Consistency in Losing

The year hasn’t opened as well as the Indian Cricket team and its fans would have liked it to. With Virat Kohli’s successful run as test captain almost for a year, the eyebrows were already frowning as Dhoni lead the team to Australia for the ongoing ODI series. Though captain Dhoni appeared confident in most of the pre-series press conferences, little did he know about the tragedy he was heading towards.

As the third match concludes at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, to everyone’s disappointment, India has already lost the series, 3-0 with two matches still left to be played. The embarrassment could be predicted at a point when India’s spearhead bowler coming back from injury, Mohammad Shami had to be sent back on account of injury again. It is since then that the Indian bowlers have failed to find rhythm altogether. Though there have been a number of positives with the Indian batting the bowlers have terribly let down. On one hand, as the likes of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane amongst others put their quality on display, on the other, series debutant Birender Sran, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and others have failed to find their line and length. On the Aussie front, Captain Smith and George Bailey have looked in sublime form. Shaun Marsh too found some form with the bat earlier today. However, the man who stole the match remained the flamboyant, Glenn Maxwell, with his match-winning 96.

As far as individual performances are concerned, Rohit Sharma looked almost unbeatable in the first two games with back to back centuries. Though he missed out in the third game, Virat Kohli took over scoring his ton after a couple of consistent performances leading the Indian batting. Ajinkya Rahane too has looked promising with the limited time he has spent on the crease. As for the bowlers, though debutant Birender Singh took three wickets in the first game, he never really looked in control of his bowling. He struggled to find his form. The wickets were luckier than real hard work. The others didn’t quite seem like it was the 2nd and 3rd time they were playing on Australian soil.

The match that concluded earlier today at the MCG was the only match where India didn’t look like they had given up. This one was a real fight which went the wrong way on account of a number of brilliant Aussie performances and of course, some really sloppy fielding witnessed in the longest time. This also happened at a time when the Indians were finally earning a name as one of the better fielding sides in the world. As India move into the final two matches to play for pride, there needs to be a lot of effort put in to avoid a complete washout.