After exiting the T20 World Cup, the Indian team has to face the harsh consequences of irrational exuberance.
In 2007, Indian cricket was trying to claw its way back into popularity, trying to put the debacle of the World Cup in the West Indies behind it. Some gains were made around the middle of the year, such as the facile victory in Bangladesh and the historic one in the Test series in England.
But the real turnaround took place when India won the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa in September that year. It brought the fans back, and the sponsors; it allowed the country some sort of a claim (come on, Twenty20 only!) to the tag of the world champion; and turned Umpire’s Post’s mother into a cricket watcher (earlier, she would only grumble that all our watching the game was pointless because the team hardly ever won).
All this was fine, but there were two other by-products of the win that were not. First, it gave rise to the belief that the senior players (Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar), who had chosen to skip the event, were a liability and the team did better without them. Secondly, the team agreed to be paraded on an open-top bus.
To be sure, the team did much good work in South Africa. It won the inaugural World Cup in a format that is surely the future of the game. It won four matches on the trot, beat the three best teams in the tournament (South Africa, Australia and Pakistan) in succession, and played arguably the best semi-final and final in a tournament of this scale.
Yet, the five-hour, 30-km Vijay Yatra, or whatever the breathless news channels called it, in Mumbai, the most unsuitable city for such a parade, was a regressive move and it had to come back to haunt the players at some point. The team’s early exit in this Twenty20 World Cup is just that point.
Now, the players are vulnerable to ridicule of the same gigantic proportions. If you accept one form of irrational exuberance, you cannot take the moral high ground when the other side of this coin, irrational hostility, surfaces. So Dhoni has to look sombre and apologise now that his moves are being castigated, calls being made to axe him, and his effigy being burned allegedly under the deft supervision of news channels.
But what about the other point, the one of the age of the player? This team is about the same age as the one that won the tournament the last time. So do we need younger players? Or, do we need better players regardless of their age?
