What is going wrong with Team India?

Just before the Pakistan series I told some of my friends(when we went to Coorg for New year) that Team India will no longer be Team India without Daada. I am not a Bengali and am not a Rahul Dravid hater. In fact am a great fan of Rahul for his batting. The reasons I told were that

1. The youngsters will no longer get the kind of support that Ganguly gave them and hence that will lead to a feeling of insecurity.
2. Dravid is a gentleman cricket. Captaincy requires a different character. You got to be agressive and be a person who stares at the opposition straight at the eye. I love Ganguly for this character itself. The way he tackled Steve Waugh in 2001 series in India by deliberately walking late for the toss showed that he is quite a character.

Now the results are showing up. And I found it interesting when Times of India came out with the same reasons. Read this link.

http://cricket.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/msid-1462632.cms


One thing is sure. Appointing Chappel cost India dear. He is expecting to bring in the Australian work ethics in Indian team. That will work in Australia but not in India for the following reasons.

1. If a player doesnt perform in Australia and he is shown the door there are dozens of quality players waiting in the reserves. But in India we dont have that many quality players. So we got to live with whatever we have and we need to slowly nurture them and build a team which Ganguly did a really great job.

2. Indians are emotional when compared to Aussies. So if a player is dropped he feels emotionally drawn back and he gets a sense of insecurity. This further affects his performance.


All I could say is that Kiran More, Chappel and co did the greatest dis-service to Indian cricket by dropping Ganguly. He should have been persisted with a little longer though his personal batting performance was bad. He would have atleast made sure that he created a core Indian team for the future before he left. With Sachin, Dravid and Laxman already nearing the end of their careers India hasnt identified the core team for the next generation. Hopefully we dont go back to the dark days of the pre-ganguly period.