World Cup T20 2009.

[johnee]

Alright, the over-confident moronic blue bunch are out of the tournament, now they have all the time in the world to do their ads(specially our dear captain, he seems to be in all the ads).

 

[EnlightenedMonk]

Orient PSPO Sir... Kone Kone mein Hawa....

I've never been a fan of that idiot... I hope BCCI does something to clip his wings a little... Usko bahut sar pe chada ke rakha hai !!!

 

[Vinod2070]

I think India doesn't do well when we start off as "favorites".

Its a fair and square result. England fought hard and played better than us. They were a deserving winner. Our batsmen never got going and without the batsmen firing, there is no way in hell we can win a world cup.

I am not terribly upset. Let the best team win, preferably a fellow South Asian team but I am OK with any team winning the cup now.

 

[johnee]

Our batting didnt fire in the entire tournament. We didnt score 180 against BD or Ireland. We could have been easily defeated against BD as well, if not for Yuvraj's knock. Yuvraj failed this time and India failed. Rohit Sharma is good finisher, he is not working at the top. Now, we know why Sehwag is so imp in our team. He instills a fear in the bowlers that gives us a headstart. Gambhir is out of touch. Dhoni is practising his test match batting in 20/20. Suresh Raina is woefully weak against short-pitch bowling and bowlers know that, unless he finds a way to play the short-pitch stuff, his career will come to a pre-mature end. And less said the better of Ravider Jadeja. He struggled and struggled until he was put out of his misery. He bowled well though and might be useful lower down the order in one-day match but he is not a one-down in 20/20. Dhoni kept changing batting order without any rhyme or reason, and that had an affect on the batting performance. Nehra should have been picked for this tournament and Dinesh Karthik should have been given a chance in this match. Both of them were in a red-hot form. Most ppl have carried their form from IPL to this tournament like Dilshan.

Now, I hope that either Sri Lanka or West Indies wins the cup. SA or Paks shouldnt win, otherwise they wont let us forget this tournament in a hurry.

 

[Vinod2070]

I get a feeling that Pakistan has a real chance now. They are improving with every game and have a very potent bowler in Umar Gul.

 

[ZOOM]

Team India deserve such a knockout loss, since M S Dhoni were seems to have using Lord's Cricket Ground as a Experimental Laboratary for experimenting different breeds of cricketers and in conclusion he face with the defeat in a kind of a matches which are never seriously gave Indian Players a serious challenges from their opponents.

 

[Singh]

I am routing for SL and Pak... better one of us than one of them.
And Pak is yet to defeat India in a world cup match

 

[NikSha]

Wasn't Dhoni's fault all alone. Whole team was playing like crap. The opening payer of that Sharma and what's his name.. well both were useless (esp. considering that sharma was supposed to be a replacement for Sehwag, thus the opening spot). Gambhir was trying to stay there but I think he felt lost without Sehwag.

Yuvraj and others were busy scoring for openers who were supposed to give us a solid start.

The worst offenders were the ballers. Failure on a huge level right there.

Either I was so bored of T20 thanks to IPL that I didn't even care about this "World Cup" (lol).


EDIT: Oh and I hope England wins the final. Screw Sri Lanka, definitely not the paki's.

 

[Yusuf]

Really disappointed reading all the comments of the members after the teams loss.
Till just about a couple of months back, pages were written on the team and its ability and the heir apparent to the number one slot in world cricket. A couple of losses and people ar name calling and cursing the very team.
I am yet to read the media report and see any channel "analyse" the defeat, but im sure the same people who did not tire singing paeans of Dhoni, will now be after his blood.

Just to put things in perspective, this is the same Dhoni and same team that won 6 T20 matches in a row not a while back. Same Dhoni who touched anything and would turn to gold. Any move of his would click and people would call him a wonder boy and captain courageous and what not.

India lost as three of its key batsmen, Gautam Ghambir, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma did not fire. The team was not helped by the mystery surrounding Sehwag either, which surely affected the usually cool Dhoni.
The bowling was not good. Ishant Sharma who is a good test match bowler is not good enough for T20. Certain selections were baffling. The choice of Ravindra Jadeja in place of Ojha was a bad move. Worse was he was sent up the order in place of Yuvraj. Also Irfan Pathan should have played and Ishant Sharma should have been dropped. Pathan is a good swing bowler and would have been better suited for the condition. His batting is an added bonus.

But all in all, its a game and things happen. Nothing has changed in Indian cricket and its the same team that sure will get on top of the team charts pretty soon.
But people have to stop being fickle minded to Gods sake.

 

[johnee]

Why are we blaming bowlers? The target was mere 153, any team can chase that. And Dhoni is the culprit in this entire tournament. His batting cost the last match and this match. If he were not a captain then he doesnt deserve to be in the team with kind of performance that he has shown both before and behind the wicket. When team wins, Dhoni is hailed(irrespective of whether he was directly/indirectly responsible or not), similarly when the team fails, Dhoni will be criticised.
Dhoni once used to be a hard hitting batsman who score sixes at will. Then he became a nudger who can score singles and twos. But in this tournament he has really lost form. He score 11runs out of 23 balls in the last match. This is 20/20, yaar. This was supposed to be an explosive format, with batsmen taking risks and going for their shots. India was playing cautious cricket. Last time when India won the cup, Dhoni led from the front. The team played the same cricket as their captain, a fearless cricket. This time again the team played in the mould of their captain, a fearful cricket. Fear of losing was more evident than the intensity to win the game.
Of course, this is a good team and will bounce back but this defeat should open the eyes of the players.

 

[NikSha]

^ (Reply to Yusuf) Ishant was actually the better bowler in all matches. Pathan gets smashed around mad in T20 esp. Putting him in just cause of lappe-baz batting wouldn't been suicidal. Rest of the team didn't even perform.

Like 3-4 people did the work in the end, that's why they are getting bashed. Bashing them will help them improve, if we go around patting their backs they will end up like pakistani team sooner or later.

Also, they are payed crores to perform for their country, it's not like they are doing us a favour or something. Their performances will and SHOULD be analyzed by the media and the people.

 

[Vinod2070]

I think there is an over emphasis on selection issues when we lose a match. I have seen the same with Pakistan (even more).

I think team selection was not the only cause of this defeat. Let's not delude ourselves that only we can defeat ourselves. The others can simply play better than us on a day and defeat us. It doesn't have to be that we played badly. May be the other team played better!

 

[johnee]

Vinod,
the premise of any sport is that if we improve sufficiently, then we can defeat the other. If we simply say that the other team is better, then there is no way to improve. Its like Indian team couldnt have done anything but lose(since the other team was better).
I agree with you that on the day, England and WI played better than India but that also means that India did not play well enough. Hence, the criticism. Also, the scores werent high either, nor the opponents performed so briliiantly. And most importantly, there was a distinct lack of intensity in Indian performance compared to the last world cup in 2007. Infact, it reminded of the over-confidence that India showed in 50over world cup the same year(which India exited in the first round).

 

[ZOOM]

In my view, all in all M S Dhoni's blind faith in some of his key bowlers work rather against his own tactics. In a match against WI, despite bowling well and taking wicket in very first over by Irfan Pathan, Dhoni choose not to continue him beyond his spell of 2 overs. His both remaining overs gone in drain and Dhoni's key stalwarts Zaheer and Ishant proved to be very expensive and played an important role in overall defeat especially when Windies need Runs at 10 an over.

Similar tactics was repeated by M S Dhoni against England and despite extraordinary spell of 3 Overs by R P Singh with a maidan over and a crucial wicket of Luke Wright, Dhoni choose not complete his quota of 4 overs. Rather he depends upon Ishant who once again proved to be expensive.

 

[Vinod2070]

Johnee, I agree that we have not played to our potential but this is not the first time we have done that. Nor I suspect this was the last time.

We do have a good team which failed to perform at it's best due to some reasons which need to be analyzed and resolved.

May be some decisions did not work like they did for us the last time. Some players did not perform to the level they were expected to. What now? It happens at times. We need to move on, support the team in good times and bad.

At least with this team, I will say that I am proud of our team and would support it even now when they need it the most.

 

[Vinod2070]

Zoom, Dhoni is the man taking decisions and risks on the ground. He has given us more successes than many of out "greats" have ever done.

Now the whole point of taking risks is that sometimes they don't come through. When they don't, we criticize them. When they do, we applaud them.

 

[johnee]

Vinod,
I agree with your views. But at the same time I feel that every organisation must have accountablity to work properly. We shouldnt just move on after such a big loss. Infact, one of the reasons for this loss, IMO, is that there wasnt sufficient analysing after poor performance in first round, after losing to WI.
We need to stop now, ponder what went wrong, fix it and then move on. By simply moving on as if nothing happened will prove counterproductive.

 

[Yusuf]

^ (Reply to Yusuf) Ishant was actually the better bowler in all matches. Pathan gets smashed around mad in T20 esp. Putting him in just cause of lappe-baz batting wouldn't been suicidal. Rest of the team didn't even perform.

Like 3-4 people did the work in the end, that's why they are getting bashed. Bashing them will help them improve, if we go around patting their backs they will end up like pakistani team sooner or later.

Also, they are payed crores to perform for their country, it's not like they are doing us a favour or something. Their performances will and SHOULD be analyzed by the media and the people.

The Aussies are also paid well as well. They too play hard for their country.
They did not even make to the Super 8s.

 

[Vinod2070]

^^ Exactly. All I am saying is not to react in an emotional manner now and take any rash decisions or making wholesale changes.

 

[johnee]

The Aussies are also paid well as well. They too play hard for their country.
They did not even make to the Super 8s.

so??
How is that connected to India's exit?
BTW, Indians are treated as rockstars(no other nation's cricketers have such luxury), so obviously the burden to perform would also be more on them.