What else can I say.......

Have we been silent for the past 10 days because of shock or remorse or disgust? I'm sure the answer is a combination of all the above emotions. But certain things also make our silence humorous. The funniest thing being that yesterday a nation of 1.1 billion people were supporting Bermuda, a country 17,000 times smaller! Hell, there are as many people living in Bermuda as there are in my neighbourhood. So, for them to be playing an international game is like us taking our evening cricket team to the World Cup! This to me is just hilarious. That a country with 66,000 people can produce a team while India with 1.1 billion people struggle to beat much smaller nations, nations which should have much smaller talent pools and so on. Something's grossly wrong with the world. Mind you, Bermuda put up a good fight and I'm sure when Bangladesh were 37/3, a few Indian hopes were rising out of slumber while Bangladeshi nerves must have been jangling.

India's performance against Sri Lanka notwithstanding (India should have beaten them; chasing 250+ against Sri Lanka has been like a walk in the park for India over the last 18 months), it is India's performance against Bangladesh that will come to haunt them. May be it was just the way the coin flipped at the toss that hurt Dravid's men the most. Two weeks into the tournament we know it's much better to chase a target (unless you are Australia), but at the time I'm sure the team decided to bat first: mainly because Bangladesh should be an easy team to win against and so batting first would give good batting practice to India's batsmen and then the bowlers would have an opportunity to bowl B'desh out cheaply and provide a huge boost to India's NRR. Similar to what India or SL did against Bermuda and Aus or SA against Holland. Unfortunately none of that happened as people with a combined experience of about 2000 matches and 40,000 runs buckled "under pressure" against a team with maybe a fifth or tenth of those statistics. Pressure cannot be an excuse. It is brought upon the players not only by 1.1 billion supporters, but also by the players themselves who have set a high standard in the game; make no mistake about that. They are 11 out of 1.1 billion because they can handle that pressure and still perform to compete with the best in the world.

The fact that they buckled two times out of three in this World Cup means that something in the system didn't encourage them to perform. I still think the biggest factor was that Sachin did not open the batting. Yes Sehwag, yes Uthappa, yes Ganguly, but when it comes to opening the batting in One Day International Cricket, only one man stands. As far as I'm concerned, you could do anything with the other three batsmen coming in at 2,3 and 4, but SRT had to open. He loves leading from the front. He also possesses the technique to attack and defend in the early overs and well, he has 15,000 runs and 41 hundreds, most of which have come opening. People talk about his fading days, but I'm not one to speak too early. He scores 100s after comebacks; in spite of Ganguly's return to the side, I think it was Sachin who looked the best and most accomplished batsman on India's tour to South Africa. He didn't score a 100, but scored two 60s and a 40 in 3 tests and that's pretty good going considering how the others performed. The main thing is, in ODIs he loves opening and can make the best attacks look pedestrian. It was a shame that after the WI and SL series at home, the two WC warm up games and the two WC group games, he still came in at No. 4 against Sri Lanka. Sadly, he couldn't perform. I think he'll play the next WC, but that's the least of my interests or worries. WC cricket and ODI cricket in general are over-rated and it's high time the BCCI gave more importance to the real thing: Test Cricket.

However, these happenings on the field pale into insignificance when we consider what this WC will really be remembered for. It may be remembered for Ireland and Bangladesh (even though they will both be steam-rolled in the Super 8s by the other 6 teams), but to me it will be one of the most tragic in modern sporting history. In a way it may be prophetic that cricket's two biggest countries won't be involved in it any further because who would want to tarnish their great sport by winning a WC that will always be shrouded under a cloud of murder! It is the most ghastly side of the sport that has shown its face and tragically, it is only these incidents that propel cricket to the banner headlines of espn.com or cnn.com or even bbcnews.com. When Lara scores 400*, does anyone outside the cricket-playing world know what's going on; when Sachin scores his 35th hundred in his Capital city, does anyone get to know; when Warne got his 700th wicket, did anyone get to know? Of course not! People will hear around the world about the Boston Red Sox beating the New York Yankees, but when it comes to cricket it is only ball-tampering, match-fixing, drug-abuse and murder than puts it on world view. What a wonderful outreach and popularisation campaign. Shame on one-day cricket. It is the main culprit in all this: there's too much money, too much commercialisation and the game has lost out in the bargain. So much so, the next time there'll be a cricketing frenzy in India, it will be for the Twenty20 WC in September, not for India's tour to the World's 2nd best test playing nation. As far as I'm concerned, I'm eagerly waiting for July 19 Lord's or may be a bit of revenge on the 10th of May.........