Reality Check for India

It is not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that matters!!!

And with virtually teenagers in their side, Bangladesh walked away winners against an established professional team India. Thoough all is not lost for India (say unlike Pakistan), we have to again depend on permutations and combinations to get through to the next round. We now have to definetely beat Bermuda by a higher margin than SL and win against SL (well that is not as easy as one might think) and then hope that Bangladesh screw up against Bermuda on NRR!!!

So often India has shown this complete lack of application when it comes to playing a team which bowls straight and fields like tigers thereby restricting run scoring. Every single batsman is to be blamed for this poor performance. To think that if Zaheer and Munaf had not scored that 30 odd runs in the end, this match would not have even had run as close. Robin, Sachin, Dravid, Yuvraj and Ganguly could not take singles and rotate the strike for long periods of time. And if they had scored that extra 20-30 runs in that 15-40 over period (I am talking about a extra run an over, which is no high ask), this game would have been different.

And please lets not assume the Bangladesh team to be a minnow or India to be a Super Power. Both are wrong assumptions. We are as bad as a minnow one day and as good as Aus another day. Lets hope that the inexperience of Bangladesh will reflect somewhere in their campaign and we will benefit from it.