We have deserved everything we got in this tournament--which is nothing. Our batsmen think they are too good for the basics of cricket, thinking they can slog across the line and clear the boundaries at will. We can't play bounce. We can't play spin. We don't support players who play well and we keep persisting with those who look like crap. The number of pull shots I had to watch against the angle of the bounce, the number of slog sweeps against the turn on this spinning pitch; really, these youngsters need to get their head back on earth.
Dhoni needs to take criticism as captain. He has failed in all the matches that mattered. Against Windies he persisted with a lacklustre Ishant Sharma instead of an effective Irfan Pathan, leaking too many runs in the end. Against England, he made a mind-boggling line-up selection, didn't utilize the full quota of his best pace bowler and sent a rookie in to set up a do-or-die run chase. In the South Africa game, he refused to admit that he had made poor choices in the matter of team selection and went in with 3 pace bowlers on a spinning pitch, bowling only 6 overs between them. He stuck with the bloke who ruined our run chase for solidarity but sent him in to bat after Harbhajan Singh. And at the press conference he'll probably blame the batsmen for the loss, again. Really, dude, it is possible for you to make mistakes. No one wants you to be perfect. To err is human. To pretend you're perfect clearly suggests that you're not.
Take a look at these averages for the pacers in our squad.
Praveen Kumar
ODI: 30.13
T20I: 15.00 (1 game)
T20: 28.13
Zaheer Khan
ODI: 29.18
T20I: 19.60
T20: 26.25
Irfan Pathan
ODI: 29.91
T20I: 24.68
T20: 22.09
Ishant Sharma
ODI: 30.32
T20I: 55.25
T20: 39.04
RP Singh
ODI: 32.25
T20I: 14.57
T20: 21.92
Who featured in all the games? Ishant Sharma. Who featured in the fewest games? RP Singh and Irfan Pathan. Really... and it's not like Ishant Sharma was setting the stage on fire, warranting his selection.
I honestly can't wait to watch some Test cricket now, with Sehwag hopefully back and Tendulkar and Laxman playing some quality cricket instead of our batting failing to perform according to the situation.
: India has lost it's place in the T20 tournament due to some of it's own bad decision, not that the opponent was a match winning side. the first ever bowl out, the "Misbah Shot" remember something?
