By Gaurang
October 27 2006

Eleven days ago, India began its Champions Trophy campaign with a facile win over the worst ODI team among the major Test playing nations, England. Even this win had a hiccup or two with the batting line-up, although the bowling looked relatively well-oiled. Today, they lost to the Windies. In the intervening eleven days, Rahul Dravid, Greg Chappell and the rest of the Indian think-tank had plenty of time to assess their weaknesses and come up with a game plan to plot their progress into the semi-finals.

However, on the day of reckoning, the plans turned out half-baked. In a crucial match against the West Indies, they picked 5 bowlers on a bowler-friendly surface where they were in dire need of extra batsmen. Was this a knee-jerk reaction against the success enjoyed in the past with a 7-batsmen, 4-bowler formula?

If not, it really looked foolish that the regular bowlers failed to complete their overs, while part-timers bowled a full quota. Not to mention the fact that a powerful hitter like Mahendra Singh Dhoni had to curb his natural instincts because India had a longish tail.

To compound matters, the think-tank persisted with the unsuccessful ploy of sending Irfan Pathan, who is most definitely a bowler and not a batsman, to bat at number three in the line up.

This sort of inept planning and poor execution is happening with alarming regularity, and must be a concern for genuine Indian cricket fans. It seems that an analysis-paralysis of sorts has crept into the Indian dressing room.

Rahul Dravid, ever the diplomat, is always able to see the other side of most issues. But as captain, this is not an admirable quality. The Captain has to have a bit of a tunnel vision and laser-like focus about him. He needs to set an agenda for his team to follow.

However, it seems that Dravid is no more adept at setting the agenda than he is at deflecting the blame. It appears that the agenda is still set by the inordinately powerful coach, who also has the privilege of not being held responsible or accountable for the outcomes of his failed experiments, as the gentleman captain he so shrewdly maneuvered into place is willing and able to bear that burden.

Observer after observer, including Indian cricket legends such as Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Ravi Shastri have started to fret about the lack of a core team which will form the basis of India’s squad as it embarks on its World Cup campaign a few short months from now.

But the bull-headed management has not seen fit to acknowledge that the primary purpose of playing matches is to win them. Instead we heard from the captain that experimentation would continue throughout the tournament. We also heard sentiments such as “what is important is not winning or losing, but the process.”

Of course, experimentation and assessment of strengths and weaknesses is important, but it should never come at the cost of winning.

Australia purposely took 18 members on tour to Malaysia in the DLF cup. They rotated and experimented with all 18 players and made some quick assessments. They also won the tournament. India had a much smaller contingent, yet managed to have a couple of players not play a single game and then ended up third in a three-team race. If this is the type of experimentation that the Indian think tank is talking about, it is about time they were kicked out of the laboratory which Team India has become, and told to perform or perish -- starting at the top with the coach.

There is still a chance that Team India will pull a Houdini act and enter the semi-finals of this second-most prestigious of international One-day tournaments by defeating the favorites: Australia.

However, the reality is that they are standing on the brink of an early exit from the competition in their own backyard. Unless they can suddenly discover the spark and fire in the belly that all this experimentation seems to have doused, come Sunday Indian fans will have to watch the rest of the tournament like they normally watch other global sporting tournaments: as outsiders, cheering for sides that do not represent them.