High on life

            The last time I wrote here, I was agitated. I almost lost hope in Indian Cricket. I felt we were up to no good. I ended the post by undermining India's great run in ODIs off late and how because of it, India's Test Cricket debacles go unnoticed. Well, it might be true, it might not be. Today is not a day to talk about that. For today is the day when we could just sit back, ideally with a hot cup of coffee (that is if you can't afford champagne), and marvel at how India has managed to put together an ODI side that is EXCELLENT in every single facet of the game.

Now, as every other individual my Cricketing experience is limited to my particular era or generation. I don't know the Indian teams of the 80s which won the World Cup and the Benson and Hedges World Championship as well as I know the Indian teams of the last 10 years. In my 12 years of following Cricket like a nerd, I haven't seen an Indian ODI team, so clinical in every aspect of the game. I have seen the Australian teams of 2003-2008 being like that, I have seen the South African teams being like that far more consistently too and it is an incredibly proud moment as an Indian to have a team with not even an infinitesimal chance of criticism. You could say I'm sounding like every other cliched commentator out there, but the fact is I'm not trying to be an exception. I'm not trying to stimulate a different contradictory point of view on this Indian side, because frankly there just isn't one. There's no denying the fact that each individual in this team has lifted himself to to a whole new level at this big stage of the ICC Cricket World Cup. The batting and spin-bowling, which historically have been India's key strengths in the game have retained their likewise reputation, but it is the fielding and the fast bowling which has been absolutely jaw-dropping.

We did win the World Cup back in 2011, with a side as good as any at the time. We did have a clinical batting order, but yet the bowling wasn't this fiery then and we did carry a couple of donkeys in the field. Sachin was on his last legs, Sehwag wasn't the most agile outfielder in the world. Munaf and Nehra were slow, and Zaheer had skills other than those of quality fielding. We did have smaller grounds in India unlike here in Australia which helped us to some extent. The out fielders didn't have to make a lot of ground to prevent a boundary or restrict the threes to twos and so on. But, it was always clear that the same fielding unit would be found wanting the moment Cricket was played on bigger grounds and juicier pitches. When it came to fast bowling, we were incredibly lucky I feel to have Zaheer peak at the right time. If you look at his record on either side of that particular World Cup, it wasn't exemplary. There was always an injury somewhere around the corner or a patch of predictive bowling which usually was just enough to take a 1-50 and make him retain his place in the side. The other pacers we had were Munaf, Nehra and Sreesanth. Munaf was pretty handy in the middle overs, but you always knew he could be effective only on the slow drop-in pitches by taking the pace off the ball and bowling wicket to wicket. Sreesanth had pace but was wavered. Nehra was injury prone, and certainly not at his 2003 best. All in all, you could say we had a fast bowling unit just decent enough for the team to be able to make-do especially and probably only in the conditions the subcontinent had to offer. The death bowling was still a worry, even in the finals SL belted us for more than 100 runs in the last 10 overs. This, mind you, was with the old Cricketing rules of being able to have 5 fielders on the fence in the non-powerplay overs. We did win the World Cup then, but saying we had a world class balanced unit was a bit of an overstatement.

Now let's rewind a bit more, shall we? Let's go down to early 2008 when we won the ODI tri-series in Australia featuring Sri Lanka as the third team. This was well, the very beginning of India's rebuilding phase. Dhoni was pretty new to the captaincy role, we had left out Dravid and Ganguly from the ODI squad too. The Rohit Sharmas, the Praveen Kumars, the Ishant Sharmas were slowly being exposed to this beast of international Cricket. We did have a pretty settled unit then. The fast bowling looked fresh and filled with vigour, for we had a bowler who could bowl 140. Tendulkar was in the form of his life, we were still considering Irfan Pathan to be that fast bowling all rounder we have always wanted. However, we didn't have the most settled middle order then. Yuvraj was struggling big time. Dhoni hadn't yet become the finisher that he is. There was no Raina and you couldn't depend on Irfan at No. 7. If you look at the Indian team now, every single member of the squad knows specifically what his role is in the side. And, these players are matured enough to alter their roles depending on the situation. Today if India were suddenly 30-3 with Dhawan, Kohli and Rahane in the hut, you could expect a Rohit Sharma and a Suresh Raina to build an innings from scratch. However, if India were 30-3 back then with Tendulkar, Gambhir and Sehwag back in the hut, stabilizing the innings was too much to ask of the then out-of-form Yuvraj and the then inexperienced Rohit Sharma. Yes, the fielding wasn't all that bad and neither was the bowling, but the batting screamed inexperience after the top 3 were gone.

We could rewind back and forth again, only to find a team much weaker than what we have now. We could very well go back to 2003 when we made the finals of the World Cup in South Africa, the bowling clicked but the fielding still well below than most of the international teams at the time. We could fast forward to the one which won the Champions trophy in 2013, a pretty decent batting and a fielding unit. But death bowling was a major worry. It took a real stroke of luck in the finals too to get over the line. The point I'm trying to make is we have never had a side that has ticked all the boxes like the way we are doing now. And, we ought to be mighty proud with that. A lot of credit for this has to go to the support staff. We have been critical of Duncan Fletcher, but it appears that he was in it for the long haul and was laying a pretty solid foundation. Sanjay Bangar, Bharat Arun and Sreedhar too seem to have added great value to the side, making the boys go through the motions pretty comfortably. And, you just simply cannot shy away from giving Ravi Shastri the credit he deserves. A very astute thinker of the game, I have no doubts in my mind that Shastri must have had a phenomenal hand in shaping Indian Cricket the way it has in the last 6 months.

  But then again, I might just be a bit too high on life. Why would't I be?! Rohit Sharma has finally played a matured knock and WE HAVE TAKEN 70 WICKETS IN 7 GAMES! There's still a tough semi-final to be won. But, I don't think we are going down without a fight like the way we did at the Oval just before my last post on this crappy blog.