The Great Indian Debate: 2007 Cricket World Cup

A joke doing the rounds sums up our WC debacle:

Q. Why can’t Virgin sponsor the Indian cricket team?
A. Because they keep getting F***ed!

After a shameful exit from the WC, the Indian cricket team was splashed over the information media. All news channels, papers and the like were flooded with analyses, figures and then disclosures and animosity. Fans moved from ‘Let’s burn them up’ to ‘Sachin is a God and no one can challenge that, let alone a foreigner’ mood.

Some of the initial comments of the shocking performance were shocking on themselves!

1. There was tremendous pressure on the team – Hello! This is the Cricket World Cup! What else do you expect? What’s to note here is that it was an admission of a fact that we have known all along that we succumb to pressure and still lack the ‘killer instinct’. When the nation sends its team to the world cup, there will obviously be expectations and more so in a cricket-crazy country and more so when the team boasts of some of the top batsmen in the world who are revered not only by fans in India but by competitors in other teams. And this expectation is not new. It was there even when we won the World Cup in 1983 and it will be there whenever we play in the World Cup. They say that the actual test of swimming is not in the confines of a warmed, silent pool but in the roar of the mighty ocean waves. As long as we do not have the courage to battle it out with those waves, we can never hope to life the glory in our hands.

Another thing that comes to mind is why are we doing so poor in hockey then or even swimming or the in any other sport for that matter? There is no pressure there, isn’t it? So, are we saying that we do not perform when there is pressure and we do not perform when there is no pressure? I think there needs to be an ‘optimum pressure’ for the Indian teams to perform! Someone doing some research on it? J

2. “This was not the team I wanted.”, “The senior players acted like the Mafia.” – Why the hell are you there for then Mr. Chappell? And what the hell is the board for? If there were such obvious and potentially devastating tension in the team, why didn’t anyone know about it and if they knew, why didn’t anyone do something about it! From my experience in the corporate world I know that a good team leader needs to assess all risk factors and take steps to mitigate them before it’s too late. I guess, in the case of Team India, it had become too late. What is striking is that everyone, from Vengsarkar to Chappell to BCCI officials has disclosed some internal problems with the team and what’s surprising is that these people are the ones responsible for Indian cricket. If things were not smooth, it is they who are to blame. It is the responsibility of the selectors, the board and the coach to make sure that the team works as a team, that all differences are sorted out and that on the field, it is actually ‘Team India’ and not a combo of ‘Team Dravid’, ‘Team Sachin’ and the like. The Indian team has failed because the board, the coach and the selectors couldn’t find players who could be knit into a common cause. It is a failure of the leadership and not the players.