Welcome to the boardroom of Team India in a posh hotel located in Durban.
The whole squad is sitting together with pens and papers in their hands. Gary Kirsten counts the players and three members of the squad are missing. He then remembers that Sachin Tendulkar is enjoying his fresh juice at the pool side and signing autographs,
no one dares to ask why.
Debutant Jaidev Unadkat and Sreesanth are not welcomed to join the meeting. The coach further told that both bowlers have been punished and are jogging in the nearby park until evening. He continues, “boys start jotting down what you think Team India did
wrong in the first test match against South Africa.” Kirsten will be thinking himself that the checklist will be countless as there was nothing right they did for the match. Team India started the match with losing a toss and they ended up with losing the
match.
Kirsten says loud “No one writes their names on the sheet and the time to finish this task is 30 minutes.” Everyone starts using their brains, which they rarely used against South Africa on the field and start writing on their respective sheets, hiding them
from each other. Kirsten sitting on a king chair, chewing his gum, eyes on the watch thinks what will be they writing. Poor batting...? The batsmen will be thinking, no wait... it was poor bowling that cost us the match. Another bloke will be writing poor
bowling but the bowlers will be asking questions, guys don’t forget what you did in the first innings while batting. Everyone with sealed lips will be playing blame game in their minds. They would be thinking… ah wait, are we really the top team in the tests?
Or the published reports of the rankings were another WikiLeaks revelation?
His realistic thoughts were distracted when one Team India’s member sitting in a corner asks for another sheet. What you did with the first one, asks his fellow. The player with his head down replied that the problems the team had are more than to be noted
on a single sheet. Gary Kirsten stands and stretches his arms and shouts “time’s up” but everyone keeps writing. Soon he realises the paper is lengthy and should be given more time to complete the task.
Drinking full glass of water in one go, Suresh Raina is writing in full speed. Kirsten thinks again to himself, the way Raina is showing fluency in his writing he should be given pen while playing rather than a bat. Two players who were not part of the playing
eleven are gossiping about Raina’s position in a team. One of them says, “don’t worry he won’t pass.” The players chuckle, dropping their heads down and hiding their mouth with the hand, hoping to get a chance in the second Test.
Kirsten stops his stopwatch and shouts, finish... that’s it... Laxman stop... MS Dhoni acts like a proctor, collecting all the sheets. Dhoni passes the sheets to Kirsten and keeps reciting his mantras “AWL IS WELL, AWL IS WELL.”
Kirsten gathers all the sheets and starts to review what everybody wrote. Pressure, high expectations, poor bowling, Zaheer Khan and batting order were the common points. Kirsten leaves the room, but just before leaving, he tells them, “Zaheer Khan is back.
Perform well in the upcoming test and prove that you deserve to be the best. Good luck.”
Players start buzzing, nothing could be figured what it was but everyone was saying one line “no, I didn’t put your name in the list, but you know what you did this summer.”
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