India vs England: Fatigue, IPL, Preparation and other excuses

Out-thought and out-played

Now that the Indians have blamed the lack of proper warm-up games for their humiliation at the hands of England in the ongoing series, they now want another warm-up game before the Boxing day test against Australia in Melbourne. This completely confuses me. On the one hand, we crib about too much cricket, then we want one more warm up game because cricketers have not had enough of the “right” kind of cricket. But warm-up games don’t cause any mental fatigue as any athlete can tell you. I’m joking of course.

There is a very simple explanation for this. “You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.” That’s exactly what’s going on with the Indian team. During the 80s and 90s it was inadequate pay, poor pitches, lack of fast bowlers, unimaginative board, lack of incentives, selectorial stupidity and player selfishness. Most of these issues have been tackled.

There are now better pitches, enough fast bowlers (although PK may not fully qualify), enough salaries and a good contract system, good domestic pay, incentives, selectorial consistency and a board that will fight for players (example Sydney) even if it is sometimes misguided.

India’s cricketers are low on motivation right now after winning the World Cup. Very simple and straightforward explanation. The nerdy types would want some other “fact-based” reasoning. It doesn’t exist because the cricketers are human and not statistics. Even if this England tour meant a lot to them, they couldn’t crank themselves up after winning the World Cup.

Why can’t we just agree that India were completely out-thought and out-played by a smarter team? England killed the Indians mercilessly and down under to boot. Let’s admit that the Andy Flower, Andrew Strauss led English team is more motivated and smarter than the teams that they are playing.

Sure, India has made some mistakes, but I don’t believe IPL has led India to perform poorly. This is the core group that challenged SA in South Africa and won the World Cup. They can’t become stupid overnight. A second string team did decently in the West Indies to win the series.

I don’t think Sehwag, Zaheer, Gambhir and Pujara played the IPL expecting to pick up injuries. Resting during the IPL would have meant giving up a huge source of income that is critical for professional players. In any case, that in itself does not mean that India would have given England a run for their money. This is pure speculation that a fit Indian team would have challenged England more or won even.

The Australians were well rested when they took on the English and they were well-prepared too. But they got creamed, didn’t they? It’s time to put the cribbing aside and salute an English team that well and truly deserves to be the number one team. It’s time for critics and commentators and quit cribbing about preparation. India were in the West Indies prior to this tour. What else should they be doing? Play the English team in a pre-series series?

I’m mad as hell that we can’t give credit where it’s due. Our cricketers are now officially over the hill and it’s time to rebuild the team. We needed this series to certify that. If we close our eyes to reality and send this same team to Australia, so that Sachin, Dravid and Laxman can have the satisfaction of a series win in Australia by beating an undercooked Australia, then we are set to suffer for another generation.

IPL is here to stay. We need to figure out how to prepare and win while it is there. India weren’t much better during the “good old days” of no IPL.