Defence of MS

There is an excellent post by Achettup on his blog on the media getting ridiculously hyper over not so big deal of India’s ouster from the T20 world cup. Here it is. Then we have Times Now and CNN-IBN going madly behind India’s decision to field first in the game against England. A lady reporter / fashion model / cricket expert constantly bantered about how wrong the decision to field first was. Then we have Bishen Singh Bedi claiming that Dhoni’s cricketing acumen is poor cos he hails from Ranchi and that his thinking is street level. Nonsense.

Then there are self proclaimed anti India bloggers who find sadistic pleasure in everything bad happening to India, be it the 26/11 or the WT20 loss.

Then there are some really derogatory comments like Mr. 3 liters Doodh a day for MS by one of his famed critics. What about the Dancer in the reality show sir? Is he good enough to pip Doodh drinker from his spot ? I would really wish to watch out this folks what they say when India gets next success – be it in CT or be it in WI tour or whatsoever tourney. Being MS is so tough this days. It doesn’t matter if you have won everything you captained, it doesn’t matter you won a test series against 2 of the most dangerous oppositions without losing even a single test. Doesn’t matter if you won 2 on the trot ODI series in Emerald Isle, which no other captain of India was able to do. Doesn’t matter if you won a ODI series and a Test series down under in NZ in 33 years. Doesn’t matter if you won the CB series for the first and final time in history. And doesn’t matter if you won the WT20 – 2007. The fact that he lost WT20 crown and the IPL – II, he is in for a serious hit. Brand Dhoni, honeymoon Dhoni, lucky Dhoni, Doodh peeta Dhoni. What not.

Former Test stars are blaming Gary on his hinting to IPL as one of the reason for fatigue that finally led to the loss. That’s on cricketnext.com.

IBN cricket “Expert” has following analysis :

“The decision to bat Suresh Raina at number three in the batting line-up despite his obvious weakness against the short ball was also hard to understand. With the asking rate (required run rate) not too stiff, could the skipper have given himself the role of seeing the initial England burn out and kept Raina in the dugout for an assault on the spinners?”

Not so long ago MS was reeled for coming at 3. So there is a problem. MS comes at 3. Criticise. Raina at 3. Criticise. Whats MS supposed to do? Bat Nishant Arora or any journo there. I doubt if the journo would even know the rules of the game.

Yes Jadeja at 4 was a mistake. Accepted.

Then there is this generalized article from PTI on what went wrong :

http://cricket.ndtv.com/cricket/ndtvcricket/WT20/storypage.aspx?ID=SPOEN20090097586

“Matches at home, the below-par attack of New Zealand and fine performances on the worn-out pitches of South Africa during the Indian Premier League (IPL) camouflaged the young Indian batsmen weaknesses against quality pace attack of West Indies and England, who were prepared to dig it short.”

Since when England and West Indies had a quality pace attack? If they had they wouldn’t be at 7 and 8 positions in the ODI cricket and at 5^th and 8^th position in Test cricket. One off victories for both the teams don’t make them have a quality pace attack. Matches at home? Does that mean India should not play matches at home?

“Individually, captain Dhoni's admission that he can't hit sixes as of yore is welcomed, but his assertion that he is working on it isn't true as the team hardly practices. The jibe at media for making an issue out of the team's absence from practice sessions is misguided.”

Didn’t media create an issue out of the supposed rift between MS and VS ? Is media’s role glorified here? When the journos who never would have stepped on the cricket field rig the Indian cricketers, they assume they are the rulers of the game and have the audacity to pass the verdict on the topics they hardly know of.

And on one hand the lesser ex stars of Indian cricket – Patil, Borde and Rajput are reeling MS, the legends of the cricket in country who actually made it the way it is today have backed up MS. None other than Sunny Gavaskar. He has backed the skipper. There is nobody better than MS to lead India in any form of the game. And if there are polls and discussions on whether MS should resign on any tv channel or newspaper, then its just simply ridiculous. MS has accepted his fault, he has apologized. What else he needs to do? We need to move on from this defeat of course with lessons learnt. And the first lesson is that the T20 defeat shouldn’t be taken seriously. Something Younis Khan suggests.

Entire media circle has gone haywire on this loss. And till the next success this topic would be red hot and even small moves by the team would be monitored and aired as Breaking News. And not to wonder if some more derogatory synonyms pop up for MS. Yeah somebody sitting in Al Manamah, Middle East is so good at doing it.