What ails Indian cricket?

In a short span of time the Indian cricket team lost two finals – one against Pakistan in Bangladesh and the other against Sri Lanka in Pakistan. Lost may be too mild a word – soundly thrashed would be closer to the truth.

For those die-hard fans who are still euphoric about the young Indian team that won the 20-20 World Cup and then beat Australia in Australia, it is time to do a reality check.

Cricket is not about ‘tamasha’ or show business. It is about solid and consistent performances over a long period of time – under different weather conditions, against different opposition in domestic as well as international competitions.

Our highly overpaid and ridiculously pampered youngsters are suddenly becoming too tired and mentally exhausted to play 12 days in a three week period (or whatever the number of days they actually had to play recently). Most of the matches were played in the late afternoons and evenings where the team was on the field for less than 4 hours. No wonder they do not have the stomach to field for 6 hours in the hot sun during a test match!

Why is there no hue and cry over this in the media? Because cricket spells big money, and no one wants to rock the boat. Even Gavaskar has appreciated Dhoni’s honesty in opting out of the Sri Lanka tour.

Our cricketers have, of late, started using baseball gloves during fielding sessions. Wonder what would happen to the young guns if they actually had to play baseball in the USA. The major league baseball season starts on the first Sunday of April and ends on the first Sunday of October. That totals 183 days. Each team in the league has to play 162 games – yes, 162 games in 183 days.

Count out a few double headers (i.e. two games played back to back in a single day) and you are looking at playing 150 days during the 6 months long season (i.e. 25 days every month). The baseball players get paid big bucks, but they earn it.

Poor Dhoni. He will probably have a heart attack at the very thought of playing for so many days, and that too year after year. If he was the best wicketkeeper in the country I would be a little more kind towards him. If he was the best captain, I would be even kinder and actually condone his copping out (like Gavaskar has done). But he is neither.

No Captain should be so pig-headed as to drop all the proven performers and stalwarts of the team in the false hope that young legs will consistently win matches. To be a consistent performer one needs three other, and more important, assets – talent, brains and experience.

There is no better proof of this argument than Yuvraj Singh. Loads of talent but zero brains. After so many opportunities in the international arena, he hasn’t yet figured out when to go forward and when to go back when playing a spinner. (He has also not figured out that he is no Rohan Kanhai or Gundappa Vishwanath – who could party till the wee hours and then go out and score a hundred.)

So here is a plan for the BCCI. By all means back youngsters and choose different teams for test matches and one dayers. But keep a few stalwarts in both teams. Go on giving as many opportunities as you want to Uthappa, Rohit Sharma, Raina. But appreciate and understand that they are not – and unlikely to be - the next Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly.

While the stalwarts still have a few years of cricket left in them, keep them in the team – if not all, at least two – so that the youngsters get some guidance and learn from the experts. May be India will then start winning more finals (or lose by giving a proper fight).