Why is Team India not the best yet?

Why is Australia still considered the best in business even though they have become vulnerable and lost their top ranking and are without their stars? The answer is simple. They play for victory rather than looking to go about their cricket as a forced routine. A 1st innings declaration on Day 4, still trailing by 43 runs, despite a good partnership going on between the tail-enders, speaks volumes about their game plan.

Clarke was bold enough to declare before Lyon could dream of his first first-class 50. No issues there and nobody showered any criticism even though Lyon played smartly for his forty, his highest first class score, but Clarke had other plans.

Whatever low their team touches, Australian players, as individual performers, have a better impression on the franchises than their cricketing counterparts, which is evident in every IPL season. An Australian in a team boosts the morale. Want an example? Compare the performances of CSK with and without their spearhead opener in Michael Hussey last year.

The difference between the recent top test teams and the number 1 Australian team before them, is complacency. Reaching the top will never be tough but staying there will always be. Mastering the art of consistency is the nucleus of all game plans.

You can think of your past as a lesson learnt but not as one to be thought of over and over again and repeat the same mistakes. Had Harris been thinking of his repeated failures with decision review during the last Ashes series, he wouldn’t have taken it yet again and wouldn’t have reached a score of 68 not out. Learn from Australia on how to learn from mistakes every day. Hilfenhaus’s first innings figures were 1 for 67 from 33 overs, whereas his second innings figures were 4 for 27 from 17 overs. Got the proof?

India has never been a consistent performer in any format. Critics might point to complacency and other synonyms as the cause. But let’s analyze it from a different angle. We, fans of the Men in Blue, always expect the Men in Baggy Green’s downfall. Why so? Because they had been at the top for long, much more than an ‘extended period’. Take the IPL for instance. Everybody, including the governing body, expects a different winner every time citing that IPL may lose its charm if a particular team keeps on winning. Consistency is lost (or rather buried) at the root. Every fan cherishes close finishes in every match. 5th days in Test matches with a result are becoming a dream.

Players grew with such mentality. Dhoni, in one of his talks during the recent IPL, told that pressure is always good. Here, he didn’t mean the pressure to perform consistently but the pressure generated after the team is being pushed into a must-win situation. Crores and crores are being spent looking at one very bleak aspect – cricket is unpredictable in this region of the game. Why are the results unpredictable? Because the results are not consistent. Why are the results not consistent? Because the players are over loaded. Why are they over loaded? Because they are under pressure every time. Why there is pressure created for every match? Because results are dependent on individual performance(s). Why depend on individual performers? Because the team is complacent and players are inconsistent. Why is there no consistency? Because money rules the game. Why money shines? Because cricket is an unpredictable game.

So, in India, cricket faces deadlock and goes in a round-robin fashion. Performance and consistency take a backseat in the selection criteria. IPL performances are being given importance, forgetting the fact that a player considered the best of a particular edition hasn’t really done the same in the next.

Post the boom in the Indian cricket market, the board has decided to preserve and protect its resources from foreign eyes, thereby cutting down the learning opportunities for the players and preventing them from honing their skills. Vernon Philander on the other hand, chose Somerset ahead of IPL.

Putting the blame on IPL or neglecting it is never going to take any team to the pinnacle. Players who were against the league during the first edition are now being lured by its popularity. There would definitely have been a similar situation of cricket losing its flavor when ODIs started to lift their heads but then we are live examples of both tests and ODIs co-existing and the time is not far off when T20 too, will join the fraternity.

There are just 2 teams currently which can boast of having the pedigree, impeccable timing, tactical awareness and courage to take the risk necessary for the growth of cricket – Australia and South Africa. India can’t put up a consistent show abroad, England are still learning to play in the sub-continent, Sri Lanka are the real unpredictable team of the game, Pakistan is shadowed by controversies, New Zealand rely on their home conditions, West Indies never got into the groove ever since they lost their supremacy on the game and Bangladesh always remain the dark horse.

Australia has always had the right mixture and a tactical leader at appropriate times and with the proposed changes to their national contract structure and reduction in the number of contracts, one can expect even better performers emerging. Wonder whether the Indian board will ever think of something like the Argus review or whether the players will ever support such changes to their contracts.

A feeling of pride arises on hearing or reading about how cricket was brought to India and how gradually it became the major sport of the nation. But the heart breaks when such high profile citizens make news after ending up on the wrong side most times. It will be better if players understand that unpredictability and consistency are two different things. Let the results always be unpredictable, but let there be consistent performance.