Will the Indian team's fortunes reverse-'swing'?

Will the Indian flag fly high again?

April 2nd, 2011 was a night to remember. Indians all across the globe were celebrating, the bottles were out and the faces of a billion fans were brimming with happiness. The dream of a billion people was finally achieved and the team became immortal. People believed that they could do nothing wrong, absolutely nothing. They were potent enough to win any match under any given condition. By now, India was the number 1 Test side and had won the World Cup after 28 years. But sadly, this proved to be a very short phase. Everything changed in a span of a few months. India went out on an ill-fated tour of England.

July 21st, 2011 was when the Indian team finally began respecting Sir Isaac Newton. They showed that nothing could stay on the top forever. You had to come down someday, and gravity was more than just a word in a physics textbook. Until then, everything looked rosy and happy. Gary Kirsten had left and in came Duncan Fletcher, along with whom came the bad times. And yes, not to forget, the swing. The ball swung as drastically as India’s fortunes did. Test cricket started to become painful for the fans back in the 2nd most populated country in the world. It increasingly seemed to look like a TV serial where the daughter-in-law only cried and the English bowlers looked like the mother-in-law who apparently had only one ambition in life i.e. to make that poor girl cry.

The Indian batsmen were completely out of sorts. There seemed to be demons on the pitch when the Indians came out to bat and surprisingly, those demons vanished when the opponents came out to bat. The same saga continued when India travelled Down Under. The Indian batsmen batted so badly that even thinking of scoring 300 runs in an innings seemed like a joke. Moreover, there was so much kindness shown by the Indian bowlers that all the out-of-form Australian batsmen began to look like Sir Don Bradman. By now, India had lost 8 consecutive overseas Tests. The knives were out and Indian media pounced on the team, ready to grab some TRPs. All of a sudden, Dhoni’s captaincy was in question. Dravid looked like a shadow of himself. Laxman had already lost his way in the England tour and Sachin was only left staggered after the series. Gambhir constantly flirted with the ball outside the off stump like it was Valentine’s Day. The freebies that he frequently gave to the bowlers as well as the fielders in the slip cordon is still regarded as the highest quality of slip catching practice that you will ever get! Sehwag looked liked a tailender who threw his bat at everything and then got out. Dhoni, meanwhile, felt as if all the team could do is lose and give some lame explanation. They had certainly lost their way.

A fair bit of time has passed since, and Indian cricket has not had such a harrowing time of late. It must be mentioned that Indian team is a very good limited overs side even now. After all, they are the number 1 ODI team at present. But their vulnerability towards the swinging ball is clearly a problem. That problem has just migrated to the shorter formats. The Pakistan series and the match against England in Dharamshala showed yet again that nothing much has changed for the top order. Raina and Dhoni were the only ones who looked little promising during this phase. Even though both of them by no means have the best technique or the class to play the moving ball, they did something very important in each of their innings. They played with a lot of patience and got their basics right. They played with extreme care when the ball was new, even though the run rate was slow; they had the self-belief and the temperament to survive the tough phase and then strike hard later. This is something which all the players must realize so that the trend reverses. The upcoming Australian series is an acid test for the Indian Test team. The job is only going to get tougher with the South African tour later this year. The flaws need to be addressed quickly else the daughter-in-law will be back again soon in a new avatar. As a die hard Indian fan, I still believe that the team can excel and one can only pray that the fortunes of this team reverse-swing.