What Went Wrong

I was a bit late in publishing it but if the world cup semifinal loss is still fresh in your minds, then you must read it. 

“What went wrong?” I asked this question to myself for quite some time after India lost the World cup semifinal. After thinking about it for quite some time and discussing with many people, I got some answers to my question . First, let’s talk about the semifinal. According to me, it was the best possible eleven from the squad of fifteen that could have played in that knockout match according to the team strategy which is led by Virat Kohli. In my view, it was just some bad luck on that particular day. Now, let’s talk about what could have been better in that match against New Zealand. Some people say that Dhoni should have batted at number five or number six. Well, I think that wouldn’t have made a lot of difference to the match. Rather, Dhoni would have been exposed to new ball bowling which he is not used to and if Dhoni got out early batting at number five or number six, all hopes of the Indians would have been shattered.

Now, let’s see how the preperations were going on for the World Cup in the past few months. First of all, team India’s middle order combination never settled and excluding Ambati Rayadu for Vijay Shankar in the World Cup squad added to the woes. Some poor matches played by Rayadu cost him his  place in the world cup. From this case, we see that other than the top players of India, players felt insecure of their place in their team and may be they could not play their natural game. Vijay Shankar, the so called “Three Dimensional Player” of the Indian team never lived up to expectations in the matches played by him in the World Cup and also prior to the world cup. He was chosen in the squad in place of Ambati Rayadu because of his all rounding capabilities. Now, I would like to point out one strategy of Virat Kohli which I was not in favour of was to bowl fifty overs with five bowlers only with each of them bowling ten overs each. Even if Shankar and Jadhav were in squad, he won’t give them the ball to bowl. Due to this strategy, the position of Kedar Jadhav in the playing eleven was a sheer waste as there were other better batsmen to replace him if he is not utilized as a bowler who can bowl some overs in the middle and provide a breakthrough. The side effect of this kind of strategy is the over-dependency on the five bowlers and there is a lot of burden on one of the talented player of the Indian team who is Hardik Pandya. The captain of the team expects him to bowl ten overs like he expects from other four as well but also expects him to bat like a top class batsman when it comes to batting. Well, everything cannot be achieved. This was the other case of not utilizing your resource to the fullest.  Now, let’s see the case of Ravindra Jadeja. We all know what a great fielder he is but doubted his all rounding capabilities prior to the world cup and he answered in the World Cup semifinal that he is way more that the “bits and pieces” player.  He was not given many chances to prove himself that he was meant for playing eleven in the world cup. We have seen the improvement in his batting when India toured England for the test series in 2018. The team management could have utilized him as a permenant middle order batsman who can bowl some overs in the middle rather than a bowler who can bowl ten overs better than Kuldeep and Chahal. In the initial matches played by India in the world cup, the tail of the Indian batting started at number seven with Shami, Chahal, Kuldeep and Bumrah were yet to bat which was the basic flaw in the batting line up as we were not getting the finish that was required in each innings. Had this batting line up played in the semi final of the World cup, we could have been done and dusted before hundred runs. So, due to some strategies of the team management, our team was never optimized. There were also other things which could have been tackled by the team management prior to the world cup. It’s high time that the captain and the team management realize what has been going wrong in the past few months and rectify as soon as possible so that our team can become the  team to beat in any conditions.

.