Roebuck: India need to focus on rebuilding
Peter Roebuck, writing in the Hindu , says India must examine the evidence provided by their heavy defeat to England and respond accordingly, forgetting about past records and big reputations.
Nikita Bastian
25-Feb-2013
Peter Roebuck, writing in the Hindu, says India must examine the evidence provided by their heavy defeat to England and respond accordingly, forgetting about past records and big reputations.
It is over. India's steady rise in the last 15 years or so reached its highest point in 2011 as the team attained top position in the Test rankings and won the World Cup ...
India has an old batting order, an unreliable pace attack, a spinner lacking bite, poor fielding and abject running between wickets. It is hardly a recipe for success. Clearly the time has come to forget about deeds and debts and champions and crowd pleasers and sentiment and to focus on rebuilding.
Rohit Brijnath, writing in Mint, says 'effort is a voice in the athlete's head' that pushes him to go the extra mile, and this is the voice that India did not seem to hear in the England Test series.
... [India lacked] effort in concentration when the ball was doing some swinging dance; in pushing the body Anil Kumble-like into one more hard over bowled, then another, then 40; in keeping the right body language in the 89th over. Yes, it’s bloody hard. It’s supposed to be.
Failure in England wasn’t simply lack of effort, for that diminishes England and reduces sport to the simplistic. India unravelled, like a seam in a faded dress, because its cricket is confused. It’s as if No. 1 in Test cricket — a grand achievement — had been earned and there it ends, instead of resetting the bar ... Wherein you say, screw luck, damn conditions, forget injuries — they’re sporting staples — every series just has to be won, till this greed infects the system, till suddenly one day you’ve won 16 Tests in a row and still ask, what about 17?
Nikita Bastian is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo