Fix Team India, not crucify it

Sainthood in Indian cricket is all too ephemeral, as Mahendra Singh Dhoni is discovering to his chagrin. The halo built around him over the past two years appears to have vanished within two weeks of this Twenty20 World Championship.

There are now clarion calls for his head. But removing Dhoni from the captaincy would be knee-jerk and foolish. The team needs some fixing, not crucifixion, for a quick recovery. The next World Championship, after all, is only ten months away.

It is not that an entire set of quality young players has suddenly forgotten how to play, or that the Indian captain — till yesterday regarded a whiz at man-management and understanding game situations — has suddenly become a twit. That’s a cop-out explanation. There is much that has gone wrong in this tournament but Twenty20 cricket, as we should know, can also be gloriously or agonisingly topsy-turvy as the IPL showed emphatically.

There are, of course, several counts on which Dhoni’s captaincy in this tournament, and more specifically in the crucial game against England, could be contested. Should he have batted first instead of chasing a total?

Shouldn’t RP Singh have been played earlier, or at least allowed his full quota of overs in the last match? Most pertinently, how could Ravinder Jadeja have been promoted ahead of Yuvraj Singh in a must-win match?

All important queries, but addressing only the last, of course Yuvraj should have come in earlier. In a big game, the biggest player can’t be shielded. Even more so considering that Dhoni’s own form with the bat had been Hamletian — never quite clear whether he should be a strike force or a fulcrum.

Yet, there are more serious issues about fitness of players, their focus, and the drill and training which T-20 cricket entails that must come under serious scrutiny.

For instance, in the match against England, India conceded 16 extras to 8 by their opponents. Ten of these extras came from wides bowled by Harbhajan Singh, and the margin of defeat was 3 runs which tells its own story.

Indeed, overall India conceded more wides than their opponents in the tournament which shows a lack of cricketing discipline. Add to this generally poor fielding (even the normally brilliant Yuvraj appeared a passenger), and injuries to key players like Virender Sehwag that lingered deep into the tournament, leading to unseemly controversies that could only have aggravated the situation.

These are matters that the BCCI, otherwise obsessed by the IPL, has to address asap. League cricket has been terrific for rewarding talent and expanding the scope of a sport. But let’s not forget that while the English Premiership League is enormously profitable for players and (barring during recession) also for franchisees, England’s team has not won the football World Cup for 43 years. There is a lesson there somewhere.