Bowlers and Fielders were good at comedy

     India inspite of spending multi-million dollars for IPL, played like minnows in world Twenty20 cricket cup.  The manner in which our batsman were exposed to short pitched deliveries were disheartening. They failed in all departments in the previous game against westindies, the repeat of it happened tonight against England.  Yuvraj and Raina who were supposed to be our best fielders misfielded, Zaheer khan and Ishant sharma were comical in their fielding efforts. One could argue if they get injured it would affect their bowling performance. But their bowling performances were even worser. I could not believe they were getting hit all over the park with disdain. They could not bowl 90 mph. Most of the teams have strike bowlers who could bowl more than 90mph. Srilanka has Lasith Malinga, South Africa has Dale Steyn, Westindies has Jerome Taylor and Fiedel Edwards. In this game James Anderson, Sidebottom and Chris Broad were able to bowl fast bouncers with good speed to which our batsmen had no answers.  Forget about bowling 90mph, I wouldn't have blamed R.P Singh (highest wicket taker in IPL),  Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma if they were able to atleast deceive the batsman with some slower one and yorkers. Worst of all they were mirroring the westindian fast bowlers by bowling short pitched deliveries. With their pace (roughly 80 mph) it was bread and butter for the batsmen. Why these guys were trying to emulate somebody else? these guys should be knowing what their skillset it and should have practised accordingly.

Batting woes continue in alien condition

     Geoffrey Boycott would always say India is a strong Team on paper. Very true in deed, before the tournament started we were one among the favourites to win the tournament. The reason for this prediction was the super strong batting order we assume that we possess. We had Virendra Sewag, Gautam ghambir, Suresh raina, M.S. Dhoni, Yuvraj singh and Rohit sharma ominous batting line up, yea on paper. The Good news is Gautam Gambir, Yuvraj singh and Yousuf pathan were able to continue their form and score runs at a decent rate. And others were not upto international standards. Raina and Rohit were hitting bowlers all over the park in IPL here they were not able to defend the short pitched delivery properly.

Captain Mr. Useless

Football goal keeper turned cricketer M.S. Dhoni got it all wrong from the start of the tournament. The issue about virender sewagh should have been handled much better, in my opinion Anil Kumble handled things much better in Australia when there was a racism row. One could ask me where have you been all these years when the team was winning Mr. Critic? But, the reality is, his batting and keeping is below par. He does not posses the technique to be a proper batsman and his keeping is a little circumspect. One of the best wicket keeper Mr. Syed Kirmani commented about his keeping during the early days of MSD's career. He was dubbed as the most destroying batsman in contemporary cricket, we could hardly see any evidence of it for the past couple of years. The ODI series wins in Australia, srilanka and series win in New Zealand were because of individual brillances of Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambir, Virendra Sewag and not because of his brilliant captaincy as some would say. So, what is his contribution to the team. Its time to regroup and reassess the strategy for the champions trophy, otherwise we could write off that trophy as well.

Is IPL grooming domestic players

With the exception of Yousuf pathan, it has produced nothing else. It was suppose to be a tournament to groom young cricketers, but it turned out to be a marketing event to get profits. The IPL was argued to be an event which would expose weakness of foreign players, it turned the otherway around. The foreign players were getting hefty pay check and invaluable knowledge about Indian criketers weakness. The multi million dollar cricketing extravaganza to expose our weakness. This money is better spent on developing cricketers to handle different playing conditions.

The BCCI has to take certain bold decisions to produce a better team for the future. It should concentrate on developing budding cricketers and correcting technical faults on established players rather than concentrating on profit making events.