ICC World Cup 2011

I had couple of posts during the FIFA world cup last year and it will be surprising if I don't have a single post about the ICC world cup this year where India is considered to be one of the favorites. But, no matter India plays or not, watching football has always been very exciting to me. I was a great supporter of Brazil as well as Argentina during my childhood just because most of the people around me were supporting either of this two teams. On the other hand, cricket does not seem to be so interesting to watch nowadays. But playing cricket feels as good as it did in childhood. Cricket has grown to a very different stage in the last couple of years with couple of new rules introduced, a new format of the game called 20-20 introduced etc. Watching cricket has become boring because of too much cricket happening around I guess, for example 20-20 world cup, Indian Premier League happens every year plus there will be at least three different tours India will make to some other cricket playing nations, and some home series as well. I wonder when these players get any rest. Anyway, ICC cricket world cup is still the most interesting one among all these tournaments and this time its happening in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Unfortunately India is not playing up to the mark in the home grounds. In the group stage, they had struggled to win against minnows also. They could not even defend a score of 327 against England, they always face the problem of losing too many wickets within few overs towards the end, their fielding never improved etc etc. There were serious errors in decision making steps which also cost a lot, for example, the batting order. India never seemed to stick to a batting order, they tried to change it in every match and got the treatment. Fortunately the team management accepted that abrupt changes in batting order was in fact a big mistake and they stick to the initial batting order in the last match against West Indies. But they are yet to overcome the problem of rapid fall of wickets during the slog overs or during power-play. Hope it won't happen in the big match on Thursday against Australia. India can make much better with the existing resources and hope they will. I also hope Indian fans, media will be with the players, won't put unnecessary pressure on them. It often happens that, Indians think a cricket match can be won by one-man effort(Sachin for example) and similarly it can be lost due to one man (Nehra for example). This kind of attitude create too much pressure on the players which is good for nothing. We need to realize that cricket is not a one-man game and only a combined team effort can make us win. Like Sachin's two tons in this WC could not save those two matches for India, similarly one bad over or spell from a bowler can't be held responsible for the defeat. Hope the cricket fans will realize this and be with the players all through the tournament.