In a country so obsessed with cricket, where other sports are sort of neglected, where people take leave to watch an important match, where its cricketing board revolves around and only around money, power and hence corruption, once again its fans are upset over a 0-4 whitewash in tests against Australia. Giving just the due respect to the sport, and not over-indulging and wasting time analysing 11 people who get enough money irrespective of what they do in the field, just thought to jot down a few random thoughts.
1. A 0-4 whitewash was expected, but didn't expect the team to be like rats there. It's not the failure but the manner of the failure that irritates a fan. No team can win all their matches. But this time barring a few, none gave a fight at all. In a five day match, usually some session will belong to a team. Here we didn't see even one such session where India dominated. The effort to fight itself wasn't there from the majority, else how you could explain players like Kohli, Saha, Ashwin doing quite OK? As a layman, I didn't feel the Aussie bowling was unplayable. Rather it was shamelessness and spinelessness on the part of the Indians that they never bothered to even put up a fight.
2. Our batsmen have never been good against major foreign teams in their soil. They have never done well in sporty bouncy tracks. This has been happening ever since we started playing cricket. And what has been done so far? Doesn't the rich BCCI have enough money to prepare bouncy pitches in India of the like of Mohali and make players play Ranji trophy etc there and prepare them well? Of course they have. Then why not?
Well we Indian fans are also sort of responsible for the same. For many of us cricket is just about hitting every ball for fours and sixes; very few of us want to really see or believe in building partnerships, rotating strikes with singles etc. Crowd turns out to see big sixes. Bowlers' efforts are seldom appreciated. Other than a Kapil Dev we really don't have any bowler celebrity. And so what better way to please the crowd than to prepare flat pitches? Give the crowd what they want and mint money via APL, BPL, CPL, DPL etc...
After such a horrendous tour, to better the batting tigers' averages, to bring the crowd back, and to forget this kind of humiliation, just call in Bangladesh or Zimbabwe and plan a five match series in India, preparing pitches where ball drops in the leg and moves via the off, making batsman rotate in their crease. And our heroes hit double, triple centuries and once again become paper heroes, having excellent average scores! This eyewash has been going on for years now.
3. It's time that zonal-based selection of selectors need to be taken away. On what basis was Vinay Kumar selected other than Srikanth a southie is the selector? Same goes with Mithun. If Ranji trophy is looked into, why not even one player from Rajasthan, who were in excellent form, taken in the team? Why Irfan was left out? What about Ashok Dinda's performance this season? This is not the usual talk where after one batsmen fail, we normally ask why not the other. This is a genuine case of excellent form vs. poor form.
4. Unlike Australia, we go by big names and not the current form of the batsmen. In-form batsman has to be taken in playing 11 and an out-of-form star has to sit on the bench. Neither the captain nor the team management have guts to take these decisions. Rohit Sharma, in excellent form (by now might have gone) was not even considered for a single match even when stars where cutting a sorry figure. Then why was he and Rahane taken in the first place?
These points just bring out the rotten system in our cricket and also reminds us that there is no point in pointing fingers at a few players and getting out of the blame. The board should remember that the same fans who bring them money might desert them one day, and BCCI can become a story of riches to rag. It's high time that they start changing things from the very base - selectors, selection criteria, nepotism, preparing sporty wickets in India so on and on. Hope authorities open their eyes at least now, though it is too late.
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