Blogs In Defense of Dhoni & Co.
June 23rd, 2009 by writemanWas it a glut of cricket matches, which resulted in severe fatigue that lead to the dismal performance of the Indian cricket team in the recent T20 World Cup? It seemed so, very much. Dhoni was talking of grey hairs, Yuvi was not even interested to give complete replies to questions in interviews, and Sehwag was hurting from an injury yet still playing on – all signs of stress and fatigue. It seemed as if the team went out and played on an imperfect auto pilot system that was ready to malfunction. Obviously, the result was not impressive.
If we look at the match schedules for the last 8-10 months it would become quite clear how much cricket India has played. The Australia tour, the series against England at home, the Sri Lanka tour, the New Zealand tour, and then the IPL – the last months have been quite hectic. These days tours involve T20 matches in addition to tests and ODIs. Though T20 matches are very short, the mental energies expended in them are no less than tests or ODIs. And every time the team toured or played there was this huge expectation to win. This was so because Dhoni & Co. had formed a habit of winning after the 2008 T20 World Cup. They did win on majority of the occasions bringing joy to the cricket fans.
Let’s us be easy on the players. They are only human and have physical and mental thresholds. It would be unfair to blame the players now. Having a team of mostly young players doesn’t mean that they will not be tired and can go on and on.
