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The two toughest teams that India had to face in the group B in the World Cup were Pakistan and South Africa. Both have been vanquished – and quite handsomely too. While Misbah ul-Haq, captain of Pakistan, perplexed and forlorn, wondered why his team has never been able to outsmart India in the World Cup, the redoubtable A B de Villiers, skipper of South Africa, conceded, “It's almost embarrassing. You never want to lose by that amount of runs.” Before the fixtures, these two teams must have fancied their chances because India were coming off a dispirted three months, losing the Tests series against Australia and the one-dayer tri-series against Australia and England.
It was not only their opponents that India surprised. The fans were too. And the very weaknesses of the team that led to the poor showing preceding the World Cup, namely the performances of Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli and the inability of the bowlers to put up convincing performances, became strengths in the first two games of a tournament in which they are defending champions.
So is this a “revival” for the Indian team? There are two issues to consider when answering this question. One, calling it a revival presumes that the Indian team had hit the nadir. However, the statistics show that while the Indian team had a disastrous Australian summer, it had pretty well kept its credential intact in the series prior to that with a win over England in England and victories over West Indies and Sri Lanka at home before embarking for Australia. In effect, India had had just one bad series, but the result of that engagement was amplified by doomsayers because that series would segue into the infinitely more demanding World Cup.
The second problem with calling the current sequence of victories a “revival” presumes, again, that India is on the way to a very good showing. This is a very long tournament, with the final to be played only on March 29, a full month plus some days from now. Admittedly, India now is happily placed to qualify from the group having beaten the best of the lot. But bigger challenges await. And as one expert pointed out on TV, instead of hardening up with tough matches for the quarterfinal, India will be playing easy matches in the run-up to that important fixture. Will a relaxed mindset – not an impossibility given that it has crossed the toughest hurdles with aplomb – affect its keenness in the quarterfinal, where a loss would toss you out of the tournament?
The fan is ecstatic, no doubt, and there is talk of a “revival”. But the said revival is mostly in the context of the unexpected losses to Australia and England prior to the World Cup. The dual victories in the World Cup is actually India, the efficient one-day performer, playing to form. After all, it was only on February 21 that ICC ranked India second behind Australia in one-day cricket. Seeking a “revival” of the second-best one-day team in the world is silly, even for a demanding Indian fan.
