Cricket is a common religion for all Indians and the world cup is its biggest sporting event. To win the world cup is similar to a Hindu having a bath in the holy Ganga or to a Muslim going for Haj. Even before the world cup started or let me put it in this way, even before our stadiums were ready for the world cup matches there were people all across media on why India should win the world cup. We are the strongest team, home grounds and Sachin's Last world cup so let us win it for him and bla bla....All reasons on why we should win the world cup. Just thought of sharing the other side of the coin and my thoughts on why India should NOT win the world cup!!!
Let us start with wining it for Sachin. I completely agree that if Cricket is religion then Sachin is GOD. Ideally we would have read in all holy books that how GOD wanted us to be a Hindu or Muslim or Christian. Realistically we created these religion and named GOD in different words and gave him different forms. The concept here with Sachin is same. Ideally it should be Sachin who should make India win the world cup. But we humans have become so practical and realistic that like we made religion for God we now want to win the world cup for Sachin. I agree he is one person who deserve to have the world cup trophy in his hand, but then let him win it for India. Alas it is a team game though we may have examples on one person playing extra ordinarily well to get the team the cup but still one man cannot do it.
They say we are the strongest team. Lets smile on this. Are we not always the strongest team on papers, but realistically we have a bowling attack that is not capable of taking 10 wickets in a match. lets keep Zaheer as an exception, we do not have a second seam bowler we can rely on to put in 10 overs. Munaf has become a medium pacer and may get injured even as we read this post. Nehra is not match fit and Sreesanth will never be economical. Even the spinners for that matter are not doing too well. You cannot rely on the top order to make enough runs every time and the margin with which we are winning matches is a proof of that. Not to mention we do not have a good middle order and lower order is a waste of time including Dhoni. I know my elder brother who did not play for any club would be able to spend more time on the crease and make more runs then the lower order batsman.
Lets talk about the peoples fav Dhoni. He may be a good wicketkeeper and batsman though I have my doubts since I have not seen him play a match wining innings for a along time now but I am sure he is not a good captain. He is just a lucky gambler. He does not have the capability to read the game like a captain should and relies solely on his gambling tactics. Its time his gambling would stop paying off and his luck will run out. I have not seen him lead the team or think 10 overs ahead of the game like Steve Waugh or Saurav Ganguly did. He has failed to get the right 11 in the team because of his constant favouritism on certain players. And it will not be long when some captains might start pointing out how he has used Raina for fielding in all the games played so far.There is no end where I can stop giving examples of his mistakes as a Captain. I know a plenty of people will support him and to counter them I would give these examples as a response to the comments.
If you are wondering how losing the world cup is going to help, then you are not aware of the Indian mentality that goes with the cup.We lose and only then will we realize that we need to correct some mistakes. I strongly feel Dhoni doesn't deserve to lead and if we win then he would be the captain for long which is not good. Cricket is not gambling.IPL might have brought a lot of entertainment and money but only if we NOT win the world cup will we realize that we need batsman who can survive 50 overs. ODI s are not hit and miss. It is the next best thing after test match cricket. ( I know that sentence is funny cause we just have 3 forms of cricket but I just want to emphasize the point)
So these are reasons why I feel we should NOT win the world cup so that we come up with a better captain and team which may be capable of wining the world cup on talent and not luck. You are free to comment your thoughts on the post and world cup. I do not ensure to convince you but I assure I will answer your doubts :-)
Cheers!!
Let us start with wining it for Sachin. I completely agree that if Cricket is religion then Sachin is GOD. Ideally we would have read in all holy books that how GOD wanted us to be a Hindu or Muslim or Christian. Realistically we created these religion and named GOD in different words and gave him different forms. The concept here with Sachin is same. Ideally it should be Sachin who should make India win the world cup. But we humans have become so practical and realistic that like we made religion for God we now want to win the world cup for Sachin. I agree he is one person who deserve to have the world cup trophy in his hand, but then let him win it for India. Alas it is a team game though we may have examples on one person playing extra ordinarily well to get the team the cup but still one man cannot do it.
They say we are the strongest team. Lets smile on this. Are we not always the strongest team on papers, but realistically we have a bowling attack that is not capable of taking 10 wickets in a match. lets keep Zaheer as an exception, we do not have a second seam bowler we can rely on to put in 10 overs. Munaf has become a medium pacer and may get injured even as we read this post. Nehra is not match fit and Sreesanth will never be economical. Even the spinners for that matter are not doing too well. You cannot rely on the top order to make enough runs every time and the margin with which we are winning matches is a proof of that. Not to mention we do not have a good middle order and lower order is a waste of time including Dhoni. I know my elder brother who did not play for any club would be able to spend more time on the crease and make more runs then the lower order batsman.
Lets talk about the peoples fav Dhoni. He may be a good wicketkeeper and batsman though I have my doubts since I have not seen him play a match wining innings for a along time now but I am sure he is not a good captain. He is just a lucky gambler. He does not have the capability to read the game like a captain should and relies solely on his gambling tactics. Its time his gambling would stop paying off and his luck will run out. I have not seen him lead the team or think 10 overs ahead of the game like Steve Waugh or Saurav Ganguly did. He has failed to get the right 11 in the team because of his constant favouritism on certain players. And it will not be long when some captains might start pointing out how he has used Raina for fielding in all the games played so far.There is no end where I can stop giving examples of his mistakes as a Captain. I know a plenty of people will support him and to counter them I would give these examples as a response to the comments.
If you are wondering how losing the world cup is going to help, then you are not aware of the Indian mentality that goes with the cup.We lose and only then will we realize that we need to correct some mistakes. I strongly feel Dhoni doesn't deserve to lead and if we win then he would be the captain for long which is not good. Cricket is not gambling.IPL might have brought a lot of entertainment and money but only if we NOT win the world cup will we realize that we need batsman who can survive 50 overs. ODI s are not hit and miss. It is the next best thing after test match cricket. ( I know that sentence is funny cause we just have 3 forms of cricket but I just want to emphasize the point)
So these are reasons why I feel we should NOT win the world cup so that we come up with a better captain and team which may be capable of wining the world cup on talent and not luck. You are free to comment your thoughts on the post and world cup. I do not ensure to convince you but I assure I will answer your doubts :-)
Cheers!!
I must say nicely written whole story n I completely agree v r having lots of areas whr Indian team shud improve on. BUT it does NOT mean U shud loose to improve on ur mistakes.
ReplyDeleteIts always faith one has India SHUD WIN. Wining world cup is for the pride of the nation n not to loose b'coz one crap Captain is tossing his luck. I completely agree Dhoni is pathetic, but beyond tht, he is leading our India's team. So I wish Indian Team shud win for India and nothing else.
If in case, we loose, then u can write above blog stating "Reasons why india lost", but now v r on the game, lets all SUPPORT our team as we always do n cheers to Indian Team !!
Thats nice...I like what you said but if India wins do you think we can ever get rid of this crappy captain?
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. This is one of everyone's fav topic....I feel that India shud win this for Sachin....but why only Sachin..There are 10 other players in the team. don't they want to win the cup ? or they are practicing for IPL ?...I am in complete agreement that India will not win the cup......There is a vast difference in the game from 83 to 2011......Teams have learned a lot from their mistakes....and we have not..See St Africa...people call them chokers but see how Peterson their number 8 batsman hit 13 runs in 4 balls..can our Harbhajan or Zaheer do it ?...We need to understand why Aus can play 34 matches in world cup without losing....the basic difference of the team selection criteria in Australian's & ours is, Australia choose the team first and then select the captain...we select the captain and then (he) selects the team...that why we haven't seen R Ashwin playing..we haven't seen Yusuf getting kick an Raina getting in...We are reading comments "We should play for country than crowd" from our captain....which is BS...read today's comment from Waqar.."we are concentrating on match against Australia..if we beat them...there is no need to think whom we play in quarter finals"..thats moral booster...and I am sure everyone of us must be calculating how we can miss pakistan in quarters and go ahead....well..all said and done....whatever happens in the world cup..people are going to forget it once IPL starts...everyone of players including Parthiv Patel will earn handsome money...and we will also start enjoying the matches and game of cricket....but unfortunate thing is ..Sachin will not see the world cup in his hands...
ReplyDeleteAgree with you on most points here. Though I am a big fan of Sachin, I strongly believe that trying to win the world cup for him is a folly, and another way of putting more pressure on him.
ReplyDeleteThe only point I don't agree with is about Dhoni being an ordinary captain. I believe that he's done a very good job over the last four years. And you can only have so much luck to do so. About Steve Waugh and Ganguly, they had the bowling attacks to carry their teams through (that does not mean that I rate Dhoni above them, just that I don't think Dhoni is that bad a captain). For the last four years, we have had so many bowlers breaking down. And yet we have been able to stay at the top. I think he's an excellent man-manager. He may have resorted to favoritism, but then most captains are guilty of such quirks (Ganguly's aversion to left arm spinners, Waugh's continued obsession with Brett Lee despite his profligate ways, and so on). Yes, he did get his tactics wrong against SA, but then I think that in a way it was good coz, we needed that loss to honestly analyze our power-play strategy.
He's had 4 yrs to build the team, and I think that he's built a good enough team given the injury struggles. He was sharp enough to perceive that having Ganguly and Dravid in the team will slow the team down unnecessarily.
And you do need luck to win the world cup. As a captain, you need your fielders to hold onto the catches. For all you know, if Herschelle Gibbs would have held on to THE catch in 1999 world cup, there would have been no Australian dominance over the next decade. And Hansie Cronje might have figured in the world cup winning captains' list.
As Richie Benaud said once, 'Captaincy is 90 percent luck and 10 percent skill, but don't try it without the 10 percent.' I guess Dhoni has done enough to prove that he has the skill too.
We have to win the cup for SACHIN!!!! Period!!
ReplyDeleteBaaki sab to agle world cup ya usse pehle prove ho hi jaega!!
But Sachin's not gonna play again and HE deserves this! All other reasons fall flat in front of this ONE point.
achi team aur ache captain ka achar daalenge world cup nahi jith paaye toh. kya bol raha hai.in end we wait for the world cup boss. luck ya ho ya joh bhi ho, jitna hi hai. n ya, y win it for sachin, y not sachin win it for us. n my zaheer toh always was an exception...
ReplyDelete@zues-yes sir, the 1999 world cup.. hw can we forget that dropped catch
ReplyDelete@Umesh: I completely agree. Appreciate your writing and the way you have put your thoughts. Loved and agree your camparison of the selection method
ReplyDelete@ Uma : So let Sachin win it for us
@ Harshada : If we win the world cup we will never improve
@ Zeus: Yes you are right when you say Dhone is not an ordinary captain. As he is LESS THAN ORDINARY. 4 years to build a team and the gambler has not managed to yet get it right. His arrogance is out on display. He did not percieve that Ganguly and Dravid will slow the team but he realised that his flaws would be known and pointed out by these senior players, so he got rid of them. I agree it is a team work but the captain makes the team work to their best.
He does not even have that 10% skill in him and as Umesh rightly said the selection of captain and then the team is a flawed method. He is not motivational and feels that playing suprise will win him matches. He has the best team at his disposal if he gets it right.But his inability to think ahead has made us weak.
It is not just against SA but on many occasions when he showed that he has not read the game.
arre yaar itna improve ho ke milna kya hai ek world cup bhi nahi jith paaye toh
ReplyDelete@ kapil : How can you say that a loss will make the Indian team more competent? what happened after the worst loss of 2007 ??
ReplyDeleteDid the team learnt anything? It continued to do what it did earlier, concentrating on batting than fielding and bowling.
The only thing it will happen is if you keep losing it will become like our National game Hockey.
I agree with you on Less than ordinary captiancy of Dhoni but can you name another one in the team who will be able to manage the guys in current situation?
Regarding removing captiancy after world cup win, Kapil was immediately removed when he had a bad performance.
I can't agree on saying Ganguly and Dravid will point out the flaws and hence Dhoni got rid of them.
They were replaced by more competent players like Kohli and Raina.
@Umesh: Cricket has survived because it has adapted to the changes from Test to Oneday and now to 20-20 cricket.
I agree that there is decline in professionalism because of IPL but after all its played for the crowds.
Can you see more crowd for a more professional England Vs NewZealand than a India Vs Pakistan match?
Nice point on the Selection. Iam not sure why Chawla was prefered over Pragyan Ojha.
@ kapil : How can you say that a loss will make the Indian team more competent? what happened after the worst loss of 2007 ?? Did the team learnt anything? It continued to do what it did earlier, concentrating on batting than fielding and bowling. The only thing it will happen is if you keep losing it will become like our National game Hockey.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on Less than ordinary captiancy of Dhoni but can you name another one in the team who will be able to manage the guys in current situation? Regarding removing captiancy after world cup win, Kapil was immediately removed when he had a bad performance.
I can't agree on saying Ganguly and Dravid will point out the flaws and hence Dhoni got rid of them. They were replaced by more competent players like Kohli and Raina.
@Umesh: Cricket has survived because it has adapted to the changes from Test to Oneday and now to 20-20 cricket. I agree that there is decline in professionalism because of IPL but after all its played for the crowds. Can you see more crowd for a more professional England Vs NewZealand than a India Vs Pakistan match?
Nice point on the Selection. Iam not sure why Chawla was prefered over Pragyan Ojha.
Ab jo bhi hai, is world cup main yehi team aur yehi Dhoni rahega. Par yehi Sachin next world cup main nahi rahega & Its not Sachin alone who can win the cup for us, after all its a team effort. Ab is captain ke saath hi sahi...lets win the cup..Dhoni will learn the lesson on improvement, team selection, skill, etc. some other time yaar.
ReplyDelete@ kapil : How can you say that a loss will make the Indian team more competent? what happened after the pathetic loss of 2007 ?? Did the team learnt anything? It continued to do what it did earlier, concentrating on batting than fielding and bowling. The only thing it will happen is if you keep losing it will become like our National game Hockey.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on Less than ordinary captiancy of Dhoni but can you name another one in the team who will be able to manage the guys in current situation? Regarding removing captiancy after world cup win, Kapil was immediately removed when he had a bad performance.
I can't agree on saying Ganguly and Dravid will point out the flaws and hence Dhoni got rid of them. They were replaced by more competent players like Kohli and Raina.
@Umesh: Cricket has survived because it has adapted to the changes from Test to Oneday and now to 20-20 cricket.
I agree that there is decline in professionalism because of IPL but after all its played for the crowds. You can see more crowd for a more professional England Vs NewZealand than a India Vs Pakistan match.
Nice point on the Selection. Iam not sure why Chawla was prefered over Pragyan Ojha.
@ Bala: What happened after 2007 was Greg Chappel. See it turned out to be good for the team.
ReplyDeleteAnd the likes of Kohli and Raina, trust me there are players who should h ave been replaced for them and not Dravid and Ganguly. And how can 2 ppl who play rarely for the team replace 2 ex-captains of the team?
waise toh ex captains will never leave the team as the new comers will never be good enuf.n instead of nuturing them and giving them chances we will be busy taking care of bruised egos.
ReplyDelete@Kapil: I can agree that 2007 might be because of Greg Chappel but he left after 2007 world cup. All the blame is internal politics between BCCI.
ReplyDeleteExperience counts only when he plays well whether he is captian or ex-captian and Kohli was one of the successful one day players from last year.
@ Kapil: I still think that Dhoni is a good captain and what you call gambling is just going by one's instinct. And when we talk about a captain reading the game, it is also going by instinct. Given our bowling strength, it's preposterous to think that the game will turn out the way one reads it.
ReplyDeleteAnd a captain is as good as his team. Nasser Hussain and Stephen Fleming were excellent captains, but Hussain did not have very good batsmen and a good spinner, whereas, Fleming had good players who were injured quite frequently. And hence their teams struggled.
Right now, Dhoni has Munaf, Zaheer, Nehra, and Sreesanth at his disposal. Ishant and RP Singh are talented but not performing well. Praveen Kumar was our best one day bowler over the past year or so, but he's injured. So it's pretty difficult to build a strong team from such a position. I think that he's built the best possible team that can be built.
And Ganguly and Dravid were past their peak when they were disposed off the one day team. As for your comment regarding Kohli and Raina replacing Dravid and Ganguly, someone had to take their place and these two did it. Rohit Sharma is so talented but doesn't know how to utilize his talent. These two had promise and they were definitely better in the field than Dravid and Ganguly. And in the shorter form of the game, you cannot have too many sloppy fielders. As it is, our bowlers are not great fielders. So we atleast need enough good fielders to man the infield. And Kohli and Raina have done well over the last couple of years.
And as for Dhoni not being motivational enough; as a player, what would be more motivational than donning the colors of your country and representing your country? I don't think so that you need any more motivation after that.
As for the Greg Chappell issue; most people see the wrongs that he did, but what they fail to see is that the team that eventually did so well over the last 3-4 years is that team that Greg Chappell wanted. So he was right about not wanting Ganguly and Dravid in the one-day side all along. I am not saying that he was a very good coach, and his sacking was justified. I am just trying to say that he was able to keep his emotions aside and take logical decisions. Too bad he didn't want to be in the background and was always craving for the spotlight.
@ Zeus: Instinct and gambling are technically very different. Even if we agree it is instinct,Only working on your instinct without knowledge is not helpful and we have seen that time and again.When one reads the game, he is supposed to read it based on the knowledge he has on the strengths and weakness of the team, so you rather support my point that Dhoni has no idea of our team and the way it plays.
ReplyDeleteI agree a captain is only as good as his team but the team is as good as your weakest player and your captain is supposed to be the strongest player of the team which is certainly not the case.And fielding is an ever pertinent issue with Indian team, you cant blame 2 experienced batsmen for it.
Everybondy dons the colors of the country then why do we need a captain or a leader to motivate and take decisions????
The team that prospered during greg's time was the team Ganguly built and dream of. So the credit to greg is just one of our ways of showing how partial we are when it comes to the white skin.When dealing with people a balance has to be kept in every field to succeed. The way he felt that only his logic was right was the reasons why he was called arrogant and unfit to coach.
thx team india for shutting up all those bloody mouths who cant see us win
ReplyDeletekapil sleep in hell for speaking against dhoni & watch more criket
ReplyDelete@ anonymous : I probably watch more cricket than you do and plus I have the guts to say what I think with my name on it...
ReplyDeleteI can see India win and enjoy it too cause there are many things that do happen though they should not..lol
Get a life man...throw your name in and let me rip your bloody mouth off..lol
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ReplyDeleteKapil, actually, Dhoni does have the perfect idea of what our team is capable of, and how to get them to do it. I might have agreed with your statements if he had been winning for only a few tournaments. But India's been putting in good performances under him for the last 4 years. You cannot survive on luck and gambler's instinct for so long.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with you that a captain is supposed to be the strongest player in your team. Ganguly, Steve Waugh, Naseer Hussain, Mike Brearley, MAK Pataudi et al, were all very good captains, but not the best players in their team.
Fielding may have been a constant issue with our team (and I am not blaming Dravid and Ganguly for it; if anything, India started becoming a better fielding side under Ganguly), but that does not mean that we should not work on it. And besides, Kohli and Raina, while not as great as Dravid, certainly add more zing to the fielding than Dravid and Ganguly. Besides, they are young; they will get better as the time goes by.
We do not need a leader to motivate the team. We need a leader to take decisions. These are two different things. You can't have 11 men on the field trying to assert their own authority.
I am not crediting Chapell with the success of the Indian team. I am just saying that the current team that did so well at the WC is the team that Chappell wanted during the last WC. His biggest problem was that - unlike Kirsten - he wanted to be in the spotlight. And given the fragile egos in our team, that led to complete chaos. And I am not being partial to white skins or anything like that. I am just pointing out to the fact, that the most successful WC campaigns since '83 have come under Wright and Kirsten, two outsiders. So maybe there's something that Indian ocaches are doing wrong, and they can maybe learn what it is so that in the future they we won't need to outsource (never though I would use this terminology in context to Cricket ;P).
Anyway, we can go on and on as much as we want, the fact is that the players seem to admire the man and respect him immensely (http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/current/story/509507.html). And what matter's ultimately is that he's got us the results (WC T20, WC 2011, Asia Cup, test victories and so on). And sitting here outside the dressing room, we can only speculate as to what makes him so successful.