Bruised And Battered India Limp Home

India return home after an brutal two and half months down under, with one solitary win against the hosts.  Pretty pathetic returns for a team that is still the defending World Champions and recent Test number ones. 

Why did things go so horribly wrong?  That is the question that most Indian fans are asking.  The answer to that is multi-faceted but the key elements of the embarrasing failure are there for all to see.

The most glaring element was team disharmony and infighting.  Even with all their faults, including the low level of athleticsm in the seniors, the faultly technique and lack of real class in youngsters, with one or two notable exceptions, and the over-confidence, arrogance, combined with a sense of entitlement in the team as a whole, India are not as bad a team as the results seem to show.

But the lack of leadership and the open factionalism that manifested itself right from the start, when Irfan Pathan, the most worthy successor to the injured Praveen Kumar was ignored by the selectors, who instead picked much less worthy replacements, one suspected due to undue influence of the Captain himself, indicated that the rot had set in and it had started at the top, i.e. at the Selectoral and Captaincy level. 

For the average Indian fan, the only piece of good news from the tour was the emergence of two fiery youngsters.  One with the bat, Virat Kohli, and one with the ball, Umesh Yadav, and to a minor extent Vinay Kumar in the ODIs.  Except for these few bright spots, the story of India's youngsters was mostly one of unfulfilled potential and lack of real fighting spirit. 

With hardly a break the cricketing merry go round for the Indian team will see them playing shortly in the Asia Cup, which should have been an event just a notch below the World Cup in prestige and aura, but because of the penchant for bureacratic bungling that all the Subcontinental boards seem to specialize in, is nothing more than yet another masala ODI tournament.

Yet, due to the incredible disgust of the cricket loving, watching and following public in India, it has become a do or die mission for Team India.  So much so that the BCCI has issued a statement that India must win this tournament "At Any Cost".

The question needs to be asked, what cost is the BCCI willing to pay?  If it is willing to disassociate itself and any of its office holders from simultaneously claiming to be doing honorary work as public administrators, while also reaping profits as OWNERS of IPL franchises, then the question may have some meaning.  Otherwise it is simply a lot of hot air, meant to bamboozle a gullible public and distance themselves from the impending fiasco they perceive.

In a perversely sad way, if India do happen to do well in the Asia Cup, it will kick the can down the road, and buy some breathing room for the inept babus in the BCCI.  But Indian fans must remember, being successful at home or in the subcontinent is not the goal of a true champion side.  It is merely the first step, and must be matched by similar success outside as well.  Otherwise in the future, Indian cricket may well devolve into nothing more than cheap TAMASHA a vision of which the recently minted "Celebrity Cricket League" has provided...