ICC T20 World Cup 2016: Toss, Ajinkya Rahane and No balls - Three factors that worked against India in semi-final

Hardik Pandya speaks to Umpire Richard Kettleborough after having Lendl Simmons caught off a no ball.

No-balls – an open-and-shut case. The first one cost, and cost dearly. But I don't think the second no-ball could have changed the situation much; if anything, it ended the slightest of hopes India had. With the likes of Brathwaite, Bravo and Sammy to come and Russell at the crease, 11 runs an over with two overs of spinners to cover up, it was West Indies’ game all along.

Dhoni and Indian bowlers couldn't have done much

Dhoni and his aversion to be flexible and innovative is responsible for a lot of things that is wrong with Indian cricket at the moment, but this loss wasn't one of them. Bowling out Jasprit Bumrah and Ashish Nehra by the 18th over wasn't a mistake; if he hadn't, the match would have been over long back. To see Kohli bowl the last over was bizarre, yes, but even the world’s best death bowler would have been helpless at that point. It was a lost cause. Don’t see any value in looking too much into it.

The decision to add an extra pace bowler is not really a convincing argument too. Who will you drop? Ravichandran Ashwin? If Bumrah hadn't got Gayle out, the only other option we had was him. Ravindra Jadeja? Against a team that has 9 right-handers in top 10? Hardik Pandya? In a team whose batsmen have been struggling big time? These are all 50-50 decisions you can't really blame Dhoni for.

The Indian bowling performance wasn’t great either, but there is only so much you can do on a deck like this. South Africa couldn’t defend even with 40 more runs up their sleeve. England failed as well. West Indies have conceded two 180+ scores even against sides that weren’t proactive.

Bigger issues looming

What concerns me more is that, for years now, this team has been playing a brand of cricket that's as regressive as anything I have seen, probably with the exception of England pre-2015 World Cup. India at the moment is a unit bereft of ideas and too short-sighted to innovate. Teams like New Zealand and England have scaled greater heights in the recent past being bold and imaginative with the way of doing things. While it’s true that you can’t win every tournament, nothing should stop you from putting your best foot forward.

Hardik Pandya's inclusion in the senior team was always rushed up, but if there is anything he can offer at this point, it's his hitting ability against spinners. The 22-year-old has shown enough of that skill in all the stages he has played at - IPL, domestic T20s and glimpses of it at the international level as well.

Pandya took off right from the word go against Bangladesh this tournament on a wicket even Kohli found it difficult slogging. It needed an exceptional catch from Soumya Sarkar to send him back. Could he have been used against Sulieman Benn and Samuel Badree? But how, when you were busy rotating the strike?

Infuse young blood

And why is it that the Indian think-tank keeps backing the same set of players? Granted, they don't have world-class middle order talents. But why don’t you try the few who can potentially become world-class players in the future? I, for one, saw enough from Deepak Hooda to suggest he should be in the scheme of things for the 2019 World Cup.

If the 21-year-old batsman can become such a monstrous hitter of slow bowlers in a space of one year (the first time I saw him, in the UAE U-19 World Cup, he didn't have such expansive batting skills; was just promising, compact, temperamently strong and can roll his arm over), surely he can be groomed to do the same against pacers?

Similarly, Mumbai’s Suryakumar Yadav, although has a questionable temperament, has played a handful of knocks to suggest he has the big-hitting skills required to play the role. Why aren't they being put through the India A drill?

Instead this obsession with batsmen who can bowl and bowlers who can bat has led to the likes of Gurukeerat Singh and Rishi Dhawan getting more chances with the ‘A’ side. It doesn’t take long for them to get exposed at the senior level. Why not make peace with the fact that you don’t have all-rounders?

Step up the game

If not for Ajinkya Rahane’s injury, Manish Pandey may not even have got a chance in the Australian series. Good for him he grabbed it with both his hands; hadn’t he played that knock, I would have bet on him getting dropped for the next series in favour of.. guess who? Suresh Raina.

England, a team that spent the entire decade believing it isn't good in LOIs because its players are not playing in IPL-style leagues, has the likes of Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Sam Billings and Ben Stokes, while India only have different versions of Suresh Raina, with every supposedly updated one being even more weaker against pace and bounce. The last I saw, he was struggling to clear the Bangalore infield against Al-Amin Hossain. Yes, Al-Amin Hossain. Go. Figure.

The memories might remain very fresh, but it has been 8 years since India last won a T20 World Cup. When was the last time the team emerged victorious in an overseas ODI series against a Test playing nation? An overseas Test series? Leave winning, have they even competed? And as if that's not enough, they are now losing to South Africa at home and against Bangladesh away.

This needs some serious fixing. And fast.