A sleepless night, a nightmare and a wake-up call

It has been about 48 hours and that is how long it took for me to stir out of the coma of disappointment, to be able to think and write about Cricket again. The game between India and England was to start at 4AM in New York and after a sleepless night, I experienced the most breathtaking 8 hours of Cricket and came off with a dehydrated body and pure disgust in my heart. It was only after hours of helpless zombie-walking, did India crawl back from the dead and managed to salvage an improbable tie. The victory that we all thought was certain never came. What came was a tie which really felt like victory after the slow-death we had experienced, and a wake-up call for the Indian Team as well as us fans.

Let me quickly get my favorite part out of the way so I can whine in peace. Sachin once again showed us what a true champion he is. I truly feel that Sachin has come to a stage in his career where he just doesn’t have a bad day. He could have a bad shot selection, or get a rare peach of a delivery, but you never really see him out there struggling to time and middle the ball. The man is just eternally in good knick it seems, and it is only a matter of the time he can spend in the middle. If he is there, he will score big with what seems like no risk at all. We witnessed batting that was serene, comforting, and just magical to watch. It made us all believe that as long as this man is here, India is well and truly on their way.

So much for that comforting thought, because it was shattered, violated, stomped upon and torn into tiny pieces of sadness by what followed. Indian bowlers showed us the insipid helplessness that makes you feel like you are sitting at the bedside of a patient, watching him die. Just sitting there and waiting for the machines to stop beeping, and the formalities to be concluded. I had already written about how toothless Indian fast bowling had come to be, and the come-from-behind victory against the Australians had me believing that it will be the slower version of the art that will compensate and come to our rescue. But what we witnessed on Sunday proves that if India has to go on to win this World Cup, we simply need to be playing every single match on a dustbowl! Pitches like Bengaluru that are flat without much bite are going to expose the absurdity that Indian bowling has become. It just seems that too many things have to fall into place for us to register a win. Win toss, bat first, no-swing early on, big 300 plus score, turning pitch, no dew and the list goes on. 

India’s bowling troubles, both with the front-liners and what adds up to be our fifth bowler option, were quite evident to me and consequently I already had my expectations adjusted beforehand. But what really left me distressed was the intent-less and painfully-defensive decision making that we saw from Dhoni. Well of course, we have come to love this man for his cool head and sharp management skills. But having four fielders on the edge of the circle, and five fielders patrolling the boundary for endless overs, giving singles so easily that it hurts to watch, and basically waiting for the batsmen to gift us their wickets just does not sound like the calculating captaincy that we have come to expect from our fearless leader! And it is certainly not the kind of Captaincy that is going to win us the World Cup with sub-par bowling resources! The rude turning of tables in the PowerPlay begged the question of why did we not try and attack a bit earlier?

So, where do we go from here? The higher powers have, with this WC edition, ensured that it is most unlikely for the top teams to exit the tournament in the first round. So, in the quarter-finals and beyond, we need one of two things. Either our batters simply need to score 400 plus consistently, with maybe a 500 somewhere in there or perhaps a thousand, OR the team management needs to come up with better strategies to utilize the resources we have. We can’t continue to be overly fascinated with our batters (to the point of making the official song De Ghuma Ke) and ignore the importance of having a potent bowling attack. Batting can not bail us out all the way to the Final and win it for us!

On the other hand, winning on dustbowls will simply give us another questioned status like our test ranking. To be undisputed champions, we need a team that is much more complete than the one we have. But as the romantic tale of Cricket goes, our belief never dies. As Indian Cricket fans we will continue to look forward and hope (and pray), even though our faith was beaten black and blue on Sunday. Not being able to defend 338 is so scary I want to throw up. Here is hoping that it was the jolting wake up call for Indian Cricket machine that we hope it was.

We need fearless bowling from our spinners, aggressive strategies from Dhoni, more overs from our pacemen like the couple that Zaheer delivered towards the end, somewhat turning wickets, perhaps a chance for R Ashwin, better umpiring decisions and continued awesomeness from our batters. And luck, lots of it. 

It is a long list, but Fans continue to hope, as we live to die another day, or immortalize against odds.