Pakistan has outshone India by a billion lumens ringing the death knell at India’s slow and unceremonious T20 demise. With the star-studded line up, Indians were favourite to win the World Cup and now all Indians are hanging their head in disbelief and disappointment trying to look for an answer.
India’s slow T20 World Cup death was finally complete on Monday morning when New Zealand dealt the final blow by beating Afghanistan to earn their spot in the semi-finals against England.
Australia, Pakistan, England and New Zealand have all made to the Semis and the two winners of the Semis will go to the finals.
The fallout from India’s early exit is likely to be huge but only cosmetic in some ways.
Also rad: Pakistan thrash India, teach Kohli and team how to play cricket
Virat Kohli will no longer be the T20 captain for India, hardly a seismic.
The Indian coach will change from Ravi Shastri to Rahul Dravid which may bring some welcome changes but perhaps again peripheral.
These outcomes will not satisfy a disappointed cricket-mad nation of 1.38 billion, which hasn’t enjoyed an ICC World Cup win since 2011.
India lost the semi-finals in 2015 and 2019 ODI World Cups and the 2016 T20 World Cup.
Again India lost the World Test Championship final to New Zealand this year.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the T20 World Cup and 20-over-a-side cricket games only exists because of India who not only invented the format but also gifted it to the world.
And here we are – being booted out when we were the fav favourites to win the title which has eluded us since 2011.
Despite boasting a star-studded line-up, envy of much of the cricketing world, India failed to make it out of the pool stage in the UAE.
To the utmost pain of India cricket fans, Pakistan topped the Group and remained undefeated.
What the first two games have shown, has been known to the Indian cricket head honchos for millions of years and that is – if top order fails, India fails.
Thus, what India needs is the mental grit – “yes I can” state of mind drilled into the players to drill out what they currently have and seems to be “Once the seniors set the stage, I will try to chip in a bit”.
India needs a Kapil Dev of 1983 who scored 175 not out when the whole team had crumbled. It did not matter for him that he did not see runs on the scoreboard when he got to the crease. Neither did it matter for him that there was not a batsman padded up ready to come to do it for the team.
Indians seem to be mentally trained the wrong way – only on “whole team contribution” mantra.
They have incredibly sick pay packets which some may debate they do not deserve.
In light of India’s T20 demise, these un-Godly pampered spoilt cricketers need to be shown their actual place after so many colossal losses at the World Cup level.
The in-coming coach Rahul Dravid who was know as “wall” on the Test crease winning many games for India will be best served if some special attention is paid to the mental training of his squad.
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