Former Indian skipper Kapil Dev beamed with self-confidence during his entire cricketing career. His Indian team could win matches with his bowling alone. Dev was a fielder par excellence and at times turned the course of the match with his gritty batting.
In his autobiography ‘Straight from the Heart’, he relates an incident that occurred when he was just 15 years old. He writes that he was given only “two dry chapattis and one large spoonful of vegetables” as food after practice, only to be confronted by Mr. Keki Tarapore of the BCCI, who asked Kapil in front of all the boys, “So, you don’t like the food we give you?” To this, Kapil replied, “No Sir, I am a fast bowler and I need more food, and more solid food than that”. Mr. Tarapore broke out into a fit of sarcastic laughter and said, “There are no fast bowlers in India”.
Resultantly, that comment alone made Kapil Dev into a more determined player. This lead to a series of events making Kapil Dev the best fast bowler, not only in India, but also in the entire cricketing world. Such was the self-confidence of Indian players back then. On the contrary, players of today are portrayed as Gods in the cricket crazy nation. Their self-confidence more of less enters the domain of overconfidence, and at times even crosses that barrier too. Their performance in the recent T20 World Cup is an example of how their overconfidence has lead to their destruction.
India was the only team that did not play warm-up matches in this years’ T20 World Cup because they believed they did not need petty practice after the Indian Premier League. They arrived late; later than all the other participating teams and believed that they were the best T20 side in the world. Since all the players were busy playing the Indian Premier League, separately for their teams, team cohesion was a question left unanswered. The Indian board should have asked the players to meet and spend time together. Instead, all the players met when they arrived at the airport to leave for the Caribbean, and the first match they played together was in the group stages of the mega event.
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni might not admit but the Indian Premier League’s late closure cost his team the Twenty20 World Cup for the second time in 2 years. The side missed Virender Sehwag, who was injured during the IPL. They selected players based on IPL form. Resultantly, they could not live up to the expectations (Ravindra Jadeja) of international cricket. The ones who did well for India in the league matches succumbed to the pressure in the bigger games (Suresh Raina).
Then, India’s shortfall against the delivery that has extra bounce completely overpowered their senses! The Indians failed to reach the final four largely because they did not practice against the short pitched delivery - one that rises from the good length spot and surprises the batsmen. Indian coach Gary Kirsten said ahead of the tournament that the players were comfortable against the short pitched delivery. However, it seems he did not spend much time with the boys to know whether they were telling the truth or not.
For the first time in many years, India’s bowling fared better than its batting. Besides Ravindra Jadeja, who is as useless a cricketer as Pakistan’s Fawad Alam is, all the bowlers bowled their heart out, with Harbhajan Singh leading the way. Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan were good in patches (although Zaheer went for runs in crucial matches) and so were part timers Yusuf Pathan and Yuvraj Singh. Nevertheless, whenever Jadeja came to bowl, especially in the last two matches, he was dispatched to all corners of the park. Jadeja was hit for runs at will, which forced India’s team management to make him the 12th player in the team.
The Indian fielding was satisfactory over the course of the mega event. However, when the batting is not clicking, the bowlers and fielders are usually helpless to do the trick. Their loss against the Sri Lankans has knocked team India out of this year’s competition. Whatever they do in their domestic circuit in the future, their pathetic display in the last two editions of the T20 World Cup will continue to haunt them.
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