Indian Cricket Team is Not Playing as a Team, Going Through the Motions

That is the reason why India are on top of their game in England, feels former Indian captain, Kapil Dev. While others have indulging in the Indian cricket team bashing, Kapil Dev has pointed out a few grey areas that India need to work on.

Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar

Kapil Dev has never been overly critical, but having played the game in the spirit in which he has, it is only natural that Kapil Dev’s passion for cricket and for representing India in sport only comes through emotionally.

India’s feat to England in the Test series by a 3-0 margin with a fourth Test still remaining at the Oval beginning tomorrow, India have little reason to lift their game now that they have lost the series, lost the faith of their fans albeit temporarily and ended up giving away their no.1 Test team rank as well. In many ways, the fourth and final Test of the India England series will be largely of an academic nature which is the danger why the team could continue to stagnate at the level it has right through the series.

Kapil Dev fears India have descended to a level where they are unable to enjoy the game, to love it and to play it in that spirit. Instead Kapil Dev is perhaps reiterating the idea of a crammed schedule to suggest that the cricketers are merely going through the motions as is the parlance to describe when a team is stuck on a level and unable to lift their game. But he is quick to suggest that fatigue cannot be the reason but rather alludes to fitness being a factor.

The former Indian captain is not one who will indulge in bringing down a team for the sake of doing so. But he is certainly concerned about team harmony in the sense that he does not feel that the presence of the senior cricketers is not necessarily percolating down to the young cricketers who are forging their way into Test cricket.

Having been a captain himself and having successfully led the Indian cricket to their first World Cup victory in 1983 in England, Kapil Dev knows a thing or two about what it takes to run a team. In his opinion, while Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian captain, are hailed as heroes not only by cricket fans but also, by their fellow team mates in the Indian dressing room. In that light, Kapil Dev felt that not enough was being done by the senior cricketers who may be more interested than their own time going into the sunset that they are not being able to impart their wisdom and their experience onto the younger players.

In particular, Kapil Dev has a word of advice because he feels for the Indian bowlers who he feels will gain immensely if the senior Indian cricketers on the field take a more active interest in what the bowler is thinking, feeling and doing and guide to reset the benchmark. He feels that the idea where players are expected to come prepared at this level is misplaced in the Indian cricket context and that the onus is upon the likes of the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, to aid these young bowlers to help them understand and take charge of the demands at the international cricket level.