India – Australia Cricket Series 2011-12

Well, lot has been written and said about current India-Australia Cricket Series. I thought of adding my bit and completing the picture (?).

To start with media began their campaign saying ‘AgneePath – Thunder Down Under’ and now before start of last test match we hear ‘Playing from Pride’. What a contrast, it is like a person going to a party with his three piece suit and during the party events later trying to hold on his only swimming trunk Or an individual is raped repeatedly for 3 times trying to save his ass on the forth occasion.

Though one thing confuses me is some of the commentator’s statements, like:

1. (after batsman hits a boundary or six )”He knew exactly where the fielder is “. They don’t repeat the line when same batsman gives a catch straight to the fielder.

2. “India should prepare (fast) bowler friendly wickets.” Now even after so many years playing international cricket, this line disturbs me most. OR it is like saying to a fish (in the water) to learn flying (like bird) or vice versa.

On the other side our players in the press conference or during interview usually mentions; if he is a bowler (and taken few wickets) will say, “We bowled in right areas and got the wickets”. If he is a batsman (who has scored few runs) will say, ”I have been practicing lot before this series”. Or if he is a bowler and made few runs then will say, “recently I have been practicing (or improving) on my batting skills”. Or “Sachin is helping me in fine tuning my batting skills”.

Accepting and understanding the term, “nothing succeeds like success”, I wonder where those right areas went when Australian batsmen were batting, did they make it disappear? And whether the preparing for the series only done by Home team? Since this time our senior players failed to perform, so everyone started shouting, replace them – retire them. If we had taken new faces and they had failed then the same people would have shouted, stick to seniors – balance the juniors and seniors in team.

We have been playing cricket on their ground for quite some year. In fact this is 4th tour for Sachin Tendulkar himself, but except few matches we have always performed poor. This time the performance was worse as none of the batsmen were in form and could not make 100 (except for Kohli). This overall poor performance in batting side cost us a lot which followed by some poor show in bowling by Ishant Sharma and we were not able to give a decent fight back to Australia.

Lets hope (what else we have) that Indian team and Selectors will learn a good lesson and start thinking of filling future vaccum which will be made after senior trio's retirement.

Good luck India for comming 20/20 game and ODI Series!!

-Shashank