India is in dismal stage on the second day of fourth and final test match against England being played in Nagpur. It is going to be another humiliating defeat possibly by a margin of an inning, and all the blame for this shameless peformance must be shared collectively by all the so-called world-class Indian batsmen who are failing repeatedly on their own pitches. Unfortunately, neither they can play on fast tracks on overseas pitches of South Africa, England and Australia, nor on slow turners and docile pitches in India.
What type of pitches they require to play? It is better that majority of them stop playing cricket rather than bringing shame to Indian cricket. You cannot win all the matches, but you should not loose all the matches and that too with great margins. You must fight to the last ball and probably, this sportsmanship and killer instinct have disappeared from the vocabulary of all the players.
Although it is a collective loss, yet some of the senior players like Sachin Tendulkar, have outlived their importance to the playing eleven. The age has caught up with Sachin and out of seven innings played so far in the current series, he has contributed significantly in one inning only, and this speaks volume about his loosing grip on his batting skills. Sachin will not get younger in the days to come and he has already contributed a lot with his bat. As a mattter of fact, probably no other bastsman will be able to break his mammoth batting records, but one day every great man has to bow out of the scene to make way for younger person to take his or her place whether in sports, business or politics.
Sachin can’t afford to cling to the team when he is not able to perform to his potentials and this is the ideal time to hang up his boots after the Nagpur test. And if he still can’t take this hard decision then BCCI should urge him to take retirement call and as Kapil Dev said rightly – the beautiful life awaits him after retirement. He will have numerous opportunites and ways to earn money when he says good bye to Indian Team.
Besides Sachin, the other failed batsman in this series and earlier series is Virender Sehwag. It is high time for him to see in the mirror and decide what he is upto and except his century on placid pitch in Ahmedabad test, his contribution to the team is negligible. It will be advisable for BCCI to put him on notice and if he continues to fail in second inning of current test and in the first two tests of next series then he should be dropped from the playing eleven otherwise there won’t be any hope of revival of fortunes of Indian cricket team.
