After seeing the pathetic performance of Indian Test team in the ongoing India-Sri Lanka Test Series, I can only shout out to myself: Where are the bowlers.”? I mean look at the piles and piles of runs which the Sri Lankan batsmen are making constantly and Indian bowlers are only looking like players of any school team who have left no stone unturned in giving liberties, one after the other, to the Sri Lankan batsmen.

Is this what we call Number One Test Team in the world? A team which allows the opposition to make 600+ runs in so many innings; gets follow-on and manages to save its nose in the second test match by drawing the result by a narrow margin! And mind you, the third test match is not at all looking very promising as well as the performance of Indian bowlers are concerned (Although Pragyan Ojha is looking promising).

The overall performance of the Indian bowlers in the series so far has made the whole experience of viewing this series extremely disappointing! Injuries to ace bowlers Sreesanth as well as Zaheer Khan have only cleared this view that the current bowling squad is nothing without them! The experience and killer instinct which they bring on the field is what is lacking in the ongoing test series! As a result – the Indians are hardly getting any wickets!

It is clearly visible through the body language of the bowlers succeeded by Ishant Sharma that they not only lack self confidence and experience, but their own belief over their abilities has lost somewhere in the mud! The spin squad has some experience when we talk about Bhajji and Pragyan Ojha, but I am not able to understand as to why these individuals are looking like bowling machines more than the real spin kings?

Somewhere or the other, I would blame the BCCI for this situation in which the current Indian team has landed into the condition! Blame it on the power-centric tactics, or the politics to choose players from one’s state or the extremely tiring schedule which leaves these cricketers with no choice but to succumb themselves to injuries and more injuries!

It’s high time, Dhoni’s men learn to calm themselves and come down from the high – a high which has been created after tagging them as Number 1 team!

At last selectors made some smart move by dropping Yuvraj Singh for the Asia Cup, seeing the fact that he has not done anything remarkable for the past few series. But Dhoni being his thorough supporter, kept dragging him through various tournaments, knowing the aspect that he is not at all providing any help to team’s score, forget about his contribution in the field (courtesy his heavy weight)! In his last eleven ODIs, the guy has managed to make an average of less than 25. But finally selectors have done one right thing in so many years, forget about their other senseless decisions. This is a clear indication that no one can assure his spot in the team, be it a small town boy or a big star like our brat Yuvi! Adding to this, I don’t think Dhoni has done some wonders too, but he is the captain of the team, so might hold a safer position to deal with the selectors. And how can we forget that Kris Srikkanth is in the selection committee! How can he remove his favorite Dhoni from the team?

I remember reading one of articles some two three days back. It said that there are high chances of Yuvi getting dropped from the Asian Cup squad, and at the same time, Rahul Dravid may get a chance to enter the ODI arena, especially after the mindless, pathetic and feeble performance of the current Indian squad in the tri-series between India Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. But that didn’t happen! The selectors again ignored him big time. Anyways, the guy must have become used to all this now – no matter how wonderfully he served the Indian cricket over the past so many years. Coming back to the current ODI team, the condition is such that, the “talented” (pun-intended) members could not even manage to register a win over the not-so-strong Zimbabwean team. And this team our poor Dhoni calls the future of Indian cricket… Wow! Where is the future heading? JUNK?

Coming back to Mr. Yuvraj again (he won’t be spared here), the guy has allowed the critics to point questions on him. He may be better for a limited over game like a quick T10 or a T20, but has time and again shown his inability to stick to the wicket in ODIs and Test Matches – formats which requires sheer patience and dependability to hold the situation.

One thing the selectors have done well in the current selection for Asia Cup is not to experiment further and concentrate on preparing those players who are likely to be the part of the World Cup next year. The team still needs to improve in various departments; especially the kind of performances we have been witnessing in the recent times, but does that really matter? We are Indian audience and are used to give these cricketers the status of demigod. So no matter how bad they perform, we have adapted ourselves in such a way that sooner or later we will forget their bad performance and look forward to the next series desperately.

Anyways, best of luck to this current Indian Cricket Team- You guys need it!

Indian audience is such a cricket crazy genre that in all the hustle and bustle of India’s loss in the T20 World Cup tournament, we all forgot to acknowledge the Indian Women’s cricket team is going great guns in the T20 World cup and Champion Vishwanathan Anand retained his World Chess Championship. And the cricket crazy nation is only going ga-ga over the loss of our “CHAMPION” Indian cricket team!

These cricketers have all the time in the world to booze at late night parties, dance with well known models and make girl friends one after another in every IPL party! But when the practice sessions are concerned, they give up to the core, all tired and end up resting on their cozy beds in some BCCI sponsored luxuries hotel! This is life for them. And with this amazing lifestyle, a shameful loss of this kind was on the cards. No one apart from few cricketers was seen in their usual form like they showed in IPL season. May be IPL is one of their biggest money resources and therefore they showed their complete loyalty towards it, but what about their country? Don’t they have the same responsibilities while they represent India in other tournaments – T20 World Cup being one of them!

So India is finally out of the World Cup. And our captain Dhoni has his own reasons to defend the defeat. He innocently said that the IPL parties played havoc on their team’s performance in the recent T20 World Cup 2010. Tell me Dhoni, who dragged you in these IPL parties? Or was there some restrictions linked with tournament that you have to attend these parties by hook or by crook? The team has been kicked out of the tournament with only two wins in its kitty – one from a team like Afghanistan and another from South Africa! That’s it! Can you believe? That it! And they call them one of the best sides in the world! Wow!

True that the hectic yearly schedule keeps these cricketers so busy that they hardly get time to stay with their families and above all the calendar takes a tough time out of them. But can we spare them for showing a bad performance constantly throughout year by year? And why this hectic schedule has not affected cricketers from other countries? They were equal participants in the IPL tournaments and its parties, just like the Indian cricketers. So why are they facing the blow of this tedious schedule?

While writing my anger out on this piece of paper, I have another thing in mind. Just like other teams, why can’t we have separate teams for all the formats of the game, be it T20, ODI or test team. True we have experienced cricketers like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and company, who generally don’t become a part of the T20 squad, but seeing the ability of the current T20 team to handle short pitch deliveries, I would certainly suggest the selectors to think about giving another chance to the old foxes, knowing the fact that an “experience” at the end of the day is the “key” to success! And the current T20 team is decked with “kids” who only know how to party hard and give excuses!

Hats off to Dhoni for maintaining excuses every single time his team faces a loss! What’s your next excuse Captain?

Sometimes I doubt the intentions of cricketers!

I mean after earning millions through match fee, advertising, modeling, bidding, auctions, I doubt whether cricketers now play with their honest intentions and provide their 100% while playing against the opponents! Here I am NOT involving all the cricketers, nor will I name any one of them, but is it not that a majority of the cricketing audience have already started feeling that Cricketers do run after money, apart from what their actual priority which should be Cricket?

Okay, let us talk about the recent buzz: IPL3: which is around the corner! Money, Money and more Money! Which cricketer is sold for how much? What is the current value of each team? Who are the sponsors? How much the owners are earning out of it? What is the TRP? How much the channel is getting for broadcasting the matches? I mean, are we guys really giving any emphasis on the short selection, the choice of bowlers, the harmony amongst a team, class of a batsman, and the technicality of a bowler? No!!! Even the captains of the teams are too busy in grabbing all the money at one go rather than concentrating on what should be the actual composition of their team! They can only make a team of those players who have been allotted to them by their franchise owners! I mean, is this what we call a real CRICKET?

Forget about IPL, in general also, tell me, why there are not ample test matches played in a year, as compared to ODIs and T20s. While on one side, a test match fails to gather a crowd of 1000, the strength multiplies to almost 40 times during an ODI and T20? It is obvious that cricket boards (like BCCI, which is the richest board) get plenty of audiences, TRPs and revenues out of ODIs, so they don’t find any need to fit test matches in their yearly cricketing schedules. It is all about the “MONEY GAME.”

Now let us talk something about the Sponsors! The huge following of tabloid cricket creates little surprise that multinational companies want to spend millions on advertising, be it online or offline. With so much money pouring in their pockets, one can imagine the effect which it can create on the mindset of cricketers. After all, they are HUMANS too!

Comparing the money factor, the money in cricket is nowhere near comparable to the money involved in other sports. Hockey, the national game of India is struggling to get ample sponsors, while Indian cricket team is finding it difficult to choose from the big multinational corporate companies who are lying in queues to sponsor them!

Now allow me to give you a glimpse of the players’ intentions! I remember watching a post match presentation, where MS Dhoni was seen in one of his best moods, despite the fact that his team lost to a low level test team and that too by a huge margin! But that didn’t bother the captain at all. He got his match fee, plenty of sponsors and the required audience for the game! What else can he ask for? People will gradually forget the result and move on with their lives! There are plenty of matches ahead, come on, who will remember the losses!!! Right Folks