Time to stop treating players like gods


To the ones who are running Indian Cricket,

India were brutally thrashed by England at Adelaide - yes, that very Adelaide where 36/9 happened. Not mocking any individual, but the semifinal loss of the T20 World Cup 2022 truly showed the mirror to the so-called "godly figures".

image-lab1znkgIndians player defeat vs ENG

A ten-wicket loss to Pakistan in the last T20 World Cup, the 36/9 versus Australia, and those 45 minutes against New Zealand in the 2019 semifinal. There have been lows, pretty ugly lows in Indian cricket in the recent past, but there hasn't been any loss compared to this one. 

This annihilation by England hurts the most. I can't pinpoint one reason, no one can, because there were 'n' number of reasons why the Men in Blue failed. But let's still try...

To call out a few, our supremely talented opener - KL Rahul - came back into the team just before the Asia Cup (3 months before the WC); our trump card - the wily Yuzvendra Chahal - just travelled to Australia to hand water bottles to the big boys, Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah suffered injuries and that could not be counted as an excuse but what about injury management? And last, but not the least, Mohammed Shami was given a T20I jersey just when the selection board ran out of options.

But then what about the reasons why we reached the semifinal, you ask? We already know the answer: India won only two games convincingly in the World Cup. (Of course, both the games were against Netherlands and Zimbabwe). 

We should not only criticise the players, but also the management, and the BCCI (shouts the journalistic ethics inside me). However, before everything, yes, the BCCI and the management should make a few changes. 

Would they? They should. But would they?

Just to mess with your heads, I will go down this road. I will ask a few questions that each one of us should be asking. 

Why in the world can't we go on the same path that England went after getting crashed out of the 2015 World Cup by minnows Bangladesh? Why can't we do the same experiment that the likes of Dilip Vengsarkar and Sharad Pawar did in 2007? Why can't we allow our top-brass players to play in foreign leagues or make domestic cricket a mandated practice?
(Editor's note for Arjun: Not the top-brass players, top-brass male players).
Or play the illustrious IPL in two segments, half in India and the other half in one of the SENA countries.

Does this elite panel of geniuses have it in them to do what England did in '15 and Vengsarkar and Pawar did in '07? If yes, then don't tinker with this side in the forthcoming World Cup as they will be the match-winners in the ODI format in home conditions. However, everything needs to be changed in the shortest format. 

If you don't have the time to go through the whole of what rubbish I have written, please do read the last paragraph of this rant (in disguise of an article).


Men who should go to the Carribean and the USA in 2024:-

Hardik Pandya (captain), 
Prithvi Shaw and Ishan Kishan (openers)
Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson (batters)
Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravi Bishnoi (spinners)
Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik, Kuldeep Sen and Mohsin Khan (seamers)

Yours truly,
concerned fan and a mere writer.


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