Men In Blue Merciless against “Weaker Teams”

Men In Blue have always been merciless against weaker teams. Indians rewrote the Asia Cup record book in today’s match against Hong Kong. Oh such a strong opponent 😉 But it was unfortunate that they could not break the record for the largest margin victory they had set against Bermuda in the league match of previous world cup, another strong team. Indian players have been rewriting record books, setting personal bests against low profile teams, but when it comes to playing against Australia or some other strong team, they hardly perform 🙁 Raina hit his maiden century against Hong Kong and that too second fastest for India. But i don’t want to comment against Dhoni’s knock, he has been playing with a lot maturity. It could be seen in his knock in the final match against Pakistan and not only that match there are many such instances. Even Sehwag and Gambhir have been playing well most of the times. But they flatter during the knockout matches. Example can be taken from the Kitply Cup, where in they thrashed Pakistan during the league match but in the Final, they could not repeat the same performance.

Indian strike bowlers R P Singh, Praveen Kumar were not that effective against Hong Kong and the three fast bowlers including Gony shared 1 wicket among them. This is really not a good news for the Indian camp. Piyush Chawla was the pick of the bowlers with figures 10-2-23-4.Does anyone remeber his bowling figures in the final match of Kitply Cup? No!!! 10-0-85-0. This was his bowling figures. See the contrast there. Its not that he is not a good bowler, its that Indian bowlers succumb to the pressure and importance of the match. The same opponent, same series but in the league match Chawla has a better performance with bowling figure 8.4-0-40-4. The same applies to all Indian bowlers. They have to improve physically and mentally. The best example is the ICC world cup 2003. India had a great tournament untill the final where they surrendered meekly to the mighty Australians. Why is it so? Again the same reason- Pressure due to importance of match and the hopes thousands back home had pinned against the 11 MIBs.

Indian players have to be taught to tackle stress and match pressure. Pressure and expectations always hamper any sportperson’s performance at any level of sport. Fitness has been something which can be seen in Australian players and they usually put the opposite team under pressure through their pre match remarks. Lets see how the Men In Blue perform in the next match against Pakistan, after losing the title in the losided series.