Merry Christmas!
Santa Claus, Christmas Tree, Friends, Family,
Festivities, Plum Cake… All these have become integral to our life on the 25th
of December, every year.
If you are a Cricket fan, though, your mind is already
racing a day ahead, thinking about the Boxing Day test match.
In possibly the most beautiful cricket ground in the
world, in possibly the most sports loving country in the world, a new battle
begins tomorrow. We take on Australia, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Man, is that a treat for the eyes!
But, when the Indian test team is lead by Dhoni, there is
a sense of foreboding. A fear pervades every Indian fan’s mind. Do we have a
chance? Are we going to see another
whitewash?
It is as if, we as a nation, have given up on our Cricket
Captain’s ability to do something right on the a cricket Field.
Is he really so bad? Are we being unnecessarily
uncharitable?
Come to think of it, the Indian Captain has help possibly
every trophy that has been made in
international cricket. The One Day International World Cup, the T 20 World Cup,
the Champions Trophy and of course innumerable other trophies.
He has possibly achieved on the cricket field what many
players would find difficult to dream..
He is the captain cool, he is the dream finisher, he is
the master strategist and the supreme six hitter.
But, there is one fundamental gap in his achievements-
the bare cupboard when it comes to Test Cricket.
When one traces MSD from limited overs cricket to test Cricket, the
feeling is one of bathos. It is a fall from the sublime high to the ridiculous
low.
Some fans, and, Dhoni obviously has many, would say that
he lead India when India reached the pinnacle of Test Cricket, the number 1
rank.
To that, I would say, Dhoni deserves as much credit for
the No 1 slot in tests as Mr Modi for the successful Mangalyan project.
Both the projects were well on their way to success
before these gentlemen became leaders.
So, what is going wrong with Dhoni?
Possibly, it is his
inability to think beyond a 7 hour duration? Like marriages have a 7 year itch,
does he have a 7 hour hitch?
As the clothes worn by the team from Colour to White, Dhoni becomes a pale shadow of his self.
He no longer leads, he is no longer into deft maneuvering. He becomes reactive, no longer proactive.
The results are too stark for us to miss. Whitewashes in
England, Australia are of course his embellishments.
Under Dhoni’s test captaincy, we have, many many times,
drawn matches that we should have won and lost what we could have drawn. Many times, the matches that seemed ours just slipped away.
It is clear that our captain cannot think beyond a day,
at a time.
It is time for change.
Else, whitewash will become the new norm for India
Cricket.
#ausvsind
