Another brain masterpiece was shown by Kiran More and his men when they dropped the only inform Indian bowler Ajit Agarkar for test matches and to make matters worse they declared this in the middle of One Day series. This would have surely given great confidence to that poor chap. Justification given to drop him was sick to say the least.He (Mr. Kiran More) said “yes, we are happy that he is back in form. We are really happy for him but given his past record we thought that he is not good for test matches.” Wow! What an answer. Sometimes I wonder from where they find such silly answers. I guess if Hitler was around he would have been proud of this selection committee.

3. Mr. Coach: - The revolution caught fire by Coach Greg Chappell’s comments. He made the famous mistake again. He underestimated the Lions and made comments against a side that is known to bounce back when are not given due respect. Best example of that was in 1996 world cup when they suffered a defeat at the hands of Kenya and then bounced back to beat favorites South Africa, again thanks to one man named Brian Charles Lara. He has been the leader of all the fight-backs and I as a cricket fan, have witnessed some outstanding innings from him when his team has looked down and out, inspiring others to perform at their level best.

4. Utility Cricketers: - This time Windies side was not as poor as everybody thought. Any good one day team has good all-rounders and this time they had a bunch of them. Bravo, Smith, Gayle, Samuels and Bradshaw. Their batting actually looked like a typical South African batting line up with lots of all-rounder’s starting as early as no 5 in the batting lineup. They are called utility cricketers now days and make a difference between average and good side. We need not go anywhere to exemplify this law. The reason for the Indian team’s recent success is these utility players. Players like Pathan, Dhoni, Kaif, Raina, Powar, Agarkar and Sehwag. The term specialist batsman or bowler doesn’t hold any significance in One day cricket now. What matters is ability of players to adapt to conditions and their ability to contribute in each facet of game. This time Indian utility players didn’t click while Windies players did. Dhoni and Pathan couldn’t live up to expectation and they were found wanting in terms of adaptability and responsibility. They were not ready to curve their natural instincts and play according to situations. One major change was inability to surprise opposition team with changes. Dravid never gave ball to Sehwag until final match, Powar and Agarkar never got promotions in the batting line up to show their talent with bat. There was no new batsman promoted up the order. For that matter even tried and tested hero’s like Dhoni never got a chance to play long innings by batting up the order. Only Pathan and Raina played at no 3 which is the most important batting position and most of the batting line up remained same throughout the tournament. This meant that opposition always knew what they had to do and were not made to think and change their plan. Shift of opposition team from plan A to B or C is sign of them going on defensive and means that you can still continue your plan A and dictate terms to them. This never happened in five matches.

5. Pitches: - Another key aspect in this series was the 22 yard strips. Lara’s experience helped him a lot here. He went back to basic’s and realized that Indian batsman like to play on the up (on the rise) and are at their best when they get a pitch where they can drive easily. So he asked curators to make pitches slow and low. But not slow and low as in India, they were a bit sluggish which meant there will be something for bowlers if they bowl it right areas and at the same time batsman cant go bang bang from word go because ball will hold on surface a bit longer than normal. They will have to settle in, bide some time at the center and then play their shots. But even then they couldn’t play their forcing drives and elegant flicks because the bowl was coming slow from the surface. So we saw Sehwag, Kaif, Raina being caught at cover and extra cover region and saw Dhoni dragging balls on to the stumps. Plus West Indies bowlers pitched the ball just short of good length which meant for on the rise drives ball never came of the sweetest part of the bat. The shots were coming from upper part of the blade and hence never had power to clear infield and meant chip shots over cover and over the head of mid-wicket fielder were very difficult as were the pull shots in front of the wicket (favorite shots of Dhoni, Pathan and Yuvraj).
Slow pitches also meant that Windies batsman could play their favorite back foot forcing drives and cuts. It also meant that they had time to counter Pathan’s swing and could play Harbhajan and Powar from back foot after the ball spins.

So in short Windies team had done their analysis, had the design ready and most importantly they executed it even more brilliantly. Indian team on the other hand was not at par to the home team with respect to their thinking and planning. The seriousness of the preparations can be understood from the fact that India’s support staff went on leave before tour for a month. This meant they never had the analysis of Windies players ready. Salute to such Coach and team management. They are leading the team in right direction (downward direction).
I don’t write this just because team has lost the series; I write this because they never looked like winning. It is very disheartening to see such good team loose this way. Champions never do these mistakes and if some team does this mistake again and again then they are not Champions. I write this because history will say that the great success this Indian team has got is a fluke and I cannot agree with that at all. I write this because these are some mistakes if not corrected can cause a lot of damage to Indian cricket.