India has just crashed out of the second edition of ICC World Cup Twenty 20 event. If you ask me whether the Indian team performed to their potential, the answer is ‘NO’ and the reasons are the following:
- There was no proper opening pair. Basically they did not have a backup for the injured Sehwag and the team composition was wrong here
- Dhoni disturbed the #3 slot throughout the tournament by promoting himself (selfish) on flat wickets and sending in Raina and Yuvraj when the wicket was fast and bouncy. This disturbed the #3 specialist slot. Ideally, he should have stuck with Raina
- Our paper tigers are not well-equipped to play in bouncy tracks. They chased moving and bouncing balls without any clue
- IPL fatigue and Twenty 20 overkill! This was the biggest reason and the topic for today
Is IPL really in the interest of the nation?
Last year I had written a post about the potential threat that IPL was posing then and most of it has come true already. The players (and even BCCI) is purely after money and once they have it with IPL, there is no interest to play for the country. If you remember, last year our skipper had skipped the tour following the IPL citing the need for rest. If he really wanted to rest, he should have taken rest during IPL and not while playing for the country.
BCCI cheating the country?
I would think that the selectors and the management must have known about Sehwag’s injury but they didn’t want to admit the fact that IPL caused the problem (which was the actual reason). By sending an unfit team, they did not really put country’s interest ahead of their money minded IPL.
BCCI is an autonomous private body. If they want to play more IPL and make money, let them but then representing the country’s cricket should not be in their agenda. The government should probably take over that part. At the moment, IPL is only benefiting the franchisees, the players and BCCI but not the country!
For this edition of IPL, it was actually an irony to see that teams like Rajastan or Chennai is playing abroad with a fake fan setup around. Even more ridiculous was the way in which BCCI and IPL was pouring out money to support schools in South Africa and acting like big bosses there. Can’t they do the same kind of charity here in India?
Ban IPL or make it short!
Ideally, they should make IPL only a within-India affair. Also, they should cut down the duration to something like three weeks to save our cricketers to play for the country. Also a shorter duration would make sure that a billion fans who are country’s future – in terms of valuable human resource – will not waste their time by watching just cricket.
Let’s not overdo Twenty 20 and kill our country’s pride! (Please note that it’s not an emotional outburst from me due to India’s exit from the Twenty 20 World cup. I have written about the Twenty 20 overkill many times in the past)
The IPL is a great tournement.
The idea of playing it in South Africa may have been accidental but was a great sucess!
it is a bit harsh to want to ban the ipl,like all things new there is going to be a few growing pains and perhaps if certain control measures are put in place there will not be a conflict beteen playing for ones country and the ipl. in addition normal cricket,especially Tests, now has competition and will have to adapt or die. if it adapts it will only be stronger and better.
@Cricket Bats, it’s great fun for sure but how much value it’s adding to the cricket or the fans worldwide is the question. At the moment BCCI is making money, that’s it!
@Michael, they sure need to adapt if they have to sustain. They cannot kill international cricket and other teams for their own selfish motives of making money.