Unacceptable

I’ve always considered myself a balanced cricket fan. Days like yesterday though make me want to reconsider. There will be times in sport where the team you support get beaten. This you accept as part of the sport and move on. What I cannot accept as a cricket fan is when your team puts up a dispirited, spineless & utterly uninterested performance. It’s just not done.

It seems eons away, but when India started out yesterday they were still in the driver’s seat. Yes they collapsed on day 2, but they had still managed to get themselves a decent lead. They had already accounted for Alistair Cook’s wicket before the close of play on day 2. A couple of early blows on day 3 &India would be favourites to walk away with a win. What transpired was comical.

Sreesanth who had been by far and away the best Indian bowler in the first innings did not open. Instead Dhoni opted for Sharma & Praveen Kumar. Mistake 1 – from then there was no turning back. Harbhajan Singh who is supposedly a specialist bowler hardly bowled. Anyone who has watched Harbhajan over the last few months will know that his wicket taking skills have almost disappeared. Yet his presence in the side is apparently set in stone. Only the foolish will believe that whatever injury he was supposed to have been ailing from yesterday somehow came in the way of him taking a bucketful of wickets. It’s about time Harbhajan goes back and works on his bowling. India cannot afford to carry him any longer.

Almost 30 % of all the runs Ian Bell scored came in the third man region. Despite this Dhoni refused to put a third man in place. I can understand not having a third man early on when the batsman is still trying to find his feet and you want to have as many fielders in attacking positions as possible. But with Bell settling down and looking in cruise control, would it have not made more sense to try and prevent him from getting a boundary every time the ball went to third man?

Yes, captains should try and be attacking. The only way to win matches is to take wickets and therefore it is upto the captain to ensure that his strategies are based around this. However, every now and then you get into situations where defence is essential and can at times also prove to be the best form of attack. You cannot allow a team to score 400 runs in one day. Think back a couple of years and the very same Dhoni brought about an Australian collapse at Mohali by getting his fast bowlers to bowl outside the off stump with a packed offside field. That strategy was justified not just because of the result that transpired but because the situation at the time Dhoni used this strategy demanded that India go on the defensive. Runs were a premium and the best thing to do then was to try and make them as hard to come by as possible.

The entire Bell incident also defied common sense. The spirit of the game is one of those clichéd phrases that really make absolutely no sense in today’s world. What was even more baffling was that even if Dhoni had upheld his appeal, I fail to understand how he was breaching the spirit of the game. Bell made a mistake and he paid the consequences. It was as simple as that. The rules of the came clearly state that as long as the ball has not been declared dead by the umpire, the game is still live. Bell had no business assuming that he ball had gone for four. Yes, it would have been an unfortunate way of getting out but we have rules for a reason.

The final blunder on a day that had nothing else worth mentioning from an Indian point of view was the way Dhoni used the second new ball. This was a wicket that had almost all the commentators calling it a ‘new ball wicket’. The only time the bowlers looked threatening was when they had a new ball in their hand. The second new ball was no different. Praveen got swing and a couple of wickets to boot. Things were bad even then but getting a few more wickets could have given India some chance. But Dhoni decided after just 14 overs that he had had enough. Yuvraj Singh was brought on to bowl his left arm dibbly dobblys and that capped what was one of the most forgettable days in recent Indian cricket history.

It is almost impossible for India to come back into this game now. What is most disappointing, however, is the manner in which this game is likely to be lost. India & Dhoni have a lot of soul searching to do and if they do not find answers quickly this series is likely to become even more embarrassing before it is over.