Just weeks ago, the pundits said this was our best chance ever to beat Australia in Australia. Our best team possible. Did the best team ever age in weeks? What happened?
IPL happened. And happened long before the disaster tours. A team full of players carrying injuries playing 90 days of sub-standard club-level cricket happened
I dont know..but India played 3 tests in the westindies before England. and they again played 3 tests against the westindies before Oz..defeating westindies evrytime.
3 tests by 5 days each equals 15 days of test cricket. wasnt that sufficient preparation and time for transisition from T20 to tests?.
Sainath has a great over all case but T20 aint alone when it comes to sharing blame..may not even be the basic cause.
Laxman for example did not make runs as he usualy did from the westindies through england, back to the westindies at home and in OZ. Sehwag appears to have shot his bolt and did not score even against the westindies at home in the tests. and Tendulkar bats like what he is..an older player who misses more than he hits as he ages.
only Dravid seems genuinely to have worked out an approach that transcends his age and perfomed consistently all the way through thisd year-long Indian debacle. yet in the process India did defeat westindies..twice. and never huffed and puffed through every 5-day cycle in doing so.
there is more to Indias defeat than just T20. maybe, just maybe the team has declined as it had to, and now cannot compete with the best in the world..younger teams in full flow, and stillk with some upside to them. and it is not just over a short period as Sainath establishes, for the defeat in england last summer was as comprehensive as this one here in Oz currently
however, I agree T20 is a pestilence and is destroying the game of cricket internationally.
but that is what the people, the fans..appear convinced is what they want..bacchanalia over mental progress and existential evolutionary success.
but such induced bacchanalia is always a product of society as it passes from one basic stage to another, as established status quo try to go on indefiently by making the people foolish..dumbing them dong... all the better to control them.
so T20 is not only exploitative financially but at the same time dumbs the people down, robs them of developed sensibility that is non specfic, applicable to successful survival, especially in oposition to the machinations of dominant classes seeking to control and exploit the people.
but the Indian people in particular are caught up in the propaganda dat somehow T20 is good. so are we all..in the van of the bandwagon of bacchanalia, on our way over the cliffside.
so be it I guess!