Time Men in Blue buck-up or buckle down

It was waiting to happen and when it did explode, the Indian players had no inkling about what hit them and destroyed the daylight out of each of them with a ruthless demolition that stands out for its sheer intensity. It is too staggering a thought that this just a tip of the iceberg and indicative of the things to come on the morrow.

Surely, the bewildered Indian ‘brave-hearts’ donning the national colours and carrying a billion plus hopes, would have spent the night praying that this was a nightmare that may never come knocking. Ever again!
Bludgeoned with a raw savagery by the golden boy at the IPL V bidding, Glenn Maxwell, with David Warner joining the run-riot that was magnanimously gifted by the ‘friendly’ Indian bowlers and the ever ‘generous’ butter-fingered fielders, the boys under the ‘astute’ stewardship of Captain Cool must have realised that they are hardly prepared to take the battle into the opposition camps, leave alone nurture any hopes of actually winning a single game.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni can be forgiven if he sheepishly takes shelter under a quote that is as downright foolish as the manner the ‘famed’ Men in Blue succumbed at Adelaide on Sunday.

“It is a very long tournament... very long and the team that does really well is most often the one that comes from the bottom. The dressing room atmosphere is good-which is to say that it is tough to get up once the morale is down, so I don't think it will be a problem.”

Shikhar Dhawan (59 from 71 balls) cooks up his own sordid take with a quote that matches that of his boss, word for word, ‘I don’t think I have a big technical problem. More than the runs I scored, I am more satisfied with the way the ball is coming off my bat.’

Damn the ridicule for these were inarguably bigger jokes than the 106-run humiliation the Indians suffered against Australia that was minus Michael Clarke and was led by George Bailey.

After the clobbering, even the bravest of the die-hard fans will think twice about putting even a dime on the spineless team’s prospects in the World Cup. It has been devoid of a win from three Tests and five ODIs besides losing to England in the triangular series.

Ishant Sharma’s knee injury comes as another setback. Although he is no great shakes, at least from among his fellow medium-pacers, he has experience on the Australian tracks. It is a different matter altogether that he s not the match-winner that India is desperately searching for since long.

The Men in Blue should be told that they are out there Down Under not for enjoying an all-expenses paid pre-summer vacation but to come home with the World Cup that they now have on a temporary four-year lease.

And yes, we forgot that this was just a ‘warm up’ match and not the showpiece itself. Ravi Shastri and his band of trusted ‘yes men’ will convince us that once they ‘decimate’ Pakistan on February 15, everything will fall in place.

Blessed, indeed, we are for the small mercies because there is no dearth of magical words emanating from the Indian camp. That is the way cookies crumble. Period!

By: Sridhar K Penna