The opening salvo

"India shock India" screamed the newspaper headlines yesterday. The titans had crashed to their most humiliating defeat ever in World Cup history. Save for the 1996 semi-final fiasco in the eden gardens, no other defeat will pinch the Indian cricket fraternity as this one. True...Bangladesh played with the abandon of one who has nothing to lose, but didn't they also have everything stacked against them right from the beginning? They were facing a team fresh from 2 emphatic wins in warm-up games, including one against the Windies, who have been displaying some mercurial talent over the past few months. They were playing on probably the most unpredictable track among all the cup venues. And they were a grieving lot, having recently lost one of their former teammates. Full credit to the hitherto unheralded, and often ridiculed lions from Bangladesh, who took all adversity in their stride and even got on top of it with grace. And this is one point where I agree with the general opinion.

Where I don't agree with the general opinion is the reason why India lost the match. Armchair critics and the junta alike are unanimous in shouting from the rooftops that India lost due to the lack of application in the middle. According to me, though that was a factor that contributed to our downfall, that wasn't the only one. There were three major tactical errors that if avoided in hindsight, could have well allowed India to get away with even the much-maligned lack of application. I'll come to that in a moment. But before that, I'd like to elaborate a bit on the nomenclature used by me to classify the voices of the cricket "elite" and fans.

I was texting a friend during the match and we also had a couple of quick conversations during the match and a long one after it. Now, this friend is what I've classified as "Junta". These are the ones who form the bulwark of the economic momentum of cricket in India. The passionate fan, who unfortunately, is also not well conversant with the tactical nitty-gritties of the game. During my text and telephone conversation, lines like "India has lost 2 quick wickets, and the rest won't stay for long either."; "Every strong team is scoring big. India should have scored atleast 280." etc. flowed. The "junta" sees the game in a very unidimensional light, and for them, good batting is all about hitting the ball as hard as you can and possibly scoring atleast 2 boundaries in every over. And good bowling is about every ball being either a yorker, a vicious turner or a copybook swinger. They form opinions on the game based on their own passion and also what the "elite" say. The "elite" or the armchair critics as I'd like to call them are the "expert" commentators who're having a field day on sports and news channels. And they are the ones who I really have a bone to pick with. Because the "junta" forms its opinions based on what they say. Guess I've made myself clear with the definitions. So lets move on to the reasons why India lost.

I mentioned 3 major tactical decisions that more or less cost us the match even before the first ball was bowled. Two of these decisions were selection errors. First being the exclusion of Kumble from the team. I don't see any reason why India's most successful bowler in the Carribean should have sat out. Ideally, the playing XI for this match should've had 7 batsmen, 2 pacers and 2 spinners; with atleast 3 of the batsmen offering bowling possibilities. This, because the track was tricky. And spin being our strength, our spinners could have extracted more from the track than our swing bowlers. And even if they wanted to emphasise on swing, I don't see why the best swinger of the ball in the current squad, Pathan should have been left out. The bowling line-up had no logic backing it. And there was the curious case of Sehwag's inclusion. I've been a strong votary of supporting guys with a slump in form. But this was taking the support too far. The fact that Sehwag had not performed well in the warm-up games goes to show that his inclusion was more of an emotional decision rather than one based on some gameplan or logic. This too, could have been avoided. Karthik had a better claim for the other opener's slot on the basis of some doughty performances in the recent past. The third, and the most crucial error, though I'd like to give Jammy the benefit of doubt here, was the decision to bat first. There was a devil in the pitch in the earlier part of the day, which was well evident from the dismissals of Dravid and Sachin, and the Banglas exploited it to the maximum. This also gave Bangladesh the psychological boost that they beautifully capitalised on, in the second innings.

Now, my mention of these reasons is not to take away anything from the Bangladeshis. They deserve every pat on their back for their performance. And neither am I trying to exonerate the Indian team's lifeless performance from its part in the defeat. All I'm trying to say here is that the "elite" should be a little more broad-minded while handing over their "verdicts" on the match. Their ultimate aim should be to educate the junta on the aspects of the game that have escaped them so far. This, in the long run, will prove to be extremely beneficial to us as it would help shape us into a mature cricketing audience. And we could well be the leading lights of decorum to emerge from the sub-continent, where the crowds are popular for being passionate but also notorious for being fickle too - a reputation we can do without.