Why did we lose?

Dr Ajit Bhagwat

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: It was the fourth ICC cricket World Cup final that I witnessed from the stadium and it gives me the qualification to say “been there…done that“! But the tame surrender at the hands of the Aussies left me baffled and perplexed. I was struggling to make sense out of what had happened at the Motera stadium over those harrowing eight hours that left over 1.4 billion folks absolutely stunned! Some sense prevailed after the initial stunning gave way to some semblance of sanity. The team which comprehensively won ten matches on the trot was crushed and reduced to a groping mediocrity! How can this happen? One fundamental fact needs explanation: “The Indian batters struggled to score on a pitch where the Aussies made batting look so easy!” Good or bad captaincy, good or bad fielding, winning or losing the toss, dropped catches and missed chances, umpiring decisions can all influence the outcomes in cricket. After reading and listening to experts and analysts, it’s clear that none of these really influenced the outcome of the match. It is my considered opinion that what influenced the outcome was “Wrong manipulation of match conditions, preempting the result and conflating sport with nationalism.” Let’s look at these in some detail. Every host country wants its team to win the cup! It has spectators and knowledge about match conditions (weather, pitch and outfield) on its side. Some of these conditions can be manipulated in a manner to favour the home team and this is an acceptable strategy in cricketing world. India had a good balance in batting and bowling so one may argue that conditions should not have mattered. However, low scoring matches are always dangerous and unpredictable when the two teams are equally strong. Kolkata semifinal was a good example of that. It is always more risky to bet on your bowlers to win the match for a team than the batters! A good batting track will favour all batters but a bowler-friendly track may help only a few bowlers. It is precisely here that India goofed up! They decided that India will win on its bowling strength and made a slow, low and dry pitch thinking that it will spin to let Jadeja and Kuldeep rip through the Aussie batting line-up with Shami creating havoc with the old ball. The plan boomeranged badly as the pitch eased out later with the dew coming on and the 240 target started looking pedestal! The ICC wanted a brand new pitch which would have been a belter track but Indians (don’t know if it was BCCI or the Indian team management) thought otherwise only to repent later. The BCCI runs Indian cricket like its fiefdom and manipulates the ICC at will because of its fiscal prowess. It is not and was never an apolitical institution. Ruling parties always dominated it for power and money but it’s for the first time that the demeanour of BCCI is conflating nationalism with sport. What does Indian air force have to do with a BCCI event? So confident was the BCCI of an Indian win that they had only Indian map (and not Australia) on the laser map of earth that was displayed in the sky at the end of the match! And they had the cheek to still display it after losing the game. They had planned to parade the triumphant Indian team in a cavalcade in four major cities of the country! When you do that the burden and pressure on our players goes up manifolds and they can literally crumble under pressure. This was reflected by the pathetically slow partnership between Virat and Rahul that cost us the match. Under these circumstances, when Dravid says he told the boys to go out and just enjoy the game, it makes no sense! It was a game lost before it was played. As an innocent spectator, I never knew this and so didn’t millions like me!