Indian Cricket Team is going through the hurdles in the recent time whether it’s related to all the controversies been around the team, including Virat Kohli & Sourav Ganguly rift or fight rumors between Rohit Sharma & Virat Kohli. The team is in rough phase and in a transition period, which is clearly affecting the performance of team on field.
India has suffered many upsets in the previous 3-6 months one after the other. This includes India’s early exit from T20 World Cup without even qualifying for semi-finals. Under the leadership of Virat Kohli, India emerged victorious in many test and was certainly the best test side. Moreover, no one was expecting that a young South African side could beat this experienced Indian team in test series. The other shocking event was followed when Virat Kohli announced his resignation from test captaincy after the series.
Now, the men in blue under the newly appointed captain KL Rahul ( due to Rohit’s absence) had a goal to beat South Africa in ODI, which seemed quite easy. However, fate had other plans and India suffered a humiliating loss to South Africa after been whitewashed in the series(3-0).
Let’s recapitulate the possible reasons for India’s defeat-
1) KL Rahul Poor Batting Performance
The captaincy role did certainly affected KL Rahul’s batting as he played a tortoise inning, while managing only 76 runs in 3 ODI matches. Thus, Indian team lacked a solid foundation from top order batsman.
2) Absence of Rohit Sharma
Indian Team missed their man in form Rohit Sharma at the top of the order on South Africa tour. Rohit is on the peak of his batting form, whether we talk about his batting in test match or ODI or T20. Moreover, Rohit as an experienced leader was missed in the ODI series too.
3) Limited Bowling Options
In the recent times, India has adopted a weird policy of having only 5 bowling options in a match, even though Bhuvneshwar Kumar & Shardul Thakur were quite expensive, they didn’t try out Venkatesh Iyer as a bowler. If stats are to be compared, then this Indian bowling is worst in the last 5-6 years according to wicket taking ability, as Jasprit Bumrah is the lone survivor stepping up in every circumstance for a wicket.
Bhuvneshvar Kumar is one of the biggest dissapointments for Indian Cricket. They should definitely try youngster in replace of him.
4) Shreyas Iyer
Shreyas Iyer was a consistent performer for India in the middle batting order, however after his shoulder injury last year, he hasn’t quite been up to the par in performance and he lacked his worth in this ODI series.
5) Batting Collapses
India has developed an unhealthy habit of having batting collapse just at the moment when everything is going in their favor. It happened in the ODI series as well when Indian batting order collapsed- 7 wickets for 76 runs. India is surely missing the services of M.S Dhoni- the batsman.
We all want Indian Cricket Team to dominate the world cricket as they had conquered and breached every fortress of cricketing nation. We all our fans of Team India, not merely a winning or losing team India. We believe in you and you will rise again to achieved greater heights and success.