Something Else Haunting Team India?

Well this has been the debate of all news channels not only regarding the shocking exit of team India from the T20 world cup, but also losing all the three matches that the team faced. Adding to that was the fact that Virender Sehwag's shoulder injury was not well dealt with by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. This was confirmed when Dhoni publicly admitted of having the fact that the services of Virender Sehwag is bould to miss the T20 world, indicating that his injury was a serious one. This just added fuel to fire and nothing else. Anyway, Dhoni did no good by keeping the Sehwag issue secret. And it is still not clear as to what was going on in the minds of Dhoni when he included Sehwag despite being aware of his injury.

Even without Virender Sehwag, the Indian team could have made it to the semi finals. And if this would not have been the case as some may think it to be, they should not have lost all the three matches they played. There was Yuvraj Singh, Rohith Sharma, Suresh Raina, Gautam Gambhir and Dhoni himself who could have made for the absense of Virender Sehwag. And on the other hand, there were also decent bowlers like Harbhajan, Irfan Pathan and R P Singh. Having such players in his team, the absense of Virender Sehwag would have hardly made any difference I guess.

I wish one take a glance at the Australian team way back in 2003 when they lost key players like Steve Waugh (who retired months b4 the WC), Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie and Shane Watson and still not only won the world cup but also won all the 11 matches they played. And if one blames the Indian Premier League for this debacle of the team, I say that it is nothing but foolishness. Had IPL been the reason behind India's downfall, then wasn't there anyone in India who got that idea before the IPL began? And had anyone knew that before hand, any reason for their silence? I say that the IPL provided some match practice for the Indian players (in particular) prior to the world T20.

News channels suggested us that the Indian players were reluctant to go out and practice cricket prior to matches against England and West Indies. Perhaps! This might to a greater extent have taken a toll on the performance of the Indian team. Anyway, the reason for that is not the disscussion at the moment. However, I feel that it was the bad grouping of teams that to some extent led to the bad performance of team India. India were grouped along with Ireland and Bangladesh against whom winning was not a big task. If the reason of Australian early elimination was due to the fact that they were grouped along with strong teams viz West Indies and Sri Lanka, so was India who were grouped along with minnows.

It looked as though India never needed a tough match practice before facing either Ireland or Bangladesh. Their entry into super eights was confirmed and so was their wins against both the teams. Had India faced any strong team, even a loss would have gived them a wake up call regarding the way they were supposed to approach a tournament that featured all the major cricket playing nations of the world. So is ICC the new culprit???