If you ask this question, which may seem to be stupid to a whole lot of people, every Tom, Dick and Harry in this country will say- yes they will. Some would also say that it’s a foregone conclusion. After all we have the best T20 players who are fresh from IPL and are ready to go. If the IPL was any indication the form of Indian players, though playing in different teams, when put together is much better than that of players from other countries. And thankfully Matt Hayden and Gilly have retired and our selectors have left out Sreesanth (Ha Ha!!). So now the World Cup is as good as ours. Isn’t it? Or is it? Let’s find out.

Are they ready for the big one?

The Weaknesses

1. The players may be tired. The IPL may be over but there have been some pitfalls. The tournament may have produced some wonderful players but to say that they are fresh from IPL would be grossly wrong. In fact they may well be tired of all the nonstop playing and traveling for more than a month and a half. Believe you me, it does affect the performance of a player. You cannot expect a person to come out and give his best continuously for over two and a half months.

2. Openers are a big concern. To say that the openers, Gambhir and Sehwag, are not in the best nick would be an understatement. They are not the best opening pair as they were once considered, at least in this format of the game. Sehawag in particular is woefully out of touch. He couldn’t really get going in the IPL even once. And we are talking about fifteen games (though he missed out on a couple of them due to injury). If he could not get his touch back in fifteen games how can he get it back now? Gambhir too, is not exactly the same ever since he returned from New Zealand. Though he did a shade better than Sehwag in IPL but he’s not really the explosive player that he proved to be in NZ.

3. Zaheer is unfit. That’s the biggest problem. Even though Dhoni has said that he’s likely(?) to be fit for the first or second game I really doubt how effective he will be after a long lay off. He has to have some match practice before we can expect him to fire. If he does not get fit for the pool games it could be dangerous to play him later on in Super Eight stage or even further.

4. Ishant Sharma is lackluster. Whatever reason you may want to give for his lackluster performance in IPL, in my opinion he’s not in fine form. I really wonder if he can still be called a strike bowler and be depended upon to deliver in crunch situations. Coupled with Zaheer’s fitness concerns the bowling department does look a bit weak, even if we have RP Singh in our ranks. Yes, we have pacers like Praveen Kumar and Irfan Pathan but in my opinion they are no substitutes for a fully fit Zaheer or an all guns blazing Ishant Sharma. Also, we may have part time spinners in the team but I feel we stll lack one quality seamer, if Zaheer and Ishant don’t come up to the required level of fitness and form. Use of part time spinners is a gamble which may pay off on any given day but to expect them to win the tournament for you would be a bit too much.

5. Dhoni’s confidence level is also not up to the mark. Despite the fact that he’s the coolest captain around it would be wrong to say that he can deliver in any and every situation. Remember, he faltered in Chennai’s last few games in IPL. So don’t get this impression that he’s without his shortcomings. Agreed he’s the best bet we have and may well still deliver. But just don’t be complacent about him.

The Strengths

1. IPL may have indeed been a boon. Yes, whatever we might say it’s a fact that all the players in our current team were part of IPL which will not be the case with any other team. That’s a big boon. Every player is more than accustomed to this format of the game. Raina, Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, RP Singh, Bhajji and Dhoni himself are in pretty good form. Irfan also demonstrated that he can bat as well. If these guys fire there’s no doubt we will do very well.

2. Batting and fielding are major plusses. Despite Sehwag and Gambhir not doing too well we still have a damn good batting line up. As for fielding, these youngsters are much better than they were a couple of years ago. All this combined makes our team really look good.

3. Bowling options. There’s no doubt about the fact that since you have so many options to bowl the opposition will get foxed as to what should they expect. They will have to take as it comes. The initiative is with us and that can be a game changer (I know I said something else a few sentences back).

4. Confidence and resilience. The team has been on a high after a series of successful outings in the last year or so and that has given this team an edge over everyone. No team in the tournament will be as confident of themselves as this one. That may be the key to winning the tournament.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that our team is pretty good. There are players in this side who can singel handedly win a match. But we can’t be complacent or over confident about our team. They need to fire and fire well. They have the potential but the question is - Will they get bogged down by the expectations of a billion people? Are these guys over confident about their success and capabilties? Or can they deliver and make us proud all over again? What do you guys feel? Are you guys confident of their success or are you just keeping your fingers crossed? Tell me. Let’s find out how many of you are confident and how many are not.

Apropos 02 June 09. India has lost the first warm up match against New Zealand yesterday. Like I said - Don’t get too complacent. I’ve started having my doubts now. How about you? Do any of you have doubts now? Don’t you guys feel that we are underestimating the opponents?

Apropos 03 June 05. India has beaten Pak team convincingly. But what it is this I’m hearing about Dhoni and Sehawag having problems with each other? If that were to happen it would be really bad for India. You cannot win matches if Captain and Vice Captain don’t get along.

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Posted on June 1st, 2009 India calling • Tags: confidence, Cricket, Dhoni, IPL, player, T20, team, World Cup. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback