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Reconstruction time but where are the building blocks?

The worst thing that could happen to Indian cricket in the next week is for them to win at Nagpur and square a series in which they have been thoroughly outplayed. Now I didn't have as visceral a reaction as say Siddharth Vaidyanathan but maybe that was because the result was not a surprise. England worked hard after the defeat in Ahmedabad whereas the Indians seemed to play with an attitude that suggested that they could just turn up and win. Culturally, we Indians tend to go easy on ourselves given half a chance and (in case we win in Nagpur) the temptation will therefore be to ignore the continuing decline the side is and focus only on short term changes. The rousing World Cup win in April 2011 can now (in hindsight) clearly be seen as the end of a long successful period after which the team needed renewal. The signs were replete through the rest of the year but the team and management kept turning a blind eye. 0-4 bashings in England and Australia were conveniently put down as "adverse" conditions when the reality was that the team just didn't put up enough of a fight. The T20 World championship brought an early exit again but Dhoni chose to put it down as just one bad loss. Instead the team chose to point at easy wins over the West Indies and New Zealand at home as signs that things were ok.

All good things come to an end and its not a surprise that a team that has lost (since 2008) the likes of Kumble, Ganguly, Dravid, and Laxman and now has Tendulkar, Sehwag, Zaheer, and Harbhajan on their last legs would struggle. Australia went through a similar period after losing McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist, Hayden, Martyn, Langer, and Gillespie (and have just lost Ponting) and are still struggling to put things back together. The West Indies can barely stay above Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in world rankings. Pakistan have no idea where their next set of stable batsmen and fast bowlers will come from. Sri Lanka will be in the situation India is headed into quite soon. Its not a unique situation nor one that cannot be addressed. However, it does require a level of honesty that the most people that matter in Indian cricket (ie not commentators and ex-selectors) have shown to be distinctly lacking in so far. Dhoni has not covered himself in glory as Test skipper in recent times but much of the problem is beyond his control and he at least has the right attitude. The reality is that India don't have the personnel they need now to reconstruct the team, especially for Test match cricket. Splitting the captaincy won't really help because that's not where the problem is in my opinion. Blaming the IPL is also infantile and an easy cop-out. Kallis, deVilliers, Steyn, Morkel, and duPlessis all played pretty much the full tournament and that's not prevented them from helping South Africa achieve the opposite of India's results from last year (ie away wins in England and Australia and an ascent upto #1). The replacements for Zaheer, Yuvraj, and Harbhajan show how bare the talent cupboard is at the moment. And there are no replacements available for Tendulkar and Sehwag.

Patience is what is required all around. The likes of Pujara, Kohli, and Ojha have shown that given time they do have the ability to develop into long-term bets but for that the selectors, the team, and the fans will need to be prepared for several setbacks in the near future. As Dhoni (who is needed by this team ever more than before) said early on as captain, commitment and the process of being a team is much more important than short term results. The sun will rise again, it might just take some time (and effort).


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