Losing to an under-19 team?

Alternate headlines:

• India humiliated
• India’s moment of shame
• Paper tigers slayed
• Drop Sehwag and Agarkar
• Is this the year of the minnow?
• Is 2007′s Bangladesh 1983′s India?

No matter how you decide to look at this, the fact is that India has been humiliated on the world stage. Bring the swords out. Sharpen the knives. Take aim. Shoot!

India’s campaign has got off to the worst possible start. The game against Bangladesh was supposed to be one of the two easy wins to take India to the second round. Instead, there is now a mountain to climb and even a win over Sri Lanka will not assure India of a spot in the second round. Unless Bangladesh loses both their games that is. The five-wicket loss will not go down well with fans, administrators or even among players. It is a slap in the face.

The problem started right at the toss. It’s easy to say that in hindsight, but the fact is that on an unknown pitch, it may have been better to bat second. With as many as seven batsmen in the team, though, the decision was justified. Virender Sehwag once again started the rot and from there on, it was a steady procession of wickets until Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh put on more than 80. But India never looked like they were settled. And no one looked like they wanted to settle. Losing 5 wickets in 3 runs seemed like the final nail in the coffin and it was thanks to Munaf Patel and Zaheer Khan who put on 32 for the last wicket that gave India some perceived respectability in their total. But 191 was never going to be enough.

And the start Bangladesh got emphasised this only more. Tamim Khan started with a blistering 51 off just 55 balls and his one six off Zaheer where he danced down and smacked him over mid-wicket was incredible. The bowling was flat, the pitch flatter and the Indian attempt at defending the total really bad. No one seemed like they could take a wicket except Munaf Patel. Watching Zaheer Khan bowl brought back painful memories of the 2003 final against Australia. If Bangladesh can do this, what will happen against better teams if India gets a chance to play them, that is!

The Indian fielding was awful and the batters made the Bangladesh bowling look like South Africa and Australia together! In all honesty, though, Bangladesh deserved to win and was superior than India in all departments. The real humiliation for India was in the fact that most of the Bangla top order was in the age group of 17-22. It really was like losing to an under-19 team. And what’s the deal with the extras? Did someone shrink the crease sizes for India? There were three half-centuries in Bangladesh’s chase and that offered tremendous stability and direction. For India, it was only Ganguly’s 66 and Yuvraj’s 47 apart from the contributions by numbers 10 and 11.

So what next? Bermuda on Monday and India will need to really turn up with some critical changes to the side.

1. Sehwag must go. No matter how much faith Dravid has in him, he has no place in the side.
2. Agarkar must make way for Sreesanth. Simply no fire in Agarkar’s bowling.
3. A fifth bowler, preferrably Anil Kumble, must be drafted into the team. If six batsmen cannot score runs, a seventh can’t make much difference.
4. Rahul Dravid has to start making a difference and show leadership. He was fairly invisible in this match.

A seemingly simple list. But can India do that? Bangladesh is actually now favourite to make it to the next round at the expense of India. At this moment, only Bermuda can save India!

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