Why is Team India nervous?

Agencies

New Delhi, 08 March 2011: Five points from three outings – two after a scare, one salvaged and two hard-earned against a minnow – that’s Team India’s mid-term World Cup report card, which could have had all A’s but for a nervous approach by MS Dhoni’s boys. Why is a team, which was bookmakers’ delight pre-World Cup, finding hard to woo suitors? Or simply put, why is Team India nervous?

 

When you have batting that has enough gunpowder to fire on shirt-front subcontinent pitches, your thought process can go adrift. And that’s probably what’s happening with India as well. A team needs to take wickets as well and when you fail to defend 338, then there is something seriously wrong. And in India’s case, it’s not a Pythagoras theorem. The nucleus of their nervousness lies in their bowling.

 

A doused Harbhajan with deflated fellow tweakers, ’Spin’ – that used to be the leading warhead of India’s arsenal – looks like a rusty weapon fighting to hold its ends together. In a tournament, where part-timers like Afridi and rookies like Imran Tahir are tying batsmen into knots, Indians have failed to weave a web.

 

 

While Bhajji seems to have lost it in mind, Piyush Chawla looks a trier at best, with R Ashwin keenly looking at Dhoni to nod in favour of his World Cup debut. Probably, Dhoni and Kirsten have not been able to find the right combination. But that’s not where it ends!

 

The pace department looks even more derelict, with Zaheer Khan carrying a sack of injured/inconsistent pacers on his shoulders. Compare Sreesanth and Munaf to the likes of Dale Steyn, Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Lasith Malinga, and a patriotic Indian fan would want to change the topic in fear of losing the debate.

 

Good Yuvraj picked that five-for but bad that we had to depend on him to pull the run-rate down to earth with specialists like Bhajji and Chawla present, and that too against Ireland. So where does the solution to India’s woes lie? Probably in the mind!

 

Dhoni seems to be missing the clarity of thought and fearlessness that flayed and slayed his opponents in the T20 World Cup. But come quarterfinals’ time and Dhoni will have to pull off those masterstrokes that have earned him the ’Midas’ pedestal. After all, the World Cup doesn’t come often to your home.