Oh! Captain…..My Captain!
“Rain rain go away, MS Dhoni wants to play”… it must have been the nursery rhyme that the Indian Cricket team skipper would have been chanting, sitting in the dressing room while watching the thunderstorm against the Aussies at the Centurion.
The Indian Team was already in a spot of bother after losing their opening game versus Pakistan but the thunderstorm against the Aussies definitely delivered the killer blow!
India’s hopes relied on the shoulders on their “best friend” Pakistan who, as usual, failed us! But why do we have to rely on someone else??
Of course we need to….because we had the “best bowling” line up possible!
Ishant Sharma refused to get back into his groove, R.P. Singh and Harbhajan Singh lost form leaving Dhoni “two to three bowlers short” and the less we talk about our fielding the better….. It definitely shows a drop in the testosterone levels!
This is the second ICC tournament this year that we have crashed out ….. In the Twenty20 World Cup it was attributed to the batsmen's failure to face short-pitched stuff and now, the bowlers need to put up their hands. But somewhere in these fiascos, Dhoni's modest captaincy has escaped the post mortem. MSD, under whom India is yet to lose a Test match, now seriously needs to re-evaluate his leadership skills. Is Dhoni's flair for captaincy is now becoming a victim of pragmatism? His cool dude image seemed to have frozen his imagination as a captain as well! His approach to batting is simply unacceptable. Instead of being the flamboyant hitter, he now builds his innings way too timidly. The result, India has lost its most fearsome bomber!
The India skipper let Pakistan off the hook by bringing in his part-time bowlers rather than go for all out attack when Pakistan were on the ropes .The result, Shoaib Malik and Mohammad Yousuf soon found their bearings and posted a mammoth stand to pile up the big score. Even against the Aussies the field settings and the bowling changes were way too timid!
Though we won against the Windies, let’s face it with just two good fielders in Raina and Kohli, two dependable batsmen in Tendulkar and Gambhir; just one medium pacer worth his salt Ashish Nehra, India couldn’t have gone the distance. We, unfortunately, did not play to our potential and hence….
But has “captain-cool” lost his Midas touch? Does his captaincy needs a makeover? Does he need to revamp his approach to batting?
I know he and his men in blue have done brilliantly well (six consecutive ODI series wins) throughout the last two years and we had a lot of injury woes but my captain….
It’s not about the defeats; its how one loses.