Half-way into the group stages of the Champions Trophy and so far the heart is winning over the head hands-down. And while my predictions were nowhere near as detailed or accurate as that genius Andy Zaltzman's, I still have a chance of getting the semi-final line-up right though an unpredictable West Indies and a predictable England might scupper that. So I'm not betting on it.
There's been much brouhaha over India's rapid descent into one-sided football scorelines and becoming what some would term "the world's worst overseas team". And while there's some logic to the cries for wholesale changes , revamping the team , and attitude problems , much of it is over the top. About the only two sensible pieces I have read recently are by Ganguly and Siddhartha Vaidyanathan questioning the lack of spirit and fight shown by the team. What's most surprising to me is that some people seem to think that the team (which was ranked #1 till recently and won the World Cup less than a year back) is suddenly a pile of dung. This when there are still several pieces of information (numbers of course) that have either been ignored or not analysed clearly at all. So here's an attempt to balance the books a little. Consider the following - 1) India's overseas record in 5 year segments roughly over the last two decades is as below: 199
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